The Very Rich Hours of the Lambrights » Library Technology

Library Technology at Computers in Libraries 2009

Donovan — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:21:51 +0000

Haven’t posted here much since I landed here at CIL2009. Most of my blogging has been on library technology and thus went up over at SELCO Librarian. But I thought I’d take a moment this morning to link to those posts:

Today is the last day of the conference but I’m not flying out until tomorrow morning. I’m looking forward to a little sight-seeing tonight and a trip to my favorite bar in the world. More on that later.

Computers in Libraries, Day 1

Donovan — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:25:25 +0000

I’m killing a little time before the opening keynote address at Computers in Libraries. Got settled in yesterday. I did catch the Lincoln exhibit at the Smithsonian but didn’t do much else. The long day of travel wore me out more than I had realized until I actually contemplated more walking. So I settled for dinner and relaxing at the hotel for a few hours. I did notice that the National Mall looks like hell; the grass is in serious need of help. No doubt the usual effect of winter combined with the tramping of a gazillion feet during the President’s inauguration less than two months ago.

Listened to the Decemberists new album, The Hazards of Love, yesterday on the plane. I pre-ordered it from Amazon in the hopes that I would get it on the release day (last Tuesday). It still hadn’t arrived on Friday; that’s the last time I pre-order music. If I can’t get it right away, what’s the point? I’ll just go to Best Buy. Anyway, my friend Mike ripped his copy for me so I could bring it along. I asked him what he thought and he simply said “Dark. Very Dark”. Having listened to it now, I think that’s a pretty good description. Very dark. More like The Tain than, say, Castaways and Cutouts. Colin and Co. had moved in this direction a bit for their last album, The Crane Wife, and seem to have continued in the same vein but even more. I’ll need to listen to it a few more times before I have anything intellegent to say about the songs themselves.

Computers in Libraries 2009

Donovan — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 01:43:11 +0000

NOTE: I wrote this post this morning at the airport but didn’t have time to get it posted.

This morning, I’m at sitting at the Rochester Airport waiting for my flight to Washington DC for the annual Computers in Libraries conference. I go to this every year and always find it a great time. The conference is always great with informative and thought-provoking sessions, lots of vendor exhibits, and chances for networking with other technology library folk. I love Washington DC, with all its history and politics, and always find it a great place to recharge my emotional batteries. That’s good because, speaking frankly, those batteries are running a little low these days.

But enough of that. My flight to DC arrives around 3:30 local time and I’m hoping to get in a little sight-seeing before settling down in the hotel. Once I get checked in and my gear is stowed, I’m going to hop on the Metro and head to the National Mall. There, I’ll take a long walk to the Lincoln Memorial and maybe to the White House if my feet are still up for it. Alternatively, there’s an exhibit on Abraham Lincoln at the National Museum of American History that is open until 7:30 PM. I might decide to skip some of the long walk and check that out instead. Once the conference starts tomorrow, time for museums and such will be limited.

Keep on eye on the blog. I’ll be posting here over the next few days. My posts on the conference itself, including sessions, will be mostly over at SELCO Librarian.

CIL2008–Monday

Donovan — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:57:01 +0000

Had a great first day at Computers in Libraries. It started rather inauspiciously when I managed to spill a cup of coffee down the front of my white shirt trying to find a seat at the very start of the first presentation. One trip to the Men’s room and lots of cold water later, I had repaired the worst of the damage. Today, I’m drinking my coffee out of a paper cup with a lid. Much safer.

I’ve posted on SELCO Librarian about most of the sessions I went to; here are the links if you are interested:

Had dinner at the Portofino, a wonderful Italian place that Barb Misselt and I found when we were here last year. After that, I hung around Mackey’s Public House for awhile. They have a great selection of beers and good WiFi so it’s a great place to wrap up the day’s blogging. If you’re in Crystal City and are looking for a good meal or a drink, you can’t go wrong with these two places.

Computers in Libraries

Donovan — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 01:43:12 +0000

I’m in Washington DC for the annual Computers in Libraries conference. I go to this every year and always come home with new ideas. I’ll be posting a lot of the library stuff to SELCO Librarian but might put up something here if I find any time to check out DC. This is one of my favorite places to visit; if all else fails, I’ll at least squeeze in a trip to the National Mall or the White House.

Pushing Paper Out the Door

Donovan — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:02:48 +0000

Cross posted to SELCO Librarian

The New York Times recently published an interesting article entitled Pushing Paper Out the Door (free registration required). As you might guess, the article is about people using less paper as digital storage and access becomes more and more common. Among the anecdotal evidence and interviews is an interesting statistic: In the richest countries in the world, per capita paper consumption has dropped 6% from 2000 to 2005.

I don’t see paper disappearing anytime soon. Remember the promise of the paperless office? Having said that, the article struck a chord with me. In the past year or two, I’ve been striving to cut down my use of paper in my personal life and at work. Honestly, it wasn’t planned or carefully thought-out. It just sort of happened:

Maps and phone books are largely things of the past as Google Maps and online phone books have become my navigational tools of choice. I still print out my maps from Google, mostly because I’m too cheap to spring for a GPS unit or smart phone with Internet connectivity. When the price barriers drop a little more, I’ll be all over it.

I’ve become much more likely to take my laptop to a meeting at work and simply access relevant documents online from the SELCO web page or our shared storage drive. Anymore, I don’t even take a pen; any notes I take will be typed up in a text editor. Every once in awhile, I’ll be embarrassed when I cannot come up with a document quickly enough in a meeting; I still find it faster to shuffle paper than to shuffle documents in Windows. This hasn’t happened enough to make me go back to printing everything out before the meeting.

I still tend to print out documents if I have to compare them side-by-side. That is changing, however, as I now have a monitor large enough to display two standard size documents side by side. The annotation tools in Microsoft Word and Adobe Reader aren’t second nature to me yet so I still tend to reach for my highlighter and Post-It notes when editing documents. The jury is still out on this one.

Business cards last just long enough in my office to have their contents typed into Outlook. Then they are gone regardless of the fancy embossing or card stock they are printed on.

All my finances are done online. If you don’t have a web page where I can access my account and make payments directly from my bank, you’re unlikely to get my business.

Two needs have driven me to trade electrons for ink:

The need to find things more efficiently. I’m one of those people who cannot stick to a personal filing system and I constantly find myself digging through stacks of paper. I would much rather file this stuff electronically and use tools like Search and tagging to find data. In a similar vein, email has become my personal information management system. Any conversation I have in email gets archived where I can search it later. There are sophisticated software solutions for this kind of thing but email still works for me.

The need to reduce clutter. My inability to stick to a personal filing system means I tend to have stacks of paper on every available surface. Yuck.

So it may not be a paperless world just yet but I think more people are going to embrace this way of operating as digital storage becomes more ubiquitous. What can libraries do to serve patrons who want to lose the paper?

Make every communication from the library available electronically. Notices should be available via email, text messaging, instant messaging and whatever else comes up. Checkout receipts should be handled this way too. Wouldn’t it be cool if checkout receipts could be emailed as an iCal or Outlook appointment? The patron could just drop it into their calendar and get a reminder a few days before the item is due. I think most libraries have gotten the word on email but support for the other tools is uneven at best. Support from ILS vendors on this kind of thing has been uneven as well.

We’ve got to find a better way to deliver online content like e-books. The existing tools are cumbersome and difficult for both librarians and patrons. I don’t have a better idea on this but I’ll look closely at any vendor who partners with an e-book provider to build this into their ILS.

More public access computers for patrons trying to manage their lives on the run. I think that libraries have mostly gotten this and have put out as many computers as their buildings will allow. There are other ways to push the envelope, however. Making sure that all the public access computers are relatively new (thus fast) and not locked down to the point that patrons cannot access their data and applications is a place to start.

Wireless is your friend. Wireless Internet has the potential to help rescue us from the pressure to constantly add more public access computers. Many patrons would love to use their own laptops if the library would just offer WiFi. And don’t stop at laptops; we also need to embrace other wireless devices like smart phones. It’s time to take down the “Please turn off your cell phone” signs.

None of these are new suggestions but they point the way forward. What other strategies come to mind? Are you looking to lose the paper or do you think this is just an updated version of the “Someday, we’ll all work in paperless offices” hype? Leave a comment and let’s talk about it.

WILSWorld 2007

Donovan — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 02:52:37 +0000

I’m in Madison, WI for the WILSWorld 2007 conference. I’m blogging the conference at SELCO Librarian; I won’t crosspost that here but check it out if you are interested in library technology. For those who are not interested, I give you a small, blurry picture of some sailboats on Lake Mendota.