Author Archive
Crickets in the Garden
I hear the sounds of crickets in the garden — the Library Garden, that is! My guess is that not only myself but all the other members of our blog team have been swallowed whole by September and all that it entails with the start of the academic year, new jobs, and new programs to plan. Not to mention that we have had a lot of good weather in NJ the last few weeks and I, for one, am taking time to enjoy it while I can. I do believe that this is officially the longest our blog has been quiet.
When Pete, Robert and I first talked about starting Library Garden we really felt that having 6-7 contributors was essential. The three of us all knew that our schedules would not allow for us to have individual blogs that we could maintain with any sort of consistency, but we felt we had a good shot if we had a team to blog with us. Our strategy has worked so far and I know that this silence on LG is just a matter of life trumping blogging for a few weeks.
Happy Blog Day 2007!
Today is the 3rd Annual Blog Day and I thought I would play along by listing my 5 “new and/or interesting” blogs. I won’t be giving much of a description for each blog I list due to a time crunch (aka packing for a vacation at Disney) and I will not be blogging again until mid-September at the earliest. I am leaving my laptop behind and unplugging for the entire vacation. Without further ado, my five “Blog Day Blogs”:
Cupcake Bakeshop by Chockylit — I love everything about cupcakes, especially experimenting with new recipes. I also love to read about them and Cupcake Bakeshop gives me lots of visuals to see the process. I actually follow more than one cupcake blog and I have to say that I read and adore Cupcakes Take the Cake equally as well. So many cupcakes, so little time.
Sandusky History — I received an email earlier this week from Dorene Paul, Reference Assistance at Sandusky Library in Ohio, that led me to a wonderful local history blog that is “inspired by the collections of the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center and Follett House Museum”. The photos are fascinating, the accompanying stories are engaging. This is local history done right!
Trashionista — Great for keeping up with chick-lit on both sides of the pond. They have a great tagline too: “We read books like they’re going out of fashion”.
MomsRising Blogs -MomsRising is a grassroots, online effort that has a goal of “bringing millions of people who all share a common concern about the need to build a more family-friendly America” and they have several bloggers helping to move their cause forward.
The Gadget Blog — There are lots of gadget blogs that I check and read regularly, some well-known and others that are not. Keeping up with the world of gadgets is important to my job, even if my budget can rarely afford the newest and the coolest.
See everyone again in a few weeks — enjoy the Labor Day weekend!
Nicole Engard to headline 8th Season of Tech Talks at PPL!
This talk is free and open to everyone — registration not required.
If you live within driving distance, consider joining us we kick off the 8th season of Tuesday Technology Talks at Princeton Public Library with Nicole Engard.
Full details can be found on the newly migrated Tech Talk blog.
How addicted are you?
Found via TTW — I couldn’t resist taking the quiz and am surprised at my score!
Mingle2 – Dating Site
History is Made!
Today the bloggers of Library Garden had an historic first — we all finally got together in real life. This photo captures the first time that the entire blog team was assembled in one place at the same time since we began blogging about 18 months ago. We have had 3 or 4 of us together in a room before now, but never all six. In fact, this the first time that Amy and Marie have met face-to-face.
The occasion? A little something we call The Magical Mystery Tour, which will be repeating again next week in South Jersey and later this fall in the Highlands. Full links and details to follow… it was a great day. Thanks to everyone from CJRLC who joined us this morning for some Web 2.0 fun.
Come Work with Me …
… and lots of other great people too! MPOW (aka Princeton Public Library) is seeking an Information Technology Director and we really want someone who is on board with all things 2.0 and can lead us forward. We have a tech savvy staff eager to implement new ideas, a great new building and an ideal location in the heart of downtown Princeton. Here is the official job posting.
Information Technology Director
The Princeton Public Library, located in the heart of downtown Princeton, two blocks from Princeton University, is seeking an experienced information technology professional to shape the future of technology and digital initiatives in its new Information Technology Director position.
The ideal candidate for this exciting new position is a strategic thinker able to anticipate upcoming technology needs and identify emerging solutions, while overseeing the daily operation of all library systems, including installations, maintenance, upgrades, troubleshooting and systems integration. The Information Technology Director will be responsible for forming and managing an IT support team, implementing, monitoring and maintaining operational standards and procedures, and ensuring a high level of service and functionality to library users and staff.
Our environment consists of
- Innovative Millenium Integrated Library System
- Two self checkout computers with RFID
- Over 100 public work stations with Microsoft Office Suite
- Computer & Wireless Network
- Over 70 staff work stations
- Mail Servers
- ·Technology Center with Smart Board
- Community Room with media equipment
- Phone Network
- Alarm & Security Systems
Experience and background
Extensive experience in systems administration along with demonstrated success in a leadership role is required. Experience with library applications and Web 2.0 is highly desired. A bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university in computer science/information technology or a related field is required. Certification as a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer is also desirable.
Qualified candidates are asked to email a cover letter and resume, including salary requirements (resumes without salary requirements will not be considered) to careers@princetonlibrary.org with IT Director listed in the subject line. No phone inquires, please.
We offer an excellent benefits package including 22 vacation days.
An Equal Opportunity Employer
The Bottom Line: Libraries Boost the Economy!
I love it when I come across articles that quantitatively prove the value of public libraries, and it seems like I have read several lately. The one I just finished reading is too good not to share!
Study: Libraries offer big returns.
In specific, it is facts such as the one quoted below that we all need to be able to call upon when our budgets are challenged:
The bottom-line conclusion: Pennsylvania public libraries provide a “return on investment” of $5.50 for every $1 of taxpayer funding.
If every state had a study where we could prove our worth in such a manner to the voting public it would be a wonderful world.
Enjoy the Smorgasborg!
Quote of the Day:
The library is like one big smorgasbord. It’s easy to pick up something and try it out.
Taken from the article “The value in your library may amaze y0u” that was posted today on Cincinnati.com
It is a short article that does an admirable job of pointing out the value of a library to a community — and it even includes a link the Maine State Library’s really great library calculator — a really useful tool that demonstrates how much money can be saved by using a public library.
I also love this marketing idea that the Kenton Public Library will rolling out shortly:
In September, the Library offers cardholders even more value. Libraries in Kenton, Boone, Campbell and Grant Counties have joined with local businesses to offer a discount to anyone who presents a library card. This partnership was formed to encourage residents to use of obtain a library card. More than 50 local businesses including Snappy Tomato Pizza, Golden Corral, Sherwin Williams, Mad Cup Café, and Pawsitively Perfect Grooming understand the value the library provides to the community and local businesses.
BookLovers Wiki: We hardly Knew Ye!
Summer Reading Clubs are well under way at public libraries across the country, including MPOW. I have had several emails and even some phone calls inquiring about the BookLovers Wiki and why we have not updated it. I finally had time to update today, but my update was merely to announce that the BookLovers Wiki is on a hiatus for this summer. I hope we can bring it back again next summer, but that will depend on a variety of factors (some of which are out of my control).
We fully intended to revive the wiki for this summers edition of the adult reading club. In fact, we had hopes of moving it to MediaWiki so that we could fully realize our original plan of creating cross indexes to the reviews (much like the TabWiki). We wanted to categorize the reviews by genre, author, title, reviewer, etc. this year. Even if we didn’t have time to migrate to MediaWiki, we were really excited to see if the addition of WYSIWYG editing to PBwiki would boost the number of reviews submitted by the public. Last year we had a few brave individuals who learned to submit reviews directly, but most (in the end) were still emailed to us and then entered by teen volunteers or staff — many of our bibioliphiles just couldn’t seem to grasp wiki code well enough to enter reviews on their own.
The BookLovers Wiki was a success in many ways, even if it had some shortcomings. We devised our plan to use a wiki for summer reading on a fairly short time frame, but it served its purpose amazingly well. It certainly raised awareness in the community about wikis in general and what they are (many atteneded classes about wikis, so even if they didn’t feel comfortable with the code at least they understood how they worked). It was an experiment, and (as far as experiments go) it was a good one.
So, why no wiki this summer? The wiki’s furlough status was made at the same time the decision was made to upgrade our III catalog to include ratings and reviews. Essentially, we want to get our community involved with adding reviews and ratings to our online catalog and, since we went live with the upgrade on June 1st, the summer reading club was the perfect vehicle to raise awareness about our catalogs newest features.
Also, we had been doing the BookLovers theme for a few years and we wanted a change of pace for the club. This year we have gone with a theme of “Read Around the World: Your Passport to Summer Reading” and it has been a hit. We have integrated our summer programming to the theme, have generated many interesting reading lists which we are now putting on our web site and will be having a Book Brunch at the end of the summer for participants.
I really do encourage other libraries to get involved with wiki projects for their communities, whether it is for book reviews or another program/project. The staff and patrons at PPL both learned much more than we anticipated from running the BookLovers Wiki and I am sure other communities would have a similar experience. I am always willing to talk about the project with those considering a wiki, so please do not hesitate to drop me a line or give me a call.
Email Woes … and the answer to my woes?
I have spent the better part of the last 5 days at work writing emails, responding to emails, trying to delete as much email as possible, organizing email, and so on. I used to absolutely love email when I first started using it 15 years or so ago. Now, not so much. In fact, I would have to say that at this very moment that email is my arch-nemesis.
I have long thought about declaring email bankruptcy, but I know that this is not really a viable option for a variety of reasons. Still, I dream about actually doing it one day and can imagine that it would feel very liberating.
In the not too distant past I had a rule of thumb for my inbox at work: No more than 100 messages at any given time and I was not allowed to leave on Friday until I was below my 100 quota. Messages either had to be answered, deleted or filed. The ones that remained were generally there for a good reason.
My current inbox is suffering from a severe case of bloat — both in terms of the number of messages that it contains and the length of those messages. I generally have in excess of 1,000 messages in my inbox and at the current moment I am approaching 1,600 (largely due to the email that accumulated during annual in DC). This does not include my spam or junk folders, this is legitimate email. My email flood began last summer when I took over as Program Coordinator at MPOW. I never imagined that organizing programs for a library would require such intense email efforts (and I will leave my rant about voice mail for another day).
Since I feel unable to surrender to email bankruptcy, I am thinking that the Web Worker Daily has delivered my solution to me : Stop being “Nice”. A light bulb went on as soon as I read the following:
We’re suffering from outdated rules and expectations about email that don’t work in our email-saturated world. Perhaps short emails without extra niceties are not just acceptable but preferable in our connected world on the web. Now that we have better ways of connecting on a human level (think IM, IRC, blogging) maybe we can put email back into its rightful place as merely a convenient way of communicating when we don’t have a real time connection..
… for getting work done on a daily basis, we could all benefit from an email etiquette that calls for short and to-the-point messages.
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I admit that I am guilty of being “nice” in many of my email transactions and perhaps this is what is really slowing my productivity down. I am going to work on being a little less nice and a lot more to the point in my email from now on. Any tips on how I can accomplish this would be appreciated — oh, and if anyone else wants to share the bloat of their inbox it might be interesting to see how many of us our caught in the flood.
Library Garden 