Hey kitty, how'd you get out of that sack?

Well, it seems that many more people know today something only a few knew yesterday. Yes, I'm looking for a new job. Where? Mostly in Phoenix but also a few other places. What for? A position, preferably one that involves training/teaching in either a public or academic library (but I'm not ruling anything out.) Why? Well, that's the toughest one.

Mostly it's the travel. Not the travel itself actually but it's what the travel doesn't allow me to have; a life. A prime example is the fact that I went grocery shopping today for the first time since my birthday. For those of you who don't know, my birthday was on September 23rd. I've just been traveling too much to have the time or even justify my spending money on groceries that I'd probably not finish before leaving town again, resulting in my tossing out most of it when I got back home.

So, that's the deal. If you know of positions that I might be interested in please drop me a line. And no, I don't plan on blogging every step of the process. Sorry.

We're sorry

I was unaware of these site until this morning thanks to the Library Underground. It seems that some folks in the US want to apologize to the rest of the world and there are many willing to accept.

Passing notes

When your best friend's eleven year old daughter (G) starts passing you notes at lunch and expects you to respond what should you do? Well, considering I'd not "passed a note" since highschool and that those notes we passed between me and the afore-mentioned mom (L) I decided to ask G if she liked me or not. Here's the result.

Meme

Here's a meme I cam across today so I though I should pass it along.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your own blog...along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the "coolest" book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

My result is from The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence.

"But even this nihilistic little fantasy of human torture, humiliation and destruction allows humanity some purpose."

Presentation Links

Those of you interested in the other presentation files from IL04 they can be found on the Internet Librarian 2004: Presentation Links page.

What time is it?

Looking for interesting online clocks? Check out this page from Denver Traffic and Denver Construction news.
Thanks Rosario

Lyrics

Through the madness, through the tears
We've still got each other
For a million years

— Queen

Days

Hold me tight
Keep me cool
Going mad
Don't know what to do
Do I need a friend?
Well, I need one now

All the days of my life
All the days of my life
All the days I owe you

All I've done
I've done for me
All you gave
You gave for free
I gave nothing in return
And there's little left of me

All the days of my life
All the days of my life
All the days I owe you

In red-eyed pain I'm knocking on your door again
My crazy brain in tangles
Pleading for your gentle voice
Those storms keep pounding through my head and heart
I pray you'll soothe my sorry soul

All the days of my life
All the days of my life
All the days I owe you
All the days of my life
All the days of my life
All the days I owe you

All the days of my life
All the days of my life
All the days I owe you

— David Bowie

Site changes

I just love having access to my own server. There's so much I can do now with my site that I couldn't do on Webpan. For example, have you noticed the icon in your address bar? Other exciting items (to me anyway) include the ability to use php (as in my previous post), deny directory listings, full remote access to my site (telent & ftp) and the ability to make a custom error page. (Click on this link. It doesn't work, but you won't get one of those nasty "404 - Not Found" pages like you're used to.) I've also got IMAP for my mail now and that's great since it allows me access to all my mail from my laptop while on the road, not just what's arrived in the inbox since I hit the road. Thanks Blake!

Problem solving

O.k. so I just wasn't happy with the php script I was using to list my eBay items on this site so I went and found another one. What's there now is not as elegant as the original one but it works better. Trouble is, when I put the script into the page, the table it was generating was way off. The header row was correct but the data rows were all shifted one cell to the right. Ah, the joys of having one to many cells in just one row of your table. The bigger problem was that the table was being generated by the php script and I know absolutely nothing about php. So, off I go poking through the script trying to find the problem. No real luck there. So, off to the resulting HTML page. I poke around in the source code of the resulting page and find a wonderful bit of code:

<TD bgcolor="#fff"><td color="">

Ah ha, there's the extra cell being generated. But, when I look at the relevant area of the script I can't seem to find anything that would be generating <td color=""> anywhere. Then I spot a section of the script labeled "Get rid of some rubbish we don't need." That sounded promising. Looking through it further I determined that it's getting way to much from the eBay data file and that section dumps the extraneous code. Copying the other lines in that section I created the following new line:

$content[1] = str_replace("<td color=\"\">", "", $content[1]);

I saved the change and, miracles of miracles, it solved the problem!

What's the point of sharing this story? (Especially since I know some of you didn't understand a word of it...) Well, mainly to point out why I believe that when you teach computers you shouldn't just teach what the student needs to know to accomplish a task. You also need to include the explanations of hows and whys that explain how and why what their doing does what it does. For example, in this case, I didn't know squat about php going into the problem but because I knew some underlying theory about how scripting languages work (along with how HTML tables work) I was able to piece together a solution. That's why I "bother" to take the time to explain things in my workshops and books.

Blogs on NPR

I was just going to mention a particular NPR piece regarding blogging and bloggers but noticed that there's a lot of them. This page has the recent on at the top and then about a dozen others.
via Librarian in Black

IM stats

It seems that Aaron's library was featured in Library Journal for having 400 IM-based reference sessions in the past seven months. Meg, on The Librarian in Black's blog, played "devil's advocate" and wondered if, after you do the math, what they did was worth the effort. My response to her would be to ask how many IM-based reference sessions did your library do? Besides those 400 sessions may not have happened in any other form so you can think of it as 400 new patrons. (Though that number gets smaller if you consider repeat users.) I believe that even just one new patron is worth the effort put into such a service from the library.

The Librarian: Quest for the Spear

It looks like the pilot for TNT's series "The Librarian" starring Noah Wyle will premier on December 5th. I'm still wondering why I've not heard any complaints that the librarian in question is male. Maybe because of who's playing him...

PDX WiFi

Sure, now Portland airport putts in free WiFi...

RSS @ APL

I had a meeting with the tech folks at at library (Aurora Public) this morning and was able to convince them to give an RSS feed a try. As soon as some technical kinks are worked out they're going to start with promoting the library programming via RSS. (I figured that if I couldn't convince the folks at my library, I shouldn't be writing a book on the topic.) As soon as the feed's available you'll be sure to hear about it here.

Textbook disclaimer stickers

This one's just hillarious. These are disclaimer stickers that you can print out and stick in textbooks.
Thanks Maureen, via LU

Playing politics with libraries

This story out of Albany scares the crap out of me. I'd be upset no matter who was pulling off this garbage, regardless of party affiliation.

"Under a deal struck to avert an override vote, [Governor] Pataki has promised that libraries located in Republican Assembly districts will get their funding, but libraries in districts represented by Democrats, won't."

A Picture Share!

"CANNOT DELIVER TO INTOXICATED PERSONS"

Turn off the taps

I was just sitting in a library reading a book and I kept hearing this tapping noise from over my right shoulder. It was a guy with his PDA tapping on the screen. The trouble was, he had the little "tap noise" turned on. O.k. folks, turn those darn things off.

Fractals

Here's a cool site amazing fractal images.
Thanks to the Librarian in Black.

Four days in the city

I just bought my train ticket from Rochester to NYC to spend the better part of four days with Amy, whom I've not seen since library school. (Ten years!) This should be fun. She's got us some "show tickets" but I've lost the e-mail with the name of the show in it. I do recall that Jeremy Piven is in it so it should be fun.

Update: After a quick search I found it. We'll be seeing Fat Pig starring Ashlie Atkinson, Andrew McCarthy, Jeremy Piven, and Keri Russell.

Welcome to the new site

It's official. I've moved the site to my own domain. The old site still exists and there's some live stuff still there but it will slowly start to disappear as I move the reast of it and I'm sure things here are stable. So, if you have any bookmarks to a Webpan-based site, check here and see if you need to update it.

Additionally, please be aware that the colors and some layout issues have yet to be finalized so it may not look exactly the way you left it the next time you return.

I'd like to also mention the amazing and fast work done by Blake Carver of LISHost.org for helping me get this site up and running. He's done more work for me in the past 48 hours than I would ever expect from anyone. On that alone I will say that if you have an LIS-related domain and need hosting (or would just like to support one cool cat,) have it hosted by LISHost.org.

Google suit

In a first-of-it's-kind lawsuit the adult magazine "Perfect 10" is suing Google for linking to it's site through which users of Google can get Perfect 10's content for free.

Koontz book update

I've added the ARC of Life Expectancy to the ms.

Brit lib wifi

It seems that the British Library now offers WiFi for the public. Why, well take a look at the following reasons according to the press release :

• Laptop ownership amongst visitors was a staggering 86 per cent
• The average dwell-time in the building was six hours
• Users were leaving the library to go to a nearby Internet cafe to access their email
• 16 per cent of the visitors only came to the library to sit down, have a coffee and use the library as a business centre

With stats like that how could they not?
Thanks Rosario

100,000

The one guess I received for the number 100,000 was close. It's the number of actual miles I've done on United in my lifetime. (The past seven years to be more accurate.) Please keep in mind that I don't always fly United.

Comments

In anticipation of moving the blog I'm starting to make some changes. The first on is in how the comments are handled. The good news, they're more effecient and will appear along with the posts instead of in a separate window. The bad news, all previous comments have disappeared.

Moving

As soon as I work out a few kinks this blog will be moving to http://www.travelinlibrarian.info/. There's a place-holder page there right now. Go there now and create a bookmark for it. I'll post further update information as it arrives. (Including the new address for the RSS feed.)

Amazon wishlist

For those of you looking at my Amazon.com Wishlist (and you know who you are) I've done a little work on it. Here's the scoop. If an item is listed as a "must have" that means I'm buiying it the day it comes out. Everything else I promise not to purchase until after Christmas.

IL04: Wither wiki

So Richard Akerman has followed-up on his own idea at the behest of Jane Dysart and created a Post Conference Wiki. I even see that Steven Cohen has already posted a comment and Jane's listed her blog. I'm thinking about it. But, here is comes, what's the point?

I'm not against Wikis. I talk about and promote them in my Intro to Knowledge Technologies class at DU. Why do I think librarians aren't big on them (other than the spam and destruction issues)? I'm trying to figure out how libraries can use a wiki in their mission to provide people with information. In other words, how would a wiki help a library get information to its users? At this point I think that librarians aren't into wikis because there's no solid practical application. (Internally maybe, but not for providing service to our patrons.) If someone can give me that practical application maybe librarians will start paying more attention to the technology.

And baby makes five

Just got off the phone with my little brother and it seems that I'm going to be an uncle again in June.

Blogging or note-taking?

It seems that Karen Schneider is a bit peeved about the concept of blogging during a presentation at a conference. As a presenter she wants folks to stop typing and listen to her. While I might agree with her in principle I don't think it's that simple. Granted, I was blogging while listening to presentations but I would hope that you've all notice that I was, in essence, taking notes. The fact that I posted those notes to my blog (usually later in the day due to the lack of WiFi,) isn't relevant. Sorry Karen, I just can't agree with you on this one.

Jeff Sharra

At The Tattered Cover promoting his new book To the Last Man

Koontz update

When I got back from conference my ARC copy of Life Expectancy was waiting for me. I'm two hours for a book signing (Jeff Sharra) so as soon as I've made a few posts I'll be starting it.

Change is a commin'

This is your first of what will probably be several warnings. I'll be having my new domain travelinlibrarian.info hosted by LISHost starting this weekend. Blake was gracious enough to get me set up so I can start FTPing files in. The move off of webpan will be in many stages with this blog going first (as it's not hosted by Webpan anyway.) As things move I'll start notifying everyone. The plan is for my email address to move last as that will be the most disruptive. Wish me luck.

Presentation copies

The PPT files for my IL04 presentaions are now available on BCR's Conference Presentations page.

Weblogs and libraries

For those of you waiting for your copy, my copy of Weblogs and Libraries was waiting for me in my office when I stopped by today.

Travel much?

It's official, I've earned "platinum status" at Holiday Inn. What did it take? Staying 50 nights at a HI property this calendar year. What do I get, a 50% bonus on frequent flyer miles and automatic upgrades to suites when I make a reservation.

IL04: photos

My photos from the conference and the flight home are now available on ofoto.

IL04: some final thoughts

I'm sure I'll have some follow-up posts about the conference in the next few days, especially once certain folks start posting their photos (including myself,) but I'm on the flight home and I figured I'd make one last "official conference post" reflecting back upon the experience.

* * *

Michael Stevens asked me last night what my best experience from the conference was. I'd have to say it was meeting a particular librarian, Irene, from Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago. I met her Tuesday morning before the keynote and we started talking about blogs and RSS. She'd heard of them but still wasn't clear on what all the buzz was about. We talked a bit and I filled her in and explained how these technologies might assist her in distributing information to her patrons. Wednesday morning I was sitting in the same seat before the keynote, this time with a WiFi connection along with Karen and another woman with her iMac. Irene was also there and had said hello and Karen and I were discussing things, and posting to our blogs. At one point Irene said "listening to the two of you wants me to get back to my office and my computer." We asked her why and she told us that after our talk the previous morning, listening to us that morning and having attended most of the blogging track on Tuesday she was really jazzed about blogging and just couldn't wait to start one of her own. "Forget the library and administration. I'm just going to do one for myself." Now that made me feel good. All it takes in one person not only getting "it" but being excited by "it" that makes what I do worth while. That made the conference for me.

* * *

I did catch up with at least one person so wasn't excited at all about blogs and RSS. That's their opinion and it's their right to have it. I'll even admit that this person had a few valid points. But, when it comes to blogs and RSS there is no excuse not to try. Granted, these technologies are not perfect for all situations but the cost of entry is practically zero and the potential benefits are much too significant to ignore. When it comes to RSS, again, the cost is near zero. Is it a replacement for e-mail? Not for everyone. However, no one can use it if you don't offer it. The belief that no one will use it before you've even offered it is defeatist thinking. Offer it first. If no one uses it, stop and focus your energies elsewhere. The only sure way to find out is to make it available.

* * *

Regarding the imperfections of the conference, there are ways to deal with these things. I'll admit that when I found what I believed to be a problem with how the conference was working (or not working,) I blogged my concerns. (WiFi service anyone?) But, and this is a big one, I didn't just whine about it on my blog and left it at that. I talked to the folks in charge and made my concerns known. If I though something wasn't being done, I talked to the folks who would be involved if it was being done. There were plenty of opportunities to talk to anyone who could at least have made note of someone's concerns and ideas for the next time around, but I noticed a blogger or two complaining and not following through. Yes, by all means blog your ideas and concerns but that is not enough. The folks you can talk to about these things, in most cases, are speaking at the conference. Why is this important? Well, if they're speaking, they're on the schedule and you know exactly where they'll be at certain times. There's no need to rely upon trying to find them via their nametag in a group of 1000 people. Look at the schedule, figure out where they'll be and when, and go talk to them. Do something about it beyond your blog. I guarantee you, you'll have much better luck at getting the changes you're looking for.

* * *

Well, I think that's it. If I have any additional thoughts I'll post them as usual. Thanks to everyone that made Internet Librarian 2004 an amazing experience. I hope to see all of you again at Computers in Library in March.

Insert painfully obvious headline here

I got up at four am this morning to catch a taxi to the Monterey airport for my 6am flight to SFO, then home to Denver. I woke up to two messages, one from Aaron telling me his flight had been cancelled, another from United telling me that "our" flight had been cancelled. I immediately called United and they offered to put me on a 3:30pm flight out of Monterey, through SF, and getting me home at sometime around 9:30pm, nine hours later than I'd expected. I complained and was asked if I would like her to "check for flights again." Figuring I had nothing to loose at this point, I requested such a re-check and she found me a 6:40am flight out of Monterey which would get me to SFO in time to make my Denver connection. I took a taxi to MRY and got in line.

I had been successfully changed to the 6:40am flight but they were not sure that it would actually take off due to the heavy fog cover (what caused the original flight to be cancelled.) I noticed that they were putting people into taxis which would drive them to either SFO or the San Jose airport. I inquired about this and the check-in clerk asked me if I'd prefer that as it would be a stronger guarantee. Sounded good to me. So, I ended up being put into a taxi wit two others for a one-hour drive to San Jose. I ended up with an "Economy Plus" (a.k.a. better) seat and will actually get to Denver about 45 minutes earlier than originally planed. I must have some karma points saved up I didn't know about.

From the last text message I received from Aaron it sounds like he also got taxied to San Jose and was getting a flight home. His description of the situation back at the hotel however involved a lot of upset librarians "as if someone put the card catalog out of order."

IL04: "evaluating web search tools"

It's getting to the end of the conference. I'm exhausted. Rita Vine's presentation was the only one I attended dealing specifically with search engines. (I'm not counting this morning's keynote as it had no competition.) Her opening comment that we're good at evaluating search results but not the engines or tool themselves is a very important one. Here's her five-step evaluation process:

1. Find new search tools
2. Figure out the business model
3. Evaluate the functionality
4. Evaluate the content's quality and comprehensiveness
5. Compare to other best-of-breed tools

She mentioned using WHOIS to find the parent companies when looking for business model information. Those who attended my bookmarklets cybertour will know how to do that using CoolWhoIs.

IL04: "library web site applications using xml"

Woo hoo Karen! This was a fun presentation. I din't understand a lot of the technical bits but the possibilities are amazing. I was particularly impressed with what she's accomlished in making RSS feeds of what her patrons have checked out. Her presenation is available vie her blog. (See, I can do that sort of linking when I have a live connection. Linking after the fact is much harder.)

IL04: bloggers on parade

This photo was taken last night before the speakers reception. (You don't want to know what this group looked like after the open bar.)

Left to right: Greg Schwartz, Karen Coombs, Michael Sauers, Steven M. Cohen, Sarah Houghton, Aaron Schmidt, Jenny Levine, Michael Stephens.
Photo: Karen Coombs

IL04: wifi update

I'm currently in DeAnza III and there is an open WiFi signal here. The SSID is "RAPIDIO". The signal's low in the front of the room and running at just 5.5mpbs but it's enough to get the job done. (There's power outlets up here too.)

IL04: data visualization cyertour

It went well. I gave out all 25 copies of my handout so at least that many people showed up. There was less discussion in this one, more of just a "hey folks, look, isn't this cool" on my part. One attendee did stop me in the hall and thank me for it so I deem it a success.

IL04: ire-some

I just got back from having lunch with Karen Coombs, Darlene Fichter, and D. Scott Brandt. Here's a photo of Scott with one of the signs out in front of the hotel. The second photo is so you can read the sign.

IL04: "technology and collaboration"

I ended up having to sneak out a few minutes early from this presentation as it ended at 11.15 and I'm giving my Data Visualization talk at 11.30. As expected from anything in which Stephen Abrams (VP of Innovation for SRSI and the current president of the Canadian Libraries Association) speaks this presentation was a hoot. (Sorry, that's the best word I can come up with for describing that hilarious Canadian.) The presentation was basically an overview of collaboration technologies that can and are being used in libraries today. His simple truth: "What matters is not what you have but how you use it." Another interesting point: People who tend to be more liberal or open minded want information that challenges their perceptions, more conservative people want information that confirms their perceptions. The new collaborative technologies that are out there include, on the user side: Web conferencing, presence management, real-time translation, real-time speech-to-text, collaboration sites and wikis. On the information provider side there's Web services, RSS feeds, learning objects, digitization, and faceted metadata. Another one of his best points: "Collaboration is an environment, not and end in itself."

The single best thing I learned from Stephen at this conference was "I may have made up the word, but since I've added it to the spell-checker, that makes it official."

IL04: day three keynote

Chris Sherman, editor of SearchDay and co-author of The Invisible Web, delivered this morning's keynote, "Search Engine Update & A Look Ahead." Chris is always a wonderful speaker. (He had a workshop rescheduled in Denver two years ago due to 40" of snow in 48 hours.) He has a new book coming out next month, Google Power which sounds quite interesting. The current trends: local search, personalization, the return of "push" (sorta), collaborative search, e-mail & desktop search, and unified search. Chris' "push" were RSS feeds. I've got to disagree with him on this, as I've posted before, since RSS is not push. It might act like it, but it's not, it's pull. (I'll give him points for calling it "push sorta" though.)

Video over IM

I just heard from Stephen Abram that AOL announced this morning that they're adding streaming video over their AIM service. Way cool. Will report more as I find something about it.

11.04am Update: Here's the press release on the subject.

IL04: Photo

Here's a photo of Me & Steven Cohen courtsey of Michael Stephens.

802.11g

For those of you looking for WiFi 'g' in a compact flash card, it seems that Linksys has just made one available for about $100.
via Gizmodo

IL04: watch whay you say when bloggers have drinks in their hand...

I guess I now officially have a new affliction, "feed envy". For the record, I actually subscribe to 99 feeds as of this morning. Would anyone like to be number 100?

IL04: plans for the day

If anyone is looking for me, here's my intentions for the day:

• 09.00am Keynote
• 10.30am Technology & Collaboration
• 11.30am My "Data Visualization" Cybertour
• 01.15pm Library Website Applications Using XML (Yeah Karen!)
• 02.15pm Evaluating Search Engines & Tools
• 03.30pm Closing Keynote
• Dinner or something...

IL04: wifi update

I'm currently surfing and posting from outside the room for the morning keynote. (out with the food.) It seems that the "MARRIOTTLOBBY" free WiFi is working and stable this morning. One day out of three ain't bad...

IL04: end of day two report

I thought of titling this entry "blogging vs. sleeping" because when I finally got back to my room last night it was midnight, and I was just exhausted. Needless to say, sleep won.

I finished out the afternoon programs and then met up with some of the usual suspects and a few new people at the hotel bar. One notable new meet was Sarah Houghton of the Marin Free County Library, a.k.a. The Librarian in Black. Then off to the speaker's reception at the top of the Marriott. That lasted a few hours and then I, Greg Schwartz, Karen Coombs, Steven Cohen, Darlene Fichter, Tom Reamy, Ran Hock, Greg Notess, and one other person who's name I didn't catch. (Hey, I'm impressed I got all those names right the next morning!) After dinner back to the hotel and spent about 15 minutes in my room checking my mail. I then got restless and headed back down to the hotel bar. Several people from dinner were there along with a few new folks including Stephen Abram and a few others who's names escape me. Topics ranged from the ancient Greeks and the Golden Ratio, to "fee-based water", to the usability of French urinals. We managed to close two bars so I figured sleep was the best option.

IL04: "rss, your users, and your precious time"

Last presentation of the day and Jenny Levine & Stephen Cohen were on the stage. This was pretty much the same presentation she bage at CIL back in March so there was nothing new for me. (They had updated it but nothing Earth-shattering from my POV.) I could tell from the attendees that RSS is still something very new to a significant number of librarians. Now is not the time to assume that RSS is a known quantity. There is still a lot of education to do.

IL04: "teaching weblogs"

Stephen (Kermit) Cohen started out by offering M&Ms for the first person to send him an instant message to him live on stage. He ended up getting one from Karen Schneider who isn't even at the conference. The topic itself was interesting to me as I'm in the process of educating the APL staff on the issue. (Honestly I'm teaching them RSS more, but it all ties together.) Why teach your staff: Keeping current, part of today's info literacy curriculum, they may be writing and posting themselves, learning curve is always present, blog the "right way" and to cover liabiliy issues. He then talked about how and what to train regarding blogs for the library administration, the blog authors, the IT staff and the users. (It was nice to learn that Stephen and I agree that links should be context neutral. i.e. Don't use "click here") His best suggestion: if you include an RSS button on your pages, include a "what is RSS" link.

Michael Stephens then took over and detailed exactly how he trained his library staff n the categories that Stephen had previously discussed. His key point, when your developing the training, be sure to have specific outcomes in mind and make the training hands-on.

IL04: "bookmarklets" cybertour

My first presentation went very well. Thirty people showed up and I spoke for a half-hour without even thinking about it. Everyone seemed to have a great time. I would have taken a photo but it was way two dark where the cybertours were being given.

IL04: “creating internet-savvy public library users”

After spending the past six weeks talking to Iowa librarians about teaching computers to the public, both the how and why, this was a very informative and reinforcing presentation. The presenters were Michael Stephens and Jamie Wilson.

Michael gave us a great history of Internet training back to 1995, focusing on what we taught back then leading up to what we’re teaching now. (From “what is it” to “how do I do particular things with it.” Many of the same things that Michael suggested public libraries should be teaching (and why they should be teaching them) were the exact same things we came up with in my IA workshops.

Jamie’s presentation took a look at the same items from the school (k-12) library perspective. This was less of interest to me but only because, unfortunately, I get very few school librarians in my workshops. (Especially since for the past year-and-a-half I’ve been doing Gates Foundation funded workshops which have been solely for public librarians.)

IL04: “making the most of the blogosphere”

Steven Cohen did a great job as moderator despite having practically no voice. Stephen did have a request of the attendees to “blog the track”, i.e. get as many of the people attending the blogging sessions to blog about the presentations as they’re happening. I’ll be doing that but I can’t post (due to a lack of a free connection) live, but all this was written live, just posted later. The two presenters were Jenny Levine and Greg Schwartz.

Jenny did a quick intro to blogging, trying to make a live post. Unfortunately, her copy of Moveable Type didn’t want to post. Ah, the joys of live presentations. Jenny’s main point, libraries are done with blogging 1.0, it’s time for blogging 2.0. Her suggestions: more personalization, more linking back to library services, more blogging that involve authentication, treat local bloggers as “the press” (send them your events and press releases) and get them to link black to you, more moblogging (photo blogging), blog your statistics and projects, start a library-hosted community blog, demand of you ILS vendors RSS feeds out of the catalog, ultimately, “show the fun/human side of libraries.”

Greg bit focused more on how blogs can help the end-user through blog-related tools. First, why should librarians care about blogs? Three reasons: diversity of authors and topics, the rate of update (much faster than the traditional media,) and their increasing influence.) Tools he focused on were Feedster, Waypath, PubSub, Daypop, Popdex, Technorati, Blogsnow, Blogarama, Robin Good’s Best Blog Directory and Submission Sites, Kinja and blogrolls (lists of blogs read by a particular blogger). I also need to give Greg a special thank you for encouraging folks to go to my bookmarklets Cybertour.

And, the question was asked during the session’s Q&A: “What is RSS?” CIL04 Déjà vu...

Because of these three, I have a lot to add to my blogging & RSS book. Damn them! ;-)

IL04: wifi update

I’m in the Steinbeck Room (in the conference center proper) for the first presentation of the morning. There is an open WiFi connection “PUBLIC” and you can connect to it. Unfortunately, it’s not free. The WiFi situation has got to change at future conferences.

IL04: day two, first report

I sat through the keynote by Patricia Martin on how libraries an create partnerships with companies to market services through sponsorships. This was actually more interesting to me than I expected as the Aurora Public Library board currently has a committee investigating “alternative funding sources.” I’ll be passing her PPT along to the chair of the committee along with checking to see if APL has (or will purchase) Patricia’s book Made Possible By: Succeeding Trough Sponsorships, A Guide for Nonprofits.

IL04: who's blogging whom?

Someone has created a Kinja weblog guide for IL04 which seems to search for blog posts on the topic of choice, in this case the conference. Posts of mine are there along with those of other bloggers. We've no idea who the person who did this is or even if he's at the conference. If I hear of answers to any of those questions I'll pass the info along. (As for the Kinja service itself, this is the first I've heard of it.)

IL04: first full day closing report

Well, after that last post the rest of the day pretty much ran together. Presentations and more presentations. I've got lots of new URLs to check out including many new coll little utilities that deserve a look-see. I ended up spending the majority of the evening talking to Karen Coombs the Library Web Chic from SUNY Cortland. (We spend the majority of the two hour evening reception speaking with the two systems geeks from SUNY Stony Brook.) Wonderful clam chowder in a bread bowl and her as company made for lively and thought-provoking dinner-time conversation. After dinner I ended up walking 1.25 miles down to the local Kinkos to make new copies of my handouts for my cybertours as the ones I made originally are still back in Aurora. Oh well. I've scoped out the location for my cybertours and it looks like it'll work just fine. Even though the cybertours are scheduled to be 15 minutes long, there all an hour apart so I'm no longer worried about running long.

IL04: Meetings & name droppings

Just bumped into one of my former DU students, Kathleen Rainwater, librarian for the Gates Corporation in Denver. She mentioned that Gary Price suggested that everyone attend my Bookmarklets Cybertour during his “Favorite Tools & Useful Freebies” presentation. Thanks Gary!

IL04: “building a case for web standards” & rss @ APL

The presenter was Dinah Sanders from III, the vendor of Aurora’s OPAC. She and I got to talking before the session about my wanting to get Aurora to use RSS feeds and whether or not those files can be placed on the library’s III server. According to Dinah it should be possible as long as we have FTP access which became available back in 2002. I asked her about the MIME-type issue, making sure that the RSS files are being served with an XML MIME-type, and she wasn’t sure. She’s going to look into it for me and I’m going to test it out. As for her presentation; the answer to the question “why standards?” is “consistency builds inter-operability.” I like that. I’m going and try to work that into the revision of the introduction to my XHTML/CSS book. I’ll provide a link to her presentation once it’s available online. (The presentation was done in Eric Meyer’s S5, not PowerPoint, which made her “slides” Web standard compliant, not just what she was talking about.

IL04: rss at the utah state library

Just had a short conversation with Raymond Matthews of the Utah State Library about how they’re using RSS. He told me that they’ve actually had RSS feeds for three years. Now that’s impressive. Unfortunately, there isn’t a single Web page that I can point to that lists all for their feeds.

IL04: lunch with a publisher

I just got back from having lunch with Charles from Neal-Schuman, Inc. The main topic of discussion was the status of the XHTML & CSS manuscript. He's happy that I'm working on it though I made it clear that turning it in in Feburary is significantly more likely than the first of December (impossible.) The conversation also led me to come up with a research topic to write about in an essay I need to write. (Some of you know what essay I'm talking about, many of you don't. I'll post about it eventually, I promise.)

IL04: “usability research update”

Darlene Fitcher’s presentation was a useful as I expected. The best bit, “When it comes to usability testing, what’s the answer?” I spoke up and gave it to her, “It depends.” I also liked that she quoted Jakob Neilson. (Love him or hate him, he’s more often right than wrong.) Here’s another important point from her presentation: users expect to find “home” in the upper-left corner of a Web page and they expect to find “help” in the upper-right corner of the page.

IL04: left over from yesterday [10.30am]

Just a few more things that happened yesterday that I didn't get a chance to blog before falling asleep...

I ended up at the local Starbucks last night with Jenny, Michael, Aaron, and David King of Kansas City Public Library. He's giving the first presentation in the Web Design & Development track titled "Library Web Site Meets About.com" which is an update of a presentation he gave back at CIL on what his library's site is doing.

Earlier last evening Outlook started acting funky on my laptop and kept crashing. After one reboot, I wasn't presented with my login screen. Not only was I not asked to log in, but my account on my laptop was gone. I even took a look at the User Accounts area and found a generic admin account and the guest account. My msauers account had disappeared! Deciding to stay calm I pulled up system restore and rolled back my laptop to last Wednesday. Luckily everything came back. The original problem was a "Failed CRC" in my outlook data file. I ran a full scandisk (it took an hour to check my 60GB hard drive) and it found and fixed the problem. So, all of you folks in IA where I've been saying for the past six weeks that I've not had a bad spot on a drive in the past few years, well, I just had one.

IL04: monday keynote & the missing proceedings

I sat with Greg Schwartz for the morning keynote by Lee Rainie, the Director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The statistics Lee gave us were quite intriguing about who uses the Internet for what and who doesn't. It seems that there are now more women online than men. His talk will be available online in the next few days. As soon as I can find it I'll post a link to it here.

Also, the latest news on the proceedings is that the truck they were being shipped on broke down somewhere along the way. The proceedings should be available for pickup at the registration desk sometime early this afternoon.

IL04: wifi update

Despite rumors to the contrary, there is no WiFi signal, open or secured, on the first floor of the conference center. I’ve heard that it exists on the second floor but I’ve not been there to check yet.

IL04: the proceedings

The proceedings have arrived and are available for pickup at the registration desk.

IL04: “library web site meets about.com”

David King's presentation was very interesting. The best news I heard was that his library's site provides RSS feeds. And their feeds are some of the most popular items in the site and Bloglines is one of the top user agents hitting their site. I'll be checking that out in more detail as I'm in the process of trying to convince the Aurora City IT department to allow Aurora PL to post RSS feeds on the city's server. (We have no server to put them on in the library proper... Long story.) Cool fact: KCPL is also in an old bank building and they show movies to the public in the vault.

IL04: marriott wifi

In the Marriott for the morning keynote. Here's a report on the WiFi situation for those looking for a signal. In the Marriott lobby, WiFi is free and open, SSID "STSN_conf". Connecting to "STSN" is the $9.95/day pay-for access. Unfortunately you can see the open/free signal in the ballroom but when you connect you won't get a DNS to work with so you won't be able to get anywhere. According to one of the hotel managers it's only available in the ballroom (and other meeting room I'd assume) if the "group" paid for it and he wasn't aware of any groups doing so for today. There also seems to be one called "MARRIOTTLOBBY" that also works when you can find it as it seems to be there one minute and gone the next.

P.S. In some cases I'm writing these entries and will post them as I find an open connection.

Common technology

I've been introducing jump drives to librarians in small libraries across Iowa in the past six weeks. I've mentioned that they were extremely common these days. The proof, this evening I was in a Walgreens and the guy ahead of us in line was buying a jump drive. Yep, in Walgreens.

Web design thoughts

I was reading We the Media by Dan Gillmor this morning and came across the following paragraph:

"Don’t bury the PR contact information so far inside the website that on one without an advanced agree in Library Science can find it. I look for the "About the Company" page, then look for the "Press" page and then for the "Contact Information" page. Maybe there's a more logical place for such information, but wherever you put it, don’t' hide it."

On first read I was intrigued by his reference to library degrees and the fact that he realizes that librarians are good at finding things. On a second read I realized that despite our abilities in finding and organizing information we still fail to apply these ideas to our own Web sites. The number of times that I am unable to find contact information on library sites is staggering. Simple things like directions to your library, a phone number (including area code please, not everyone trying to call your library is local) and the director's e-mail address (if not also department heads) are missing or nearly impossible to find on some sites. Please folks, ask yourself the following question: when a user arrives at your library's homepage, can they find contact information within a single click? If not, your design might need some adjustment.

IL04: WARNING!

The laptops of two presenters were stolen right out of the rooms they were presenting in over lunch. If you have a laptop on site, you might want to keep a good eye on it during the conference.

IL04: Day 0

I just got back from six hours walking around Monterey. I spent two hours at the Aquarium, walked along Cannery Row, had lunch at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, sent a bunch of postcards, and checked out the Lower Presidio (the public part.) Photos from the day can be found on Ofoto.

Treo⁴

Stephen Cohen of Library stuff took this photo yesterday. The conference hadn't even started yet and somehow there were four librarians each with a Treo in a single hotel room. How geeky is that?

IL04: Day -1

I'm calling this day -1 (and tomorrow day 0) since the conference officially starts for me on Monday. So far I've met up with and/or said hi to Frank Cervone, Darlene Fichter, and Michael Stephens. (And one other guy who was in the room and I know I've met before who's name seems to have slipped my mind. Sorry.) I ended up having lunch with Jenny Levine and Stephen Cohen who are presenting a full-day workshop on blogging and RSS tomorrow. (They're still writing the workshop at this moment...)

Do you know the way to monterey?

It's oh-hell-it's-early in the morning and I'm in the Des Moines, IA airport waiting to head out from my last Gates training trip in Iowa (and anywhere) for 2004. Nope, not heading home, not really, as I'm on my way to Monterey, CA for Internet Librarian 2004. The funny part is that I have to change planes in Denver and again in San Francisco. I never thought that I'd be passing through my home airport. (And with only 25 minutes between flights so it might be close.) Oh well, it gets me to someplace sunny and warm. Since my workshop on Sunday was canceled it looks like I get a day to myself. Yes, everyone, I plan on going to the aquarium. (No, telling me that it's the place that was featured in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was not the deciding factor.) My plans for what to do this evening in Monterey, check in to the conference, get my badge and ribbons, and then sleep. (Considering that in Monterey time I got up at 2am this morning, that two-hour time change is going to be a big deal.)

The plan is to blog as much as I can from the conference so keep an eye out here for updates. (The key is how WiFi friendly the conference center is. However, this time I have the Treo which will get me wireless access assuming there's Sprint service...)

XHTML/CSS book update

The great red ink bleed has begun. I've gone through the first three chapters so far today with a red pen. I hope there's enough ink in it... Hell, if I'm finding problems, you know it needs work!

Photoblog update

I've "solved" the problem with my photoblog by replacing it with a new one. The URL is travlib.textamerica.com. You can also get to it via the "current photo" in this page's sidebar. Please update your bookmarks and if you've subscribed to the photos, you'll need to go to the new site and do so again.

Popular

It looks like more and more libraries are finally starting to install service pack 2 on their WindowsXP computers. At least, that's mu assumption due to the fact the my article about installing SP2 is currently the most popular article in WebJunction. (Scroll to the bottom of the page.)

"Lord vader, rise!"

The Star Wars Episode III Teaser Trailer was made available on AOL yesterday. Sorry, sometimes blogging from the road is not always easy...

Firefox update

For everyone whom I told not more than an hour ago that the "current version" of Firefox was 1.0PR, I was wrong. Firefox 1.0 came out today.

Approaching a milestone

I'm approaching the number 100,000 and should make it there in the next two weeks. No, I'm not saying what this number means. If you'd like to try and guess, post what you think that number might signify as a comment to this entry.
L, you're disqualified as I've already told you. Sorry.

Aurora coffee fest

I spent a significant portion of today outside selling books for the Friends of the Aurora Public Library. A few photos can be found on the FAPL Web site.

Saying yes

As some of you may know, I'm a busy person. I travel for my job, write, and am on two boards (the library and the library friends.) In between two board meetings yesterday I started talking with two other friends board members about how all three of us we of that type that found it difficult to say 'no' to things. One of the two women I was talking to said that the problem was actually that too many other people had figured out that we don't say 'no'. The other woman then corrected both of us and said that the real problem was that 'not enough people say yes.' I think she's got a point. What are you doing to help your community?

More election humor

From Louise's blog:

I keep hearing that many people voted for Bush because you "don't change horses in mid-stream" (i.e. you don't change leaders during a war).

My friend and former classmate Mary Lou's response?

"Apparently Americans don't believe in changing horsemen mid-Apocalypse, either."

It's science!

Check out these candy bar cross-sections.
Thanks Rosario

Could he do a worse job?

Presentation copy

For those interested the PPT file for my blog & RSS presentation to the SLA folks last night can now be found on the BCR conference presentations page.

Rocky mountain sla

Last night I gave a presentation on blogs & RSS to the Rocky Mountain chapter of the Special Library Association. My co-presenter was Scott Brown from Sun Microsystems. It went very well despite the combination of my not being able to get an Internet connection for my laptop and the provided computer with a connection not reading my jump drive (where the backup copy of my presentation was) due to it running Windows 98. (I ended up running my PowerPoint off of my laptop then switching the projector cable to the desktop to do the live portion of the presentation.) While figuring all this out one of my hosts commented that I seemed to be handling all the problems in stride. Ah, the life of a trainer. I must say that the most interesting part was learning that Sun employees are encouraged to blog, whether or not it's work related. Most of those blogs are publicly available at http://blogs.sun.com/roller/, and they all have RSS feeds too. It was fun to learn last night that currently the most popular blog at Sun is not the one by the CEO. He's currently in second place.

Internet librarian '04 update

Due to a lack of registrations my pre-conference workshop on Internet policy issues has been canceled. I'll still be doing my two Cybertours on Bookmarklets and Data Visualization on the 16th @ 2:30pm and the 17th @ 11:30am respectively.

If W had worked with jefferson

Here's a good but from the History News Network: "If W Had Written the Declaration of Independence"

Holiday inn

It's nice to see that according to HotelChatter my hotel chain of choice has mad the top five of the best WiFi hotels of 2004. (Just two more nights next week and I'll make Platinum status...) It's also nice to know (in an odd sort of way) that I can't afford to stay in any of the worst WiFi hotels.

Banned by wal-mart

It seems that George Carlin's 'Jesus' book has been Banned From Wal-Mart. "According to the Reporter, Carlin's spokesman said the book was not allowed in stores because its cover makes fun of the last supper -- but a Wal-Mart spokeswoman countered by saying the book would not "appeal to the majority" of the store's customers." Maybe it doesn't "appeal to the majority" of the store's customers because it makes fun of the last supper.

Wifi in libraries

I've reworked my "Where's WiFi" page to just be a list of libraries offering free WiFi access. If your library offers such service, please drop me a line. The list isn't long at the moment but I'm sure that'll change.

The treo 650 is on its way!

According to PalmOne Sprint stores will start carrying the Treo 650 in "mid-November". The linked article also provides a complete review.

Dean koontz book update

The following items have been added to the book:

• Odd Thomas paperback
• Angel of Darkness by Charles de Lint
• The Pavilion of Frozen Women (UK) by S.P. Somtow
• "A Halloween Message from Trixie Koontz, Dog"

Yes, I'm still waiting to hear back from Dean...

Christmas hint

If everyone I know who's planning on getting me a Christmas present went in on a single gift, I'd really love a 40Gb iPod.

And since we've no place to go...

Denver woke up this morning to two inches of snow. The first snowfall of the year. The reaction was predictable, immediately everyone forgot how to drive.

Hawaiian library disaster

From Library Underground

On Saturday night, a flash flood swept through the University of Hawaii at Manoa campus in Honolulu. The flood crested at about six feet on the ground floor of the main library, where the government documents and map collections, as well as our technical services departments, are located. The force of the flood water was so great that it knocked out walls, broke windows, moved fully loaded map cases, and knocked over our stacks. Fortunately, the flood occurred at 8:00 p.m. and the library was closed. The few people inside were able to escape.

Needless to say, our collection suffered extremely heavy damage. At this point, we are trying to salvage our air photos and rare maps. Almost everything was under water as only the top shelves of the few stacks left standing are dry. It appears that we will be able to save very little of our collections.

We will be working to rebuild our collections over the coming months and years. We have been a federal depository since 1907 and a regional since 1977. We are also a United Nations depository. If at all possible, I request that you hold onto large runs of material on your withdrawal lists, as we will undoubtedly be requesting documents on a grand scale.

Our campus servers are still down, including email. The library servers were also on the ground floor of the library, and we are trying to cleanthem up and recover the data.

Here are a couple of pieces of advice: (1) Make sure you have your staff members' phone numbers at home so in an emergency you can reach everyone to make sure they are safe and to mobilize people for disaster response. (2) Back up your office computer and take the disks home with you. All of our computers went swimming, so we don't even know if we can find them, much less recover the data on the hard drives.

In a situation like this, all you can say is, At least we don't have to worry about retrospective cataloging now!

Gwen Sinclair
Head of Government Documents & Maps
University of Hawaii at Manoa Library
temporary e-mail: ouz09ges@earthlink.net