Trash Trouble

Trash Trouble
Originally uploaded by Travelin' Librarian.

This is the trash out behind my garage as a result of both moving out and having had no pickup for the Month on January despite many phone calls and promises by Allied Waste Services of Denver. I've been told by a manger that it will be picked up today. We'll see...

Update: The trash was finally picked up this afternoon!

Hotel Checkout Ettiquite

Ze Frank style...

Which SF author are you?

I am: John Brunner His best known works are dystopias -- vivid realizations of the futures we want to avoid.

Which science fiction writer are you?

A Knight on Doctor Who

In one of the most brilliant casting announcements I've ever read, Sir Dereck Jacobi will be appearing in a series three episode of Doctor Who.

Live Free or Die Hard teaser trailer

Jacob's Ladder II: The Next Generation

IMG_6790.JPG
Originally uploaded by aligatorsandpancakes.

Funny photo/headline combination

Julie Andrews kills 300 insurgents with Screen Actor's Guild lifetime achievement award

Found on CHINAdaily.

Google Books/Maps Mashup

Places mentioned in this book
Originally uploaded by Travelin' Librarian.

Google is now mashing up itself by adding maps of places mentioned in books. Here's an examples from Tolstoy's War and Peace.

Geni

Geni.com is a new ajax-based site that allows you to easily create an online faily tree. As you add your family to your tree you can invite them to contribute. (It's slightly social from that point of view but I'd wouldn't call it a "social web" application due to a lack of many other "social" features.) I can say it's very easy to use but I'm waiting to hear what my father thinks of it. (He's the family genealogist.)

I now own 1.5 houses

I just got the call and we closed on the house in Lincoln. I think this is all starting to become a little too real.

Marketers are reading your blog

At least a few new firms are specifically focusing on blogs to help companies figure you what people are saying about their products and to get ideas for offering new ones.

This is the TabletPC interface I want!

My house is empty...

A Picture Share!
Originally uploaded by Travelin' Librarian.

...but still up for sale. The packer came on Friday and packed all my "fragiles" (dishes, some figurines, etc.) and on Saturday the movers came and put all my boxes and furniture into a truck. The house is now empty but desperately waiting for a professional cleaning crew to come in on Monday or Tuesday to clean up, especially the dust bunnies with big pointy teeth. (Hardwood floors look great but the breed dust, even under things like entertainment centers.) Mary is off to close on the house in Lincoln tomorrow and then we're off on Wednesday evening to "accept delivery" of my stuff, scheduled to arrive at the new house on Friday. Honestly, I'm not sure all of this has hit me yet but I'm sure it will soon.

WHAGR?

What has Art Garfunkle read? Find out on his official website where he lists every book he's read over the past 30 years. (Personally, I don't think he's read enough at just 967 books in 30 years. That's just 32.233 books per year, .61 books per week.)

An open letter to the members and customers of the Friends of the Aurora Public Library

IE6 users, if you can't see the whole post try reading it at the alternative location or use this as a great opportunity to update to IE7.

In January 2006 I was asked by the then FAPL board president to take over as the manager of the FAPL Book Outlet. I accepted the position and in the past year many changes have been made. Many of you have liked the changes, a good number have come to accept the changes, and a few of you still do not like most or any of them. Then came the recent sale at the central library and additional complaints have been received. This letter is both an explanation and a response to the criticisms I’ve received over the past thirteen months.

First, just a little about my background to help you in understanding where I’m coming from. I currently hold a masters degree in library science and teach computers and the Internet to librarians across an eleven-state region. I have also been a member of the board of trustees of the Aurora Public Library for the past four years. Prior to my present career, I was a bookseller (from clerk to management) for more than ten years (in both independent and chain bookstores), and have been a book collector for more than 25 years. I am by no means an expert in books but I feel that my knowledge of the trade is well above that of the typical book buyer.

When I was brought in as the new manager the store had recently moved to its current location at nearly triple the space of the previous location and at more than double the rent. (Even this amount is at a significant discount as we’re sub-leasing from the city and they’re giving us a great deal.) Our books were shelved by price, not by category, placing books of the same genre/ topic in as many as five different locations in the store. Some of the books were priced using stickers while others were priced by drawing stripes or other symbols on the bottom of the books with permanent markers. (Both of these methods reduced the book’s value significantly.) Ultimately, sales at the store had stagnated.

Before deciding how to address these issues I had to clarify the mission of the Friends. That mission is to, at its essence, make money to support the Aurora Public Library. With sales at a stand still, increased costs, and the difficulties customers (and staff) were having finding what they wanted, I set about making some significant changes in how the store was run and organized.

The two areas that customers noticed the most were the reorganizing of the books out on the floor and the way books were priced. In the first case, over a two-day period several volunteers moved nearly every single book in the store so that books of the same genre/topic were shelved together. Paperbacks and hard covers were still shelved separately, but no longer were there paperback romances in four locations in the store. The result was not perfect on the first try and as recently as four months ago we were still moving some sections around to shelve in a way that works best for both the customers and the staff.

The second change, pricing, was more difficult for many, staff included, to accept. About a dozen volunteers spent three days, writing a price, category, and date into every book in the store. The category and date make both shelving new and removing old stock easier on the staff. Having the price in virtually the same location in every book makes things much easier for the customers than the old system of different locations and/or markings on the books. This is a standard practice in the used book trade as it does not reduce the value of the book.

The actual prices of the book is where the largest number of complaints have come from and in many cases those that have not liked the new pricing fall into one of three camps: those that don’t like increases in prices in general, those that want the store to be something it no longer is, and used book dealers. Let me respond to each one of these in turn.

Even I fall into the first category: those that don’t like price increases in general. When people started noticing that we increased our prices they commented on it to me and the staff. Once we explained that our rent had more than doubled most people understood and didn’t comment further.

Those that want the store to be what it no longer is, is a harder category. There are generally three types of used book stores: exchanges, used, and rare/antiquarian. Stores run by Friends groups tend to be in the first category; the store has stock that it’s trying to sell of cheap and fast, usually having some sort of flat-rate pricing scheme. That is what the Book Outlet was but I felt we could be more than that. Used book stores have cheap books, mid-priced books, and expensive books with more varied pricing. Rare/antiquarian book stores specialize in the obscure and the expensive. What I’ve attempted to do is to move the Book Outlet away from the exchange model to the used model. Folks in this category loved the cheap prices of the old model and don’t appreciate the slightly higher prices of the current model.

The reason for moving to the used model takes me back to the mission of the Friends: to make money to support the Aurora Public Library. With this new model both sales and income have increased despite the additional costs of the new location, and because of this we were able to totally fund the 2006 summer reading program to the tune of $27,000 in addition to funding other programs and library remodeling efforts. I understand the folks who liked the old exchange model, but continuing to use that model would just not allow us to support the library as much as we would like.

As for dealers; for years we have been selling books to area dealers and have enjoyed doing so. We also look forward to continuing to do so in the future. However, in the past we were not exactly smart about doing so. Frequently we would hear stories of dealers buying books from us for less than a dollar and reselling it in their store for $20, $50, or sometimes more than $100. (Once or twice a dealer would come back to the store and give us additional money from part of the profit he’d made off the resale of one of our books.) To make myself clear, we don’t mind dealers buying from us and reselling in their stores. However, selling to them a book for $2.00 and having them make a $98 profit, does a serious disservice to our mission when instead we could sell it for $25 and have them make a $75 profit. This way, we’re a little happier and the dealers are only a little less happy.

This leads me to the next issue: our use of the Internet to price some of our stock. Yes, I will admit that when we find a book that we feel might be worth more than a few dollars we use the site bookfinder.com to guide us to an appropriate sale price. Whenever we do this we take into consideration many things including, but not limited to: the condition of our copy, the condition of copies for sale online, the number of copies for sale online, and the asking prices of the online copies. In most cases we end up pricing the book using our normal pricing guidelines. If we do end up marking up the price based on what we found online, we ultimately keep this fact in mind: all of our books are donations and therefore whatever we get for the book we can consider “profit”. In other words, unlike other book dealers we don’t have to make back what we paid for the book in the first place since we didn’t pay anything for it. So, with that in mind, we generally price the book lower than what is being asked for online.

Even then, the vast majority of our books in the store are not priced this way. Those in the locked cabinet and some of the books on the bookshelves at the front of the store are the result of Internet-based pricing, but that is a small minority compared to the rest of the books in the store.

***

Now, as for this past weekend’s sale at the central library, there were two complaints that were heard by both me and the other volunteers: the sale “wasn’t what I expected” and the books were “overpriced”. Again, please allow me to respond.

I believe that both of these complaints are connected as the second is a result of the first. What most people expect when they see that a friends group is holding a book sale is the traditional annual book sale with lots of cheap books that the friends are trying to sell off quickly. (We have the Book Outlet so we don’t do that sort of sale.) However, what we advertised was a sale of “rare, collectible, and used” books also stating a price range of “40 cents to several hundred dollars.” We did our best to make sure that this was stated in all the advertising we did. Unfortunately, despite these statements, some still expected the more traditional friends book sale with a majority of cheap books.

More than 75% of the books at the sale were from a single donated collection of mostly history and cookbooks. Some of these books were not worth as much as others but many were worth more than the usual $1-4 prices we charge in the store. A group of about a dozen volunteers spent more than six months valuing and pricing the books using the previously mentioned Internet-based method. We all did our best to keep the prices reasonable based on the research we performed. Remember, our mission is to make money to support the library, not sell off a valuable collection of books for pennies on the dollar.

In one case a customer came up to one of the volunteers and asked if the $2 price we had on the book was correct since the book was worth $500. In another, a dealer, toward the end of the sale pulled out a single book from his $375 purchase and pointed out that the $100 we were asking for the book was what he could get for it in his store and could he have it for a little less. We talked and I lowered the price of the book for him. In the first case a customer got a great deal, in the second a professional dealer validated the price we had set on the book. These two situations show me that we priced most of our books correctly, just not at the level that people expected.

Additionally some read the e-mail about extending the hours of the sale through Monday morning and offering most of the books at 50% discount as a sign that this was more of a traditional sale at which we were trying to “dump what was left”. This is incorrect. The extension of the sale and the discount was not planned. It was a decision I made on the spot based on a number of factors including the fact that we could have the library’s room an extra day and the poor weather on Sunday. Had either of those not have happened the Monday extension and discount may not have occurred.

In the end the sale made just short of $6000 which will all go to benefit the library. The books that are left over from the sale will not be disposed of, they will be dealt with as any other book we have in one of several ways. Many will end up being offered for sale in the store, some of the prices will be reduced, while others will be offered for sale online. Others, the lower priced ones, will be sold off to designers for use in show homes.

Overall, everyone involved in the planning, organization, and implementation of the sale believes it was a success.

***

The February FAPL board meeting will be my last. At that meeting I will be ending my tenure as the Book Outlet manager as I am moving to Lincoln, NE for a new job. I have enjoyed this position and I’m honored to have been able to support my library in this way. The reigns will be handed over to someone else who I hope will continue taking the store into the future and continue to fulfill the store’s mission. I appreciate the time you’ve taken to indulge me and if you wish to leave any comments please feel free to do so via the comments link at the end of this post.

Someone's sick of the snow

E-mail me in Nebraska

My NLC address now works: msauers[at]nlc.state.ne.us

Blogging irony

I had to get through this:

to be able to blog this:

This isn't an alarm clock blog

But it may seem like one lately. This one's tag line is "wake up and smell the coffee". Yes, you can take that literally.

A clock for procrastinators

I've always wondered about people who intentionally set their clocks a little fast, say by ten minutes, as I'd know that I'd set my clock ahead by ten minutes and automaticall adjust the time back in my head. Well, maybe David Seah has a better solution. His Clock for Procrastinators is an online clock that is always ahead, but how far ahead is randomized so you don't know how fast it really is at any one point in time. Now if someone would move that feature into a bedroom alarm clock for those who have trouble getting out of the house in the morning, I think he's have a hit on his hands.

Google's phishing blacklist

Google's phishing blacklist, the one used by Firefox when you set the "check by asking Google about each site I visit" option in the security settings, is available online. It's not exactly bedtime reading but it is interesting from a technical perspective.

Rosario get's down with DDR

ALA Midwinter 2007 058
Originally uploaded by libraryman.

This is my former boss trying DDR for the first time at ALA Midwinter. This shows why I'm so bummed that she moved to Pasadena.

The blonde in the library

It's an old joke but this is the first time I've seen it in video form.

Thanks Kathy

House Hell

I just got a call from the realtor selling my house. She informed me that as of a few minutes ago my buyer's been told that he can't qualify for the loan to buy my house. Back to square one just seven days before this house was supposed to close.

More e-mail "errors"

So I'm selling my weight bench and health rider on Craig's List. I've been trying for the past several days to list the weight bench to no avail as every time I submit the listing I'm told that the listing violates some unnamed Craig's List rule. I read the rules from top to bottom and couldn't figure out the rule I was violating. (All attempts at e-mailing for an explanation were ignored.) This morning I tried to list the health rider and got the same response from the system. I had an idea and tried listing the items with my gmail.com address instead of my travelinlibrarian.info address. Guess what? This time the listings went through on the first try. Go figure.

Yet another e-mail "error"

Yet another e-mail "error"
Originally uploaded by Travelin' Librarian.

This time at the Mozilla Store. They ought to know better!

Lincoln house

I've put up the photos taken of the house in Lincoln. Please keep in mind that all of the furnishings are those of the soon to be previous owners and that some serious redecorating will need to be done. (Especially since i have no need for a nursery.)

"The Move" updates

I'm back from a weekend trip to Lincoln to find a place to live and it was, I must say, an unqualified success. Not only did I find a place to live but I'm getting a house, not an apartment. The price was amazing, it's enough space, and it's only 3.1 miles from my new office at the Nebraska Library Commission.

Today I'm home most of the day to deal with canceling services here at the old house (Internet, cable, tv, water/sewer, and trash) and waiting for the buyer's mortgage broker's appraiser to make an appearance. (Though it looks like I won't be home for that but that's not a problem.) It does turn out that I need to replace the roof and the 30 year-old furnace for the buyer so I'll just need to grin and bear it when it comes to that expense.

So, assuming nothing goes wrong here's what's coming up:

• January 26: Close on the selling of the old house and have the movers pack my fragile items. (I'm packing the rest. NO ONE packs my books but me.)
• January 27: Movers pack all my stuff (with a few exceptions) into a semi and drive off.
• January 29: Close on the house in Lincoln. (I'm hoping I don't actually have to be there for that.)
• Feburary 3: Stuff arrives in Lincoln. I will need to be there to receive it.
• February 15: Last day at BCR
• February 16: Drive out to Lincoln. (I think buying a seat on a plane for my car might cost a little more than I can afford.)
• March 1: Start at NLC

Updates as warranted of course...

A year without credit

It's done
Originally uploaded by Travelin' Librarian.

I too this photo one year ago today and haven't used a single credit card or other bit of credit (student loans, mortgage payments, and the balance on the cards not withstanding) since. It hasn't exactly been easy the whole time, but after a full year, it does feel good.

Ire lane

Ire lane
Originally uploaded by Travelin' Librarian.

This has always been one of my favorite signs. (Montery, CA)

What happens when I do this?

What happens when I do this?
Originally uploaded by Travelin' Librarian.

My nephew Andrew is intrigued by my new toy.

Utah places

Want my job?

BCR has posted the position announcement now titled Emergent Technologies Trainer.

Podcasts: Part 2

I remembered earlier today that I previously posted a list of the "professional" podcasts I listened to and promised a list of "personal" podcasts. Well here it is.

• Big Head Todd Cast
• Chrysler Music Legends
• Coverville
• Doctor Who (TV Series Commentaries)
• Doctor Who: Podshock
• dotBoom (video)
• The Legacy Podcast (find in iTunes)
• Starbucks Cofee Conversations
• Starship Sofa
• The Show with ze frank (video)

Ultimate List of Free Windows Software from Microsoft

Microsoft offers a lot of free Windows software, some of which is rather useful. The trouble is that finding it on the Microsoft site can be daunting unless you know exactly what you're looking for. Well, here's a page from The Road to Know Where blog listing all of them with appropriate links.

Drive-By Users

I heard a new library term the other day: "drive-by users". What really made me notice is that the person using it (one of the local library system's regional managers,) followed it up by saying "like Michael here." It seems a drive-by user is one who looks everything up online, places his holds, and then stops into the library long enough to pick up the book, say hi, and then walk out the door again. Guilty as charged.

24: Day 6

Fox has a trailer trailer and SkyOne has a Day 6 prequel and a 24 Holiday Video titled 24th. (On the SkyOne site a NSFW Nip/Tuck trailer will automatically start playing. Click pause and then select the "24" tab in the upper-right to find the 24 videos.)

Hitachi breaks 1TB hard drive barrier with 7K1000 - Engadget

I said it would happen by the end of 2006. Cut me some slack, I was only off by five days. Here's a 1TB hard drive for only $400.

I want one!

TARDIS 4-port USB hub
Originally uploaded by Travelin' Librarian.

If you're feeling bad for not sending me something for Christmas, here's the way to relieve your guilt.

Second Life Portable

I'm a big fan of portable apps if for no other reason than is messes with many a librarian's head when I show them that I can plug in my flash drive and run my software on their "locked down" computer. And, with the recent acquisition of a 4GB jump drive, I've got a lot of room to play. So, when I saw these instructions from Brett Bixler of The Pennsylvania State University on how to make Second Life run off a jump drive and leave no trace on the local hard drive (though admitedly, it does use the C: drive while Second Life is running, it just deletes the files when you exit,) I had to try it out. Yes folks, it works. Second Life does run a little slower than usual since jump drives aren't as fast as hard drives but it did function reasonably and might be a solution for those wishing to run Second Life on public computers.

For some time I've been looking for a way to run SL off a Flash drive. This will enable students at Penn State using public labs to run SL, keep up with the frequent updates, etc.

I finally have a batch file (for the PC) that seems to do the job.

I installed SL on a Flash drive.

I created this batch script. A batch script is just a text file, so you can copy this script into any editor and save it as RunSL.bat:

: This script will launch Second Life.
: When SL is closed, it will delete temp
: directories that cause PSU Lab problems.
: For this script to work, the folder
: containing the Second Life application
: (SecondLife) must be in the same directory
: as this script.

@ECHO OFF
ECHO Please leave this window open.
ECHO IGNORE ANY "Profile Storage Space" MESSAGES YOU SEE!
ECHO Now launching Second Life...
ECHO.
PAUSE
CD /d %~dp0
CD SecondLife
START /wait SecondLife.exe
RMDIR /q /s "%APPDATA%\SecondLife"
ECHO.
ECHO Second Life is closing. Now cleaning up your temp files...
ECHO.
PAUSE
CLS
EXIT


Student directions:

The batch script named RunSL.bat will launch Second Life when you launch it. When SL is closed, it will delete the SecondLife temp directory that is stored on the C: drive in the Documents and Settings folder. This will keep the PSU labs at UP from forcing the user to manually delete these files, as the user's file storage space quota is exceeded when Second Life runs. Second Life runs fine without these temp files.

For this script to work, the folder containing the Second Life application (SecondLife) must be in the same directory as this script. You cannot change the name of the Second Life folder, or the names of anything inside the Second Life folder.

If you are running this off a Flash drive, install Second Life (download the software from http://secondlife.com) directly onto the Flash drive (~70MB), copy this script onto the Flash drive in the same directory, and run this script to launch Second Life.

The Second Life application is frequently updated, and most of these updates are mandatory. If you launch Second Life and must update it, please follow the directions Second Life provides. Make sure you have enough free space on your Flash drive (~100MB) to perform a successfull update.

Creative Library Display

Marion Display 06 001
Originally uploaded by AlbionCollegeLibrary.

I just love this display from the Albion College Library, in Albion, MI.

Lawrence Lessig On Free, and the Differences between Culture and Code

Another amazing lecture by Prof. Lawrence Lessig.

Wikinomics on NPR

On January 2nd, NPR's Talk of the Nation featured Don Tapscott, co-author of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

Feed change

Those that are subscribed to my RSS feed, please take note. I've moved to a FeedBurner version. If you don't know what that means, don't worry. The important bit is that the old one will be going away. If you're subscribed to the feed located at http://www.travelinlibrarian.info/atom.xml please unsubscribe and resubscribe to the new version at http://feeds.feedburner.com/TravelinLibrarian. (This is the one that the Syndicate link in the sidebar points to.) Thanks!

The Disney Trap: How Copyright Steals our Stories

Star Wars Fun

In honor of the Darth Tater I received for Christmas, here's a link to the online Death Star Designer. Yes, you can design your own Death Star. Just be sure to make it mighty, defendable, and within budget.

Global Warming Denial

CBC's The Fifth Estate has a 40min program on the scientists that deny global warming and where their ideas truly come from.

Ninja Turtle or Renaissance Artist?

via xkcd

Which Superhero am I?

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 85% Green Lantern 70% The Flash 55% Superman 55% Supergirl 55% Hulk 45% Batman 45% Robin 40% Iron Man 40% Catwoman 40% Wonder Woman 35%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Office 2007

Here's an interesting bit from the 2007 Microsoft Office release system requirements:

Grammar and contextual spelling in Word is not turned on unless the machine has 1 GB memory.

The iPod Death Clock

Enter your iPod's serial number into The iPod Death Clock, provide a little information about how much you use it, and get an estimate on how much longer it'll live. I was told that the new one I got for Christmas will last another 575 days. Based on previous experience, that does sound about right.

2006: My Year in Books

(Idea stolen from Jessamyn)
number of books read in 2006: 118
number of books read in 2005: 132
average read per month: 9.8
number read in worst month: 4 (Sepember)
number read in best month: 22 (April)
percentage by male authors: 88
percentage by female authors: 22
fiction as percentage of total: 84
total number of pages: 29893
number of audiobooks: 24 (numbers above include the audiobooks)

House Update

Things are coming together and the plan is to close on the sale of my house on the 26th. The weekend of the 12th I'll be heading out to Lincoln to find an apartment to which all of my stuff can be sent while I finish my work at BCR.

New Jumpdrive

Jumpdrive sizes
Originally uploaded by Travelin' Librarian.

After all the weather delays, my new 4GB jumpdrive finally arrived. Man, is it tiny. Take a look at the photo to the right. From left to right are a 16MB, 1GB and my new 4GB jumpdrives.Four-times the storage at about 50% of the size.