LibraryTechtonics

The air conditioning at Reading Public Library is busted (I think it has been since the end of last summer), and steps were taken to fix the issue before it got hot. Despite all the forethought and preemptive action, the library A/C unit is still busted, and the new unit which was s’posed to arrive last Monday is still on a truck somewhere.

Our director, Ruth Urell, did arrange with our custodial staff to have several portable standing A/C units brought in in the interim, even before we found out that the library’s central unit would not arrive on time. However, the portable units, try as they may, couldn’t compete with this heat. Extra units would brought in to supplement the original set, and window units were installed where possible, given that the building is an old school, and isn’t quite equipped for window units.

Ruth also had Nancy, the awesome secretary of the library, go out and buy us fresh cut fruit, lemonade, juice, ice pops and other frozen treats, to help keep us all going. It was funny answering reference questions with a melting ice pop in one hand and a glass of lemonade in the other! We did manage to stay open all of our hours through Friday, but come my Saturday shift, we closed 2 hours early because of the heat. Today the library opened at 9am, and closed at 11am. We’ll be playing the rest of our hours by ear until the A/C is fixed.

Even with the heat and the madness, we all came to work, we all did our best, and the patrons blessed our hearts for it every time they spoke to us. Ruth has had our backs the entire way, and really did make every effort to plan for and take care of the yuck ahead of time.

Yet another reason why I love my library, even in all this heat.

I have, really. In a most peculiar, drastic fashion.

Truth be told, I haven’t read a news feed in at *least* a month, perhaps more. I’ve visited certain blogs directly but sporadically, mostly out of some sort of attempt to prevent myself from being sucked into catching up and never get out.

The whole thing has been entirely effortless, with an eery, normal feeling, like falling out of the digisphere is really what eventually happens, and it’s really all OK, when there’s something about it that really isn’t OK at all. And yet, upon reflection, I think it was a good thing that it happened.

I attribute most of my recent disappearance, and now most of my other accidental hiatuses, to just a simple need to unplug. A need to not feel constantly driven by external forces of content, a need to find some breathing room between my brainspace and the digital knowledge mindshare that is the online world. My new jobs required a lot more attention than a originally anticipated, crashing into the plate that held my previous existence as a job seeker, which is entirely OK, and I am quite glad for it. It’s just another shift in an ongoing career climate change, to be weathered with patience and careful contemplation. And yoga. And many deep, cleansing breaths. And subsequent butt-kicking action.

My internet brain lying somewhat fallow then slowly re-emerging is probably the best thing that can happen right before ALA. Midwinter was quite the whirlwind, but I’m guessing it pales in comparison to the maelstrom of an annual conference. My tech mojo, writing skills, and librarian kung fu are all still sharp, just redirected into my meatspace work, which isn’t entirely online and bloggy. Work is reshaping how I think about blogging, the way I blog, and what I blog about, but not changing my committment to my little volcano island on the web.

So yeah, basically, it’s all good. I’m sure these little gaps will continue to happen, and you should consider them normal, while I shall resolve not to stress out about them anymore as some sort of sign that I’m “losing my edge”. I won’t be disappearing anytime soon, just popping up in new and interesting places from time to time, and returning with interesting stories to tell.

I had a good deal of fun multitasking and collaborating with Luke the Librarian today. Last night, I did some tooling around with Luke’s mockup, and we exchanged a few emails back and forth. While I was at the NOBLE Tech Expo, I was taking a few notes on my laptop and keeping an eye on my email. Most of what was being presented at the Tech Expo was not new to me (a story for another post), so as I was listening, I was having all sorts of fun formatting stuff (the sheer madness of converting text-to-table, tooling with data, then converting table-to-text, with some search-and-replace fun thrown in), then emailing stuff to and IMing with Luke. I left the expo, came home, got back on email and IM with Luke, and many back and forths later, the pages are up.

*Victory dance for techie librarians who collaborate.*

So here’s the deal. The events have all been sorted by division/committee/roundtable/what-have-you acronym (with a link to a handy acronym list to help people decipher the acronym moon language), then within each section by date and time. We figured it would be easier, especially for readers not attending the conference, to look for reports by the group association than using a schedule that wouldn’t help non-attendees. For each session listing, there’s a link to a page for that session. Bloggers can link to their posts from specific session pages, and non-bloggers who would like contribute can create a new wiki page to write up their notes, then link to the wiki page from the session page.

The entry page for the Conference Reports section explains how things work in more detail, as well as encouraging bloggers and Flickr users to adopt the ALA2005 tag for their ALA 2005 content.

The theory is that if we built it, the librarians will populate it. Spread the word.

I’m flying United to and from ALA Annual, but this won’t be ready by then:

Fly the Wi-Fi Friendly Skies
[Wired 7 jun '05]
NEW YORK — United Airlines, the world’s second-largest carrier, received regulatory approval Monday to install wireless internet access to its fleet in a partnership with Verizon Communications.

Hopefully it won’t cost horribly much. I’d love to see the low-cost airelines offer wifi for free. One can hope…

So Luke the Librarian sent me an email today, running an idea by me. I think it’s fabulously elegant yet simple.

Luke has proposed that bloggers who are blogging the ALA conference can sort of “sign up” to cover certain sessions, and then once those sessions are blogged, the blogger can link to the report on their blog from the session listing on the wiki.

I love it. It’s an excellent way to have all sorts of bloggage in one place, associated with the actual schedule. I think the only way this idea could fail is if no one picks up on it, and I’m sure the librarian bloggers out there will be all over it, at least. It’s a very nifty approach to conference reporting and report aggregation.

And, as Luke pointed out, even people without blogs could just create a new page on the wiki to write up a report to link to, and my view is that it’s a great way to get librarians involved with using wikis, especially if they’ve never done it before.

Luke’s idea is most awesome, and from the mockup I’ve seen, he’s done most of the work already, so it’s just a matter of posting it (so for all you ALA 2005 wiki addicts out there, don’t dupe his work, it’ll be up soonish). Keep an eye on the wiki for it!