Announcement: Library Catalog Down this weekend

The Library's online catalog is scheduled to be offline Friday-Sunday (1-3 Feb), with connectivity restored Monday. We can still help you find materials in the Library, though, so please ask us.

If you're at home or at the office and need to know if we have a particular book, you can go to WorldCat.org, search for the title and/or author, input your zip code (68113 for the Library) and WorldCat will tell you if we own it. Then call us and we'll see if it's on the shelf.

WorldCat will also tell you what other libraries in the area own it. Many libraries have their catalogs linked to WorldCat, so you can click on the library name and it may take you to their catalog - which will usually tell you if the book is on the shelf or not.

On using area libraries:

• Active duty military are entitled to free library cards at the Omaha Public Library (including branches).


• Active duty military and their families are entitled to free library cards at the Bellevue Public Library.


• Students at most of the colleges and universities in the metropolitan Omaha area have borrowing privileges at the other college and university libraries. Call the library you're interested in to see if they participate in the program.

Today I Am . . . briefing the boss

There's something about putting a brief together on your operation and going over it with the boss that really helps to put your work life in perspective.

My web person showed him what we're doing with our online resources (website, blog, forum, professional research services, individual research assistance online from a live librarian) as well as showing off some of the cool new stuff for the future (your avatar wanders the virtual library to find information!).

I talked about my philosophy of serving our customers no matter where they are and how we can implement that philosophy via web-based services, the Drive-Up Library, and working via phone and email (and maybe eventually IM, text messaging, etc) to help people get the info they want.

We discussed what this means in terms of staffing and funding (especially for technology infrastructure), and while (of course) he made no promises, I know that when I submit requests, he'll understand what we're trying to do here.

We also talked about the Library's upcoming programs:

• African-American stories at the Friday storytimes in February in honor of African-American Heritage Month


• National Napping Day (March 10)


• Cyberspace Careers Pizza Party for 11th graders (late March or early April)


• Professional Reading Society meeting on Gen O'Malley with a gentleman who knew the General (May)


• Summer Reading Program for kids at the Base Library (June-July)


• Teen Summer Reading Program with the Bellevue Public Library (June-July)

While on the one hand I'm exhausted before I even start, on the other, I'm so jazzed about what we're doing! Pulling it all together like this reminds me of how much fun this job can be.

Currently Reading: BBC News online
Currently Listening to: "Abduction from the Seraglio" by Mozart, via WGUC classical radio

No more lining up the projector?

Automatic Projector Calibration with Embedded Light Sensors

Johnny Chung Lee, a PhD graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, uploaded a video to YouTube on Saturday that demonstrates his thesis project: a technique for automatically discovering the locations of surfaces in the projection area using embedded light sensors.

No matter how he angles the viewing screen, the picture projected onto it lines up perfectly and is not distorted in any way. The calibration takes about 1 second for a perfect match, as opposed to the 5-10 minutes I spend moving tables, adjusting the leveling wheels on my projector and still ending up with a warped picture.

His technique also helps in performing automatic touch calibration of interactive whiteboards or touch-tables.

End result? When you're doing a presentation, you'd no longer have to have the projector smack in the middle of your conference table . . .

Currently Reading: "Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever" by John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade (again)

Currently Listening to: "A Boy Named Sue" by Johnny Cash (country/folk)

Professional Military Reading - the CSAF list

Every year, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force (as well as other military leaders) puts out a list of books he recommends all AF personnel read. The new list, from General T. Michael Moseley, was provided to AF base library directors yesterday so that we could place our orders. These are the titles for 2008, with those the Offutt Base Library owns marked with an asterisk - the others are on order.


Our Military Heritage:
*At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor, by Gordon Prange
Empire by Default: The Spanish-American War and the Dawn of the American Century, by Ivan Musicant
Last Chance for Victory: Robert E. Lee and the Gettysburg Campaign, by Scott Bowden and Bill Ward
Louis Johnson and the Arming of America: The Roosevelt and Truman Years, by Keith D. McFarland and David L. Roll

Our Air Force Heritage:
First Light: The True Story of the Boy Who Became a Man in the War-Torn Skies Above Britain, by Geoffrey Wellum
Gods of Tin: The Flying Years, by James Salter
*Jimmy Stewart: Bomber Pilot, by Starr Smith

Our Mission, Doctrine, and Profession:
John Warden and the Renaissance of American Air Power, by John A. Olsen
*On the Edge of Earth: The Future of American Space Power, Steven Lambakis
Why Air Forces Fail: The Anatomy of Defeat, by Robin Higham and Stephen J. Harris

Our Nation and World:
*The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, by Bernard Lewis

Previous lists are available at the CSAF Professional Reading Program site.

The Chief of Naval Operations list
The U.S. Army Chief of Staff's Professional Reading List
The Marine Corps Professional Reading Program


Book links are to Amazon.com for convenience of reading reviews, not as an endorsement of a specific company.

Currently Reading: regional librarian newsletters such as NLCommunicator and NCompass(Nebraska Library Commission), Eastern Express (Eastern Library System - east central Nebraska), SoLiS (Southeast Library System - southeast Nebraska), MPLA (Mountain Plains Library Association), and Meridian Monitor (Meridian Library System - western Nebraska)
Currently Listening to: "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin

Spam, hoaxes & other bump-in-the-night emails

A few good sites
to check to see if
that email you just
got is truth . . .

or . . .

SPAM!!!

About urban legends and hoaxes - particularly those sent via email:
Snopes
About Urban Legends
Break the Chain
TruthOrFiction.com

From the government:
US-CERT (Computer Emergency Readiness Team)
US DOE CIAC (Computer Incident Advisory Capability)

MalWare companies:
Symantec
McAfee
Trend Micro

From the techie point of view:
VMyths.com

Scary legends and tales:

Halloween Web
HalloweenOnly.com

Halloween legends at Snopes.com

And if all else fails, try running a search using your favorite search engine and see what people are saying about it.

Currently Reading: Songs of Johnny Cash
Currently Listening to: "I Walk the Line" by Johnny Cash (country/folk)

Learning librarianship forever?

Paraphrasing a conversation I had last night:

The frustrating thing about the stock market is that you can never learn all you need to know. Every time you think you have a handle on it, it changes - unlike physics and history, where for the most part, true tends to stay true.

Librarianship these days has more in common with learning to understand the stock market than with the study of history or physics. You really can learn enough about the Civil War to get a pretty good handle on it and not have some new piece of information come along that turns everything you've figured out upside down.

The increasing rate of change of technology, though, means that learning librarianship is like shooting at a moving target - or trying to understand what affects the stock market. Those of us who've been in the profession for a while are working hard to get up to speed, to realize that technology offers wonderful new options for service, but we have to remember that there will never be a time when we can say, "I got it."

We have to stay engaged with those who are finding new ways to interact with information and each other, because sure as you think you understand it all, someone (or multiple someones) will come up with something new.

With that in mind, I offer to librarians (and information junkies) a link to the LISNews Ten Blogs to Read in 2008. One of my favorites made the list:

"Library 2.0 has something to it, even if we don't know what it is. We have to keep the stupid term and keep searching for the true revelation, which will undoubtedly come some day." -- Annoyed Librarian, 1/21/08


Currently Reading: "Flight of the Phoenix" by Elleston Trevor (which is 10 times better than the Jimmy Stewart movie, which is 10 times better than the Dennis Quaid/Hugh Laurie movie, which I actually liked quite a lot)
"There are certain men who, when faced with the choice of dying or doing the impossible, elect to live. This story is written in honor of their kind." -- dedication
The wind had flung the sand thirty thousand feet into the sky above the desert in a blinding cloud from the Niger to the Nile, and somewhere in it was the airplane. -- the first paragraph

Currently Listening to: the washing machine

Library closed - Martin Luther King Day

The Library is closed Monday, Jan 21, in honor of Martin Luther King, jr Day. We'll be back on Tuesday. Please take a moment to remember this remarkable man.

Today I Am . . . working the Circ desk

My weekend to work, and I'm determined to spend more time with customers. This is not hard on the weekend, as long as I don't have some report I have to generate. Since we're finished with the Fall rush of reports, budgets, analyses & such, I can get out on the floor again.

I've missed it. Being in my office allows me to concentrate on reports, negotiate with vendors, research new technologies; to review what we've done in the past and what other librarians are doing now, to bring information together to help plan the future of the Library. This is good. But there's something about actually working with individual customers that brings it all home for me.

It reminds me that the statistics I deal with represent real people. It reminds me that the resources I'm purchasing solve real problems for those people. It reminds me that the decisions I make about how best to organize and present information to people makes a difference to them. And it reminds me that the Library is valued by them for being . . . a library.

And in the end, that's why I'm here. The people.

(Librarian action figure is real-life librarian Nancy Pearl of the Seattle Public Library, author of Book Lust and Now Read This. "The role of a librarian is to make sense of the world of information. If that's not a qualification for superhero-dom, what is?")

Currently Reading: "J.Doe: The Artists - The Project" by C. Kelly Lohr
Currently Listening to: "Susudio" by Phil Collins

Teens using the internet

Two complementary blog posts on teens & the internet from Stephen Abram, library visionary, bring up questions about how skilled they really are on the internet. Stephen posts about two very recent reports:

Teen Content Creators is a report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project (Dec 19, 2007) that shows how very involved teens are with internet-related activities. A few of their statistics:

• 93% of all teens use the internet with 27% having their own personal webpage
• 64% of online teens ages 12-17 create content for the internet (journals, webpages for hobbies, fansites, blogs, with 39% of all online teens posting creative work such as fiction, art, videos, etc) and 55% of this same age group have Facebook or MySpace accounts
• girls that go online blog more (35%) than boys (20%), but boys post more video content (19% vs 10%)
• 47% of all online teens have posted photos.

About 28% of all teens use landline phones, cell phones, texting, social network sites, instant messaging, *and* email to keep in touch with their family and friends.

[Your reaction to all of this may vary, based on whether or not you currently have a teen in your life, as I do.]

Then there’s the Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future.

It's a study by the British Library and JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) that was just released Jan. 11, 2008 that seeks to identify how researchers of the future are likely to access and interact with digital resources in five to ten years. They hope to help libraries anticipate new behaviors in the `Google generation’ (those born since 1993, who’ve grown up with the internet). Some consistent themes they’ve discovered:

• the information literacy of young people has not improved with the widening access to technology
• the speed of young people’s web searching means that little time is spent in evaluating information
• young people have a poor understanding of their information needs and thus find it difficult to develop effective search strategies
• they exhibit a strong preference for expressing themselves in natural language rather than analysing which key words might be more effective
• faced with a long list of search hits, they find it difficult to assess the relevance of the materials presented
• many young people do not find library-sponsored resources intuitive and therefore prefer to use Google or Yahoo instead: these offer a familiar, if simplistic solution, for their study needs

There's some excellent information on how people actually use virtual information sources - skimming, "power browsing," downloads - that would be helpful to anyone designing a website that is intended to provide valuable content.

So, my conclusion? We have a hard row to hoe ahead of us. Teens are not the easiest people to convince that they don't know what they need to know, so we're going to have to dig down deep to provide concrete assistance so they can see and experience the value of learning better research techniques. Which means we'd better know what we're doing ourselves.

I'm reminded of Michael Stephen's story about the public librarian who goes to his local Panera's every day with his laptop and puts out his sign that The Librarian is On Duty. If you can find quick and quality answers under those conditions, you're primed to work with teens. Those of us who've been off the floor a lot lately may want to do some refresher work before tackling them.

Currently Reading: "The Tale of Tom Kitten" by Beatrix Potter
Currently Listening to: "Jack Fig" by Leo Kottke (blues/jazz/bluegrass acoustic guitar)

Two different views on filtering by ISPs

This week, the New York Times has been running a series on various issues related to the transfer of information over the internet. Saul Hansell, in his "Bits" column, has touched on copyright, content filtering, digital fingerprinting, piracy and fair use.

I found the discussion of controlling piracy via Internet Service Providers (ISPs) particularly interesting.

Mr. Hansell sought input from two lawyers: Tim Wu, of Columbia Law School, and Rick Cotton, the general counsel of NBC Universal. They spent some time on this subject in yesterday's blog:

Mr. Wu says that imposing filters on the internet, regardless of reason, is a potential threat to free speech. He believes that the internet is public infrastructure and as such, ISPs have "a duty to the public to carry our information without messing with it along the way."

He also states that the entertainment industry is not an industry in crisis; he sees one that is after more income - which is understandable, but "not worth hijacking the internet for." He also reminds readers that their concern should be for creators, not the creative industry, and cites the writers strike as an illustration of the difference.

Mr. Cotton, on the other hand, focuses on what he calls the "extraordinary deluge of illegal pirated material being accessed over the broadband ecosystem." He cites studies from 2005 and later that state that peer-to-peer (P2P) networks (the primary method for individuals to obtain and share large files with others) represented 60% of internet traffic at the end of 2004.

In order to control the widespread abuse of copyright infringement, he believes that those in control of the communications - ISPs - need to apply content protection technology.

Mr. Wu disagrees, stating that "tolerating the routine inspection of all content, in the search for 'forbidden' content, is a fast road to a private police state."

Mr. Cotton responds with the question, "Are technology protections aimed at reducing viruses, spam and hacker attacks part of the fast road to a private police state?"

Although I, personally, think that Mr. Cotton is comparing apples to oranges in this statement, both men make good points that we need to be thinking about. It's a perpetual dilemma of librarianship to protect the revenues of the creator of a work of art yet encourage freedom of information.

The thought that my ISP may be slowing the transfer of information from a source to my computer makes me uncomfortable. Yes, I can live with it - but if this is the first step, what's the second?

Currently Reading: still on Stargate Atlantis
Currently Listening to: "Duncan Hills Coffee" by Dethklok (metal & Guitar Hero II)

Storytime

Our storytime is at 9:30am on Friday mornings at the Base Library. Since the Library is actually closed until 10:00am, please come in the side door on the north side of the building near the Vet Clinic. (Please park in the Library's lot in front of our building. The side lot is for the Vet staff & customers - and there are barely enough spaces for them right now due to the Pharmacy construction.)

Regardless of other events going on here on base, we will continue to hold the storytime. If for some reason (snow or whatever) we should happen to have to cancel it, I'll post an announcement in this blog.

Today I Am . . . seeking out restaurants

Why, you ask?

Because one of the library committees I'm on is running a conference this summer, and I'll be putting together a list of restaurants for the out-of-town visitors.

In true researcher style, I'm doing a preliminary survey to see what I've got myself into and how much time I'll need when it comes around to producing it.

The good news? There are a TON of great restaurants here!

The bad news? There are a TON of great restaurants here!

So help me out? What's your favorite Omaha area restaurant? (Preferably one that's not a chain. Something unique to us.)

Give me the website to the restaurant, too, if you would. Then we'll have a great list right here.

Currently Reading: a blog about Omaha restaurants
Currently Listening to: "Beyond Boundaries" Michael Hedges (acoustic guitar)

Cool new mini-tech

It's always interesting to read about the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Although many of the products (as with the auto shows) never make it to customers in their demo incarnations, I'm fascinated to see where tech is taking us. This year, the products that are catching my eye are the previously awkward, heavy and clunky equipment that now you can carry around in your purse or backpack - with room to spare.

Witness 3M & Himax's LED projector (in the pic above) that's small enough to be put inside a cell phone or digital camera. It's about 1 x 4 x 3 cm, with a lens about a cm in diameter, and can project a a 640 x 480 pixel image a half-meter in a bright room - probably more in a darker area.

What else am I sold on? The idea of a printer that I can stick in my briefcase or backpack without worrying that toner or ink will leak all over everything. PlanOn's thermal Printstik PS910 weighs about 1.5 lbs and is 1 x 11 x 2 in, so it can print a full 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper (about 42 cents ea) that doesn't smudge at a rate of about 3 per minute. Planned retail is $299.

Polaroid's 8 oz Instant Mobile Photo Printer will give you 2 x 3 inch peel-&-stick photos, again on thermal paper - this time with color crystals embedded in the paper that activate when heat is applied (about 40 cents/sheet). Planned retail is $150.

Both of the printers are wireless & compatible with BlackBerry, digital cameras & other mobile devices.

But the really good news for people on the go: UMPCs (unltra-mobile PCs) like the Everex Cloudbook. It's about 9 x 7 x 1 inches and has a starting weight of two pounds, a 7 inch screen, 30 GB hard drive, webcam & Wi-Fi, 3 USB ports & a 4-in-1 card reader - all for a projected list price of $399 (at Wal-Mart in late January). It runs OpenOffice, Mozilla Foxfire, Google software and more.

In the future, I can see having a Pampered Chef party in my home with the consultant projecting cooking demo vids on my livingroom wall, figuring up my order on her Cloudbook and then printing out my order. She could even provide on-the-spot photos of my friends and I trying out some of the products.

Impact on libraries? Not much, at least anytime soon. But these are the technologies our customers will be using - and the budget implications make me very happy. Hey, what librarian wouldn't want better technology for less money that's incredibly easy to move from place to place?

Currently Reading: "Stargate Atlantis: Casualties of War" (SGA-7) by Elizabeth Christensen
Currently Listening to: "The Old Man and the Sea" by Colour of Memory (Celtic/folk)

Tech changes society . . . again

Interesting take on the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike from today's Arizona Republic:

Dispute may change how we view shows
Bill Goodykoontz
The Arizona Republic, Jan 13, 2008
[excerpts - italics mine]

"From what I can tell, the public really doesn't care about the fate of the writers," said Craig Allen, an Arizona State University journalism professor and television expert. "Although it's impossible to predict the impact of the strike, the fact that viewers are ambivalent about content and distribution shows to me that the public is in touch with a concept and system for movies and TV that may have long since passed the writers by."

That march of technology may in fact weigh against the writers, Allen said.

"History illustrates again and again that collective bargaining cannot survive when unions are confronted by changing technology that neither workers nor managers can control," he said. "Just ask the Pullman Porters, the foundry workers, the longshoremen, etc., who years ago found they were bargaining not against management but against onrushing technology. Those unions died.

"Solidarity is possible when the issue is labor vs. management - not possible when the rug underneath both labor and management is pulled away."

~ * ~ * ~

The italicized line could as easily read: the public is in touch with a concept and system for obtaining information that may have long since passed the librarians by."

The WGA position that they should be compensated for digital dissemination of their work finds a lot of sympathy in the librarian profession. "Fair use" and proper compensation are key to our digital and paper copying, document delivery and interlibrary loan services.

But resistance to change is not the way. Change is coming -- is here -- whether or not we think it's a good thing. We need to take the word "should" out of our vocabulary. People should come to the Library. People should ask us for our help with their research. People should recognize our value.

People will do what is most efficient, in many cases sacrificing the search for the "best" answer and taking one that is "good enough" simply because they need to move on to the next step.

It's not only a case of educating the user (think of the WGA crying "unfair" to the studios); it's a case of us constantly adapting to a new world. If we don't keep up with how our customers are seeking information and make our services available via that technology -- as well as making sure they are high quality -- eventually we may not even be around to play the should game.

Currently reading: various news alerts
Currently Listening to: silence

Learning publicity

I first met Joe Marich last fall when he was doing publicity for David Rollins, an Australian author who is hitting big with our James Patterson & Nelson DeMille fans with his book "The Death Trust." Since David's book features an AF Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) Special Agent (Vin Cooper), Joe - thinking outside the box - created a publicity program called Operation Book Track that brought the two of them to 5 AF bases over a 2-week period.

I fell for Joe big time. (Well, I fell for David, too, but he lives in Australia and Joe's a heck of a lot closer in L.A.) Anyway, Joe was so much fun and had so many good ideas that I suggested him as a speaker for the annual AF/Navy Library Director's Workshop this summer -- and he's coming! I'm so stoked!

Publicity is an area a lot of us are uncomfortable with. Librarianship training doesn't really lend itself to thinking in terms of "selling a product," since we're all about free access to information for everyone. A key point we have to remember is that we have a quality product, something that is better than most people know -- and that's where publicity fits in. How are they going to know if we don't tell them?

So Joe will talk for about an hour -- maybe helping us to get our heads into the mindspace of today's consumer (how they think, what catches their interest); how we can take advantage of new & old ways of publicizing what we do; and maybe talk a little about Operation Book Track.

And I know we'll just plain have fun. A conference to look forward to!

Currently Reading: "Alexander and the Wonderful, Marvelous, Excellent, Terrific Ninety Days" by Judith Viorst
Currently Listening to: "Belleau Wood" by Garth Brooks (country)

Research insight from a composer-pianist

I wrote a couple of days ago that I’d been listening to a recording of Rachmaninov playing his 2d piano concerto. To many musicians, this piece is considered one of the old “warhorses” and should possibly be retired for a while in favor of some lesser-known works. To many audience members, this piece can never be played enough.

I’ve now been in both camps.

As an orchestra member, I’ve said, “Here we go again,” to what turned out to sometimes be an enjoyable experience and sometimes didn’t – the second typically when the pianist decided he was going to show the audience his stuff.

I recently heard a recording by a Chinese pianist who is touted as “the young pianist to watch,” and was stunned by his virtuosity, though not as positively by the appalling (to this American ear) brassiness of the horns. To “clear my palate,” I went looking for another recording.

I’ve always liked Ashkenazy, so checked to see if he’d recorded Rach 2 (he did, & I downloaded it using my iTunes account). To my surprise, though, I also turned up the recording of Rachmaninov playing it (in the 1920s), which I purchased out of sheer curiosity. What would his “interpretation” be?

Well, first off, he does it a heck of a lot faster than any other performer I’ve heard, chopping off as much as a minute per movement from the Ashkenazy performance and a full two minutes from the Chinese artist. With each movement being about 10 minutes long on average, Rachmaninov's speed gives the piece a whole different feel.

The other element that was strikingly different was his emotional approach to the work. I’d always thought of the concerto as a showpiece for a pianist, but Rachmaninov shows off the music, allowing the orchestra to star in an equal role. It’s more of a love duet than a traditional concerto. It’s a completely different way of looking at the piece. Maybe there are performers out there who are more true to Rachmaninov’s approach – but I haven’t heard them yet. This was an eye-opener to me.

So what is a discussion of piano performance practice doing in a librarian’s blog?

Consider the impact that going to the source had on my evaluation of this work. Whatever I eventually choose as my favorite interpretation, my view of the piece will forever be altered by hearing the original.

When you’re doing research, remember that the early documentation often has a freshness that can be watered down by later researchers. Sometimes later works lose the excitement and sense of immediacy that you get from the writings of someone who was there. I’m not saying to ignore later writers – they usually have an over-arching view that is important – but it’s hard to find one who can also make you feel the event in a deep, visceral way.

Find the original if you can, and let it flavor the knowledge gained by distance.

Currently Reading: "Mountains of Mourning," by Lois McMaster Bujold
Currently Listening to: Rachmaninov again (classical)

Customer Service

According to the executive summary of a study I'm reading, service is more important to you than ever. In fact, 60% of the respondents to the survey said it was the number 1 reason to work with a particular organization (more than price, product or convenience).

The survey also said that there's a gap between how companies think they're doing and what the customer's perception is.

So my question is: What is "customer service"?

Is it the quantifiable stuff like how many times the phone rings before we pick it up? How long you wait at the circulation desk? How much information we offer online? How long we spend with you when you're looking for something? Or is it mushier things like the warmth of the staff and if they seem to be happy to see you? Or somewhere inbetween?

You can comment here, or feel free to drop by the Library and ask for me, or to talk with any of the staff about this.

Currently Reading: "Customer Service in the Multi-Polar World" by Accenture

Currently Listening to: "Surf Rider" by The Lively Ones (60s surf rock, featured at the end credits to Pulp Fiction)

Construction

What's with all the construction?

Well, you probably know about the new BX going up right in front of our building. I think we're past the water outages now (at least from them), and hopefully past the power outages, too, though the water was more of a nuisance. It'll be nice to have the BX so very, very close, though.

Last I heard, it will be finished this fall. Correction: the Grand Opening is scheduled for Jun 8!

What happened to the bank? It's going to be the new pharmacy - with a drive up window. Yeah, that plus having seen it at the Seward's (NE) public library inspired me to offer our own Drive-Up Library service. Estimated completion is this summer.

In the meantime, please keep dropping by -- we're still here.

Currently Reading: Google News
Currently Listening to: a strange version of the Brahms Horn Trio for French horn, Violin & Piano which doesn't seem to have a horn in it??? (classical)

Today I Am . . . looking at information services

Overdrive, IRSC, Ebsco, forums, Country Watch, My Space, Janes.com, blog . . . so much of what we at the Library provide is now online. Today I'm trying to get it all into my head so I can lay it out in our "advertising" in a way that makes immediate sense to people.

Some of it's purchased by AF Libraries, some by ACC Libraries, some by the Base Library . . . some of it's accessible if you have an AF portal account, some if you have passwords we gave you, some of it's free to anyone . . . some of the services have been around for a while, some of them are new, many have different renewal dates . . . but the result is that the information on what we offer and how you can get to it is flying at me from all directions.

My challenge is to organize it all and then put the info on the website, on flyers, brochures, whatever, so you can figure out what best matches your needs -- for work, for school, hobbies, car repair, family health, whatever.

(What's the IRSC? It's ACC Libraries' Information Research Service Center, located at Langley AFB, and available to all ACC personnel. Check in on the latest research services, chat with a librarian online, find links to documents and websites for your profession, and more -- especially if you have an AF portal account.)

Currently Reading: A fascinating article on computer forensics, "Forensics Fear," from the Winter 2007-2008 issue of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly magazine. Yes, we have it in the Library.
Currently Listening to: "The Black Stallion and The Black Stallion Returns" movie soundtrack

The Drive-Up Library

For those who have trouble getting into the Library building during bad weather or because of physical constraints such as sick kids or sprained ankles or whatever (especially in this blustery, windy Nebraska winter), the Library is starting a new service -- the Drive-Up Library.

Contact us (in person, or via phone or email) to sign up for the service. If you aren't registered, you'll have to do that, of course, and you'll have to have your login & PIN for the web catalog.

Login to the Library's catalog and search for what you'd like to check out: books, music, movies, audiobooks, whatever. (Make sure your search is for only the Offutt Library.) If it's not currently checked out, put a hold on it. Do this before midnight.

The next morning, we'll get your list from the computer and pull your items. Call us after 10am to tell us about what time you'll be coming by. We'll get the books checked out and ready to go.

When you get on base, drive to the north side of the building by the Vet Clinic and call us at 294-5276, and we'll bring your materials out the side door to you. (We ask that you wait to call until you're actually in the parking lot, because we often don't have enough staff to have someone standing outside waiting.)

And you'll be on your way, with new stuff to read, listen to, or watch!

Currently Reading: still "One for the Money"
Currently Listening to: "Teardrop" by Massive Attack (electronica/trip hop)

January's Offutt Beaten Path mag links

The January issue of the 55th Services magazine "Offutt Beaten Path" somehow lost the links to the sites I was talking about. I'll get them posted here shortly.

Currently Reading: "One for the Money" by Janet Evanovich - gotta get it back to the Library, it's due soon
Currently Listening to: Rachmaninoff playing his 2d Piano Concerto (some modern performers could listen & learn something)

Miss Mary is leaving us.

'Tis the way of good people, they seek out new challenges - and full-time positions. Unfortunately, I don't have one for her, so our loss is going to be Omaha Public Library's gain. Her last day is Friday, 11 Jan - and then Miss Frankie will be taking up the reins of the Offutt Library storytimes. Frankie has been doing storytime at Moms, Pops & Tots (at the Offutt Community Center), and is looking forward to getting to know all the Friday morning folks.

Please come & join us with your preschoolers and more on Friday mornings at 9:30. The Library isn't actually open until 10:00, so park in front, but walk around to the north side of the building and come in the side door.

Currently Reading: Sudoku (okay -- playing, not reading)
Currently Listening to: "Firefly" TV soundtrack

Today I am . . . weeding

No, not the garden (not in this weather!), but the staff's collection of professional books. We moved it to a new location near my office, and I kept staring at it thinking I really needed to see if it needed updating. The holidays are a good time for this kind of project because it isn't so busy, so I dug in.

How do we choose what to keep & what to get rid of? What I've done for this collection is pretty much what we do for everything.

First I look at how much they're used. There are some I dig into all the time, so those are keepers. Others are standard reference works for Technical Services, such as the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) books, and we definitely need a copy of that!

Next, I check the copyright dates. Some of the books are pretty old - but that's a relative term, depending upon what you're talking about. A book on searching techniques for the internet is old if it's from more than a year ago because too much of the information is now wrong, wrong, wrong, where the book about assigning call numbers to music recordings is still good, though it's from the 70s. So you decide what's too old based on the content and what will do for a bit longer.

Then Shawnee (she's back - YAY!) checked to see if there were newer editions available of the books I said were too old. We started our wish list with these.

For a couple of the books, though, I decided to just keep the older edition rather than buying the new one. After all, our funds are limited, and books on storytimes for two-year-olds (at $40 for a new edition) still have tons of good ideas in them, even if they're from 5 years ago. (Mary reviewed the children's services books for me - always ask an expert when you can!) We can get fingerplays and related activities for newer books on the web. We're not going to update the DDC either, even though we're one edition behind. Since we don't run into that many weird classifying problems, we can wait either until I get more money ($375) or until the next edition comes out. Besides, the major changes are listed on OCLC, one of the professional websites we use, and we can always check the Library of Congress web catalog to see what they've done.

I'm taking out a couple more titles because they aren't relevant any more. I have a collections of essays on running a one-person-library which was useful back when I started and we saw about 3,000 people a month and worked with about 40 offices -- we've grown a lot since then (THANK YOU) -- and the techniques just aren't as helpful. This one I'll offer to other AF library directors, see if someone else can use it. Same with other books that might be useful to others, even if a bit old. As long as the information isn't actually incorrect.

Is all this boring? Well, not to me. See, every time I shape the collection like this, I'm thinking about you. What you want. What you need. What you don't yet know you want or need. I want the "right" stuff to be on the shelf when you come in - and it truly makes all of this detail-work worthwhile when I hear that someone came into the Library and found just what they wanted.

Currently Reading: "ANSCR: The Alpha-Numeric System for Classification of Recordings." I think I'll go back to the cat book.
Currently Listening to: "Mi Morena" by Josh Groban (vocal pop)

A New Year, A New Blog

Happy New Year -- and the start of some new web-based services from the Offutt Base Library, which is operated by United Tribes Technical College (UTTC). I'm Becky Sims, the Director of the Thomas S. Power Library - the base library for Offutt AFB.

First, a disclaimer. Nothing I write has been reviewed or approved by the Air Force, Offutt AFB, DoD, the U.S. government, UTTC, or anyone else. While I'll do my best to stay within guidelines, don't take anything I say as the opinion or policy of any of the above.

And who is UTTC?

The staffing of the Offutt Library is contracted to United Tribes Technical College of Bismarck, ND. While all of us who work at the Library live in the Bellevue area, UTTC is the primary employer. (A couple of us work for LABAT-Anderson, subcontracted to UTTC, which has been involved in staffing and running the Library since 1997, which is when I started.)

From the UTTC website:

[UTTC] is a nonprofit corporation chartered by the State of North Dakota and operated by the five tribes wholly or in part in North Dakota. Those tribes are the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara Nation, the Spirit Lake Tribe, the Sisseton Wahpeton Sioux Tribe, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa.

The College was founded to provide a community in which Indian people can acquire an education and obtain employment. Programs which have been added over the years have kept this initial purpose in mind, providing not only occupational education and training but also individual and social skills in a culturally-relevant setting, with an emphasis on children and families.

Pat (the Library's #2) and I drove up to UTTC last year to visit, and we felt right at home. The campus is on the grounds of the old Ft. Abraham Lincoln (the 2d one), and has a parade ground and architecture much in the style of Offutt's old Ft. Crook area. Add in that UTTC is located right next to the Bismarck airport, that they have a Child Development Center, an elementary school, student married housing on the campus, a nice-sized library in a building that looks like the one where the Heartland of America Band practices, and the similarities are uncanny.

As you hang around, another similarity comes shining through -- how much they care for the people who live and work and study there. We are proud to call them our employers. For more information on UTTC and their excellent program, check out their website.

Currently reading: "Cat Body, Cat Mind: Exploring Your Cat's Consciousness and Total Well-Being" by Michael W. Fox - a gift for my son from my sister-in-law
Currently listening to: "Aces High" by Iron Maiden (metal)