tek – Page 6 – librarian.net

three hours at the library

I spent a few hours at the library yesterday, somewhere between three and four. Almost all of this time was spent doing Windows updates to the three semi-public machines. The library got broadband a few months ago and updates were basically impossible before then. So I came in, unlocked the Centurion Guard (quick aside, can anyone tell me if this is really in any way more secure than a good software firewall like Deep Freeze if you’re just using the machines as PACs?) and did the updates which involved downloading the updater, doing an express install of the most urgent updates, and then doing a more complete install of the 53 updates that had been made available since the last update.

I also installed Firefox on the exec and patron-facing profiles, did some helpful configging of it, taught the librarian how it was different (tabs!), and hid Internet Explorer as much as I could without uninstalling it since I still need it for more Windows Updates! While all these downloads were happening, I ordered a $40 wireless router, replaced the “you can not IM here” sign with one that said “Use Meebo for IM” and explained to the librarian how Meebo worked, and even used it to IM with someone the librarian already knew, who happens to be a local buddy of mine.

Since the downloads were still going on, I gave the librarian and the trustee I was working with a pep talk about the importance of having a website and my firm assessment that once we built a little website, most of the maintenance and updating could be done by them. The library was a little hub of activity the entire evening. 1,300 people live in the town and probably twenty of them came into the library in a three hour period. I got introduced to almost all of them.

Nothing else really to add here except that a lot of this work just fell under the heading of 1) good advice and 2) deferred maintenance. Neither of them always seems like the best way of spending your limited time and money. Yet at the same time, the whole “getting to yes” part of library tecnology may be, at the end of the day, the most important part of a solid technology foundation.

my talk from ACRL-OR

Posted on 26Oct06 by jessamyn

I’m in the back of the room at the ACRL Oregon & Washington conference called Resistance Is Futile: Academia Meets the NeXt Generation. My talk Sensible Approaches to New Technology in Libraries, subtitled How do you work Library 2.0 into your 1.5 library with your 1.23 staff and your .98 patrons is online and it’s been updated since the last time I gave a sensible tech type of talk.

help LITA out with a little survey

Posted on 05Oct06 by jessamyn

From the web4lib list: “We are gathering data for our presentation at this year’s LITA National Forum. Our presentation is “Putting all the Pieces Together: Building a Cyberinfrastructure at the Georgia State University Library”. We invite you to participate in our survey regarding the technologies and web services you are using in your library.”

My NDLA talks, from Fargo

Posted on 22Sep0622Sep06 by jessamyn

I’m sitting in the back of the NDLA business meeting as this conference wraps up. What fun! It was the North Dakota Library Association’s 100th year. They had Michael Gorman and Loriene Roy, both of whom gave really interesting speeches which I listened to while eating some truly tasty food. I’ll give a little wrap-up later, but for now, here’s links to my two talks.

The Information Poor & the Information Don’t Care: The Digital Divide and Rural Libraries
Evaluating New Technologies for Libraries – High Tech on a Shoestring

heroism and CSS

Posted on 26Aug06 by jessamyn

Even though library jobs don’t pay super-well and they’re not particularly high-status positions, the opportunity for heroism and just general fairy-godmother type actions are many. I’ve only been back in town for a few days but I already helped the head of the garden club get her mailing list online, helped a woman in town sell off her old books on tape (including pictures, on Ebay) helped a woman apply for US citizenship and get her own email account so she doesn’t have to share her husband’s any longer. I have one student I work with who learns one new email feature a session, and every time she comes in and we learn, say, how to forward mail, she’ll look up at me grinning and say “It’s just like magic, itsn’t it?”

The fun part for me is that most of this work is easy for me and yet solves a large problem for other people. The most fun part is often helping out bloggers, because when you get it right, they’re likely to say all sorts of nice things about you on the Internet.