Saturday, February 6, 2010

February?

Well, January slipped by too quickly. It does every year; some day maybe I'll be prepared for that. I taught the laptop class to a variety of users (Windows 7, Vista and XP). The frustrating part was having one person arrive late, with a brand new laptop that hadn't been turned on at all. There is an enormous amount of set-up necessary the first time, so he was a constant interruption whenever we moved on to something new. Later this spring I'll do Computer Safety again.

The RFID tagging has begun, and miraculously doesn't involve me! Teams are working in pairs, both in fiction and non-fiction, with a few other people tagging returned items before they get reshelved. Then the security gates get installed, and we figure out how to use the neat gadget that reads tags as you walk down the stacks.

Sadly we've had an express computer out of service for a few weeks, a result (I suspect) of the imaging software gone bad. Luckily it only affected one machine, but I shudder to think what could have happened if we'd used that on all the adult computers! I'm not too excited about expanding the imaging idea unless we find something more reliable.

The big project (for me) is updating the Technology Plan! We prepared one a few years before moving to the new library, so it's been interesting to re-read that. Not everything we planned on actually happened with the move to a new building. It will be hard to predict what might develop in the next several years, too.

Conference season is upon us: Offline, Broad Valleys meeting, PLA, MLA, MPLA, and others, I'm sure. I have to attend MLA and MPLA; I wish I could go to PLA and Offline; I may get to go to an afternoon session of Broad Valleys. I'm trying something new next week: on online conference through WebJunction. I can't go to all the sessions I'd like, but am curious how this will work. Lois and I really enjoy Computers in Libraries - we hope to attend that in 2 more years.