Groundhog Day!

Although it's a beautiful sunny day here (but still cold, at a chilly 20 degrees!)I heard Punxsatwny Phil didn't see his shadow so at least the East should have an early spring! Ironic, considering they are having their worst winter in years, as far as snowfall goes. It doesn't really matter in Montana, since we can have snow any time; spring just means wet slushy snow and gray skies. I'd rather have the nice snow and blue skies!

Lots of new staff at the library now. There was a glitch in getting some of them set up on all computers. They would log on a computer and go through the process of entering settings in the catalog software (which has to be done on each machine!), then ambitious and helpful staff would also log them in on a second computer to get started. This caused the network to go a little crazy, since the first log-in hadn't been logged off to actually save. So at a subsequent log-in dire error messages would appear, and all the previous work was lost! Once again confirming my tendency to be methodical and do things step-by-step. So a few people had to start over, but now that we've figured it out we'll do better in the future.

Last week I taught the Computer and Online Safety class. There is so much information that could be discussed, so I try to keep it simple. There were 8 "mature" women, so we had a great time and they all seemed very pleased (and not too overwhelmed!) with what we covered. I enjoy teaching, and some day hope to get responsibility for the classes back to Computer Services and a small consistent group of instructors. I think that would result in better continuity throughout the classes.

Offline next weekend! I'm bringing my recently-purchased Sony e-reader to go along with a session on other gadgets. I have downloaded a title on to it using my laptop but haven't used the netbook, and don't know if I'll be able to connect those two - there are "authorization" issues with the Adobe DRM software. At least that's been the experience with the Nook. I think it will take a little getting used to reading on the e-reader. It's not difficult, just different than holding a book. But using a cell phone was different than earlier phones at first, and now seems perfectly normal.

Something unrelated to library work but fun: there are now several of us who knit, so the idea of meeting on occasional Sunday afternoons for some knitting (and other crafts) time away from work seemed fun. One staff member mentioned the Scarves for Special Olympics project back in December, so we decided to work on that. This week we'll pack up the scarves (at least 20!) and ship them off. We're already looking forward to making more next year.