Wednesday, May 16, 2012

May!

What do April showers bring? In the library world it seems to be new gadgets! When I returned from vacation the new flatbed scanner had arrived and was out for the public, thanks to a co-worker who revised the instructions already posted. We've experimented a bit more and discovered a few new options that make it even better. Now we've received our library's Technology Petting Zoo (TPZ, to those of us talking about it!). What's in the zoo? A Nook tablet, Kindle, Kindle fire, and iPad, along with a few gift cards to the appropriate stores (Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Amazon) so we can actually add content. These are designed for staff to play with and become better able to help patrons when they have questions. Training is offered next month, so we haven't done much with them beside charging them up but it will be great fun! I hope staff who aren't normally curious about such things will be able to take this opportunity and get more comfortable with new technologies. Wireless printing is now available, to the adventurous at least! Our older B&W (a Dell we got when we first moved to the new building) doesn't play well with one part of the process, or newer fonts in Word 2007 - some documents come out as just wing-dings. But otherwise things work, as long as you have a Windows laptop. So far I haven't had anyone actually print, but we've got instructions ready. I'm curious if more summer visitors will be asking about this. We're planning on hiring 2 part-time desk positions, one at Computer Services. I'm not sure what the hours will end up being, but I'd like to see them work Saturdays so I could switch to Monday-Friday. Now that computers work so much better, and we are part of the shared catalog, it isn't as necessary for me to be at the library Saturdays. But we'll see how it all works out. Roof repairs this summer! The exact plans aren't announced yet; we may be opening later each day but details will be coming soon. Then we can look forward to rainy days without leaks!

No comments: