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Images Library Issues

Hot Library Action

From The Nonist, some Hot Library Smut:

Yesterday I came across a truly gorgeous book of photographs by Candida Höfer titled, Libraries, a title which pretty much says it all, because that is just exactly what it is, one rich, sumptuous, photo of a library interior after another. It’s like porn for book nerds. Seriously. They are gorgeous photos, nearly all without visitors and just begging to be entered. (ha. sorry.)

And boy are they some pretty pics:

BNF-PARISRIJKMUSEUM-AMSTERDAMHANDELINGENKAMER-TWEEDE-KAMBIBLIOTECA-DE-LA-REAL-ACADEREAL-GABINETE-PORTUGUES-DE-STRAHOVSKA-KNIHOVNA-PRAHA

If you want your very own library porn, you can order it from the publisher.

Categories
Books Library Issues Media

New Worldcat search

Check out the new search from OCLC…Worldcat gets Googlized, and the results are pretty good. I absolutely adore the “refine your search” options that it gives you on the left bar…Now can we finally get rid of our local catalogs? Pretty Please?

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Library Issues

Librarians go Bowling

IMG_7363 IMG_7385
IMG_7380 IMG_7370

Last night we finally got a bit of a break from the insane pace of Immersion when most of us took the opportunity to head to Milky Way Bowling and try our hand at a little candlepin bowling. Free drinks, free food, and a bit of physical activity, and we were almost ready for today.

Today = re-writing our pre-Immersion assignment with all the tools and tricks we’ve learned over the last 3 days. What was a 4 page document is probably going to be 10 or more by the time I’m done with the damn thing, and working thru all the new concepts and strategies is almost overwhelming. It’s going to take months to digest all the stuff we’ve done.

The best part of the experience? By far it’s meeting people like those in the pics above…I’ve learned a lot in 4 days, but I think I’ll be learning from these guys for the rest of my career.

Categories
Digital Culture Library Issues

Google @ ALA

Here’s Google’s video relating their experience at ALA 2006. Included are shots of the booth in the exhibit hall, a little video of the party they held at Muriel’s, and snippets of interviews they did with librarians at the party. You can see the swanky glowing drinks that I talked about earlier.

I was interviewed, but evidently didn’t make it into the video…but they did put up a picture of myself and Charles at the booth:

me @ ala

The most amusing thing to me about the picture? Google put these up as a Picasa Web Album, but I’m linking to it from my flickr account. Why? Picasa doesn’t give you easy linkability…I could copy image location and paste in the URL, but that’s not a friendly user experience. Flickr EXPECTS you’re going to hotlink their images, and gives you the URL to do so.

Picasa also doesn’t give you an easy way to browse to a specific picture…this was pic 166 of over 200, and when I went back to find it, I couldn’t be bothered to click next picture 165 times. There must be a jump to picture option for usability, guys. What else…oh yeah…no multiple sizes to pick from, so the resolution you get is just what’s there. I love Picasa as a local picture manipulation solution, but Google is a long way from flickr for online experience.

Categories
Library Issues

And yet more on the website redesign…

So, a bit of an update.

CMS? Check.
Install? Check.
Template? Check.

Got the rough template design done earlier this week, and while there will be lots of updates to it, the very rough structure is in place. Now it’s all about verifying the migration plan. We’ve got a test server that I’ve been doing all the experimenting on, and the question is now do we do content addition on the test server, or go ahead and move on the production server, with the risk that entails?

In the spirit of answering the question, I’m going to attempt to move my current Joomla installation to another spot on the server…fresh install, and then move the database over. We’ll see if that works, and that will answer the above question, I hope.

Next week? Actual, honest-to-god content migration begins! (I desperately hope…)

Categories
Library Issues

Next Step Blogging, take two

A very nice writeup of my ALA presentation from Karen Schneider via LITABlog…it was just a ton of fun to do, and Karen is entirely too mum about her involvement in the process. She was the instigator that got Steven, Karen C., and myself together to do the thing in the first place. Thanks, Karen! I hope to get the chance for a repeat performance next year.

Go take a look!

Categories
Books Library Issues Media

Turn it up!

I’ve got a ton of leftover stuff I still want to talk about from ALA Annual. Here’s my favorite vendor sign from the exhibit hall at ALA in New Orleans…

Large Print Audiobooks

Large Print Audiobooks? Do they just talk louder?

Categories
Library Issues

Website update #X

Well, we’ve decided to use Joomla in the library website redesign, and I’m in the process of messing with a raw template and pushing it into the direction we want to go. Found a really excellent template that is pure CSS…too many of the ones we looked at used Tables for structure. But I’ve got a pure CSS one that seems to render well in IE, and if I can just move it over to variable width rather than fixed, I’ll be set.

But the next week or two will be me = coding hell. Send cookies.

Categories
Library Issues Personal

So much stuff

I’ve just returned after a complete whirlwind of a week. I spent 5 days in New Orleans at ALA, then drove to Columbus, OH for the Origins game fair, the second largest gaming convention in the country. So much stuff to talk about, but I’m completely exhausted. So instead of writing, you all get: My Week In Pictures!

kgs taking a photocafe du monde aftermath

Michelle Boule and Paul StarkeSuchi and Jean at the swank Google Party

Neil Gaiman @ ALAapproaching cincy

NINFireworks!

Categories
Library Issues

Why Would Anyone Listen to These Three?

Next Step Blogging

Why Would Anyone Listen to These Three?

Originally uploaded by Wandering Eyre.

Great pic by Michelle Boule, just prior to the LITA presentation that she chaired and I, Karen Coombs (to stage left in the photo), and Steven Bell took part in. The presentation was titled “Next Step Blogging” and will be revealed in its entirety on LITABlog (as soon as Karen Schneider finishes it up…). My slides can be found here. It went remarkably well, with an absolute standing-room-only audience. Next time we need a bigger boat.