Categories
MPOW OCLC Personal Web Scale

OCLC Web Scale Management

I am very pleased to finally be able to announce that the Library at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga is scheduled to be the first live implementation of a product that has been talked about for years: a web-based, collaborative, modern library system that does away with silos of data. We are implementing the OCLC Web Scale Management library system even as I type, and will be going live with the system for circulation on August 20, 2010, and with circulation, cataloging, and acquisitions on August 30, 2010. A wiki page documenting the process, working groups, and more is available, and will continue to be updated as the process continues.

I could talk for a long time about how excited I am about the possibilities of this system…and probably will for the next few months at least. I’ve been pursuing Andrew Pace about this product for what feels like years now, and after seeing it and understanding what may come as a result of this…well, I can’t wait.

This is a major shift in the library world, and it’s one where I think the repercussions will take years to really be felt. The simple time-saving that will be immediately felt for libraries in their processes are enormous…the workflow necessary to get something from order to shelf is so straightforward and fast that I feel strongly that we’ll save several person-years of staff time in short order. In addition, there is a shared-plugin architecture for the staff-side that combines with the open API calls that give incredible access for mashups of data that directly interact with the system. One example that I’ve seen is a plugin that combines the New York Times bestseller API with the acquisitions module in Web Scale to allow for single-click ordering from a list of bestsellers that is a live call from the NYT.

Going the other direction, the architecture allows you to pull your own data out and impose it on other pages. An example of this would be a Firefox plugin that shows you realtime budget information while you shop on Amazon.com…complete with recalculation as you add things to your Cart.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t a ton of questions still. We’re the earliest of adopters on the first product of its kind…to say that I am a bit nervous would be an understatement. But the potential and promise of Web Scale is something that make it worth it.

We are literally implementing Web Scale Management in 30 days. To my knowledge, I’ve never heard of another ILS migration even approaching this level of speed…so if I’m a little out-of-touch for the next month, you won’t be terribly surprised.

Categories
Personal

Tech Trends Webinar fail

Just a quick apology for the software failure for the ALA Techsource Tech Trends webinar that was scheduled for today. There was clearly a massive failure of scaling for the new presentation software.

I’m holding off a day or so in posting my slides + comments, just to see if we can get it rescheduled and I can take part then. If for some reason I can’t, I’ll get my slides and comments up here asap.

Categories
Apple Gadgets Personal

iPad Horror

Two days ago, I noticed some odd flickering on the lower fifth of my iPad screen, and shortly thereafter I got some very odd banding/video artifacts in the same area. It didn’t seem to have any obvious cause that I could recreate, and last night, this happened:

Needless to say, today I called Apple, and as always they were awesome about getting it fixed. There is a new iPad on its way to me even as I type, and I’ll throw this one in the box and send it back.

This looks like a faulty display or video cable to me…somewhere, a connection is shorting out. Can’t really troubleshoot a hardware issue on this sort of thing, so back it goes…and I’m actually just fine with that. Because of the iTunes syncing, I’ll be able to plug the new one in and restore it, and go right on about my business.

Categories
ACRL ALA MPOW presentation

Building a 21st Century Learning Environment

Here’s the MASSIVE slideshow from the preconference I was a part of for ACRL at the ALA Annual Conference just this past weekend. I was thrilled to be able to present with the team from my library, including the Dean of the Library Theresa Liedtka, our Head of Reference & Instruction Virginia Cairns, our curmudgeonly but kind Assistant Dean & Head of Materials Processing Mike Bell, and our current ILS Manager & Web Technologies Librarian and former Head of Access Services Andrea Schurr. A powerhouse of a team, I think we gave a great preconference about the process behind our renovations and new building. It’s a massive file, but it was also nearly 7 hours worth of content. Enjoy!

Building a 21st Century Library

Categories
Brand_New_World Uncategorized

Hanging with cousin Kelsi



Hanging with cousin Kelsi, originally uploaded by griffey.

Eliza is enjoying having her cousin Kelsi around for a few weeks. Not sure if the same could be said of Kelsi, but she’s being pretty patient with Eliza…as patient as an almost-13-year-old could be.

Categories
ALA humor presentation

ALA Battledecks, the complete collection

Here’s a collection of the entire Battledecks experience. Crazy funny, and awesomely inventive folks. <wayne&garth> I’m not worthy! I’m not worthy!</wayne&garth>

Categories
Digital Culture Legal Issues

Seriously, AT&T?

In preparation for ordering iPhone 4, I went about adjusting our AT&T plans this evening…the new tiered pricing actually works out for us, as Betsy rarely uses over 200Megs of data a month. As I was switching her over, I read this amazingly silly EULA from AT&T:

DataPlus 200 MB for iPhone

Terms and Conditions

DataPlus 200MB for iPhone may only be used for the following purposes: (i) internet browsing, (ii) personal email, and (iii) consumer applications. Using iPhone to access corporate email, company intranet sites, and/or other business solutions/applications is prohibited.

Bwahahahaha. Corporate email is prohibited? WTF? Talk about your unenforceable EULA’s….you can’t visit an intranet, for frak’s sake? Seriously, AT&T? Seriously?

And you wonder why people hate you.

Categories
Apple Digital Culture Media Personal Technology

Quick Office, not Goodreader

After some prodding from Glenn in the comments of my post on Goodreader and the iPad, it turns out that the security culprit doesn’t look like it’s Goodreader at all. It’s the Port 4242 that gave it away, and much thanks to Glenn for pointing it out…I was too concerned with publishing fast, and didn’t follow up the details as well as I should have.

It looks like Goodreader lets you SEE any shared iPad on wifi, but it doesn’t share openly in the way that I described. The bad guy here appears to be QuickOffice, which DOES use port 4242 and share files by default across a shared wifi LAN. I could see in Goodreader the files that someone else had on their iPad in QuickOffice…not the normal set of events for the iOS devices, as the file systems are normally sandboxed to not allow that to happen.

So: revised security alert! If you use QuickOffice on your iOS device (iPhone, iTouch, iPad) please ensure that you have sharing off by default, so that others aren’t able to see your stuff at all.

Categories
ALA Library Issues LITA presentation

LITA Top Tech Trends – ALA Annual 2010

Here’s the video of the LITA Top Tech Trends panel from ALA Annual 2010. My impressions of the panel were mainly “OMFG I’m on stage with Lorcan Dempsey” and “How big IS this room?”…was very hard to concentrate on the content being put forth while actively involved in it. But I think we all had very interesting things to say. I’ll see about cleaning up my notes and putting them up in a post in the next few days.

Categories
ALA humor Personal

ALA Annual 2010 Battledecks Champ!

I am truly, honestly surprised and thrilled to be crowned (or tiara’d) the American Library Association 2010 Annual Conference Battledecks champion. I still haven’t seen video of my competitors, but I can say with authority that they are all smarter, better-looking, and funnier than I.

Somehow though, I pulled it off. The official ALA video below doesn’t include my entrance, complete with luchadore mask (which I think got me bonus points). I wasn’t going to watch myself, but I realized I was so completely out of it during the thing that I barely remembered anything except the cataloger joke.

NOTE: about that. I worked as a serials cataloger for the 2 years of my degree at UNC-Chapel Hill, and took every class in cataloging offered. I have great respect for catalogers. But sometimes, you just have to go for the obvious joke. Please don’t hurt me.