Interesting Website

In a recent post on our blog, Library Lifelines, an interesting site from the History Channel was highlighted: This Day in History.

If you're interested in what happened on a particular day in history, this site has interesting factoids and videos about major events that took place on those days.

If you're the slightest bit curious (and you know you are), check it out.

Ah-ha! You thought this post was going to be another vent session, didn't you? (It almost was.) :-)

ttyl

Library Hand Sanitizer Locations Too High

The university has been installing hand sanitizers all around campus. Sanitizers were also installed in the library. The only problem: they don't conform to the Americans with Disabilities Act guidelines for wheelchair reach.

All of the other stations are stand-alone units; the ones that were installed in the library were drilled into the walls and pillars. Now they've got to be repositioned. Whey we didn't get the standing stations is anyone's guess.

Did I mention we're also dealing with a friggin' transportation strike? The mayor, the governor, and a congressman have been trying to head off a threatened strike by the TWU against the only transit company in the region. At 3 am yesterday morning, TWU leaders walked out of negotiations and ordered a strike leaving the city and surrounding suburban areas in turmoil.

ttyl

What is it with these Name Changes?

Geeze, another company has changed it's name again for the umpteenth time. One particular company, which will go unnamed, has changed its name back to what they were calling themselves thirteen years ago.

Does someone get paid to think these things up? Because if they do, sign me up. Reminds me of when I worked in periodicals. Title changes were a pain in the sit-down. Especially those titles that changed, then an issue later changed to something else or changed back.

In other news . . .

Not much out of the ordinary. Last week was pretty much the same as previous weeks, printing issues, portal issues, etc. We did have a book give-away. A full book truck full of gift books was nearly cleaned off. Anything left by the end of today will go to Better World Books.

ttyl

All Quiet on the Education Front

Semester break is here. All two days of it. The students will be back tomorrow and so will everything else--including the heat, I hope.

It's friggin cold in this building!!!!!!!!

It's difficult to concentrate when cold air is blowing through the vents overhead.

Presumably, when the students return tomorrow, the heat will too. Can't have them complaining about the cold in the building.

Fat lot of good it'll do them if the staff gets sick.

ttyl

Trying One's Patience

The past two days have been full of challenges to our ability to remain calm.

The Uniprint system has been (once again) down more than it's been up, the portal went down, email went down, and our patience has been pushed to the limit. But that's not all.

This morning, a faculty member from the Philosophy Department (a guy who used to be a student here and still looks like one) came into the library without an ID card, jumped the turnstile, didn't sign in and proceeded to request exam books. But that's only part of it. The other part: he teaches moral philosophy. Some example he is to the kids. More like a manifestation of hypocrisy.

Then there was the student this morning who blew off the Circulation Desk Assistant when she told him that the network was down. He went over to the Reference Desk only to be told the same thing. I was at the desk at the time trying to solve some technical issues. I told him exactly what the Circulation Desk Assistant told him.

However, he didn't want to hear what we told him. It's not like we're not trying to help the students, but we can only do so much when the networks are down. But some kids just don't seem to get it.

ttyl

Celebrating 20 Years

One of my colleagues is celebrating 20 years of working in the library. Naturally, we had the inevitable meet-and-eat. Yum. The morning was spent reminiscing about the changes that have taken place in the library and on campus over the past twenty years.

We're talking about a time when the library still had card catalog drawers. Remember those? When she first started, the library only had two computers. Now we're the largest computer lab on campus.

One of the younger members on staff can't even conceive of a world without computers and cell phones. The inevitable question: "How did you survive?" Answer: "We used books, typewriters, and carried change for a public payphone."

Wow. Times have changed.

ttyl

IT was Really Helpful -- Not

Here's a new one for you.

The Serials/Electronic Resources Librarian sent a ticket to IT asking how often the trash in Zimbra is emptied because she doesn't know how to manually empty it herself.

Get this: IT's response? Zimbra trash is not automatically emptied. She'll have to empty it herself manually.

Well, duh. She already told them that she didn't know how to do it manually. Instead of telling her how to do it manually, the help desk tells her she'll have to do it manually.

Now what was that I was saying about service yesterday?

ttyl

Marketing Team is No More

Sniff, sniff. The marketing team has disbanded. Although the team is no more, the marketing goals of the library remain the same. We will continue to market the library as best we can, but instead of having a specific team of people to do it, everyone in the library will now participate in the marketing effort. We have decided to be more inclusive allowing anyone who wishes to get involved.

This means that more people with varied skills will be able to do things that the team couldn't do because of the limited number of people on the team. Hopefully, this doesn't lead to a handful of self-appointed individuals who unilaterally make decisions for the library. Personally, I think this is the road were headed down.

Meanwhile in other news...

The archival research librarian finally returned to work today. He has a lot of catching up to do. We threw him a free welcome back party this morning. I was actually surprised to find out how delicious some fat-free foods can taste.

Yesterday, I got a shipment of gift books totaling 97 from a professor who regularly gives us things. He's not on staff here at the University, but he says that we are one of his favorite libraries.

On the IT scene, things seem to have settled down a bit. I tend to look at it as the calm before the next wave.

The semester has been quite busy. Since the last time I mentioned it, I've sent out two more shipments of books to Better World Books. I've got a few more that need to go out in another shipment. I had so many books that needed to go out that I actually had to get in touch with them and ask them for some boxes. They provided boxes for free. All I had to do was get in touch with them and tell them just how many boxes we needed. Within a matter of a couple of days we had them.

Now that's service.

ttyl

Mish-Mash and Other Stuff

We should have known it was too good to be true. After a few days of uninterrupted access to the University Portal, guess what? Yesterday we had problems. And that was after an article appeared in the student paper reporting the problems had been pretty much resolved.

A few of us have been discussing our Banned Books Exhibit--if that's what you can call it. It's been bothering me that after all the work that was put into planning and preparing for it, that the final result looks like no thought was given to the actual display.

On one side of the cafe is a beautiful poster drawing attention to the observance. The timeline of censored events in history is included as a sidebar. The books that were chosen for the display appear on shelves separated by the cafe's main aisle. On top of the shelves are a couple of relatively small signs about Banned Books week. And that's about it.

We really dropped the ball on this one. There's nothing eye-catching that will draw student and visitor eyes toward the display. The sign/poster sitting off by itself does nothing to connect the books with it or the display. Unfortunately, we're not all in agreement on how to make the display more appealing and noticeable.

As far as an exhibit goes, there's no continuity. In the past, we could have set everything up on a wall that was specifically designated for displays. But the decision was made to no longer us it for such.

Banned Books Week is not yet over, and I'm going to see what I can do to increase interest and awareness of censorship in the media.

BTW, has anyone else done something for the observance? What did you do to draw attention to it?

Let me know.

TIA

ttyl

All Quiet on the IT Front

Believe it or not, but things have quieted down on the technology front. Printing has been going smoothly and student complaints about other technology matters have been manageable. So far, so good.

In the meantime, the library has been participating in the Banned Books Week observance. The poster and the timeline I worked on came out nice. The poster and a display of books is on display at the entrance to our cafe. I'm not sure if the students are looking at the books, but the poster can't be ignored.

Unfortunately, I don't think we did enough to connect the book display with the poster. Our focus wasn't just with books, but with censorship in all media through history around the world. The timeline begins with the 16th century and progresses to the current year.

A link to our latest newsletter, which features a graphic from the poster, is here.

ttyl