Citegeist

The short answer: it ain’t happening. But if you’re a Mac user, you’re used to pretty things in pretty packages that “just work” …except when they don’t. Then, if you’re like me, you spend hours casting about for work-around or magical solutions that will kludge things together just right, then blame Bill Gates when it doesn’t work. (Because we won’t blame The Steve.)

My goals are to get out of running Outlook (and thus Windows) and to have one calendar that contains my work appointments (Exchange) and my personal appointments, which are currently kept in Google calendar. Here is a list of things I’ve tried and discarded:

• Outlook 2007 running under Windows XP, using the Parallels Desktop emulator. This application, while elegant, is a processor and memory hog unless you have 2 GB of RAM. If you have 2 gigs of RAM and don’t mind jumping through this many Microsoft hoops, this solution is for you. One word of advice, though: once you get a windows virtual machine created with Office and your favorite AntiVirus software installed, create a clone of it and store that clone somewhere other than your hard drive. You will need gSyncIt to copy appointments from Outlook to a single Google calendar and vice versa.
• GroupCal is a program that syncs between Exchange 2000 or 2003 and iCal. It does not work with Exchange 2007 or under Leopard.
• SpanningSync is a program that syncs between iCal and Google calendar, which is great, but it leaves Exchange out of the equation.
• Entourage 2004 is a bloated piece of Very Broken Microsoft Crap that I would wish on no one. Entourage 2008 is its slightly slicker package that I will still not tolerate, as it makes my system beachball at random and inconvenient intervals, often falling behind on simple tasks like opening or typing an email. (Also: I know this is coincidence, but over the last month, I’ve installed Office 2008 twice, on two different Macs, and both hard drives died within a few days of installation. My IT advises against using Office 2008; I’m sticking to that for now.)
• Plaxo Online, with its rather Facebooky interface, purports to sync Outlook and Gcal to itself. Unfortunately, Outlook sync’ing requires, well, Outlook.
• Publish my work calendar on the web using Office Online, then do some iCal-fu to import to iCal and Gcal. This seemed like too much work, not to mention that it requires Outlook.

My current solution: use the gmail interface for work email and have a second tab in my web browser to my Exchange calendar. Even if there were a way to sync Exchange appointments with Google Calendar, I would probably have to continue working this way in order to create, accept, and decline appointments. I don’t like the stranglehold that Microsoft has on my calendar data; either I’m missing something or they just do not play well with others.

Passion Quilt Meme: Do What You Love

Originally uploaded by cindiann

Michael Stephens tagged me for the Passion Quilt Meme yesterday on his blog, Tame the Web. I had been thinking over the past few days of writing down the story of how I came to love taking pictures,* and the quilt meme sort of made those thoughts gel in my head: If you are lucky enough to be good at something, then you should try your hardest to make that your life’s work.

The meme: Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.

Capture what you love, whether in pictures, writing, needlework, painting, or even little pieces of macaroni glued to construction paper. Capturing memories, ideas, moments, and people in concrete form makes them more real to me, and I delight in reliving them, which makes my connections to those people and moments stronger by the day.

If you believe in something, tell someone. For me, saying aloud what I think I believe often holds surprises: sometimes I don’t know how passionately I believe something until I hear it out loud. Sometimes I have no idea what I think about something until I hear it come out of my mouth. Finding and establishing connections with others who share your vision–whether it be your vision of family life or library land–will cement those beliefs for you and keep your passion alive.

If we believe that we can do anything, we will not succumb to the fear and inertia that second-guessing ourselves can bring. It took me thirty years to learn this lesson; I *heard* these words a lot growing up a girl in Kentucky, but I didn’t really believe them–much less act on them– until there was someone in my life who really believed it, too.

Lastly, it is important to work hard. This may seem like a no-brainer, but I include it here in part as a response to the “rockstar” thread that strung through the bibliobloggosphere last week. Those who wrote about becoming accomplished in our field, starting with Meredith Farkas and Dorothea Salo, spoke of working hard at whatever specialization we choose.

I’ll tag:

• Ryan Deschamps
• Julie George
• Jason Price
• Steve Lawson
• Was gonna add Chrystie, but she’s already done it!

Me, Age 3

Originally uploaded by cindiann

*In case you’re curious, here’s the story:
When I was very small, my family lived in the UK for a time. One of my dad’s Air Force buddies, whose name I remember as A.B. Wayne, had a camera and often took photos of us. I was in love with the crisp and honest portraits that laid open the humblest moments to later examination. I was fascinated with the small, black-and-white prints that somehow glowed in a way that the color prints did not. I was three.

Fast-forward seven years to when my uncle gave me a Polaroid camera for Christmas. The film was a bit too expensive for me to take very many shots, but I did what I could. I later had a 110 camera, a Kodak “disk” camera–which refers to the format of the film, not digital media!–a Canon point and shoot 35-mm camera and a Canon 35-mm SLR before venturing into digital with point-and-shoot models from Casio, Kodak and Fuji. I bought a digital SLR in 2005 and upgraded to a better model last summer. If I had taken my own advice and pursued photography as a career, that list would probably be much longer!

Six of my EKU colleagues and I talked a bit about our experience with Learning 2.0 at a recent local library association meeting, the spring meeting put on by the Academic & Special Sections of the Kentucky Library Association and the Kentucky Chapter of SLA. We used Google Docs to build on a slideshow created by some of the group at a conference last fall. Of all the new-ish tools available on the web today, I continue to be wowed by Google docs. It blows me away to have people from all over the country or in the same room editing the same document. It’s an incredible thing to watch.

Thanks to Cindy Judd, Julie George, Margaret Foote, Nicole Montgomery, Brad Marcum, and Melissa Schutt for the opportunity to present with them. It’s a pleasure to work with such a creative, energetic, innovative, and dedicated bunch.

Help Help Help sign

Originally uploaded by stacey.greenwell

Stacey Greenwell and Alice Wasielewski gave an exciting and informative presentation at the annual Spring Meeting of the Kentucky Chapter of SLA and the Academic & Special Sections of the Kentucky Library Association on the Information Commons at University of Kentucky’s Young Library, called the Hub @ WT’s.

Some takeaways that were new to my idea of an Info Commons:

• Six projectors are mounted around the area, projecting art exhibits that are rotated monthly. A blog done by one of the archivists at UK, Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century, was mentioned on boing-boing during the Hub’s Archives exhibit. Alice noted that replacement bulbs are a recurring cost of this program.
• Though The Hub is filled with flexible, wheeled furniture, reusing some of the existing, built-in wooden carrels has proved very popular. Each set of two carrels has one desktop computer and three chairs, and there is almost one rolling white board for each set.
• The biggest unanticipated problem having vending machines (snacks and drinks) in the library has been the frequency with which the change machine runs out.
• Collaboration with the campus IT department has been essential. They pitched in on the project to upgrade the wireless capabilities in the Hub, including cell phone signal strength.

I think perhaps my favorite part of the presentation was Stacey’s assertion that an Information Commons should be more than “just a computer lab with soldierly rows of PCs,” and The Hub @ WT’s is definitely that!

Congratulations to Stacey and Alice for their work in The Hub; their statistics show that the students love it as much as they do. Congratulations, too, to Stacey for being appointed the Head of The Hub after serving in an interim capacity for more than a year.

What students see

Originally uploaded by cindiann

Web-based library catalogs hit the scene about 10 years ago, and since then, many of them have not changed much. Most have not kept up with the stunningly fast evolution of the web; to get modern web functionality from a library’s catalog, the library must now purchase additional products from their vendors or invest in the expertise and hardware required to implement, develop, and support an open source product well.

Meanwhile, libraries that can’t afford to buy a so-called “next generation” catalog interface (come on, none of them is anywhere NEAR as cool the Enterprise D!”) or who don’t know how or can’t afford to develop open source tools are stuck with what you see here, an abstruse and bewildering, old-fashioned interface to a vast store of rich data, likely stored in a proprietary database, despite the MARC standard that our catalogers have so exactingly and sometimes excruciatingly adhered to.

This image is my satirical view of what a legacy OPAC looks like to the average Google-using undergraduate student, and probably to a lot of other people, too.

I hope the (r)evolution continues more swiftly.

If you’re at Computers in Libraries 2008 this coming week, come to Tuesday’s “From WoePAC to Wow!Pac” session to hear more.

Gleaned from twitter, blog posts, web pages and other sources. If you know of others, please post in the comments and I will add to this list. Thanks.

Name, location (ILS)
Binghamton University, NY (Aleph)
Darien Library, CT (III)
Deacon University, Victoria, Australia (III)
Eastern Kentucky University | Embedded in Voyager OPAC
Fairfield University, CT (Unicorn)
Glasgow University, UK (III)
Grand Valley State, MI (Voyager)
Michigan State University (III)
Nashville Public, TN (III) | Library Website
Scottsdale Public, AZ (III)
University of Kentucky | Embedded in VoyagerUniversity of Queensland, Australia (III)
Westerville Public, OH (III)
Yale Law, CT (III)
Deschutes Public Library, OR (III)
Cal State Fresno, CA (III)
University of Miami, FL (III)
Georgetown University (main campus; Law Center coming soon), Washington, DC (III)
Stark County District Library, OH (III)
Wadsworth Public Library, OH (III)

Please note: if you want to help with the spreadsheet, you must send me your gmail address. Read on!

Library Journal published this year’s list of libraryland Movers and Shakers yesterday; congratulations to them all! As usual, it’s a great list of familiar and not-so-familiar names from all over the US and Canada and makes for great reading.

LJ tends to list the honorees by cute tagline rather than by name; Jessamyn West wrote a post that lists them by name, and Connie Crosby wrote a post that lists them by name and includes a snippet of each article in addition to other useful information.

There was quite a discussion this morning (EDT, GMT -4) on Twitter among several librarians (YMMV with that link!) about the demographics of people who make it on to this annual list. I’ve pulled the 2002 - 2008 data into a Google Spreadsheet and am eager to get it filled out and do some charting. You can view the spreadsheet here; if you would like to be added as a contributor to help fill out the sheet, IM me at cinditrainor (A.O.-hoo!gleN) or send email to cindiann at that awesome gmail dot com. Once the spreadsheet is complete, I plan to create and share graphs, charts and tag clouds via Swivel.

Wheeeee!

One of my twitter buddies posted a link to this animation at Deviant Art (sfw). Really entertaining, at least for this computer geek.

Wednesday marked the third annual Statewide California Electronic Licensing Consortium (SCELC, pronounced /skelk/) SCELC Colloquium in Los Angeles. SCELC is a consortium of over 90 libraries throughout California; their purpose is largely to broker cooperative licensing for library resources for their members, but they do other great stuff, too, like the annual Colloquium and Vendor Day.

See this page for slides and links from the presentation I gave with Claremont’s Jezmynne Westcott on next generation catalog enhancements and slides and notes from my other presentation, “Moving Forward: Tools and Trends for Today’s (and Tomorrow’s) Library.”

Is this the start of a revolution?

Amy Kearns sent a message through Twitter this afternoon asking her followers to look at this wiki page. Take a look; I’ll wait right here.

Imagine: librarians all over the world answering questions via Twitter. It’s a grassroots, always-open reference desk available to anyone with a computer or cell phone. The idea prompted me to respond: “The Librarian is Always On.” Amy has–as do many of us Twitterbrarians–Twitter friends in Europe and in Australia as well as all over North America. It would be my guess that between all of us, we could answer a question no matter the time of day. For me, tweets get a little sparse between midnight and 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time (GMT -500), but that’s nearly the workday for western Europe.

How would it work? We’re not sure it would. But to try, we have to take advantage of a few of Twitter’s features:

• We have to agree on a watchword, a series of characters that mark an incoming tweet as a question in need of an answer.
• Interested librarians would have to use Twitter’s tracking feature to scan for tweets containing the watchword.
• Replies would have to be sent as “@replies”–any tweet beginning with @<username> appears in a special tab in Twitter labelled “replies.” @replies seem to appear in this tab regardless of whether that person follows the author of the reply. (Admittedly, twitter only seems to work this way. Here is an opportunity for all of this to break down.)
• As additional insurance, questioners could use twitter to track their own Twitter user name–this would ensure that tweets containing the user name are received.

Points of failure:

• Questioner doesn’t use the proper watchword
• Answerer doesn’t construct the @reply properly
• User mysteriously doesn’t see @reply (sometimes they *only* appear in the replies tab)
• Tracking fails, meaning that not all trackers of the watchword see a question and/or not all users see their replies
• As David Fiander points out, both questioner and answerer would have to have public Twitter feeds

Brute force (i.e. sheer numbers of participating librarians) should address most of these points, assuming that the questioner uses the proper watchword.

So, what should the watchword be? #librarian, #libn?

What should we call this service? How about “HiveLibrarian: Resistance is We’re Always On”?

I am also sure there’s an opportunity for the Q&A tweets to be harvested using the Twitter API and dumped into a knowledge base of some kind.

Why stop with librarians? What other professions could solicit queries this way (who would be willing to answer them the same way)?

As Amy posted on her wiki page: Am I crazy, or could this work?