Working With Innovators

One of my coworkers was recently recognized by the Northern Massachusetts Regional Library System (NMRLS) for his work in making library life easier.

Chris Kupec (Assistant Director at Chelmsford) and Dean Baumeister of the Memorial Hall Library in Andover, MA, developed some free software to make the printing of routing slips possible for libraries using SirsiDynix's Horizon product.

To understand the benefit of this, you really need to get into the nitty-gritty of working at a circulation desk. But the bottom line is that this software literally saves hours worth of effort each day. The software automatically prints routing slips that accompany books for interlibrary loan requests, which is a huge improvement over the prior method of writing out a slip by hand.

There's been some buzz about this project for awhile, and it is slowly spreading throughout our consortium and the rest of the state. We've had it in place for about five months, and the staff cannot even imagine doing their jobs now without it. Even though ILS' may not do exactly what we need them to do, it's nice to know that librarians out there are picking up the slack.

So good job, Chris and Dean, and all other innovators out there. Anyone interested in meeting Chris in person can do so at the Computers in Libraries conference in Washington, D.C. - and I'll be there, too.

chris kupec, dean baumeister, horizon, libraries, library, printers, public libraries, public library, routing slips, sirsidynix

Posted under Uncategorized | Comments Off on Working With Innovators

Yo – What’s the 211?

I learned of a new tool in a meeting today - it's called 211, and is similar to the national 411 information phone line. The difference is that 211 is geared only towards community organizations. So, if you wanted to know about homeless shelters in your area, you could call 211 and they would tell you.

The meeting in which this came up was a planning meeting for my library consortium's Community Information database. We've had declining usage of the CommInfo database consortium-wide, and have been trying to come up with ways to make it both more visible and more useful. Also, it is a module of SirsiDynix's Horizon v7 product, but it is not going to be supported in v8. So, we feel we need to do something in order to keep this resource.

In the course of doing research for alternate software we could use to power the database, someone stumbled across 211. It seems to focus on human services, whereas our database includes all community organizations - little leagues and stamp clubs as well as Alcoholic Anonymous and food pantries.

Also, it seems entirely phone-based. This initially stuck me as odd, since everything seems to be "web or bust" nowadays. But after I thought about it, it occurred to me that many people looking for these services are probably better served by the reliable and universal telephone system, rather than requiring internet access and savvy.

In addition to 211, we also discovered a group called the Merrimack Valley Hub, whose sole purpose is to be an online community database for the Merrimack Valley (which works out nicely for my library, since we are part of the Merrimack Valley Library Consortium). I was told that this group had approached MVLC five or so years ago when they were starting up, asking for our records and wanting us to use them instead of our own system. I think there has been no cooperation or communication in the years since, so rediscovering their thriving website surprised some people.

But with the apparent demise of our own system (which SirsiDynix does promise will continue to function to some degree even if we take no action), our choice is to either migrate to a new software solution we would maintain ourselves, or else discontinue our resource and rely on someone else. The Tyngsborough Public Library, a member of the consortium, has been working on developing their own Community Database, as a possible tool the entire consortium could share.

But adding new tools where resources already exist seems to be a major problem with libraries. We currently subscribed to a number of databases, many of which overlap. I think we pride ourselves on offering so much to patrons, but all we're really doing is extending and confusing their search by giving them an entire workshed full of tools when all they really need is a hammer. It is frustrating continually having to reinvent the wheel, especially when you know so many other people are also doing the exact same thing.

2-1-1, 211, comminfo, community, community information, community resources, i & r, i and r, i&r, information and referral, libraries, library, merrimack valley hub, mv hub, mvhub, public libraries, public library, tyngsborough, tyngsborough library, tyngsborough public library

Posted under Uncategorized | Comments Off on Yo – What’s the 211?

Reference Question of the Week – 3/4

Oddly, I was just asked a question that also routinely shows up in my stats, as keywords people use to find my website. I say "odd" because I I've never answered this question, but Google keeps finding me, anyway.So, the question: a patron walks in and says, "I want to do IM chat at work, but my company blocks AOL and the others. I used meebo for awhile, but they just blocked it this week. What are some other sites like meebo I can use?"

I kind of laughed, and so did she, because she knows she's doing something wrong. But I can't judge, so I searched the internet and found a posting on the Big Blue Ball forum that listed a few. They are:

• meebo - https://meebo.com/
• WebAIM - http://webaim.net/
• eBuddy - http://www.ebuddy.com/#AOL
• QuickBuddy - http://toc.oscar.aol.com/tic.html
• ILoveIM - http://iloveim.com/
• Kool IM - http://koolim.com/

I haven't used most of these, but the patron was very happy. She says it takes her I.T. people about a month to block new sites, so she should be set for about a year with this list.

Also interesting, the Blue Ball posting pointed out that "most schools/offices allow access to secure http sites by bypassing the firewall/proxy; meebo has https access." Huh.

chat, ebuddy, iloveim, im, kool im, libraries, library, meebo, public libraries, public library, quickbuddy, reference question, webaim

Posted under Uncategorized | Comments Off on Reference Question of the Week – 3/4

Greasemonkeying Around

Late to the party as usual, I'm just now finding out how much fun coding with greasemonkey can be.

As I understand it, greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that lets you write code to modify how your Firefox browser displays other peoples' web pages. So, if you would like a link from Google's homepage to your own, you can write a greasemonkey script to do that. You're not changing the Google homepage itself - only those Firefox browsers with your greasemonkey script installed will display the link.

But even that is great. There are a lot of scripts out there to play with, so I picked one and tried to modify it for my library's use. It puts a button on Amazon book detail pages, so I can link right into my library's catalog to see if we have the book (similar to our bookmarklet).

To use the script, you just click and install the file (after installing greasemonkey, of course). Then, view a book page on Amazon, and look for the Chelmsford/MVLC logo and link on the right (under the Ordering button).

Editing them is basically coding in javascript, with some differences. It's fun, though, and powerful. The barrier will be creating something useful, and then getting patrons to install it on their own computers. I'm working on a few others, and will be adding them to the library's Tech Tools page.

browsers, coding, firefox, firefox extension, firefox extensions, greasemonkey, javascript, libraries, library, public libraries, public library

Posted under Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Using Page2RSS

My library has both a website and a blog. The blog, powered by WordPress, has an rss feed built in, but our website, which is mainly static html, has no rss feature.

Until we can convert to a more Web 2.0 way of doing things, I've been testing the talked-about Page2RSS service.

I set it up for our homepage, and so far, it works well. It is not pretty, but it works. I feed it into my bloglines, and it displays only whatever html code has changed on the page. Which means, the output depends on the changes, and hence is not necessarily formatted in a nice or readable way.

But for my purpose, it works well. It seems to check for update once every one or two days, and our homepage is updated with about the same frequency.

(Which, honestly, in my overbearing and nitpicky way, is part of the reason I am monitoring our homepage. Rather than having a single person updating the website, we've got about seven or eight, all with differing skill levels, interest and time availability. I cringe at way some of our pages look, because a basic understanding of web coding would take care of a lot of the problems. But I don't want to step on anyone's toes or hurt anyone's feelings, so I don't say anything and just do what I can.

But our homepage is different. I will correct things other people did, if I can make it look better. So, by monitoring our homepage via Page2RSS, I can see when other people make changes, and if a little more editing needs to be done. I feel like a jerk doing this, but I'd rather our patrons see a clean and useful homepage than one with obvious mistakes.)

So if this test continues to go well, we'll be able to offer an rss feed to patrons, which is the ultimate goal.

libraries, library, page2rss, public libraries, public library, rss, rss feed, rss feeds, website, websites

Posted under Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Reference Question of the Week – 2/11

Sometimes you get reference questions that scare you.

A woman comes to the desk, asking for information on childbirth and what midwifes do. I took her to the childbirth section (618.45's), but she said those books were too basic for her. She started talking about a class she took, and how they left too much out. She wanted to find out, she said, about episiotomy and cesarean section, and needed pictures and instructions.

It sounded to me like she was looking for medical textbooks, which we do not have. While I was saying that, an alarm in her pocket went off, and she said, "I have to go pick her up, but I'll be back later."

I didn't notice when she returned a few hours later, and a coworker of mine helped her. They went through the same process as me, looking at the same books, until the woman began talking again about needing pictures and instructions.  My coworker brought her back to the desk, to show her how to search databases (Gale's Health Reference Center Academic and PubMed) to find more current and in-depth information.

In the course of that instruction, my coworker casually asked if the patron was in nursing school. The patron said, "no, my daugther's pregnant. She could go at any time, and I want to be ready to delivery that baby."

I know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but I think that a trip to the hospital is worth something, too.

childbirth, libraries, library, midwifery, public libraries, public library, reference question

Posted under Uncategorized | 1 Comment »