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Category: Random Thoughts

Why I’ll be Wearing Comfy Shoes Tomorrow

Published by Iris on Thursday, September 11th, 2008

New students arrived this week. Yesterday there were new student week leaders dancing on our welcome sign all morning. (That’s quite a reception as you’re going to work!) Tomorrow I’ll be staffing the library table at the academic fair, leaving that a little early so that I can help host the library’s annual picnic for faculty and academic staff, working frantically on a couple dozen last-minute projects, and then helping out with the library’s annual murder mystery event (which gets started at 9pm).

I’m simultaneously looking forward to it and dreading it. Each of these things sounds like a whole lot of fun. The whole, though, sounds like it’ll much more tiring than the sum of it’s parts. I will therefore be wearing distinctly unfashionable, comfy shoes. Stereotype, here I come! Too bad I just got my hair cut today and can’t make a bun anymore.

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Mission: LSSP

Mission: LSSP

Published by Iris on Thursday, September 4th, 2008

This is how I ended up with 5 feet of scratch paper, no real idea of where to store it all, and the warm fuzzies for all my co-workers who instantly donated more paper than I thought we’d collect in a year.

Hello All,

As you probably know, the introduction of print management last year brought about a huge reduction in paper use here in the library (to the tune of about 17% less paper used!). With fewer duplicate print jobs being sent to multiple printers, fewer accidental print-outs, and more attention being paid to what and how much was being printed, we saw the massive piles of unclaimed printouts dwindle down to a few sheets here and there. And there was much rejoicing in the land.

Much rejoicing until students wanted scratch paper to write on, that is. Having grown accustomed to a Limitless Supply of Scratch Paper (hereafter called the LSSP) near the printers, students took to opening the printers and removing sheets of paper from the printer trays. Not only is this poor use of ITS supplies (they do not exist to underwrite students’ scratch paper needs), but the opening and closing of the printer trays seems to have caused a sharp increase in the rate at which those trays go out of alignment and need repairs. Clearly, something needs to change, and asking students to buy notebooks would probably be met with blank stares.

What we need is a good old bait and switch. To this end, the printer area will serve as bait (so much paper, so much history of free paper, so much traffic in general), but when the students arrive at the printers we will dazzle them with big, beautiful stacks of scratch paper which will mimic the LSSP. Not only will this fill a clear public service and save ITS many printer-tray-related headaches, but it will also be a good use of paper that would otherwise be recycled only partially-used.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help us collect this precious scratch paper. On the middle shelf of the cart near the main black and white printer in the TS area you will find a double-decker Paper Collection Device (PCD). The top level of this PCD, the one marked “Scratch Paper,” is for paper that has been printed on one side and that contains no sensitive information (remember, this will end up in the hands of students) or even paper that is blank on both sides but is no longer fit for the printer. The lower level of the PCD is for anything else (colored paper seems to inhabit it now). The SCIC students [explanation of these students] and the reference librarians will use the paper from this PCD to attempt to keep a pile of scratch paper by the printers dazzling, big, and beautiful in order to mimic the LSSP as closely as possible.

I know what you’re thinking, but don’t worry, this message will not self-destruct.

Best,
Iris

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I Could…

Published by Iris on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

I could start getting ready for work, or I could eat breakfast. I could do a lot of things. But I’m not. Because, you see, I’m wrapped in a blanket, and I have a sleeping cat on my lap and a thunder storm to listen to. Standing up would ruin all of those things.

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Library 3.0

Published by Iris on Friday, August 15th, 2008

Friends, Romans, countrymen. I am here to tell you that we are, yet again, behind the times. There are people out there who are still talking about Library 2.0 and spending great amounts of energy figuring out a) what that is, b) how that differs from the Library 1.0 that must have existed even though it was never named, and c) how to put it into practice.

This is no longer enough.

I don’t care if we still haven’t even agreed if there is such a thing as Library 2.0. I don’t care if we haven’t figured out quite how to do it. If we don’t drop everything and run, we’ll miss the Library 3.0 train. Forget about your 23 things, your webinars (who invented that term, anyway?), and your virtual worlds. Those are so 2007.

“But what are we to do, oh wise Pegasus?” you ask. In answer to that I say, I have absolutely no idea. Apparently we’re supposed to be more semantic and stuff, so go do that. Also, Wikipedia offers up this definition of the web analogy to Library 3.0 thusly:

Web 3.0, a phrase coined by John Markoff of the New York Times in 2006, refers to a supposed third generation of Internet-based services that collectively comprise what might be called ‘the intelligent Web’—such as those using semantic web, microformats, natural language search, data-mining, machine learning, recommendation agents, and artificial intelligence technologies—which emphasize machine-facilitated understanding of information in order to provide a more productive and intuitive user experience.

Since I’m already fluent in “natural language,” I think I’ll just check that one right off my list. And last I checked, we had several hulking cabinets full of microformats, so I’m going to declare that one done, too. I’m also pretty good at recommending things, though people rarely seem to pay attention. Their loss.

All in all, we’ve probably got our foot in the door on this one, thank goodness. Still, we might want to start taking sides now, just to save time later. We’ll need some volunteers for the “This will devalue Library 2.0” camp, and a “this is silly, don’t talk to me about it” camp. Of course, we’ll need the “3.0 evangelist” camp, but if you’ve already had a turn as a 2.0 Evangelist, please be aware that you may be needed in the “This will devalue Library 2.0” camp. You can’t be the stars of the show every time.

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