Reflections 01/01/10

This blog is not usually a place for personal reflections. However there is a meme on twitter this morning  #10yearsago. Looking at many other’s microposts of where they were 10 years ago naturally led me to reflect on whether I should post my own and what I would/should say. I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t compress it into 140 characters. Also I turned 50 last month – it is time for a bit of reflection on where I was, where I am, and perhaps, where I might be going.

Firstly a lot of people that I follow seem to have had a LOT of change in their professional lives in the last 10 years compared to me.

Ten years ago I had chosen my new profession, had graduated 2 years before and was working in my third job as a librarian. I was to stay in that job for the next 7 years. So in the last 10 years I have changed jobs but not careers. Also I saw my last job change as a progression- building on my experience and getting back to my core subject specialty. Advancement wasn’t a consideration.

The others that I follow have had much more career progression but, on reflection,  I follow them BECAUSE they are high flyers and I can learn from them. Of course high flyers will undergo more rapid change than I.

My periods of rapid change were in the eighties and nineties. My twenties and thirties. We moved house and changed jobs frequently.

However ten years ago I was living in this house, with this same lovely man and I had an eight year old in primary school and a soon to be five year old about to start. Any changes in that time have been from the natural progression of kids growing up. On reflection our lack of change is not because we are old and staid but because we are happy with how and where we are. And we have been lucky. It’s been a decade of consolidation. The kids have grown, we have done some renovations, we have both changed organisations but not careers. We have had a lot of different pets. We haven’t traveled much. We haven’t had very significant health issues. No-one significant has died. [Updated: stupid sentence. Some members of my family did die in last 10 years] The potentially large upheaval that came from my husband being retrenched last year was offset as we had been financially well off for the decade previously. It was scary at the time but, in hindsight, we have mostly done well from it.

I have been thinking about where I might be going lately professionally because for the first time I am in an organisation where the structure might allow for a librarian to do something different, change paths and do interesting things without leaving. With opportunities come choices. I like this organisation and its goals. My clients have similar interests to me, are bright intelligent people and mostly I can speak their language. I hope that in ten years time I will still be working with them. However I can’t forecast exactly what I will be doing. I know and hope that it won’t be exactly what I am doing now. I think our structure, my interests and the current strategic directions of  the internal organisation and the external science research environment, that any future role will be something now regarded as much more IT related than traditional librarianship. To prepare I need to do some skill building. In the short term I need to build my project management skills and extend my IT knowledge and cred. I definitely need to learn to code. In the long term I need to keep current and open to change.

Personally I am also forecasting larger changes for our lives in the coming decade than the preceding one. One kid has all but moved out. The other will also be likely to. Our parents are getting aged. Things are unlikely to stay the same. But that is how it ought to be. We can only be as prepared as possible.

Happy New Year to all. Thanks to my family, clients, colleagues and RL and online friends for making life interesting. Here’s to looking forward.

Outlook issues

I thought I would document this one in the interests of others as it took several man hours (IT help, colleagues and me) to resolve.

We frequently scan bits of paper and email the PDFs to ourselves and others.

Suddenly about a week ago I suddenly wasn’t able to receive the scans from the MFD (multi function device- or big machine that copies, prints and scans) that is in the library. I could receive from any other machine but it was a pain to walk up to the other end of the building to do it. I logged a call with our IT people for help.

After a bit of testing it arose that I was the only one with the issue. My colleague in the desk next to me could get scans emailed from the same machine just fine. It was getting very weird. the first thing I thought of was the junk email folder but that was empty.

A bit more testing from IT at the exchange resolved that it wasn’t an MS exchange issue either but somehow the emails were getting auto permanently deleted. (Thanks Jeremy). If a scan was sent to me while I was shut down the email went to the web mail just fine so the issue was my local setup.

Then I  got worried.  Around the time the problem started there were several updates to key bits of software. I started looking at what I could uninstall and also looked around at any Outlook add-ons that I had.

All this testing was a pain to my colleague (thanks Aimee) – I had to change sites and was ringing her every 5 minutes to ask her to try sending me another scan from the questionable machine.

I don’t know what made me look but I found it.

In the “Junk email options” I had ticked ON “permanently delete suspected junk e-mail instead on moving it to the junk email folder”. Now I remember turning that on several months ago after seeing nothing but true junk in the folder and getting sick of deleting it. Clicking it off and getting yet another test sent proved it. The test went straight to the Junk folder.

The mystery is why Outlook suddenly decided that the MFD address was junk. Adding it to the exceptions has, hopefully, now solved it. But I am also now worried that there has been other emails that I have missed in the intervening months.

So this is a warning. However well you think Outlook is handling your junk email DO NOT be tempted to select the “permanent delete” option as “permanently” in this case does NOT mean “move to the delete folder” and you can’t see and monitor what Outlook is deciding is junk.

How many WiFi connections?!

Hubby was asked by son to “help” configure his and his mate’s Nintendo DS Lites to hook up to our home WiFi network. After much research (including one site which stated incorrectly that our router was incompatible)  we finally found the answer that worked on a router support forum. The key, we think, was that our network passkey had to be in ASCII not Hex. We chose the opportunity to strengthen our network passkey. We also protect our network by MAC address filtering.

Of course then we had to reconfigure every other connected device in the house.  I thought that I would document the list and the issues.

• 2 laptops running Windows XP- one using a Dell wireless utility- no problems so far a reboot didn’t fix (these are our work supplied machines).
• 1 XP laptop (our son’s) using a Belkin PMCIA slot wireless card.  The utility wanted a hex passkey so we entered a hex translation. We restarted the card by physically removing and reseating it, then it accepted the hex version of the passkey and connected.
• Tablet running Kubuntu Jaunty. A lot of problems. Turns out there is a documented bug where it won’t accept an ASCII passkey. Installing WICD worked here.
• iPhone- no problem
• Nokia E71- no problem
• Nintendo Wii- no problem
• 2 x Nintendo DS Lite- they started it

Occasional visitors (B-I-L and daughter) yet to be re added and tested:

• a laptop running Vista
• a laptop running Ubuntu 9.04

I know we could have more, e.g. if we had other internet connected gaming consoles, but I think this is a lot of WiFi networked devices for one small household. And this list doesn’t include the two desktop PCs that use cable for their networking (one is our media server running MythTV on Ubuntu 7.10).

How does your household compare?

How to: Tasks with notifications for iPhone

As much as I love my iPhone it has been as backwards step for me from my Palm Treo for certain productivity functions.

Top of the list was a todo or task management system that synced with Outlook and gave me an alarm when something was due.

Today I have that functionality but it isn’t perfect. As with most iPhone work arounds it involves third party web services.

I decided on the Toodledo app some time ago. It has a lot of functionality, was getting good reviews and has a third (fourth ?) party application that syncs with Outlook. Today Toodledoo updated their iPhone app so it uses the new iPhone 3.0 push notifications.

So my system involves:

• Outlook
• A Toodledo account
• The Toodledoo iPhone app version 1.5.0
• The Outlook sync from Chromatic Dragon (there is a warning on the Toodledoo site but I have had no problems.)
• An iPhone running 3.0

Once you have these things in place follow these instructions. The key things are to allow notifications on the phone when asked on startup and sync THEN go to the web site Reminders/Alarms page and select the iPhone as your reminder location.

I took some time to get this to work.

My problems were:

• I was creating a task with a reminder on the phone and not realizing that it the app only auto syncs on startup not exit.
• The task has to exist on the website.
• When I was getting to the point that I was about to give up I checked my account settings ON THE WEBSITE and realized that the time was set for 2 hours ahead of what it should have been. Once I fixed that my next test worked fine.

The other thing to know are that Toodledo has two service levels- free and pro. With the free account, such as I have, you only get one notification choice, i.e. iPhone or email or SMS, and one choice of alarm time- one hour before the due time. Don’t rely on the exact time – they state that its actually 1 hour +/- 5 minutes.

The other not ideal thing is that I choose to manually sync with Outlook. My Outlook file is vast and any auto syncing (including Google Calendar sync) was slowing it further. Between that and that fact that the iPhone app only syncs on startup I have to remember to consciously sync everything.

I would be interested to hear of other iPhone users experiences setting up tasks with Outlook sync and notifications.

The purpose of libraries in a corporation

I wasn’t going to do a follow up to my last post but as usual various conversations over the last month have percolated this up to the surface. And this didn’t start as a follow up it just reads like it is.

By the way- special librarians know this stuff (or should). It’s not new and it’s very basic- it just needs to be explicitly stated from time to time especially to those masters who are not librarians, in terms that they will understand.

The purpose of a special library in a research organization/ corporation is to save the organization money.

Our role is to do it through efficient management of information sources.

The library is not a just a cost centre. It’s cost benefit and ROI can be demonstrated.

Take the cost of buying books and journals for the library- the most basic of services. Now compare it to the cost of every researcher buying their own copies. Because they will not go without. They will just buy it themselves and do. Every time we ask a researcher for a cost code to buy a book rather than having the budget to fund the purchase they will wonder where the benefit is to them of letting us cataloging the book and making it available to the wider organization when they could just use their credit card, go to Amazon, get it quicker and not deal with the library at all. The benefit is to the organization as a whole not to have many multiple copies of books needlessly purchased but we need to track such dispersed purchases in order to prove the cost benefit of the library alternative. The same calculation can be used for journals, comparing enterprise wide subscriptions to the costs of buying individual articles directly from publishers or buying individual membership and subs. The benefits are in the economies of scale provided by centralizing purchasing including document delivery. The benefit is not to the individual researcher so its up to the organization to provide the incentive by providing a well managed adequately funded library service. This is the same reasoning as managing software purchases and licenses enterprise wide. It is not different.

How about my colleagues wages? Cost out the researchers time to source a paper, do a literature search or a citation analysis. Now we are paid half as much and can do it in half the time.  The work still needs to be done. But my way costs 1/4 as much. When I am doing a training class it’s to provide the researchers the skills to use the tools that will save their time or simply to introduce them to the benefits of using my services and saving their time that way. Either way saves the organization money.

The library service needs to be able to provide the data to management to enable the ROI calculations. Statistics from systems are easy but everyone grumbles about keeping stats on reference requests and other non systematized services. Suck it up people! It’s absolutely vital that we have the data that prove that we are providing a service that meets our purpose. Also every proposed new service has to be evaluated in this light. Does it save the time of the client (and therefore save the organization money) or does it make the existing services more efficient (and reduce costs and save money)? We do it all the time with journal subscriptions – is it more cost effective to subscribe or pay document delivery per article? We have the data for that. Any other service is no different – it just may be a bit harder to get the data.

Having a purpose really focuses thinking! And in a special library it is so straight forward. Not meeting it or not being being able to show that we/you are meeting it will mean the closure of our/your library.

The future of libraries

Several discussions have been dominating my Friendfeed best-of-day threads lately all revolving around the future of libraries.

Peter Murray Rust kicked off discussion asking for contribution and feedback for his (then) coming presentation on Libraries of the Future.

I was a bit despondent at the request. If a scientist who would be typical of my normal client did not know what we did or what we were for and had to ask, what sort of job had we been doing? Was this a marketing failure or a service failure or were libraries and librarians really doomed? Dorothea Salo and Christina Pikas and others rose to the challenge.

Then there were the disappointing Taiga Forum provocative statements. Again John Dupuis, Meredith Farkas and Dorothea Salo and others have critiqued these thoroughly.

In contrast late last night (my time) John Blyberg posted the “The Darien Statements on the Library and Librarians” authored by himself, Kathryn Greenhill and Cindi Trainor.

Kathryn told me that something was coming and I had seen the pictures of the whiteboard wiki so when the cat woke me a 3am this morning I went to check.

There have been some comments on the post itself but compared to the reaction to the other two the reaction has been positive, uncritical and low volume.

Don’t get me wrong. My reaction is positive. I am just a bit disappointed by the lack of discussion. Steve Lawson and Dorothea and a few others have pointed to the post. Unfortunately Friendfeed and Twitter trends work on the volume of the discussion not the positiveness of the reaction. Maybe its only the controversial posts that will get the attention and this one is just too in agreement with what we think. Or maybe (she says hopefully) it is just too soon.

I then started thinking about how the statements worked as a mission statement for myself and my colleagues.

And it does. Can I work with the statements? Oh yes. Will I be pointing my work colleagues to them? Most assuredly.

But unfortunately I can think of librarians for whom that would not be true.

It all arises from the first sentence. The purpose of the Library is to preserve the integrity of civilization. This would be true of any civic institution. Substitute school or police or court in there and it’s still true. The rest logically arises from that one sentence. The differentials between libraries and other civic institutions are covered by the role statements. The purpose statement thus applies to public libraries, academic libraries and state libraries and (thank goodness) my library as the institution we serve is in itself covered by the purpose statement.

My one nit pick is what about the libraries that are not part of civic institutions? What about those librarians who are employed to serve the information needs of a corporation or company? The prime purpose of the company is make money for its owners. Statements about triple bottom lines and civic responsibilities don’t take away from that fact. The purpose of the library and librarian employed by a corporation cannot be encompassed by the purpose statement from Darien. As a consequence they cannot be governed by the statement “Individual libraries serve the mission of their parent institution or governing body, but the purpose of the Library overrides that mission when the two come into conflict.” Do we expect those libraries and librarians to also serve the higher purpose of the rest of the profession? Or do we call these something else besides libraries and librarians? This has been discussed ad nauseum over the years in regards to the whole profession.

As I said this is a nitpick and I am sure that most corporate librarians would only be too pleased to take on board the rest of the statements and support their professional civically employed colleagues in any way to uphold these ideals as to purpose. But I don’t know whether they could justify incorporating this purpose statement into their day to day work lives.

Adventures with MU (WordPress MU that is)

I haven’t posted for a while but I wanted to discuss the WordPressMU set up at my place of work.

I have been trawling the forum for a while now looking for a couple of answers but I think our set up and therefore our needs are a bit unusual. At the moment I haven’t upgraded so we are still running version 1.5.

We have multiple blogs and multiple authors (nothing unusual so far) but we want everyone registered to be able to post to any of the blogs. The blogs are for news (current awareness in Librarian jargon) from the library service to our clients. So the clients don’t need to see a whole mass of irrelevant posts we have divided up the posts into seven main subject areas (each blog) then into further categories so each “minor” subject area has a feed. The main blog that is built into an MU installation is used for posts relevant to the whole organisation.

The blogs are fire walled so I can’t show them to you, unfortunately, so you can get a better picture. They are designed to look like they are part of the intranet. There are about thirty of us all contributing and most are contributing to more than one blog. So far we have four site admins. Myself and three others.

Here come the issues:

1. It is fairly laborious to add each new user to each blog. We would like each new user to be able to be added to all the desired blogs at the same time (and while we are at it – add them as an editor please).

2. It would be great for a site admin to be able to see in one place somewhere in the admin pages the numbers of posts each user has contributed and not have to visit each blog in turn.

3. Our contributors would like to be able to make the same post to multiple blogs without cutting and pasting. (I thought about trying this using a feed but not every post in a category or tag would go to another blog and if we set feeds up there would be far too many possible combinations).

4. I haven’t yet been able to get a LDAP plugin to work and I have tried two. I think its our PHP or LDAP set up. But this would save so much work and confusion (I have already reset passwords multiple times.) It’s a time issue as much as anything- I just haven’t had enough to pursue it. Thanks to Techxplorer who has given me a few clues.

5. I need to get an email subscription option working soon. I want my clients to be able to select to get a digest of posts for a selected category. (Reminder- these blogs are firewalled – Feedburner and any other web based email service will not work). The Subscribe2 plugin is a contender if I can get LDAP working. I don’t want to demand that a client remember yet another password. The other contender is PHP list.

6. It would be nice to have a page where all the contributing author’s photo and bio are displayed automatically. I have seen a plugin that does this for single author blogs but doesn’t work with multi authors.

It’s been an interesting time watching my colleagues come to grips with using blogs in this way, most have never used blog software before. We are semi-live in that the link has been sent out to a selected number of users for their feedback. It was great the other day to logon and see 30 new posts in my feed reader from just one day’s posting efforts.

99 things meme

I haven’t done a meme before and this one care of Ruminations seemed relevant given the time of year.

THE 99 THINGS MEME

Things you’ve already done: bold
Things you want to do: italicize
Things you haven’t done and don’t want to – leave in plain font.

1. Started your own blog.

2. Slept under the stars.

3. Played in a band.

4. Visited Hawaii.

5. Watched a meteor shower.

while sleeping under the stars- as a kid.

6. Given more than you can afford to charity.

7. Been to Disneyland/world.

8. Climbed a mountain.

9. Held a praying mantis.

10. Sang a solo.

11. Bungee jumped.

12. Visited Paris.

13. Watched a lightning storm at sea.

14. Taught yourself an art from scratch.

15. Adopted a child.

16. Had food poisoning.

17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty.

18. Grown your own vegetables.

19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France.

20. Slept on an overnight train.

21. Had a pillow fight.

22. Hitch hiked.

23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill.

24. Built a snow fort.

25. Held a lamb.

26. Gone skinny dipping.

27. Run a marathon.

28. Ridden a gondola in Venice.

Been to Venice but the price of a gondola ride seemed excessive (regretted the decision)

29. Seen a total eclipse.

30. Watched a sunrise or sunset.

31. Hit a home run.

32. Been on a cruise.

Been sailing for a few weeks on a yacht but a cruise on one of those large ships seems boring.

33. Seen Niagara Falls in person.

34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors.

England- Cornwall

35. Seen an Amish community.

36. Taught yourself a new language.

37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied.

Are we ever really?

38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person.

39. Gone rock climbing.

40. Seen Michelangelo’s David in person.

41. Sung Karaoke.

42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt.

43. Bought a stranger a meal in a restaurant.

44. Visited Africa.

45. Walked on a beach by moonlight.

46. Been transported in an ambulance.

With a kid- not to be desired

47. Had your portrait painted.

48. Gone deep sea fishing.

49. Seen the Sistene (sic) chapel in person.

50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

51. Gone scuba diving or snorkelling.

52. Kissed in the rain.

53. Played in the mud.

54. Gone to a drive-in theatre.

55. Been in a movie.

56. Visited the Great Wall of China.

57. Started a business.

We are always making plans for tourist things in rural locations but reality keeps us in the city

58. Taken a martial arts class

59. Visited Russia.

60. Served at a soup kitchen.

61. Sold Girl Scout cookies.

62. Gone whale watching.

63. Gotten flowers for no reason.

Well it was one flower- nicked from a neighbour’s garden but it was a rose so that counts right?

64. Donated blood.

65. Gone sky diving.

66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp.

67. Bounced a cheque.

Entirely in error of course.

68. Flown in a helicopter.

69. Saved a favorite childhood toy.

70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial.

71. Eaten Caviar.

72. Pieced a quilt.

73. Stood in Times Square.

74. Toured the Everglades.

75. Been fired from a job.

But I left one after one day on the understanding that it just wasn’t going to work out.

76. Seen the Changing of the Guard in London.

77. Broken a bone.

A very small one- in a toe. I had almost forgotten.

78. Been on a speeding motorcycle.

79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person.

80. Published a book.

81. Visited the Vatican.

82. Bought a brand new car.

83. Walked in Jerusalem.

84. Had your picture in the newspaper.

A local paper – as a kid

85. Read the entire Bible.

86. Visited the White House.

87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating.

88. Had chickenpox.

89. Saved someone’s life.

That would be that someone needed saving- not  to be desired

90. Sat on a jury.

Was called but not selected.

91. Met someone famous.

Define famous – would Mark Oliphant be close enough? Famous in science and South Australia

92. Joined a book club.

93. Lost a loved one.

94. Had a baby.

95. Seen the Alamo in person.

96. Swum in the Great Salt Lake.

97. Been involved in a law suit.

98. Owned a cell phone.

99. Been stung by a bee.

There are many things that I would like to do that are not on this list. Perhaps I should start a bucket list.

Ode to a lappy: Part 2

I wrote about how much my laptop was helping my productivity and online learning in June.

from spcummings Flickr

Well yesterday it broke.  Apparently it is something on the motherboard and needs to be looked at by Dell – which could take a few days.  I was grateful that it wasn’t the hard drive because, even though I KNOW different, a large proportion isn’t backed up anywhere.  My IT colleagues have lent me a replacement laptop and transferred the contents of the desktop folder on the old hard drive to this one.

So I am operational – somewhat. Which is actually the point of this post.

I have admin rights but because I only have the loaner for a few days I am not going to install everything that I have on the old laptop or bother IT to image the old machine. I am missing quite a bit and it’s slowing me down but not necessarily stopping me. I thought I would start a list of the bits that I am missing from the corporate image provided. It could help me in the future recreate my machine if necessary and it will let you know what I use every day. (BTW its a long list.)

• Voyager (library software) circulation module. This is absolutely necessary and I had to reinstall it.
• Firefox bookmarks – I have only been saving a my research bookmarks to Delicious not the bookmarks in my toolbar that I use everyday. I will be changing this as a back up.
• Firefox plugins  and  bookmarklets- delicious and google email/share are the ones that I am missing most so far. WordPress “press this” bookmarklets for the different blogs.
• desktop widgets- I have been using a small set of Yahoo widgets to monitor things like wifi access
• software for the Dymo label writer
• webcam software (could work without it but it adds a dimension to phone calls and meetingplace)
• iTunes- I can’t sync my iPhone at the moment
• desktop feeds- I have been using Feeddemon and trying out Outlook 2007 to access our firewalled feeds from our blogs and wiki.
• Procite and Endnote- used to help clients work out issues but also to maintain publication lists for my division
• Snagit- really missing as I am trying to write an induction powerpoint and have to update the screen shots.
• Adobe Acrobat. We send out a lot by PDF and some need editing.
• Irfanview found it
  
• Pidgen for IM but I do have MSN
• Skype
• Picassa and Flickr uploader
• WinSCP – to load themes and plugins for our WordPressMU installation
• Dreamweaver
• Windows media player classic- not everything will play in windows media player
• Office 2007. The corporate default is 2003 and I was allowed to try out 2007 to test the RSS feeds in Outlook 2007. Despite everyone hating it and some initial frustrations I have rapidly got to like the new layouts epecially the categoires and task management in Outlook. I was heading to “inbox zero” as a benefit.

There are also some things that are desktop versions of some apps that I use to get content to my iPhone:

• Stanza
• Audible
• Toodledo sync
• Splashshopper (list maker)
• Evernote

There is probably more but that’s what has come to mind after 24 hours. What would you miss most?

The one conference and one keynote I wish I was at

We don’t get many (any) tech librarian conferences coming to this city. And we rarely get the resources to go interstate let alone overseas.

The program for the next Information Online conference in Sydney wasn’t exiting enough to motivate me to compete for a place to go at the time that I needed to apply. I am regretting that somewhat now.

However when I saw the program for Online Information in London (happening right now) I thought “wow”. It had names I recognized and would kill to be able to hear. But it wasn’t going to happen.

Thankfully one of those same people is blogging the sessions. Shifted’s post of Clay Shirkey’s keynote is long and comprehensive and almost fills the gap for me. I was greatly impress by a video I saw of his presentation at Web 2.0 Expo NY “It’s Not Information Overload. It’s Filter Failure.” Its message resonated with the role that Information Specialists are trying to do here.

As I said Shifted’s post is long, but worth reading right to the end where, in response to a question, Clay discusses a librarian’s role in the new world of online communities.