2010 Project Wrap-up

The 2010 Project is finally [sot of] finished!  I included the "sort of" because the part that is complete is the initial 10-week roll-out of the program.  The initial group of patrons and library staff who signed up to start in late January / early February had the opportunity to go through the program as it was revealed week-by-week and participate in the contests and receive completion prizes.  Now, however, the 2010 Project website is getting a minor re-vamp and will be made available as a link off of our library website in early May.  This link will remain active through the end of the year.  This will allow participants to go back and explore related resources or try activities they may have skipped the first time through.

Most importantly, opening up the 2010 Project site for the rest of the year will allow people who weren't able to start in the first place a chance to try the program.  Of the 300+ people who initially signed up, 150 (give or take a couple) finished.  The participants generated over 100 pages of comments and suggestions!  Here are a few examples:


"Thanks to the HPL Project Teacher and those who support and sponsor these programs it gives old dogs new tricks…" 

"Thanks for the various topics covered. I would not have known about them otherwise."

"This has been a great resource for the HPL to offer. No where else in Hutchinson would you be able to find such a wealth of knowledge for everyone at no cost. This is especially helpful to us technology challenged senior citizens!"

"The truth is, I have been opened to so many new things that I enjoyed each week for a different reason. Taking this class shows me that although I resist the technology forms of "socializing", I am curious about it and want to join in (on my own terms). What a shame it would be to be left behind in this era of technology.  A great project. thanks, HPL."

"This is a great project and I hope you have more of them in the future. Keeping up with technology is a never-ending process and you're helping us get up to speed on the Information Superhighway - thanks!"


"I would be interested in any other online educational projects you might have in the future. This was quick, fun, and easy and I picked up some information I wouldn't have known about. Learning something new just keeps you that much sharper, and you have to be in this technological world."

"Please keep me on your database list if you do another! Thanks!"

That last comment really gets me to thinking.  When we set out to do this we had NO idea how many people would be interested, nor did we have any way to contact and advertise the project cheaply once we decided to do it.  As it turned out, we were overwhelmed by the response.  So I wonder how people feel about signing up for events with a contact and then having the library, from time-to-time, use those contacts to send out alerts for upcoming events?  Hmm...another new project to work on.

Time for a different look

It's Spring, what can I say?  I'll try the left-side links for a while.  I am left-handed after all.

Do you have a Wowbrary subscription?  If not, and you are interested in hearing about all the new stuff that HPL acquires before anyone else, I would highly recommend signing up.  Personally, it has contributed greatly to reinvigorating my desire to read for pleasure.  There are so many great things coming in every week.  One word of warning however, some patrons have been experiencing difficulty receiving their Wowbrary emails when signed up using an email address from Cox Communications (for example, "john123@cox.net").  We are working with Cox to solve the problem, but as of 4/21 it is still an ongoing issue.  I will update with a resolution as soon as we have one.

One of the books I found through browsing the Wowbrary newsletter was Boneshaker by Cherie Priest.  If an action-packed, zombie-filled book set in an 1870's steampunk alternate universe sounds like fun - this is the book for you!  I think it would make a great movie - Ridley Scott would do it right.

I just started The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence by Paul Davies.  Dr. Davies has published numerous works on physics written in a way that even a mathematically-challenged librarian can understand them.  This one is interesting in that Davies examines the SETI program and the search for "ET" to date and describes the possibly erroneous underlying assumptions we've made in trying to detect how an alien species might contact us.  As I said, I've just started this one but it is shaping up to be something I would recommend if you are inclined as I am to occasionally scan the stars and wonder who or what and how many might be looking back.

Clouds and my experience with the "Magic Smoke"

No, this isn't a confessional.  The Magic Smoke I am talking about is something that at my old job we called the "Genie" - that smoke that appears when an electronic device burns up or short-circuits.  Proper usage is, "Dave powered on the reference desk CPU, heard a crackling, and saw the genie escape."  Or one might say in a stern, chiding way, "It's definitely down since you let out the magic smoke!"  While I (thankfully) don't have to deal with it, at least on a regular basis anymore at work, the genie escaped from my home PC about 6 months ago causing a mini-crisis in my home.  After some work, all was well and 99.9% of our home network life was restored (the remaining 0.1% was lost saved games - the kids were a little miffed...)

What's the point, you ask?  A good portion of my documents, spreadsheets, etc. and software were not stored on my genie-less PC, they were stored in "the Cloud".  This situation certainly has its advantages.  I could use our other computer to work in the meantime, for one.  Also, there was no fretting over anything but the inconvenience of having to order new guts for the dead computer.  Cloud computing saved me again a couple of weeks ago when my work computer succumbed after a battle with a drive-by virus.  A combination of keeping important and/or currently used documents in the cloud and on a back-up USB hard drive made the whole experience much more tolerable since I lost no data.

But there are some worrisome aspects of cloud lurking always in the back of my mind.  Not least of these is privacy.  Although that is an 18 month-old article, the fight over who can see how much of your info out there in the "cloud" is still raging.  This brings a definite sense of insecurity to privacy-minded folks, like librarians.  Google, Amazon, and those sorts of commercial enterprises already track our searching to serve us targeted ads, ISPs could potentially (and may be already) tracking much more.  Nearly 5 years ago, an agency of the federal government was alleged to have captured data without warrant and with the cooperation of AT&T, (the folks trying to deflect the issue in that "privacy" article above).

Privacy issues aside, cloud computing appears to be gaining considerable, if sometimes grudging, acceptance.  And, as with all new twists in our technological world, our library and libraries everywhere will continue to wrestle with it.

What would it be like if...

...we didn't have an "Information Desk" on the first floor?  We are beginning to explore ways to give it a try.  Reference service (and the big desk) would remain as-is on the second floor.  But how would anyone get help on the first floor, you ask?  Instead of waiting for you to come to us (which often doesn't happen anyway), we would come to you.  This is a not-new, but not universally embraced idea called "roving reference".

 Why would we do such a thing?  At the root, because of studies like this:

• A study by Swope and Katzer in 1972 suggested that the majority of users who have questions in mind do not approach the reference desk for assistance.(1) This problem was compounded by the large-scale move to online public access catalogs (OPACs) and CD-ROM databases in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

So the idea is that if you won't come to us, we'll come out from behind the desk and help you!  The technology for such an endeavor has never been better - small, light, sometimes hyped, tablet-type devices to wirelessly connect to the Internet and cell phones for making calls would replace the desk phone.  That's all the equipment needed, really.  Maybe a pair of these for each of the reference staff.  What do you think?  Are we crazy?  Bear in mind, of course, that we will be experimenting with this concept regardless!

Learning Day - [UPDATE]

I am spending two days in Wichita at the Kansas Library Association annual conference.  It's nice to take a day or two every once in a while and learn what is going on with other people who do what you do.  It is also nice (sometimes) to sit in a session and think, "Hey, we already do that!"  Other times though, while it might sting a bit, it's nice to hear about a better way of doing something you thought you were doing well.

One thing in that latter category applies to HPL for sure.  It is that HPL has some major work to do on its website.  This is something I have been conscious of for a long, long time.  It's also something for which we haven't had the time / skill set / money to complete.  But those excuses are going by the wayside.  We have a happy confluence of opportunities coming over the next 2-3 months and we are starting the planning phase of a re-vamp.

I am looking forward to this afternoon when I will be learning more about graphic novel collecting and also about the Kansas Library Express which is a state-wide system for sharing books and other material. [UPDATE] - I have looked through the information from the KLE courier system discussion and feel somewhat more confident now about joining the network and receiving real value from it.  They presented a nice map which I will post here as soon as I can get it scanned.  The 200 or so libraries already participating are distributed rather nicely throughout the state.  Some of the larger libraries with which we regularly exchange lots of books are not yet on the system.  However, enough of our lighter-volume "regular" borrowers are on it to warrant a serious look.  Time to start thinking about Monday and putting all these good ideas into practice...

HPL 2010 Project Update

The end is near - but only in a way.  When we started the 2010 Project we always had the intention of leaving the completed project up to be used even after the initial "run through".  Now that we are nearing the end of our 10-week course, it is a good time to take a look at what we have accomplished.

Mainly due to the dedication and hard work of Kristine, our technology trainer, over 300 people have been exposed to scores of useful Internet-based tools and library resources.  On a personal level, I accomplished a change in habit by participating in the 2010 Project.  As I have alluded to in previous posts, I often feel behind the curve regarding the Internet and what tools are the "in" thing.  My new habit, developed over the 10 weeks of the 2010 Project, is to each week try one new tool I've heard about.  Will I ever "be on top of it"?  I doubt it.  But I will be keeping pace, I hope.  Here's one that I just learned about, a radio station locator called Antenna.  This one requires an install and seems to have trouble with Windows Vista - proceed at your own risk!

I've strayed off the topic a bit here, so back to my original thought.  If we assume about half of the 300+ people signed up for the 2010 Project actually complete all 10 weeks, then those 150 folks will have learned a minimum of 10 useful "things" each, hopefully feel much more confident in assessing new tools coming out in the future, and will share their impressions with people they know.  This last bit is important because we will be leaving the HPL 2010 Project website up for the balance of this year.  Although the prizes for completion will no longer be available, the resource will be there for any who want to explore the program.  I will post the web address for the project when it becomes available, so keep it in mind if you didn't get in on the original run-through.