A few comments lost :(

I got a little over-zealous with my spam management and I think I accidentally unapproved and deleted just a few comments.  If your legitimate comment was zapped, I do apologize. On a related note, I’m not getting notifications of legit comments at the moment, so, although I’m logging in here a lot more, it may take longer than usual for comments to be posted.

Something old, something new

No, it’s not a wedding; it’s a job change.  In December, I became a systems librarian at the Harvard University Library.  Back to academia for me.  I’ll be working with Aleph and Verde for the foreseeable future – either of which could be old or new, depending on your perspective.  I have never supported Aleph before, at least not Aleph Acquisitions, so that’ll be new for me.  If you’ve been concerned about the lack of posting at Ab’s Blog, fear no more, because I cannot think of anything more inspiring than an ILS Acquisitions client, can you?

So far the job has gone like this: office tour, paperwork, holiday party, snow day, a little work, Christmas Eve half day, vacation until tomorrow, and then, half day employee orientation.

Lest that sound like a cushy schedule to you, let me add that I’m not working in just any old library building – no ma’am.  I’m working in this building, which, for those of you who didn’t follow the link, has achieved gold LEED certification.  Do you know what pressure this puts a new employee under, not to mention an interviewee?  What if I push the wrong button on the toilet and use twice as much water as I need?  Will an alarm go off somewhere?  Why isn’t there a trash can at my desk?  Maybe I’m not supposed to throw away anything at all?  Oh, it’s just an oversight – are you sure it isn’t a test?  I am sure that if I throw my tea bag wrapper in the trash instead of walking to the paper recycling 10 feet away, I will be fired.  I am sure that if I take the elevator without a doctor’s note or arms full of heavy packages, I will be shunned (although the elevator is probably self-powered, come to think of it).

Also, this building is square on the inside, with two stairways like a double helix running up the middle.  If there are any Mawrters reading, think of the maze that was Erdman and you understand.  In trying to locate my boss, I might accidentally wander into the Head Honcho’s office instead.

So you can see it hasn’t all been fun and games and sleeping in. I suppose that with a little time I’ll get used to this whole green building/maze thing.  The Aeron chair will help, as will my new colleagues, who will be models of sustainable behavior, I’m sure.  And around 1 p.m. tomorrow I’ll start to focus on getting Verde up and running, which will leave little time to worry about the fact that I left my desk lamp on while I went off to a meeting.

If I really need a break, there is always The Globe Corner Bookstore downstairs – yes, right in the building! – and that is a temptation I’m not sure I can resist much longer.

You Can’t Spell Absence without Ab

My spouse and I have a running joke concerning all the words you can’t spell without ab: abnormal, fabulous, flab, absent… you get the idea. I certainly didn’t intend to go the better part of a year without posting, that’s for sure. Sorry for leaving you all with a cliffhanger. It turns out that ERM implementations combined with Other Stuff Going On hasn’t produced prolific blogging, and now that I’m working on some other things in my day job, I’m going make a few more general comments than originally planned.

1. Know why you are getting an ERM. It’s not the solution to all your e-resource problems; you need to be clear going in on what led someone to plunk down the big bucks.

2. Understand whether software really addresses your reason(s) for getting an ERM. If you have communication problems among library staff, for example, an ERM could help by exposing information to more people. But if the communication problem is that your license negotiator hoards signed agreements and doesn’t share the terms, the ERM probably won’t solve that.

3. Don’t confuse ERM with the need to re-evaluate, streamline, and change staffing and workflows so you can work effectively with electronic resources.  It seems not uncommon to look at staff processes along with an ERM implementation, and I think that’s fine – as long as enough background work has been done to understand the probable causes for getting an ERM, regardless of whatever reorganization may take place.

4. Remember why ERM systems were invented in the first place. We’ve all struggled to capture data that can’t be easily stored in the ILS.  Sure times change, and there may be added benefits in an ERM that weren’t thought of a few years ago, but when you’re planning for ERM I think it’s worth reminding yourself of this often. Start with your core functionality and top priorities and work from there.

That’s all for today, kids.  If you’re reading this, thanks for hanging in with me for the past year!

What to Expect When You’re Expecting an ERM

One of the hardest things I’ve done professionally was to document and transfer to someone else the work of being an e-resources librarian. I knew what I did; I had e-mail and spreadsheets and gray hairs to prove it. But to set it all out for other people, to include the exceptions and asterisks, and to help them make sense of it all – well that’s difficult.

If you have an ERM in your future, whether it’s open source or commercial, then you will be faced with a similar task sooner or later. One of the difficult things about implementing an ERM is that you are confronted with the need to know exactly how you do things, whether you’re happy with how you do things, and probably with the need for some sort of group consensus as well.

In upcoming posts I will discuss in more detail:

  1. Data,
  2. Workflows, and
  3. Interoperability

Some Links, and Bunnies Theatre

At a recent training session, some of the attendees got a little restless and found the “just for fun” links off the student gateway page. Since I was conducting the training, I didn’t have the luxury of checking the sites out myself, so it was not until today that I finally experienced the 30-Second Bunnies Theatre Library. (Try the James Bond Medley.)

Closer to home, Lorcan Dempsey has written recently about the network reconfiguring the library systems environment.

The Thingology blog has a nice visual post about tag clouds and the concept of “fauxonomy”.

Going back a few weeks, Meredith Farkas wrote about listening to our patrons and actually addressing their concerns, illustrated with a story about Car and Driver magazine.

If you need another diversion, please see my own standby, National Geographic News, for giant squid. Or check out some smart cars.

Woe Is Me…

for I have returned from an offline vacation just as the NY Times article is making the rounds of the blogosphere, and it is standing between me and all the quality blog posts further down the page.  I have no further comment, except to say that things are looking pretty good for the American League tonight… now that’s important.

If you haven’t taken an offline vacation yourself recently, may I suggest one?  I don’t mean no work; I mean no e-mail, no blogs, no web surfing.  I didn’t log on – except to reserve a boat ride – from Tuesday morning to Sunday night.  I wish the trip could have been longer, but six days of walking, hiking, boating, and eating seafood is enough to put things in perspective and provide sustenance for, um, reading a dozen posts about thrifty, tattoed librarians.

G2G – it’s bottom of the 9th, 5-4 and 1 out left!

Copy Windows Error Messages

Did you know this?  I sure didn’t.

For all you techie troubleshooters out there,

Apparently since Windows 2000, you’ve been able to copy the entire error message to your clipboard by hitting the universal copy shortcut, Ctrl-C (who knew?!).

No more SnagIt just to get a copy of the text.

Post via LifeHacker.