Aaron the Librarian

Did I mention today is the last day before Fall Break?  Yuppers, it is. I’m told I don’t *have* to be back until Wednesday.  We’ll see if I can hold out that long… and I’m out de door… Sayonara!

Alrighty, did an open show-n-tell on how to work the Microdax MF Scanner (this is the tech we should have gotten at M[f]POW!).  Quick, easy, painless, and - dare I say it again - fun!

*Whew* managed _not_ to volunteer or get volunteered for anything.  Thankfully, since my plate are piling pretty high at the moment.

Went to the Access Queries session (which had good points, but I didn’t really pick up much new stuff - I need to really get into the documentation to get it - already new about inner and outer joins from long ago.  Should have gone to the circulation tricks session, but at least I got the handouts.

This is another fun bunch of people, hope to see a bunch again at EndUser.

Remembered I forgot to arange for hotel space, decided to zip over to my parents place after dinner (a mere 4 hour drive). Enroute to dinner, got pulled over by a nice police officer who informed me I had a headlight out (I was a padiddle according to an old college driving game - the driver’s-side headlight was out). Got a ticket for the officer’s troubles (my PA tag is so new it is not in the NY database yet (same with my new PA license), so I almost got arrested for his trouble too) as well as directions to the nearest parts store.

Fixed headlight - wow, I can see much better now! - missed dinner with all the f@rting around and drove the four hours anyway (got in at 11pm). Hung around with Dad for a goodly bit (Mom woke up long enough to say hi & chatt briefly) then took a three hour nap. Got up at oh dark early and boogaloo’d four hours back.

Wow,  learned about four super cool thingies to do with our web interface:

• Spell Check / Did you mean?
• More like this
• RSS feeds for new books (and by subjects if we want)
• er.. this was cool too, but I forgot what it is

Nice folks, only three PASSHE / KLN types were there (Mary Lou, Krista, and moiself)

I very badly need to get in control of my paper tiger.  Only 5 weeks otj (~1 week out of office in those 5) and I can’t see my desk already.  And the piles are shifting. And I got a paper cut while catching a sliding pile *sigh*

Back in the saddle again,

We’re talking about consolidating all our myrid spreadsheets & text files & nascent databases containing all out E-res data to get a better handle on what we have, where we can adminster it from, who to contact for troubleshooting, when renewals are, how much each costs, whether or not we have perpetual access to content already paid for (like in Emerald).

My head hurts just thinking about it; I mean I’ve done similar before (at M[f]POW), but I got spoilt by having a new Electronic Resources Librarian get hired in just as I was getting all the data pieces consolidated.  Then we went with SerialsSolutions ERM product and it was going spiffily when I left.

We’ll see about shaking some funding loose for this, though I suspect there are other pressing priorities from a content hole point of view.

So, okay, by now you know I get jazzed over the strangest things.

Had patrons come in today (I mean c’mon who would be jazzed over that?!) who wanted to use a microfilm collection of ancient newspapers (yup, more than 15 years old, so they’re ancient) 1860-1880, to be exact (oh, I meant 150+ years ancient)

Anyway, MnPOW has a new microfilm digitizer which totally rocks (a Cannon Microdax) and was simple to show & use.  I made an outline of the process (the outline seems pretty complex to me at the moment, but looking at the computer+scanner setup it’s following a wizard)

Long ramble short here…  showed patrons how to use it, the were impressed at the ease and happy to have it digital instead of print - and it was fun!

Yippie, Our Article Linker is up and configured (and I typoed a few things in my setup document, but we won’t dwell on that since it’s fixed now) and working out of EBSCO and CSA databases - onward to the next clumps of databases and then on to the individual subscriptions!
Woohoo!

While I’m so totally looking forward to LITA National Forum in Nashville, my wallet is not.  I had no idea how expensive (to my now one income mindset) it is.

Originally, I was going to just commute (hey ~43 miles one-way twice a day for a few days is nuthin for a driving fool like me - I used to commute ~91 miles one-way to work daily, for below subsistence pay but that’s a different post someday) but ~655 miles one-way does not a good commute make.  That’ll teach me to change jobs after having a poster session acepted at a local, national event (well, no, it won’t really)

So, MnPOW has this really neat-o competitive process to dole out supplemental travel monay — and I found out I’m eligible to apply, so I’ve completed the application and am crossing my fingers and toes (ow, they’re cramping as I type this) for some sort of (literally any) remuneration.

Wish me luck!

And see you in Nashville if you’re going too!