Have You Seen My Library Thing???

As an inveterate reader and bibliophile I was always envious of those people who had their own personal catalog for their personal collections. I knew how to do a database file in Access, but it was so cut and dried...in fact, it was downright boring! Then one day someone turned me on to Library Thing! What a joyous day that was...(you have to know me...)Now I was able to catalog and tag my books...according to my likes and terminologies...I could then search for those books by author, by title, by subject...by my own personalized tags...even by book cover! If I were quite....ummm...anally retentive, I could catalog my books by cover design, color and size. You know, if you've worked in the public library system long enough....someone always comes in with "I don't know who wrote it, or what the title was...and I can't remember the subject, but it was this tall and this thick and it had a red cover"...well...by jiminey...it can be done that way...if you want...all with Library Thing. And the best part is...it's free! Yes...free...well...for the first 200 books it's free. You can buy a years subscription to their service for $10 or you can buy a lifetime subscription for the astronomical price of $25....talk about value for your money...but wait...it gets even better...not only can you catalog YOUR books, you then have access to thousands and thousands of other book geeks around the world and their collections also! But wait!...it gets even better....(can you believe it?)...you can communicate with everyone else (if you make your profile public) and discuss books and authors. There are so many plus's to this site, I could go on for hours...and I have...but not here....You need to stop reading this and head over to librarything.com and check it out for yourself.

It is possibly the absolute best thing to happen to the net...since the net! The only thing...and this is a rather small gripe...the only thing I wish is that there would be a way to save your personal collection of books as a database file...in case of catastrophic failure. I know....'it'll never happen' and it won't because the folks who've put library thing together have done a great job of running it on multiple servers and while it might go down for service or maintenance...there will most likely always be a library thing out there...but the person that I am would love to have my library thing collection on my computer...available whether I was online or off...little thing...I know...but we book geeks are like that!

So go...what are you waiting for??? Go...right now....we'll talk later!!!

Back in the Old days.....????

Had a wonderful visit from some friends from Ireland, terriffic couple. They've been on the road for 11 years!...11 Years...from gig to gig, home to home, city to city, all around the world...Gypsy Troubadors, to be sure. What this got to do with computers and technology?

Well, back in the old days....we would have a notebook, and sheafs of papers, contracts, addresses, dates, plans, maps, you name it, and it would be in that pile of papers...and heaven help you if you lost it...Now? Now, there are laptops, pda;'s, portable hard drives, GPS locators...it makes being on the road a lot less stressful...notice, I did not say easier...because being on the road is not easy, it is a hard life, but when you let the latest is new technology help you, then it makes life so much simpler. Voice mail, blogging, myspace, facebook, sending promo posters by electonic file, save, transfer to thumbdrive, take to kinko's...download and print....

Seeing as they are form Ireland, they have some of thier favorite old Irish TV miniseries...'Father Pat' on hand, plug into the computer and sit and watch...or plug into the tv for a better sized screen and sound. Life is amazing sometimes.....

Now, if you don't know how a song gowes, you can head on over to something like Mudcatcafe and search thousands of folk and traditional tunes, find the history, listen to a midi file of it, cut and past the lyris, change the key, make the print larger or smaller so you can see it well on the stage in dim light...print at will, or save to your program, and use your laptop as an open book...

Makes me want to pack up and get back on the road that I gave up on 15 years ago.....NOT!!! I love my work, I love new technology...but I especially love the benefits and the variety of people I get to work with everyday.... No more ...'On the Road Again'...for me...

HOW Connected Can You Be?

I am...ahem...a bit older than a few of you folks out there riding the aether....How old? Well, let's put it this way...the first time I had ever met Richie Haven's, sitting in his hotel room, we pulled out out=r Sinclair computers, tape decks and cables to attach to the tv screen, and typed in our basic code onto the cassette, ran it so we could...save our data to the cassette tape! OOOHHHHH! High tech...weren't we???

I'm no expert, to be sure, in fact I can get lost in it all, but I do have to say...I LOVE gadgets and any way they can make my life, personal or professional...easier...is fine with me.

So, here we are almost 30 years later, and I am typing this on my battery powered wireless folding keyboard onto my pda that I can beam to another pda, which is wireless, reading the lastest wiki's and blogs, searching the net, reading and responding to emails, as they occur, and still able to hook it all to my phone watch movies, listen to any number of 120,000 songs and still search the web...all on a small handful of gadgets, taking up less space than a happy meal box!

Yes, times have changed. But, times are the same...somehow...It gives me great pleasure to open my 1911 Britannica and smell the knowledge as it wafts from the pages, taking me into the marbled halls of the Alexandrian Library, to read an article on the 'new' science of physics written by a young Albert Einstein...knowledge is timeless, and while technology opens the portals to worlds beyond our imaginations...it is the ABILITY to retrieve and share that knowledge that makes me love my work. You see, it's not a job....A job is something you HAVE to do, your work is what you WANT to do...and I am fortunate to have my work be something I love to do.

So, don't get too bogged down on technology, its a great tool, but don't forget...paper is where it is at...sometimes!!!

lessons learned and places revisited

I am certainly no luddite when it comes to these things, but it is enjoyable finding that my local library is finally getting a foothold on the technologies that will make ourt lives so much simpler. I especially enjoy reading about the "new' tools out there, the myspace, the facebook, the librarything, and knowing that I have been an activ and participating member for quite some time.

Like I said, I'm not techno-geek, but I am all for using technology and it's associuated tools to make our jobs that much easier to relate to and provide service to our patrons!

Bring on the next lessons!!! I value the day when we shall be able to provide our reference services from our home, on those days that traffic, weather or illness prevents us from being at our 100% best...

As it is, having a web enabled pda with a shortened dewey listing is a valuable tool, an even better choice would be to have wifi accessible catalogs on our pdas?...but that is in the future...perhaps not too far away!

new day, new technology

It's been a long time since I unwrapped my little Sinclair microcomputer. Hooked up the keyboard and the CRT, plugged in the cassette player and started typing in my first lines of code, so that I could enter in my information. It was an amazing day for me.

My only problem is that I am technologically hindered when it comes to FIXING things, be it mechanical or electronic. When everything works, it's wonderful, and when one little byte goes awry, then all this is good for is a very expensive paperweight.

But the advances in computers have been phenomenal. From the Sinclair, the TRS-80 (so lovingly referred to as a Trash-80) to the Austin 286/12x...Imagine that...286 kB and a blindingly fast 12MhX processor speed. It boggles the mind!

But I try to keep on the advancing line of technology. Not because I want to be cool, or know the latest buzzwords at the afterwork parties, but because I love technological innovation and learning how to utilize them into my professional and personal life!

Now I have a wireless PDA, web ready at a heartbeat, check my mail on-the-fly. Looking for wireless hotspots, posting on facebook and myspace. The list goes ever on!

In fact, out library has started using IM (Instant Messenger) Reference services for our patrons. Yes sir, times have certainly changed!!