Happy Birthday, LoC!

Today is the Library of Congress' 207th birthday. Many happy returns!

It's only gotten up to 75°. I'm still cold.

Systems Librarians are people too!

Yes, indeedy we are - people too, and librarians too! Came across this LiveJournal posting by FabGrrl (and followon comments), "Systems Librarians are people too!" and had to share. However, I have to say that I don't have it anywhere near that badly; I guess partly because I've worked with this team for years, so they know what I do and what I'm not likely to do, and partly because I'm a solo librarian and don't have to explain (or justify) to an "old guard". Thank heavens!

I love being a systems librarian and, having done the more traditional librarian route for a couple of years, I'd choose systems librarian again as a career path in a heartbeat!

Sunny and 70°; just a bit on the cool side, but nice.

Catching Up, Part 1

Thanks for the well-wishes, folks! The battle continues but I think I'm starting to win it...

I'm still catching up on things, but here's the first round of items that caught my eye:

* Computers in Libraries was, apparently, a blast - once again I'm bummed to have missed it. Check out the blog posts about it via Technorati.

* This is just cool: "Space Tethers: Slinging Objects in Orbit?"

* Somehow, I think I already knew this: Daily Show viewers are more informed than Fox News viewers. Check out the Pew Research Center's report.

* The First InfoTubey Awards happened April 17th! Check out the winners!

* Another video contest, this time for "Library Love" - from Thomson Gale's librareo project.

It's a sunny 73° and I'm heading home for the rest of the day.

Not dead yet...

...just flirting with the idea. Did you know adults can get tonsillitis? I started out last weekend with pinkeye, was diagnosed with the tonsillitis Monday, and now have an ear infection too. Needless to say, not a lot of librarianship is getting done this week. Mostly it's just whimpering.

Am sure I'll have lots to post about after I get caught up sometime next week. Until then.

The Library Hotel

Now, that's just plain nifty. Check out The Library Hotel in New York City - over 6,000 books arranged, by floor and room, according to the DDC. If I ever got to stay there, I would of course have to request Room 500.006 (Astronomy)! Read a Washington Post article about the hotel at "Your Room is Booked".

found via LISNews.org

When Servers Die

When servers die, especially unexpectedly, the server caretakers suddenly have pressure, panic, and lots of "That's not acceptable" flying around. Of course, the server that went belly-up was the one with the most amount of data on it... And learning that the controllers and power supplies for the server are so old that they aren't made anymore, well, that was fun too.

This is why regular backups are important, people. Even if it's "old stuff" that you may think no one wants anymore, back it up. Because as soon as it's unavailable, you'll find out just how many people are looking at it. Much scrambling has been done to get the data on a different server and back accessible to the public again; we seem to be in decent shape now, but there's still a lot of work to be done. At least folks are getting web sites again instead of "Site not found"! Thank heavens terabyte storage is coming down in price. We're gonna need some more on the new system.

But, hey! It's not an EDMS crisis (everyone actually seems happy right now, which makes me nervous). Nice to have something different to stress about for a while. (OK, not so much.)

It's a gorgeous, sunny 80° outside, with a light breeze. Aaah, springtime in the desert!

Oh, I WANT one....

Check out Perceptive Pixel's new multi-input touchscreen technology for HCI* (not much at the website yet but I'm assuming that's going to change). ZOMG!! I am in such drooling technolust for this thing... Read more about Jeff Han and his vision for the future over at FastCompany. This is not your father's touchscreen interface...

*Human-Computer Interaction

Ah, Mondays...

And it's only just noon!

Got in this morning to a zillion error messages from the RAID arrays on our major data archive machine, which also happens to host some of our web sites. It seems the SCSI controller is failing... what joy. The RAIDs are still rebuilding... guess migrating those last few web sites to the other server has just moved up on my priorities list.

All the staff, in both locations, is now (as of two hours ago) back working with our data in the new flat shared network drive format. We'll see how that goes this week. I'm going to scrub the server of every vestige of the old EDMS product, right down to the registry, and then do a fresh, new installation with the latest service pack, then start to rebuild the vault with the data in the flat structure. We'll see if that helps with some of our past problems. And we just had a lovely hysteria moment (at least I did) - one of the assemblies was opened out of the flat structure on a machine that's had the old EDMS completely wiped from it - and it gave *exactly the same errors*. Ha! (Whimper...)

In the meantime, as if this wasn't enough for a Monday, the big color printer has decided to stop talking to anybody...

At least the weather is beautiful - 78° and sunny, with a light breeze. Aahh...

Rex Libris: Movie Star!

Yes, it's true - Warner Bros. Pictures is making a movie about Rex! Too fun - I'll be keeping an eye on this project, that's for sure. Wonder if it'll be live-action or animated? (My bet is on animated.) Get the Rex Libris comics, action statue and Tshirt from SLG Publishing.

It's a cool, overcast 83° and I'm about to start a long weekend! Happy Easter, everyone.

At last, we haff returned

So. At long last, my staff is back in our data files... via a shared network drive instead of our EDMS software. It only took two weeks... arrgh! We had a small venting opportunity this afternoon with playground balls dressed up in the logo of the product, a pickax, and some knives. (Really.) It was surprisingly satisfying.

Maybe now I can get back on board with the CMS investigation....

hello, second day of 90° temps!

Learning From Amelia

Yes, it's another story about a tattooed librarian, a topic near and dear to my heart! Over at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Laurel Walker writes, "Interested in tattoos? You can learn a lot from Amelia." I wish I'd been able to attend Amelia's talk, as the history of women and tattoos isn't that far behind tattooed librarians as a fascination of mine.

85° and sunny. I suspect repetition is on the way.

System Rebuilds R Fun

Or, not... At least this one is going well. New drives are in, and the RAID array is 50% rebuilt. We should be back accessing our data files by Wednesday, I hope! After that, a break, and then after that, continued work with the vendor to fix our EDMS. Either that, or I start investigating a new product for us to use... whee.

ObGeekRef: A Brief History of Programming Languages. I had no clue C++ has been around since 1983. Article is from 1995; how many more entries would it have now?

Spring is over; summer is ascendent. It's 90° and sunny, and that's pretty much the forecast for the rest of the week. Time to break out the shorts!