3BT: Tucson Spring Morning

1) Not needing a jacket on the way to work.
2) The lovely light smell of the new-blooming trees and bushes.
3) A free extra shot of espresso (and a kiss on the cheek) from the corner Coffee Dude.

Aaah, spring...

Conan the Librarian...again!

Conan the Librarian just keeps popping up - this time in an amusing action-figure vignette by Poe Ghostal over on Flickr.  I believe everyone who's had to deal with loud patrons has wished this at one time or another...

Blog Bits

Spent some time today reading blogs, and these caught my attention as things to share:

* I so want to work (and visit) here! Jenny Levine (the Shifted Librarian) talks about her trip to DOK . Wow. (I mean, what else can you say?)

* I don't know how Steven Cohen (Library Stuff) finds and keeps up with all this stuff, but he posted two fairly nifty Twitter tools: TwitterMap and Twitter Karma.

* Lee LeBlanc guest-blogged at Tame the Web about answers to his question "Why are you a librarian?" I really enjoyed the wide variety of answers (#32 made me chuckle).

Bronchitis is the pits. Special super cough medicine is fun. The weather is lovely. Yay!

Speed Bump: now in poster form!

One of my favorite librarian comics from Speed Bump has become so popular the author, Dave Coverly, is now making it available as an inscribed, color poster!  It's a bit spendy but would be very cool to have on the office wall.  (Hmm, gift idea!)

(Mr. Coverly gave me permissions to use this particular comic three talks ago... he's a groovy dude!)

IL2008 Call for Speakers

Bit late off the block with this, but in case you haven't already seen: the Call for Speakers for Internet Librarian 2008 is now open. Send in your ideas by March 26th!

Cold, grey and rainy here the last couple of days. Brr!

For the Guybrarians in your life

I loves me some effing.librarian, I have to say. His post on "to be a guybrarian" made me laugh out loud, but I'm curious... guys, do you agree with effing? Is this what you envision when someone calls you a "guybrarian"?

It. Is. Not. Snowing.

AL Direct notices me again!

My CMS article is mentioned in this week's AL Direct! How cool; even though I can't swing being a member of ALA as well as SLA, they still seem to like me! :-) (Thanks to Joe for letting me know!)

Shelving the Stereotype

The Houston Chronicle ran an article in late February on the changing face of librarianship: "Information isn't reserved for books", by Carolyn Feibel. Gotta love an article that starts off with the question "If Google and a librarian had an informational smackdown, who would win?"

Me, of course, I vote for the librarian.

Found via Folderol

CiL: I made the cover!

Wow. I had no idea that Information Today was going to use my article on choosing and implementing a CMS for their March cover! How exciting :-D Even more exciting, they've made it freely available online (although without the groovy graphics and tables and things). This makes my second article for CiL, and my second cover! What a lovely way to end a Monday!

It's a perfectly lovely 75°. Aaahhhh.... spring in Tucson!

Slog, Slog, Slogging Along

You may have noticed (then again, maybe not) that things have been somewhat quieter than usual around here lately. I'm continuing to slog through the new Drupal-based web site; am now nagging others for input to the image galleries (why post old images to a new web site?) and waiting on that, and the other big bugaboo is: the front page module.

You'd think, after reading the project page, that it'd be pretty straightforward. And for the uses I've done so far - basically, a link to log in, and a link to the sitemap for browsing - it was fine. But now I want to put an actual spiffy front page with a different look to it on the site, and danged if I'm not having a ton of trouble with it. The front page settings has a nice little box for you to use, and you can choose themed, full, or a redirect type. I've been using themed, which uses my theme from the rest of the site, but now I want to choose full and drop in a completely different page. I quote: "You can paste in the full HTML code for a complete page and include a different style sheet in the HEAD of the document if you want a completely different layout and style to the rest of your site." So, I do that, but does it work? NO. It basically seems to be taking my title and any other information in the head of the document (including the style sheet), stripping it down to plain text, and dropping it before any of my content. This leads to: a VERY UGLY PAGE.

I've had it for the day. Maybe whatever I'm missing will become clear next week...after a lot more coffee. Sigh.

More on the third "Librarian" movie

Bummer! Now it looks like winter '08 instead of fall... ah well, should still be a big bunch o'cheesy fun!

• TNT planning third 'Librarian' movie
• Noah Wyle, Bob Newhart and Jane Curtin Return for Third INstallment of TNT's Successful Librarian Franchise
• TNT Checks Out 'Librarian' Again

The thermometer says it's 70° but I'm cold... yes, I'm a weather wimp, I admit it!

McSweeney's Reasons

Discovered via twitter and laughed over openly, McSweeney's Ten Reasons to (be|not be) a Librarian is so very, very true... I totally classify things, I can't help it!

More from Rex Libris

My favorite a$$-kicking sesquipedalian librarian is back! Rex Libris #9 ("In the Grip of Ogpu!") came out just after Christmas, and Rex Libris #10 ("A Cock and Bull Story") has just been released... I love the standing order with my local comic store, I have them both to hand and will probably (finally!) read them on the plane this week.


Plus SLG Publishing has come out with another Rex T-shirt, which I simply must have! "Have YOU returned your library books?"

I loves me some Rex! :-)

LoginToboggan Rocks!

So, I've been fairly quiet lately about the whole Drupal development thing, primarily because I've been madly pulling in data and creating node after node after node. It's really shaping up nicely. One of the big bugaboos I've mentioned here before was the access restrictions; was having a very hard time getting that all sorted out the way I wanted. Well, I threw a help email out to the Drupal4Lib listserv and bang, I got a good half-dozen suggestions. One of them, LoginToboggan, is exactly what I was looking for! (The folks on Drupal4Lib rock, I tell you.)

It's gonna be close but I think I'll make the end-of-February goal for going live with the new site. The public parts of the site are 95% done; the private sections are about 80% but I feel fine going live with some of the older historical data not quite posted yet (provided, of course, I get it posted within a month). The next big thing facing me is the actual migration; I have a sparkly new server waiting for everything, but all I've done so far is make sure the latest version of CentOS is installed and everything's updated. I haven't even installed Drupal there yet... bleurgh. But I have, what, ten days left? I can do this!!

It's a blissful, sunny 72° and a lovely breeze is coming in my open window.

Another reason to choose a private school

Sigh. The Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) is having a very bad year... in addition to recommending closing some of the schools, they have now made the decision to cut librarian and counselor positions and increase class sizes. I've been pondering what to do when my son reaches school age and private schools are looking more and more attractive as the public schools continue to be gutted more and more...

Kirk Coulda Been a Librarian!

Found via the always-excellent LibrarianInBlack, check out this short clip from Star Trek: The Animated Series. Spock scores again!

After days of stunningly beautiful weather, another storm is moving in and it's 67° and getting grey and windy. Tomorrow will be much cooler...

Go, us!

US News & World Report lists Librarian as one of the best careers for 2008, along with several other librarian-type skillsets (such as Data Miner and Usability Specialist). w00t!

Library Career Romances

Found via Library Journal, Jen Wolfe's "Library Career Romances" and "Miscellaneous Librariana" are interesting and amusing glimpses into the world of the "career girl" novels from the 40s through 60s, and into more modern writings as well. Jen has obviously put a lot of work into these lists!

ALA Goes Drupal

Sayeth Jenny Levine: "ALA is planning to move its current Online Communities service to a Drupal environment during the next few months, so we've posted an RFP for the project at http://blogs.ala.org/ittsupdate.php . Please help us publicize this to relevant groups so that we get as many responses as possible." Interested? Read more at the ITTS Update.

SLA Arizona Chapter S-Az Meetup!

Nine frisky librarians gathered at Dirtbag's in Tucson last night to eat, drink, be merry, and network like mad. I received another three or four emails from folks who wanted to attend but couldn't. Everyone enjoyed themselves (and agreed, the onion rings are great!)!

Many thanks to all who attended: Cindy Coan, Laura Carscaddon, Cheryl Cullier, Melissa Morgan, Jennifer Swift-Martin, Jim Martin, Cindy Elliot, and Deborah Beaumont. Hope to see you all next time, too!