Today has been a pretty good day.
1) After battling the front page display of my new web site for a while, I threw it out to a local CSS expert (thanks, Mark!) and to the Drupal4Lib community. (I wanted dual background images, one at the upper left and one at the bottom right, and no matter what I did the front_page module was only showing one image.) I got a lot of great suggestions to fidget with things and arrangements, which led me to think about swapping which images were called from where. When I flipped the body and wrapper background images, it worked! Not only did it work, it works across every browser I've tested so far, even IE (!!!!), and under both Windows and Linux. (I'll test from the Mac when I get home, but I expect it'll be fine.) Needless to say, a happy dance was performed :-D
2) I got to play with javascript and replaced the static image on our main web page with a script that randomly displays one of eleven images. Makes me happy, and more importantly, it seems to have made the scientists and directorate happy. Thanks, JavaScript Source!
3) I get to shop for all the table decorations for the big "Under the Sea" party at SLA. Hee hee!
Currently 84° and sunny. (expect to see that a lot in the future, ha ha)
April 24, 2008
April 22, 2008
Social Events at SLA
The calendar is rapidly filling up:
* PAM Book Group, Monday evening
* Blogger's Social, Tuesday evening
* LSW Meet-up, time and date still TBD.
Plus open houses, early-bird dinners, and the much-looked-forward-to Under the Sea PAM/IT dance! Thank heavens we'll be in the City of Coffee...
* PAM Book Group, Monday evening
* Blogger's Social, Tuesday evening
* LSW Meet-up, time and date still TBD.
Plus open houses, early-bird dinners, and the much-looked-forward-to Under the Sea PAM/IT dance! Thank heavens we'll be in the City of Coffee...
April 15, 2008
Random Video
Busy, busy, busy - here are some things to keep you occupied...
* Thumbs down: Erik the Librarian. Seen around the net, and in Library Journal...4 episodes posted so far. The summary says "Erik is a reclusive, introspective, yet very vocal librarian on a perpetual quest to make himself understood." LJ said "...it's a low point in the ongoing wars against the librarian stereotype. [...] Actually, he's obnoxious, manic, grating, and aggressive to the point of stalkerish." And, you know, I just can't top that. (I also couldn't watch anymore past about halfway through episode 3...blech.)
* Thumbs up: Library War. "The action comedy anime adapts Hiro Arikawa's popular novel about battles fought to preserve libraries when a new law threatens to clamp down on freedom of expression in 2019." I watched the video (no, I had no idea what they were saying) and just hope it gets released here with subtitles! Reminded me a lot of Yomiko Readman, aka The Paper, from Read or Die. (Watch it, if you haven't!)
* Two Thumbs Up! "Blood In The Stacks: Ravaged By A Vampire Librarian." (No, really, it's totally SFW.) Since even my stick people are sometimes unidentifiable, watching this vampbrarian (ha, ha) come to life was wild!
* Thumbs down: Erik the Librarian. Seen around the net, and in Library Journal...4 episodes posted so far. The summary says "Erik is a reclusive, introspective, yet very vocal librarian on a perpetual quest to make himself understood." LJ said "...it's a low point in the ongoing wars against the librarian stereotype. [...] Actually, he's obnoxious, manic, grating, and aggressive to the point of stalkerish." And, you know, I just can't top that. (I also couldn't watch anymore past about halfway through episode 3...blech.)
* Thumbs up: Library War. "The action comedy anime adapts Hiro Arikawa's popular novel about battles fought to preserve libraries when a new law threatens to clamp down on freedom of expression in 2019." I watched the video (no, I had no idea what they were saying) and just hope it gets released here with subtitles! Reminded me a lot of Yomiko Readman, aka The Paper, from Read or Die. (Watch it, if you haven't!)
* Two Thumbs Up! "Blood In The Stacks: Ravaged By A Vampire Librarian." (No, really, it's totally SFW.) Since even my stick people are sometimes unidentifiable, watching this vampbrarian (ha, ha) come to life was wild!
April 14, 2008
18 Sexy Trips to the Library Stacks
Entertainment Weekly celebrates National Library Week in their own film-based way.
Spring is on the way out; today it's supposed to hit 95°. Thus begins summer's approach...
Spring is on the way out; today it's supposed to hit 95°. Thus begins summer's approach...
April 3, 2008
What She Said
Y'all know my stance on the whole MLIs-librarian versus non-MLIS-librarian thing. But Mary Carmen really hit it with her post "You Call it Being a Professional; Some of Us Call it Being an A$$hat". She links to several other blogger's posts as well, and I certainly can't say it any better.
My mother forgot more in her 37 years as a non-degreed librarian (and yes, I believe she is now a retired librarian, not a retired paraprofessional library worker, dammit) than I will ever know. She, and librarians like her, taught me a lot about how you should treat fellow workers. I hope I live up to her lessons.
My mother forgot more in her 37 years as a non-degreed librarian (and yes, I believe she is now a retired librarian, not a retired paraprofessional library worker, dammit) than I will ever know. She, and librarians like her, taught me a lot about how you should treat fellow workers. I hope I live up to her lessons.
April 2, 2008
A Librarian at War
I found Shelby Monroe while researching a different topic, but I have to mention her here, and what she's doing. Miss Shelby, as she is known, is a librarian embedded with a division in Iraq. (Yes, you read that right.) She decided it was important to tell the daily stories of the soldiers in Iraq, and show pictures of the regular citizens, so she quit her library job and shipped out. Miss Shelby blogs about her experiences, and shares her photos, over at "101 Days with the 101st Airborne" and "Heads Down, Spirits Up!" (subtitled The Adventures of a Restless Librarian in Iraq).
What she's doing takes a huge amount of guts. HUGE. If you've read this for a while, you know I have a military background; IMHO it's one thing for a prepared (or semi-, as the case has been) soldier to go into a battlefield, but it's quite another to quit your quiet life far away from that chaos and willingly put yourself into it, then share the day-to-day realities of that chaos. I'm in awe.
Miss Shelby, thank you.
What she's doing takes a huge amount of guts. HUGE. If you've read this for a while, you know I have a military background; IMHO it's one thing for a prepared (or semi-, as the case has been) soldier to go into a battlefield, but it's quite another to quit your quiet life far away from that chaos and willingly put yourself into it, then share the day-to-day realities of that chaos. I'm in awe.
Miss Shelby, thank you.
Random Things
Lots going on, very busy; just wanted to share a couple of things with you!
* Philip Flick emailed me last week (and I'm sharing with his permission): "I was closing down a bank account in one town because I was moving to another town where I was just hired to work at the public library. He asked me what my occupation was and I told him librarian. He offered the title, "media specialist". Then he commenced to say that sounded much better than librarian, because of all those things you (are supposed to) think of when you think of the term 'librarian'. I am sure I did not provoke him to this, all I wanted was to close my bank account, not hear some discourse on what stigmas there are associated with being a librarian. One thing about the incident that I thought was weird was that he never even bothered to 'catch himself' in the process of his insult. He just carried on and thought that his assessment of the profession was the norm." So, yeah, there's that image thing impacting our daily lives again...
* Judith Seiss (yay, OPL!) alerted me to "What is it about librarians?", a brief discourse from Millard Filmore's Bathtub on "racy" librarian blog titles.
10:30am, 71° - yay spring!
* Philip Flick emailed me last week (and I'm sharing with his permission): "I was closing down a bank account in one town because I was moving to another town where I was just hired to work at the public library. He asked me what my occupation was and I told him librarian. He offered the title, "media specialist". Then he commenced to say that sounded much better than librarian, because of all those things you (are supposed to) think of when you think of the term 'librarian'. I am sure I did not provoke him to this, all I wanted was to close my bank account, not hear some discourse on what stigmas there are associated with being a librarian. One thing about the incident that I thought was weird was that he never even bothered to 'catch himself' in the process of his insult. He just carried on and thought that his assessment of the profession was the norm." So, yeah, there's that image thing impacting our daily lives again...
* Judith Seiss (yay, OPL!) alerted me to "What is it about librarians?", a brief discourse from Millard Filmore's Bathtub on "racy" librarian blog titles.
10:30am, 71° - yay spring!
March 25, 2008
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...
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...
March 23, 2008
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...
March 20, 2008
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!
* 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!
March 17, 2008
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!
Cold, grey and rainy here the last couple of days. Brr!
March 12, 2008
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.
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
Me, of course, I vote for the librarian.
Found via Folderol
March 10, 2008
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!
March 7, 2008
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.
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!
The thermometer says it's 70° but I'm cold... yes, I'm a weather wimp, I admit it!
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!
February 27, 2008
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! :-)
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! :-)
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