Hic Incepit pestis

Here begins the plague

The library has been closed for exactly a week today.  We had been providing curbside service for the week prior when social gatherings of 10 or more were banned by executive order of Governor Evers. A Safer At Home order was issued that took effect at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, March 25th, so we shut things down the evening before at 5 p.m.

No one is to go out except to the grocery stores, pharmacies, doctor appointments, and essential work.  All library self,except myself was told to work from home. I would check the book drops, be there for mail and other deliveries, check on the facility, manage the operational side of things like bill processing, coordinating a boiler and controller replacement, and helping with arrangements for the library to be a polling place at the spring election.

I have been busier than usual with more intense social interactions over the phone or Zoom (virtual conferencing) than one usually has in person.

These truly are strange times.  I thought I might start up this blog again. Perhaps for sharing with the library public.

This Blog has DeForest Book Rat in the title. I do consider myself a book rat as others might consider themselves gym rats because I read all the time. I read a lot. I read eclectically.

I thought I might share some of the titles I have been reading and some of my thoughts about those titles and the place of literature in a time of pestilence.

Guess we'll see how this goes!

I Told You I'd be back......

Greetings once again!

Here is a bit from my last library column about one of the new and exciting things happening at the library. Yes, we finally got our new electronic locker system up and running! So, here it the first public announcement of it. And yes, I did see the "Music Man" this summer at the Stratford Festival.

Maestro! May I have a drum roll please? Rat Ta Tat Tat. And perhaps a flourish from the trumpets? Dum da da dum! I would like to make a very important announcement. Starting immediately – if not sooner – you will be able to pick up the books you have on hold any hour of the day or night! That’s 24 hours a day, seven days a week (Well, in most weeks anyway.) “How is this amazing new service possible”? I hear you ask. Well, it’s not because we have the library open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is because of technology! With a capital “T” and that rhymes with “E” and that stands for “Electronic Lockers”. Yes, my friends. We have a set of newfangled lockers located on the south side of the library building right next to the book return. Now just imagine, my friend, you’re getting dolled up to go out to a fish fry on a Friday night. And you look at the clock and you see that the library will be closing any minute and you wanted to pick up those dvds and books that were sitting on the hold shelf waiting for you. So, what you do? Do you rush to get dressed and hop in your car and speed over to the library and risk getting a ticket? No.Do you say to yourself, “Well dash it all. I guess I’ll just have to get them sometime on Saturday, but that means that I can’t go to the blood bank and some poor person who needs type AB negative blood will just have to wait for their transfusion.” No. Because now you can call the library and ask them to check the books out and put them in a locker. Then you can swing by the library after you’re filled with fish, fries, and slaw (and maybe a little dessert), pop open the locker and get your materials which have already been checked out to you by the ever friendly, pleasant, and helpful library staff. “But how is this possible?” I hear you ask. Well, friends. When you call the library to ask to use the locker, you will be given – or you can mutually agree upon – your very own, special, one-time only PIN number!!!!! You simply punch your code into the keypad and viola! A door behind which your materials are patiently waiting pops open and you can collect your materials! Isn’t technology grand? If you would like to try out this new service, please give us a call at 846-5482.

That's two posts in one day -- in case you're counting! In my defense, it has been raining all day here so this gives me something to do to keep me out of trouble -- with a capital "T" and that rhymes with "Pool".

Ciao!
Ratty

This is unacceptable!

Goodness Gracious me!

My how time flies when you're not engaged in a project that asks you to blog regularly. How is it possible that I haven't written anything since March. March!!! I mean really. Since March, I've been on two vacations. One to the East Coast which included Gettysburg, Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown, Monticello, Mt. Vernon, and the Hiddenite Emerald Mine in Hiddenite, North Carolina where I went panning for gemstones and got a few too! In August I made my usual pilgrimage to Stratford, Ontario to immerse myself in a week of two-a-day theater experiences. I returned to work 27 days ago and have not had a day off since then. I have had one meeting after another, have had to put together a number of budget scenarios and a power point for a presentation to our village's Finance and Administration Committee, worked the primary election and had a library board meeting on the same day, and have generally been busy, busy, busy. I do write regularly. I email daily to a friend, which I could just as well do here and it would have the added feature of keeping me blogging so if ever I do link this to our library's web page, it won't have 6 month gaps. I mean really. How is that even possible? So, gentle readers, my apologies. I will post again soon -- possibly even tomorrow -- about some of the exciting things that are happening at the library. And there have been exciting things which is one of the reasons I've found it so hard to keep writing here. Until tomorrow, then.

The Rat is back!!!!!

I Am Curious ! -- Mellow

Greetings !

This is the last assignment for the second and last semester of Project Play. I was intrigued by the video clip about curiosity and the final question to be addressed in this blog that has to do with Project Play. The questions posed are( and I paraphrase) : Do you think you are a curious person? and What relationship does curiosity have to Project Play, the things you've learned, and keeping the Project Play torch burning? Glad you asked! I wasn't sure that I would describe myself as curious, because for me the word "curious" has a slightly negative feel. So rather than be inhibited by my sense of etymology, I went to an on-line dictionary and looked up the word. The first definition is "eager to learn more" and comes from a Latin term Unduly inquisitive; prying.meaning inquisitive / careful. Which pretty much describes me. And since I was interested -- I'm the type that gets lost in dictionary for hours which I suppose makes me "curious" -- I looked at the second definition which is the one that carries the more negative connotation of "unduly inquisitive; prying". Having reached a certain age and with it at least a basic understanding of myself, I would describe myself as curious about how things work and how process works, and even about how things and process could work in the future, but I' m not -- as a general proposition-- as interested in people. And I think I'm not as interested in people because that's were the second definition of "curious" joins up with my social sensibilities and I feel that being curious about people gets you into the realm of "unduly inquisitive and prying". Let's face it, I'm a Midwestern Norwegian/Danish mix that firmly believes that if someone wants to tell you about themselves and their lives you stand their and listen and make appropriate, encouraging noises even while every ounce of your being and upbringing tells you to run away. So, I think I have answered the first part of the question. Ja, sure. You betcha. I am curious.

Curiosity and the tenets of Project Play go hand in hand. Playing and learning are deeply linked. Good learners are playful with ideas. They like novelty. They have learned to be risk-takers and try new things. "Fear is the little mind killer" -- to quote Frank Herbert in "Dune" -- and you can't think or learn (much) when you're afraid. The big issue for any hierarchical institution ( and I think you'd have to allow that most public libraries are hierarchical due to the very nature of the classification system that organizes the books on the shelves. This classification system seems to spill over into the institution so that it's easy to become tradition-bound and easy to believe there are correct answers for every question.) is how to create a culture that rewards risk-taking. Believe me, I have tried. Believe me, I don't have any answers except to try to model the behavior myself, encourage others to try, and to be sympathetic and non-blaming if things don't work out. I believe that curiosity is integral to keeping current with technology and being able to pick and choose what will work best for your library and its customers. You have to be constantly exploring the ever-changing landscape of the Internet to discover what's out there. Then you have to have the courage to choose. Courage is a attribute of the curious. You can't have risk-taking without having the heart, the courage, to overcome the fear of the unknown, the fear of failure, the fear of humiliation.

Project Play has done a great job of offering an environment where it is safe to take risks, where it is safe to fail, and where there is a "guide at the side" to help us rise from the ashes of our failures. I personally think the "coolness" factor of some of the applications we have looked at and played with have added to the learning. Never underestimate the power of cool.

I'm glad the Project Play learning community will attempt to stay together. Mutual support has been a real asset of this project. It has kept us motivated. I will continue to explore the new brave new world that is evolving daily on the web. With the help of everyone associated with Project Play, I will try bringing some of these applications to my library's users.

See you in the funny papers!

The Rat

Make Mine Mashed...

Greetings!

Mashups have given me more pause than any of the other technologies we've looked at. I think this is because there are an infinity of combinations of APIs possible and the sites I've looked at seem to have just scratched the surface. Once again, I think that some of the examples looked at such as Ann Arbor's are great and useful for customers(also transparent) but aren't possible for this individual library to use on its pacs because it would have to happen at a system level. The mapping applications are nice and in fact we have used one of these already here in DeForest. We got a list of patron addresses without names and used a mashup that mapped these addresses onto a google map so we could see where our patrons lived. The information wasn't startling or unexpected -- the closer you live to the library the more likely you are to be a library patron -- but it was nice to see a visual representation on an actual map of the area of where our customers are coming from. That LibraryThing for libraries where you can import recommendations, see what's hot, find similar authors, etc. is awesome. But, this would have to be undertaken at the system level and perhaps our database is of a size it would overwhelm LibraryThings capacity. I have seen the Encore ILS which seems to have some of these features -- I'm not sure where their program gets it's data. But I digress. So, I like mashups and think they're great because anyone can play around with them and create something new and useful -- and without a lot of technical education. This may be moving the world towards the ability to customize almost infinitely -- which is a good thing. But large systems, by their very nature push towards uniformity, and most public libraries anymore do not stand alone. This creates a real tension between customization and uniformity which goes a long way towards explaining customer complaints like " I just don't see why I can't...... (fill in a verb and/or adverbial phrase). or better yet " I don't see why they won't let you.... So, until systems get so large that their vastness starts to look like customization ( I'm patterning my theory on the chaos theory of physics ( if you get far enough away get enough perspective) you will see the pattern in what you thought was chaos)) this tension will continue to exist and I'll continue to scratch my head and think "Wouldn't it be cool if...!!!!"

The Rat hopes you have a very Hoppy Easter and that the Easter Bunny leaves you lots of chocolate, jelly beans, and Peeps (and nothing that looks like chocolate jelly beans)!!!

What I Like About YouTube

Greetings!

YouTube is way cool! I have been visiting it for a couple of years now on at least a monthly basis. I was initially sent there by a friend's email and once I started looking around I was hooked. There are so many entertaining, sentimental, and educational things out there that it would be easy to get lost in time and find, suddenly, that it is four hours later ( Not that I'm writing from personal experience here. [Dictionaries have the same effect on me -- if I were writing from personal experience, mind you.]). The charming thing about YouTube is that it makes everyone a filmmaker, so there is a great democratizing effect. You don't have to be rich or famous to put together a "film" that gets a lot of visits. Also, if there was something you saw on television that you really liked and thought it might be gone forever, it probably exists on YouTube somewhere. One of the downsides of YouTube is that it is duplicative. There are many posts of the same thing -- like the Medieval Help Desk which I posted in my previous blog. The search strings seem to be very intuitive so that if you want to see, for example, those funny California cow commercials, you can type in California cows and get to some of them and one thing leads to another in YouTube sort of like citation indexing. I'm more familiar with YouTube as a source for video clips than as a social networking site although I could see where it could be that as well. As to its usefulness to public libraries, I think that it is a lot like MySpace and FaceBook. It is where a lot of people are or where they visit regularly and if you are going to market your product and try to attract more customers, then you need to go where the people are. Having a YouTube account makes a lot of sense, but only with the caveat that I trot out every time I opine about all the wonderful new technology we've been playing with, that it has to be some staff members job (not an added-on job, but their actual job) to keep the content fresh, up-to-date, and new. Novelty (what a novel idea for an institution that deals with novels en masse) drives consumer interest and thus library visits. If the customer never knows what new and exciting thing they might encounter at your library or on your library's web site(or other web presences) they'll keep coming back. I also think that if libraries are going to invest the dollars to have a web presence that there needs to be a way to count that activity ( I know, there are hit counters)and use it with funding sources and that means an ability to compare your level of activity to other libraries of a like size. The library produced movies -- like the Harper College Tour-- worked really well because they were humorous, poked fun at some stereotypes, actually got across their message, were short and pithy, and had good production qualities. I don't think any library should post something that looks like "The Blair Witch Project" unless you are actually doing a homage / send up of that film. I think that's all I have to say on the subject -- at least for now!

The Rat has spoken!

Medieval Helpdesk Movie

I really like this version of "The Medieval Helpdesk". You can learn Norwegian while reading the English Subtitles simultaneously.