Archive for December, 2008

Mark Survived!!

December 30, 2008 at 8:01 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

Hi, fellow Technical Servants. I thought I’d use our blog to bring you up-to-date on my surgery, etc. As you know, it went really well. I’m feeling good—very little pain—but having to wear a catheter for a week is a pain in the…. But I’m getting really good at emptying it. There’s a nursing home assistant job in my future, I feel certain.

 

Anyway, the oddest aspect of my hospital stay was that my wife, Betsy, was admitted to the hospital herself the night after my surgery. She had been having some bleeding complications recently from her surgery back in early December, and it got much worse after she went home the night of my surgery. So, after an anguished couple hours, she got back in the car and drove herself to the ER at the hospital I was in. They wound up admitting her for observation, and we had rooms just two apart from each other! The nurses thought it was the most romantic thing they had ever heard of and kept teasing us about not being able to apart even for surgery. So funny.

 

I’m home now and taking it easy. I’m watching lots of Star Trek the Next Generation DVDs and reading the New York Times from cover to cover each day. I’m looking forward to my post-op appointment next Monday, when they will (a) remove my catheter (YAY!!) and (b) discuss the pathology report that resulted from the tissue they removed from me last Friday. The doctor expects good news, and I’m cautiously hopeful. Then it’s just a matter of getting up enough energy to get back to work. I feel good now but get exhausted quickly. That should improve.

 

I miss you all and wish you a Happy New Year. Hope to see you soon.

 

Mark

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Techno-trends in Library Land

December 22, 2008 at 7:42 pm · Filed under Library News

Although its title is deceiving, the SEFLIN online workshop “Trends, Fads or Folly: Spotting the Library Trends that Really Matter” provides a good look at three of the technological trends librarians have reportedly been buzzing about: virtual worlds, folksonomies, and “new” modes of reading. (Actually, if you participated in the Web 2.0 initiative here at Sherman library in 2007, you already know a bit about these.)

 

Nearly 75% of the 90-minute class was devoted to the use of virtual worlds in libraries, especially Second Life. According to the two panelists, libraries and library workers are using virtual worlds for everything from training to reference to networking. And, of course, it’s a key piece of ammunition in overcoming the ennui of the teen library user. Many libraries are paying big bucks to set up virtual buildings in Second Life, where users can duplicate the library experience in surprising detail. (I wonder if this includes the ability to rip pages out of art books and happen upon teens having sex in the bathrooms!)

 

A folksonomy, for those not currently in library school, is “the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content.” It’s also sometimes referred to as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing, or social tagging. Similar in concept to Wikis, people use folksonomies to put their “stamp” on the way a picture, piece of text, or just about anything else is categorized. According to the panelists in this workshop, libraries are experimenting with this as a way to actually let their patrons helps catalog items. (Calm down, Kathleen.) It’s a good way, they say, of getting patrons more invested in their libraries.

 

The segment on “new” ways of reading focused on nontraditional ways of absorbing information, such as via digital audiobooks, ebook readers, etc. Not really very cutting-edge. Playaways and downloadable audiobooks are pretty standard fare in libraries these days, but apparently they are becoming more prevalent and drinking up more of our ever-dwindling library resources.

 

What does this all mean for technical services? That we’re going to be cataloging a whole lot more ebooks and downloadable titles. Less processing work, I guess. As for virtual worlds, I don’t see that being something that’s going to affect us right now. That said, the ability to fly and look like a buff 25-year-old—standard fare for Second Life—is pretty tempting. So you might want to give it a try.

 

You can view the entire workshop anytime, through the SEFLIN site. Let me know if you need help finding it.

 

–Mark

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