James LaRue - myliblog

An article solicited from me and edited by Library Journal's Josh Hadro showed up as today's " Library Link of the Day ." The article itself is based on a panel talk I gave at BCR's 2010 Reference Renaissance, entitled " The Visibility and Invisibility of Librarians ." There are a few comments on it already. I did another version of this that will be coming out in a book of conference proceedings at the end of the year. I love the souped up chart they did from my original one.

I enjoy seeing good people and good libraries thrive. Click here for a link to a wonderful story by Norman Oder, formerly of Library Journal, about my neighbor to the north.

On election night, I came back from rehearsal (for "The Education of Mister Scrooge," by the Front Range Theatre Company ) and checked Douglas County's website. I saw that Amendments 60/61 and Proposition 101 were going down overwhelmingly. Given Douglas County's conservative bent, I figured that was decisive, and went to bed. As it happens, of course, the measures were defeated in every single county in the state by close to 70%. There were lots of reasons for that defeat. Among them was the good work done by many librarians on their own personal time. Aspen Walker, a librarian who happens to work as my assistant, made a major contribution in her Bad3Bad4Libraries effort. The defeat of the measures was good in many ways. Yet I woke up mildly depressed. A few days later, I realized why. I've been involved in three elections in four years (2007 and 2008 for the library, and in opposition to the Bad 3 this year). The first two lost. The success of this one did ...

This is about the attempt to do a 20 year study mapping environmental factors to childhood well-being. Ambitious! I serve as chairman of the citizen advisory board. Click here for a link to the project website. There's also a video. That link is here .

I feel a little guilty about this. But if you somehow escaped this utterly infectious smash hit from the South Korean girl band the Wonder Girls, then you must be made to pay. The weird thing is that its appeal continues for me. My daughter, who taught in Taiwan, tells me that EVERYBODY knew this, all ages. That was almost a year ago now. But these Wonder Girls are just so dang cute. Oh, and here's a bonus link, a clip from the "Korean Beyonce." It goes to show you: American pop songs and moves are extremely widespread. So to speak.

Recently I was asked by a colleague what I thought about our 2008-2009 adoption of self-check and AMH solutions. Bob Pasiznyuk, who was our IT associate director at the time (now the director of the Cedar Rapids Public Library in Iowa) was chiefly responsible for that decision and its implementation, and I swear he wrote it up for me, although I can't lay my hands on the paper. But for other librarians considering the solution, here's the short version about why we did it, and roughly how it played out. We had three problems: * extraordinary growth of use. * sharp restrictions on space (for more traditional circulation stations) * limits on dollars for additional staff * a rising incidence of repetitive motion stress injuries The use of RFID tags, self-check stations (3M), and automated materials handling units (sorters from three different companies) was the right solution. Our initial investment was about $1 million. We paid for it out of savings. We calculate th...

A terrific name for a band, and a remarkably gifted couple of indie musicians, cranking out offbeat music in somebody's house. Nataly Dawn can sing like a funk-laconic angel, and Jack Conte is a demented percussionist with a tiny piano. Give it a listen here . My favorite: " If you think you need some lovin' ."