James LaRue - myliblog

I know, that sounds a little insulting. But it's true. Click here to see graphs and everything.

I burned a copy of Fedora 15, then loaded it first on my desktop machine, and now on my Acer netbook. A few brief comments. First, it did load, relatively quickly, on both machines. The desktop image is lovely, and it's all very spare. I got it to talk to both wireless cards without incident. Second, on the Acer I had to go into the System Settings (much easier than older Gnome 2) and fiddle with the touchpad to enable one tap clicking. The default resolution is right on the Acer too -- I had to fiddle with the display on my desktop. (1024x768 seems to be the standard laptop). But the Gnome 3, or Fedora 15, fonts are too skinny. Third, it was a little jarring to try to move around from one active program to the next. Instead of just clicking on a panel, you have to click on Activities, then a sort of panel on the right, then the item. That replaces one click with three, which seems LESS efficient. Fourth, but it's fun to learn new things, stretch the brain. For now,...

Click here to listen to two of my favorite people speaking with deep passion and warmth -- and a lot of high mutual regard -- about the wonderful profession of librarianship.

This image (thank you Rochelle Logan!) details my attempt to describe to my public library board of trustees, and the public generally, just what we do. Not what we say we do, or think we do. What we can actually measure. Note: you may have to click on the image to make it large enough to see clearly. I began by sorting (by descending volume) of all the statistics my library (the Douglas County Libraries in Douglas County, Colorado) gathered in the year 2010 (January-December). There are seven broad categories of use that far overshadow everything else. AFTER these stats, it's a drop of an order of magnitude (a factor of ten). This is what my library DOES. I've carried this around for awhile, and think the only big things missing are these: * wireless use. This is growing very rapidly. it might be as big as PC use. (It turns out we have captured this. It's about 4,000 to 6,000 a month, so 48,000 to 72,000 a year. Right now, that puts it midway between the 7 things...

We have a notepad in the shower, on some kind of water proof paper, using a special pencil. A few days ago, I found this, created by my son, Max. A dinosaur, with goatee and beret, says, "Hmm, yes, busy." The "Like" is, I think, my daughter's comment. So what's bad: the other shower isn't working. What's good: live art feed and commentary.

3M was one of the big hits of ALA -- an alternative to Overdrive. As it happens, DCL had a lot to do with this product, as in pretty much defining the goals, doing the mock-up of how it should work, getting it to directly integrate with our catalog, and more. Major kudos here to Monique Sendze, my Associate Director of Information Technology, and her staff. I spoke with Eric Hellman at ALA about it, and he wrote a nice blog post here . He's a smart guy.

JCPL Facing Closures: Learn More at Save Jeffco Libraries Community Meetings (GOLDEN, Colo. – June 17, 2011, UPDATED June 21, 2011) Save Jeffco Libraries is hosting six community meetings to inform Jefferson County residents about the significant budgetary issues facing Jefferson County Public Library (JCPL) and the group’s efforts to form an independent library district. “Over the past several years, the Jefferson County Commissioners have diverted $6 million in property taxes from JCPL’s dedicated mill levy to other County departments,” said former Library Board chair and Save Jeffco Libraries founder Tom Atkins. “Diversion of these funds has resulted in staff layoffs and Monday closures.” “If JCPL remains a part of Jeffco government, things will only worsen. The 2012 Library budget will be $2 million short, and it is obvious when you look at the numbers that Jeffco residents will likely see some of our libraries close. As an independent library district, five-year projections ...