If you follow my Twitter, you know I’ve been consumed with coding the OPAC for my public library these past seven days. Also, I pissed off greatly angered my Dad recently. I’m constantly negative / patronizing around him. It’s like a subconscious force. So much for trying to be personally developed.

The library is looking really great now; check out this search for example. I’m putting it on hold starting right now. I won’t work any more on it for one month. Hold me to that promise, okay?

The problem with it is that it’s not the best way for my to contribute to the world at the moment. The world starts at home, so it doesn’t matter how much you’re contributing if you’re leeching at home. I have some work to do.

I listened to a lot of back episodes from Uncontrolled Vocabulary. Fascinating talk show on librarianship. I didn’t know that people talked about things like taxonomy schemas and Library of Congress subject headings en masse.

I’m going to take and post some new photos. Maybe I’ll even write something. Or if I’m feeling lazy, I’ll take a photo and then write a short paragraph about it. It’s all good.

I wrote three posts on Daytona State College News a few days ago. That thing gets tons of search traffic. Must be because of it’s high ranking.

I’m counting… I have 18 days till the return to college. 10 days till birthday #17. I still have time to make some progress.

I replaced the $20/day plaque with one that says $1/day. That’s more reasonable. My online ventures are averaging 60 cents per day this month. It’s in reach, I say!

See y’all around. Actually, not around. Right here.

I’ve disappeared for the last few days because I’ve been working on The Thripp Public Library. While I can’t open it to the public yet (Dad won’t open our house to the world), I’m working on it now because I have time off and Dad’s generously donated lots of his books. Though I wanted to use Evergreen or Koha, I picked the simple and obscure OpenBiblio as my library system, because it’s the only thing I could find that would run on shared hosting. I was disappointed by the lack of features to start, but I’m starting to like the power and control with it, especially since the database makes sense, so adding new features is easy.

Before I even got started, the first step was to choose a barcoding format, classification system, and spine labeling format.

I don’t like Library of Congress (LC) classification because it’s arcane and confusing, so the Dewical Decimal system (DDC) was the default choice. But what to use it for? You can use it for everything, but I decided right away not to use it on fiction items, instead opting for “FICTION / *last name*” as the spine label and call number, which is the same as the Volusia County library system. It may not be ideal, but it’s much easier to use. Biographies are tougher. I chose DDC, but I put two lines above that say “BIO / *subject last name”. The DDC part is always “*numbers* *first three letters of the author’s last name*”. Large type items get “LT” at the top of the spine label. Spine labels == call numbers, always. I created a template file for spine labels in OpenOffice.org Writer, which I add to as I catalog books. Then when I get to twenty or thirty, …

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Sorry for the lack of updates this week. It’s been busy for me… mainly because I have school and work (20 hours per week for the summer). And that’s right in the middle of the week (Monday-Thursday), where it keeps me busy.

Anyway, I’m trying now to switch jobs… to move back to the Ormond Beach library from Holly Hill (I’ve written of the two on my about page). My boss isn’t being nice to me. I told her that maybe she shouldn’t go into library service, because she doesn’t seem to enjoy the work. That hit close too home apparently, so now she’s threatening to fire me for being disrespectful. I didn’t know it was so easy to fire a public servant.

I can definitely see her reaction is rooted in fear rather than reason. Now, I have little bias for emotion or reason… half the time emotion is intuition, and that is a great skill to have. For the other half, the emotion is fear. Fear-based decisions are never good. They distract your focus and weaken your resolve. You get stuck in a repetitive loop of non-achievement.

What I told her, is pretty much the same thing I’ve been feeling myself. Librarianship is a public good and a necessary field, but I haven’t been seeing it as my best way to contribute to the world. Why should I limit myself to the narrow medium of reference requests, when I can be helping people everywhere, on a much broader level? I think my photography does that. I give out print copies often, and hear how people find it beautiful and inspiring. Actually, I’ve never heard those exact words… but a lot of stuff like it. Photography hasn’t been profitable, but that’s in part because …

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This is a lengthy post (~4500 words). I cover file names in great detail, but go much further into the differences between a literal and abstract asset management system (descriptive file names vs. not), spend many paragraphs debunking time zones, daylight time, traditional date formatting, and use 500 words to debate underscores vs. hyphens vs. spaces to break up words in your web addresses. The implications go way beyond mere file names. Read on if you’re in for a adventure . . .

I don’t like that all the articles I read on organizing your photos recommend giving them descriptive file names. The problem with files and directories is that they’re just like their non-computerized equivalents: rigid and inflexible. Your photo cannot appear under “flowers” and “macros,” because a file can only belong to one folder. Similarly, it can only have one file name, and if you fill that with keywords so you can use the Windows search to find it, the name becomes long and unwieldy. Plus, if you take a lot of photos (I’m averaging 500 a month), it’s totally impractical.

Why is it impractical? Because you’re restricted in length and taxonomy, there are no connections between files besides rigid folders and rudimentary keyword searches, and you’re adding metadata in a bad place, because the file name should be the unique and persistent identifier for the image. If you want to change all your pictures of “cars” to “automobiles,” you’re in trouble. Every time your taxonomy scheme changes, you have to change dozens of file names. This is fine if you’re the average, uninformed user: you have one copy of each photo in “My Pictures” on your hard drive, and that’s all that exists. But even then, unless you’re use batch renaming software like 1-4a rename (the biggest kludge …

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I’ve been impressed by the progress the LISWiki (library and information science) has been making, so I’ve opened an account and started contributing to articles; stuff like digitization, renew, checkout, and open stacks.

I’m also blogging about library service now; I wrote my first article yesterday, 10 Tips for Reference Dialogues (digg). If you’ve read my about page, you know librarianship is my choice career, so it’s inevitable I start writing about it. This will be mixed in with my photography here, though there will be more photos of books to accompany my entries.

Other news: the spring ‘08 semester is over. I got an A in everything but photography, where I got a B+. Do you see the irony there? I did the assignments and missed no classes, and had nice stuff including Wine Bottles, The Rebel, and The Gaze for my presentation, but my teacher is afraid of A’s.

My cousin’s blogging again. I set up my photography archive using Gallery2, but it’s just for family and friends since my family is afraid of the public. I changed all the Google ads here to orange; I like it because they stand out yet complement the olive green links and banner. 2008-05-16 Update: Switched back; orange was getting no clicks. Check out the “printable view” links on each post now, such as the one for 10 Tips for Reference Dialogues. I messed with the WP-Print code so that the footnote markers come after links instead of before, the printed from URI is just the article, and the links are black instead of the default blue or purple (that’s CSS though). What I don’t like about the defaults, …

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A cornerstone of library work is the reference interview (or interrogation if you’d prefer), as it is the principle persona for the library knowledge-base, and is increasingly the domain of library assistants and para-professionals. These are the ideas I’ve picked up from working in the public library sector.

1. Use the encyclopedias. Many students come in wanting books on obscure subjects. Especially in smaller libraries, there are no books to be found, but an encyclopedia article will do in a pinch, and is an authoratative source.

2. Ask questions. If he asks where the nonfiction section is, don’t just point at it; ask if there is anything in particular he’s looking for. Often there is, but you need to break the ice. If you’re asked for “history books,” don’t ask interrogative questions like “why do you need history books?,” but cooperative ones like “what kind are you looking for?”

3. Quality over quantity. Don’t give the patron a good book on crocheting and then eight unrelated books on knitting; start with one, and then follow up if the resource proves inadequate. Overloading him with information is not much better than doing nothing at all, as it is our job to sift the wheat from the chaff.

4. Leverage Google for the author of a title, the jargon of a field, or even how to spell an elusive word (if the mis-spelling is common, Google will list it with the question, “did you mean?”). This can be useful if you can’t understand your patron’s mumblings; search what it sounds like, and often you’ll get your answer. You can then query your library’s catalog with the details you …

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