I just read that Roy will no longer be writing his column for Library Journal - but will continue to blog - an option he didn’t have when he started out 10 years ago.

Blogs didn’t exist then either. But since they do now it seems like a fairly good platform for continuing my coverage of all things digital that impact libraries. I can be as timely as I want, I can be as brief or as verbose as I care to be, I can easily include images and links, I have no editor to keep me from making a fool of myself, and readers can much more easily and publicly add to or refute what I say. In other words, it’s about as bully a pulpit as any columnist could want.

So after ten long years I will no longer be writing a column for Library Journal, but I will be blogging. I promise to never tell you what I had for breakfast or what my dog did. Every post will have at least something to do with libraries meeting the challenges and opportunities of the digital world.

Even more interesting is a comment by Judith Seiss (who’s OPL Plus blog I love to death!):

Welcome to to blogosphere. You will find it addicting. Next year, I, too, will stop publishing in print, but I will probably continue some blogging.

What an interesting trend. I have to admit that it is easier to write here on a blog than it would be if I had an editor to answer to - but I still get excited when I see my name in print … and without that what would my mother have to show all of her friends??

Sirsi is having a webinar in July with a focus on publishing for library professionals.  I’ve been very pleased with previous SirsiDynix Institutes, so if you’re interested in learning about publishing for your profession, make the time to attend.

Writing for the Library Profession

Date : Jul 10, 2007
Start Time : 11 a.m. Eastern
Length : 01:00:00

Do you want to inform and influence your colleagues?  Do you have a story to tell?  Have you done something innovative that delighted your users?  We don’t have a paucity of ideas and innovation in libraryland, we do have a problem with diffusion.   We need to share our ideas and experiences more.   From blog postings, to periodical and newsletter articles to website content and even to books library staff are increasingly being asked to write.  With the dynamic and rapid change happening in our sector, we have an increasing obligation to share our knowledge and experiences.  It’s an exciting time to be in libraries.

Registration is free - but you do have to register in order to attend.

If you follow Unshelved then you’ve noticed the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) theme. Well over at Gamecrafters’ Guild you’ll see that my husband is hard at work on his novel, posting excerpts to keep his readers up to date. If you’re participating - check out his profile & progress - if you’re not - it’s still pretty cool to check out :).

Just a little plug for my honey and his novel.

My most recent article is available in the Nov/Dec Issue of ONLINE Magazine.

DIY: Developing Web Applications In House
ONLINE Magazine, vol. 30, no. 6, November/December 2006, p.35.

Enjoy!

I have updated my Publications & Presentations page to include links to my most recent presentations and the citation for my most recent article. Note that the presentations regarding the Intranet all include links to the Flickr set for screenshots (since I usually do these presentations live on our Intranet - and I can’t share that info with you).

I added a few new pages - and updated some of the old pages. For those of you who only read this blog via RSS, you may not have noticed. On the right menu of this site I have included a link to an About Me page. I used to link to my bio on the Jenkins site - but that is skewed towards what I’ve done for the library - and I’ve done a lot more than that lately. I also updated my Resume (under About Me) and added a Publications and Presentations page. There’s not much clickable on this last page (except for my Computers in Libraries article from 2005) - yet! I will be adding my presentations from LITA and IL when I have them - although these will mostly be me browsing through our Intranet to give you a feel of what we did - and not a static PowerPoint presentation.

So if you want to stop by the actual page - feel free to check out these new pages.

I mentioned that I was writing another article last week. Well I finished it and sent it in - I don’t know yet if it will be published, but I thought I’d share some of the ideas with you all.

I decided to take 2 routes. Route 1 was deciding to get someone in house to handle your library programming projects (versus a contractor) and Route 2 was how to actually handle the project once it has been offered to you. I am working on a HUGE application (as I mentioned before) at work and what better time to explain the process to others?

I went over some of the benefits of having someone in house - like the fact that they’re always there. I constantly have people stopping by my desk to ask me questions, ask for upgrades, explain what they meant, etc. This helps me with my programming and I think it helps the staff (the users) feel better about the project as a whole. With a contractor you usually only see them once in a while. We had one that only came in one a month to talk to us - and even then not everyone had time to talk with him. Most recently we had a contractor who we have never met. All communications were over the phone and only 2 or 3 people participated in those conversations even though 20 or so of the staff would have to use the application.

Why did we have contractors? Well the first one was before I learned PHP and the second one was there because our IT team (me included) could not figure out how to achieve the result we were looking for. So, even if you have a programmer in house, you may still have to hire and outside consultant, but it will be less frequently (I hope).

I talked about planning the project - meetings, flow charts, more meetings. Which is interesting because I’m reading The Accidental Library Manager right now and Rachel suggests that you have as few meetings as possible and keep the on point and on schedule. I agree with her 100% - but it just never seems to happen that way when you’re talking about changing the way people have worked for 5 or more years. Plus, you as a programmer have no idea how people have been working for the last 5 years, so you have to spend time sitting with them and listening to them until you understand what goal they need to reach - the staff of your library is now your user - I repeat that a lot.

Well I hope you all get to read the entire article, I included some stuff here that I didn’t get to fit in - so you got a sneak peak and the bonus features.

Yesterday I got a call from Marydee Ojala (editor of ONLINE Magazine). She mentioned that I should keep my eye open for ideas for articles as I worked on tweaking my intranet. I mentioned that I was too busy at work right now to write and that in a couple of months I was going to be juggling school and work so I probably wouldn’t have time to write another article for a while. But she got me thinking - which I’m sure was the point of the call

I couldn’t go to sleep last night because I was going through everything on our Intranet and thinking if we came up with an issue that was big enough to write an entire article about - but I couldn’t - things have gone surprisingly smoothly (with the exception of a few minor tweaks here and there). So what could I write about? I am working on a HUGE project right now - I knew that it would be big before I took it on - but I didn’t realize how big! It requires a lot of organization and meetings and clarifications in order to get things in order. So why not write about planning a programming project in a library? I don’t know if it’s what she had in mind - but I stayed up late last night (couldn’t stop my mind from working) writing. And then on the train ride to work I wrote more. I just came in to work and typed it all up - and I have 1000 words already. Guess that means I’m writing another article

We’ll see if I can keep this pace up - if so I’ll share more details when I have them.