Reflections from above

Well, today marked the end of my month and a bit as acting branch manager, Sydenham Library. Looking back on over the past month, it has given me a new appreciation of what my boss actually does.

I guess from the point of a worker, it is very easy to sit back whenever something goes wrong, or something just does not seem fair, and wonder to yourself "What exactly does my boss do, it doesn't seem like she does anything". Why, yes, to an extent they do none of the labors that make the place function, they are like the mortar in a house. When we think of a wall, we think of the bricks, and they make up the wall... but there is one thing we really don't think about that is holding all those bricks together... the mortar.

When I was first asked to be acting manager, I thought to myself, this is going to be a breeze, the place will pretty much run itself, and I will have so much extra time to get little tasks I have been putting off for ages finished. I can now say, out of all those little tasks, I probably only got around to doing one. I can always tell when I am challenged at work and enjoying it, cause the days and hours just fly by. This experience was like that, it feels like only a couple of days ago I was waving off Inna thinking of what pranks I can set up in her office for when she returns.

This experience has also given me the opportunity to see how things flow from the other side attending co-ordinators meetings and the like. I can see why sometimes despite our constant nagging at the branch, it can be difficult for Inna to commit to trying different things, or improving some workflows.

It appears to me that libraries have so much potential to deliver valuable services to the community and help people better themselves and become technologically more advanced, and lets use the catch cry, become life long learners. I think there is really only one thing currently holding libraries back from achieving this with fantastic results... Librarians. The sooner all these old dinosaurs retire and die, the better. I know it sounds a bit Nazi like, but fire the librarians and burn the books. Whilst trying to give the world the impression that they are now hip, know what a blog is, and can be cool. They are a bunch of scared little old ladies who are too obsessed with trying to keep the piece with everyone, and try to create a model of services and workflows the suite everyone... when basically different areas have different needs, and different needs are often addressed in varying services and procedure to match those needs.

If you are a librarian reading this, yes congratulations you are actually using a fang-dangled computer and reading one of those modern bloggy-who-ze-what's-it's... but maybe you should retire now - Why we are at it, lets change the name library to 'community learning centre', 'technology and information hub'.

To close... the biggest thing I have learnt from my manager stint... write everything down in a diary. It's bloody hard trying to keep track of everything that's happening, and where all your staff are. I shall now go back to being mortal.

New/Improved Web Toys

Well, I haven't posted anything serious lately... except for the seriously easy mug cake... so thought it was time for something with a bit more substance.

Playing about on the net as of late, and a few new/improved services have propped up that could be some fun to have a play around with.

Firstly for whats new....


Google Maps Streetview
http://maps.google.com.au/

You can kill hours satisfying your inner stalker with Google Streetview. Google Maps and Google Earth gave us all the ability to look down onto places via satellite imagery, which was all pretty cool (oh look there is my house, taking up a total of 1 cm of screen space)... now Google has introduced to Google Maps Australia streetview.

Streetview allows you to select a location on almost any Australian street, and get a 360 degree vantage point, as if you were standing there on the street. Its truly amazing. Like the satellite images, it is not live images, and it appears most of the Melbourne stuff was done around Christmas time, as I have my Christmas wreath on my front door.

I knew streetview was being launched this year, but I was truly surprised at the coverage. I was expecting the inner suburbs of the major capitals to be done, but to my surprise you can visit many country towns and have a peek around. With such broad coverage the biggest surprise for me has been that they have not covered Geelong???

You can imagine all the people moaning and groaning out there about privacy, but really, they need to build a bridge and get over it. The images are already at launch over 6 months old, peoples faces, and car number plates are automatically blurred out so you can't be identified. The images are from the view of the street, so if someone really wanted to see what your house looked like they could just drive/walk past and get a more detailed view, as the streetview images loose quality when you zoom in.

What has been improved:

Delicious
http://delicious.com/

Delicious has just recently launched a new platform and interface. Most of the base functionality of delicious appears not to have changed, and most of what has changed seems to be purely cosmetic.

Some of the other changes to the platform include:

• new name... the url is no longer del.icio.us by is now delicious.com this is apparently to make it easier for people to remember the correct URL.


• When you manually post a URL now by typing in the URL to save, delicious now goes and automatically fills in the name/description by checking the URL and returning its page title... this I think is very good functionality, and is one thing I could not understand why it was not in the old del.icio.us


• In the improvements they have dropped support for HTML feeds of your bookmarks. Most people won't even know this is gone because they never realised it existed, but for people like me who built apps from it (for work) we have now had to change to using the REST APIs to return the same data.

Facebook
http://www.new.facebook.com/

Facebook has also undergone some cosmetic changes. At first I was not a fan, but now I can not comprehend what I would not have liked about it.

The new interface loads a lot faster, as not as many elements appear on your screen at once.

I love the new look of profiles, as if you look at someones profile who has installed 101 apps, you don't have to wait for each app to load as you did in the old Facebook, as they are now kept on a separate tab.

The new platform also encourages a lot more social interaction with the ability for people to comment on pretty much anything that appears on your profile, such as your 'status'.

LibraryThing
http://www.librarything.com/

LibraryThing has released a new service which makes all the cover art available on LibraryThing accessible by external app's. In library land, this could be a big competitor to services such as Syndetics which charge for such a service.

The downside... They will only allow you to download 1000 book covers a day, so if you try and integrate the cover art into your library opac, and your opac returns result sets containing 20 items, you will hit your thousand pretty quick.

At Brimbank Christian is working hard on a new catalogue interface to better integrate the catalogue with our web site. To help integrate enhanced features such as cover art into this I have written a little API that sits on our web server, that cache's the cover art from LibraryThing when we initially get it, so we can provide most of our cover art from our own server (its only the first time an items cover is ever displayed it will come down from LibraryThing).

Well that is all I can think of, so if you get bored, have a play on the web and checkout these new/improved services.

End of Fin Year - and End of Old Life

Ok, tomorrow marks the start of the new financial year, and I am sort of looking at it as also being the start of the lead up to a new start for me.

Well the first 1/2 of this year has been a bit of a roller coaster for me, had lots of ups and downs, but I think the second 1/2 will see the ride smooth out a little... then 2009 will be 2000 and mine!

So updates on whats happening in my world:
The me/Sean situation... is coming close to being resolved and now we seemed to have agreed on exactly what will work and are going through the processes to have it legalized.

We are going to see our place, and I am looking to rent a place close by to where I am now. I am happy with the area, its close enough to work so I figure why go elsewhere if I am happy where I am. With renting, I will be paying less than I am in mortgage payments, and in the long term it gives me more flexibility to move to follow job opportunities. So if anyone is looking for a nice little place in Caroline Springs, keep your eyes peeled!

Another reason for the move is I came to the conclusion, that it will force me to have a new start. Despite not knowing exactly where I will be living soon... I am strangely excited and looking forward to it.

Health kick front - I have gotten a little lazy at late, as it has been too bloody cold and/or wet... but still determined to make a good go of it when the Gym opens in the coming months.

On the work front, my project work down at Sunshine has been extended until the 1st of November, when it will be re-evaluated. While we did reach and complete the project goal of building a new website for the library service well on time and budget, we are now going to focus on improving what we have done and adding lots of extra cool features that were on our wish list, but were not the highest priorities in the original project.

This means I am still only working at Sydenham Library on Mondays and Thursdays, then at Library Administration in Sunshine for the remainder of the week. This is except for a month from August, when I will be acting branch manager while my boss goes on a holiday abroad. I am sure I will need to watch and study Frances O'Brien very hard to see how to do the job properly. During that time I will be based at Sydenham full time again.

On the love life front... well - hello I have been talking about work - so nothing really to announce at the moment.

Reprogramming

Well I have been neglecting the old blog as of late, so I thought I better do a post to keep it alive!

This week at Sydenham Library we have been undertaking a process to reprogramme the RFID tags in our entire collection for use with our new 3M RFID solution.

For those who are not from the Library world - RFID is Radio Frequency Identification - and is a modern day solution to replace barcodes with microchips which can transmit a book or DVDs unique barcode number through a radio frequency. In an RFID solution, each 'item' is tagged with an RFID tag, a sticker basically around 4 cm X 4cm. This tag acts like a disk, and can hold information you program into it, which in most libraries case is the unique barcode number used to identify the item to the libraries catalogue system.

Why would we want to do this in Libraries? Well there are a number of benefits to using RFID as opposed to barcodes. These include:

• With RFID you do not need to line the tag up to an exact position above its readers, as you do a barcode. This means there is less moving items about reducing manual handling injuries such as RSI. This also means that the efficiency of tasks such as borrowing and returning is faster.
• Unlike barcodes where you can only read one barcode at a time on a scanner, an RFID reader pad can read multiple RFID tags at once as it does not require line of site - once again reducing the time it takes to borrow and return items.
• Because of its ease of use, RFID helps make self-service solutions easier for library customers to use. Self-service means less loans are handled by librarians, freeing them up to perform other duties and giving them more time to organise and deliver other value added services to their customers.

Sydenham Library already had an RFID solution in place, but with the introduction of the 3M solution to the Sunshine Library which is also part of the same library service, the 3M system has been extended to Sydenham now to maintain consistency across the library service. Why then if we already had RFID do we need to reprogram all our tags you may ask?

With RFID even though the theory and equipment behind most solutions is roughly the same, the difference can lay in where abouts on an RFID tag the item barcode is stored. If you think of an RFID tag as like a big square of pigeon holes, with each hole being able to hold a single piece of information. For example our tag might look like:

1 2 3

4 5 6

7 8 9

now lets say our barcode numbers are 3 numbers long. Solution A might store the barcode number in slot 1,2 & 3... where solution B might store the barcode in slots 7,8, and 9. So with our reprogramming process we are moving all the information stored on our tags to a position where the new 3M system is looking for it!

We started reprogramming at the start of the week, and as of last night pretty much only had our children's and AV collection left to reprogram, so the reprogramming task is rather fast and should hopefully be finished by either late this week, or early next week!

Well I know this was a boring post, but I just felt I had to post something!

New Brimbank Libraries Website

Well after almost 6 months in development, we are entering the home stretch with creating and launching the new Brimbank Libraries website. While we continue to improve and spit-polish features behind the scenes, a 'copy' of the new site is available for people to take for a test drive. This can be accessed from our Development Blog at http://development.brimbanklibraries.com where you can also read the latest on some of the new features we will be introducing into the new site, as well as comment on what you like, don't like, and what is completely fu#*ed up with the new site.

The new site is made in Joomla! which is an open source content management system. It was a real big learning curve at first to understand the architecture of Joomla, and how it does things differently to the current proprietary product that we use.

The advantages with Joomla include:
Its open source.. so it's free, and is constantly being updated and improved by a community of developers.
There are hundreds of 'extensions' you can plug into the website to add additional functionality to meet the needs of your audience
If there isn't an extension that does what you want, there is nothing to stop you from making your own extension from scratch, or hacking an existing extension to bits and tweaking it to your needs.
It has a very friendly 'front end' editing system to allow staff to easily update the content of web pages without needing to know any html.
Did I mention it's free!

Some of the new flashy features of the new site include:

• A book blog that is fully integrated into the website... unlike most libraries which have an external book blog that sits completely separate to their site.
• Use of web 2.0 tools such as del.icio.us for bookmark/weblink sharing, instant messaging, Google Calendars, ect.
• Google maps... cool to look at and play with!
• Less clutter! over the years the old website was filled with garbage left right and centre, the new website means we have been able to strip everything back, and refile the bits that are worth keeping, in what is hopefully a more logical order
• Integration of RSS Feeds so you can get the latest library news in your RSS aggregator like Google Reader or Bloglines.

The new site is due to be launched mid June, so if you have a chance, log in and take the demo for a test drive and let us know what you think... and more importantly any bugs you may come across!

http://development.brimbanklibraries.vic.gov.au

Destination Library

In my spare time I am currently working on a project, doing some web graphic/css design stuff for a Victorian Library working group, trying to encourage more people to consider joining the library industry.

One of the initiatives which this working group is launching is a wiki with information on the types of jobs available within the information management industry, profiles of people working in the field, and links to information on education providers to help you join the industry, since you will become so overwhelmingly impressed with libraries from reading all this stuff!

The wiki is being called "Destination Library", and the main theme the working group seems to be going for, which I am trying to carry through with in my designs is a 'new age, not old lady's in "cardigans, peals and sensible shoes" - Though the later I'm not too sure of, as if you go to any library conference or training, I estimate over 90% of attendees are wearing flat black shoes.

The image/title at the top of this post if one of my initial ideas, with a theme based around it taking shape. Once I have more developed I will post some samples and get your feedback on what works, and what sucks.

In the meantime... If you are now so interested in joining the information management industry you can access the Destination Library wiki, as it stands in its naked, undressed state at http://destinationlibrary.pbwiki.com

See Where I Work!

As part of the job share I am doing with Christian for the development of the new library website, one of the cooler things I have been playing around with is creating interactive online panoramas.
This involves taking a whole heap of photos from the same spot and 'stitching' them all together to create one huge 360 view, then loading that picture into a web page with a java applet called PT Viewer.

Once this is loaded you get a full interactive panorama which allows you to turn around, zoom in, zoom out.... basically allowing customers to have a interactive tour of our library.

Checkout my example here.

A New Project

Well, I now have a new project. I have been appointed as an online community development officer for Brimbank Libraries. You may be asking yourself about now "what the f$%k does an 'online community development officer' do?"


First let me point out that I am job sharing this position which Christian who works at Central Services and that it is only temporary for around 6 months.


What this position is responsible for is the research, consultation and development stage of a new website for Brimbank Libraries. What makes this role so exciting is:

a) The website well and truly needs an overhaul, and being in a position to have input into how it should be structured is great.

b) Council has a vision of making the library website more than a static web presence, but more interactive and more of a community portal integrating many of the latest web features such as blogging, wikis, RSS feeds, ect, allowing more 2 way communication between the library and its customers online.

c) Council is looking at building the website on an open source content management system called Joomla. I think the potential of an open source solution is very exciting.

I will be working at Central Services at Sunshine on this position on Tuesdays Wednesdays and Fridays, meaning I will continue to work at Sydenham on Mondays and Thursdays.

Swimming Upstream

Hey, On Friday night I watched Swimming upstream with Jesse Spencer (from TV Series House), Judy Davis and Geoffrey Rush. It is based on a true story about swimming champion Tony Fingleton (played by Spencer) and his upbringing by a controlling, over competitive alcoholic father (Rush).

It was a bit along the lines of Billy Elliot, except it was set in Queensland, and included cute boys in speedos rather than to-to's!

On Saturday we laid a concrete footing for our eventual garden beds, so that was a fair bit of physical labour! Today was a rest day, we went and fed the ducks earlier (and sea gulls!).

This year we are having the family Christmas at Sean's and my place. We have already started getting things together and bought some wine for it yesterday - though it is starting to get bad as when we go to Dan Murphy's we have to get a shopping trolley!

This week marks 1 year working for Brimbank Libraries - which has spookily flown by really fast. So no doubt soon my boss will set a time for my annual review, then I can look back on things that I was planning on doing in the last 12 months but never got around to doing!

Matt Lucas from Little Britain is on Kath 'n' Kim tonight (which I don't watch cause I don't really find it that funny), so being a Little Britain fan I will have to watch that.

Anyway, that's it for me!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone. I hope you have a great happy, safe and prosperous 2007.

Sean and I had a quiet New Years at my place. Mum and Dad had a few of their friends over, but it was really pretty quiet with them all sitting around talking. We watched a few DVDs during the day including Carnivale' which I got for Christmas - very good, but very confusing TV series which was on the ABC a couple of years ago. You don't really get to understand the story til you have watched both seasons 1 & 2.

Another movie we watched was Keeping Mum starign Rowan Atkinson, Kristin Scott Thomas and Maggie Smith. It was hilerious. The story is of the family of a vicor (played by Rowan Atkinson) who live in this small little community. Pretty much the entrie family is unhappy, the Vicor has no inspiration, his daughter has a new boyfriend every week, and his wife if getting a bit on the side. Then comes along a new housekeeper Grace, played by Maggie Smith, who they don't know has escapped from prison where she is serving a life sentence for murdering her Husband and his mistress many years earlier. Well many character and associates of the characters end up falling victim to Grace, as the murders bring the family closer togeather. If you can get your hands on it, it is well worth a watch.

I'm back at work now. It has been really busy at work over the last 2 weeks, and we barely have a chance to take a breath, but it is keeping us on out toes.

Anyway, lots to do, better go... Andrew

What a Week

What a week it has been. Sydenham Library opened its doors to the public and the pace has been very steady. There have been lots of people coming in to join the library service, however the computer usage so far has been very sedate.



The problem I wrote about at the house with the microwave cavity has been resolved and the builders are going to change the cabinetry to fit a standard microwave. This has made Sean very happy.



We went to Seans friends wedding on Sunday which offered an 'interesting' menu which included things like Shark Fin soup, abalone, ect. I didn't eat anything as it was all way to fancy for my tastes.



Well, thats about it, just FYI I will include a photo of the new library....

Sorry

Hi all,
Sorry I havn't blogged in a few weeks as I have been flat chat. Christmas has snuck up on me this year more than it has other years. I had the day off on Monday so Sean and I went Christmas shopping at Chadstone. Thankfully because it was a Monday it was not too busy. We got pretty much all our Christmas shopping done - as well as the usual arguments which come with shopping (cause shopping is boooooring!)

It has also been flat out at Work. We have the grand opening for the new library this Sunday. The last week has seen the numerous plasma screens setup, our kiosk stations setup as well as loading up the public PCs with software and tidying all the cables up.

I went out for Dinner with some old work Friends on Tuesday night down to a hotel in Essendon. Very nice meal. I had roast pork, then lemon marang pie for dessert.

Tomorrow our new bed is being delivered to my grandparents where we will store it until we take posession of the house. Captain snooze said they would originally hold it for 6 weeks, which turned out to be 6 months before they rang up and said it needs to go from their warehouse.

With the house we have a problem with the microwave cavity at the moment. We have measured the cavity and found it is too small to fit even the smallest microwave on the market. The designers are currently working on resolving this issue, so hopefully they will get there butts into gear and have a resolution soon.

Tomorrow night I have an end of year Christmas celebration with my 'Movie friends', then Sunday I am working at the grand opening, then off to Seans friend's wedding reception, which is a Chinese banqute which should proove interesting.

Well thats about it. I will try and update more frequently before Christmas.

Cheers
A

Update

Well, week one at the new Sydenham Library has been busy. A large amount of stock is now on the shelves and we have started setting up all the little bits and pieces that you never usually think about.
There has been a small amount of progress with the house. The brickwork has been cleaned, and the edges around the windows and doors have been painted. We were lucky enough this week to be able to get inside the house! So here are some photos:

Front/Side View of the house

Rear view of the house

Laundry

View from Gallery into the Kitchen & stairwell

View of bedroom including balcony

View from front of Gallery looking towards the backyard.

View of bedroom looking from brack towards front.

Bathroom (it looks small)

View looking down into Gallery

Upstairs loft

We Finally Have A Library

This week promises to be a very busy week. As of tomorrow, I will finally be working out of Sydenham Library. The library is currently scheduled to open around the 10th of December. This week will mean a lot of shelving and setting up, so it promises both to be fun and exhausting. However there will be no computers til at least November 20.

The house has not progressed a great deal. Skirting boards have been done, and that's about it. I think we are currently waiting on the cabinetry before they can paint.

Our calendar is already starting to look really busy. It is filling up fast with work and social commitments. I have not even started Christmas shopping yet, and have not even thought about what I'm going to get most people (maybe since Sean likes shopping he could do it all???)

I don't think I made an entry of it (have been a little lazy with the blogging as of late), but my Grandpa is home from his week and a bit in Hospital. Took him and Grandma to see the progress on the house today, as at his lowest moment in Hospital he told mum that he was just living to see my house finished, then he can die. I'm not sure if that is a good thing to say or a bad thing.

Another thing I haven't blogged about is that I am to be an uncle. My youngest sister (17 YO) has gone and got herself pregnant to some feral guy. So that is making life interesting as it appears both her and the boyfriend have no grip on reality and have gone totally feral. I think the way it has happened has taken all the joy that becoming grandparents should be away from Mum and Dad. My Grandparents and Sean all now refer to Celina and her boyfriend as the Gypsies living out of their car. Very stupid girl!

Anyway, hope you all have a great week.... A

All Locked Up

Well, what a busy week it was last week. Had lots of training for work during the week including a full day off-site "managing effective teams" session with some other council staff. I had a site visit to the new Sydenham Library on Thursday. The building works are progressing there very fast. The interior is pretty much complete and now most of the remaining work is on the exterior.

Speaking of building works. The house is now officially in lockup, so unfortunately when we went there on the weekend we could not get in to take newer photos (I tried though the glass, but there is too much reflection). The staircase is now in, as well as the decking on the entry/porch. All the plaster has been delivered and is piled up around the place inside, but as of the weekend they had not yet started putting the plaster up. The hole is now in the brickwork for where the embedded letterbox will go.

I am also going to upgrade my computer hopefully this weekend. I have a day off on Friday, so amongst other things I am going to go and buy the components I need to do the upgrade. That means I will be busy in the evenings this week backing up all the stuff on my current PC that I wish to keep (as I will reuse many parts from the current PC such as hard drives, CD/DVD ROMs, graphics card, ect.

Also a busy week socially this week. I am going out for dinner with some old workmates on Wednesday and out for dinner and movies with a group of friends on Friday night down at Werribee.

That's about it!

Weekend By The Sea

Sean and I spent this weekend down at my grandparents caravan at Ocean Grove. It was nice to get away from everything and just have time to chill out and relax. We went straight down on Friday evening, I had an RDO on Friday so I drove Sean to work in the morning, went and had my hair cut and did some other stuff, did a bit of Work at SirsiDynix in the afternoon, then picked Sean up and drove straight down from Seans Work.

On Saturday we went for a walk along the beach at Point Lonsdale, followed by a trip into Queenscliff to look at some of the local galleries for painting ideas for the house. We had lunch at the View Grand in Queenscliff. We then went to Drysdale, Clifton Springs, Port Arlington, then back to the Caravan before going back to Queenscliff to get some fish and chips for tea.

On Sunday we went for a walk along the beach in the morning, packed up our stuff then went to "the house" and my grandparents before going home.

I didn't have my camera with me so I have no house photos to share (thank god you are probably thinking!). All the electrical work is complete and I spoke to the builder on Thursday and he said that they are doing the plaster work this week, so I believe we will no longer have access to the inside from this week (bummer!).

I held my first training session at Brimbank last Thursday, it was staff training for Microsoft Outlook. It all went well, so hopefully this will carry through to some successful training sessions once the Sydenham Library opens in December.