Week 5 was faster to catch up on, since I already use Pinterest.
I mostly use Pinterest for crafting purposes, rather than work-related ones (although I do pin books from Vision onto my reading boards, so that's something).
I use Pinterest mostly to get ideas of things to make, but I do have a board for things I've actually made, called (quite originally) Stuff I Made.
Thursday 27 February 2014
A Few Weeks Behind: Week 4, Images Part I
I am a little behind on my 23 Things. (Fortunately, I peeked ahead and I think I've accidentally covered some of Week 7 in my normal rambling in quieter weeks!)
So, time to steal a few minutes on quiet evening and catch up!
Part of the reason I'm behind is because it's been February, and February is depressing, but I'm also less familiar with Creative Commons licensing than I am with some of the other 23 Things so far, so here we go ...
Thing 11 is to incorporate a Creative Commons-licensed image in our blog post. I was delighted to see that Laurie Cinotto (lalalaurie) has Creative Commons-licensed some images of my favorite celebrity cat, Charlene Butterbean of the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee fame. (But if you are another stereotypical gooey-for-cats library person, do yourself a favor and check out the rest of her Flickr photostream, especially this one of Wee Wylla Stout (all rights reserved).)
So let's attribute a photo!
(Image by Laurie Cinotto [lalalaurie] via Flickr)
She makes me think of Spring!
Thing 12 involves using the Wordle image generator to create a word cloud and share the image. This is a tool I've used before. Did you see the Advanced option that let's you assign numerical weighting to words? One thing I tried was creating music signage for various DDC music classifications, with the names of the performers in a section weighted by the number of CDs we had in the collection. It was eventually decided that they were too complicated for signage, but I liked them and the Rock Music one turned out cool enough one of the non-library staff asked for a large copy for his wall.
But for today, here's a word cloud for this blog. A little bit bookish, a little bit tech: looks right to me!
So, time to steal a few minutes on quiet evening and catch up!
Part of the reason I'm behind is because it's been February, and February is depressing, but I'm also less familiar with Creative Commons licensing than I am with some of the other 23 Things so far, so here we go ...
Thing 11 is to incorporate a Creative Commons-licensed image in our blog post. I was delighted to see that Laurie Cinotto (lalalaurie) has Creative Commons-licensed some images of my favorite celebrity cat, Charlene Butterbean of the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee fame. (But if you are another stereotypical gooey-for-cats library person, do yourself a favor and check out the rest of her Flickr photostream, especially this one of Wee Wylla Stout (all rights reserved).)
So let's attribute a photo!
(Image by Laurie Cinotto [lalalaurie] via Flickr)
She makes me think of Spring!
Thing 12 involves using the Wordle image generator to create a word cloud and share the image. This is a tool I've used before. Did you see the Advanced option that let's you assign numerical weighting to words? One thing I tried was creating music signage for various DDC music classifications, with the names of the performers in a section weighted by the number of CDs we had in the collection. It was eventually decided that they were too complicated for signage, but I liked them and the Rock Music one turned out cool enough one of the non-library staff asked for a large copy for his wall.
But for today, here's a word cloud for this blog. A little bit bookish, a little bit tech: looks right to me!
Wednesday 26 February 2014
Going to weed for the first time
I'm going to do my first 'real' weeding today, joining the AWK weeding team in Bouctouche.
Why? I've been trying to create some Symphony custom reports to assist in the weeding process, with only some success. Some of the tools have been somewhat useful (a report to identify copies in part of a collection that are the last copy in the provincial collection; a report to identify titles of which the library has multiple copies even if they are of different editions), but others have missed their mark.
NEED MOAR DATA!
Today, I'll take part in a real weed to observe the weeder in his natural habitat, get a feel for the types of criteria and processes they use, and if there are any ways that the automated system can help.
Should be fun :-)
Why? I've been trying to create some Symphony custom reports to assist in the weeding process, with only some success. Some of the tools have been somewhat useful (a report to identify copies in part of a collection that are the last copy in the provincial collection; a report to identify titles of which the library has multiple copies even if they are of different editions), but others have missed their mark.
NEED MOAR DATA!
Today, I'll take part in a real weed to observe the weeder in his natural habitat, get a feel for the types of criteria and processes they use, and if there are any ways that the automated system can help.
Should be fun :-)
Friday 31 January 2014
Almost Embarrassingly Lazy ...
This is an almost embarrassing example of my belief that if I can get a computer to do it for me, I shouldn't have to do it myself.
I'm writing a little Perl script to replace the library's Symphony code from a string of data with the two-letter equivalent that Technical Services uses, but I'm not even typing all of the program myself: I'm using my favorite Excel function, Concatenate, to construct the individual lines of code based on a pattern.
I'm writing a little Perl script to replace the library's Symphony code from a string of data with the two-letter equivalent that Technical Services uses, but I'm not even typing all of the program myself: I'm using my favorite Excel function, Concatenate, to construct the individual lines of code based on a pattern.
Thursday 30 January 2014
Close Your Eyes and Think of Summer
I noticed that one of the other participants in the NB 23 Things posted a picture of the view from their summer spot, so I thought I'd share what I dream of when I dream of summer.
This is the view from the beach at my family's camp at Lake Utopia. Both of these shots were taken at the bonfire:
This is the view from the beach at my family's camp at Lake Utopia. Both of these shots were taken at the bonfire:
Tuesday 28 January 2014
The Library Catalogue
I enjoy the social features of our online library catalogue. On the catalogue, I use the username Rainey (as one would expect).
My favorite social feature in the catalogue is the Lists feature. I have existing lists on a couple of different topics: the stuff I've borrowed and finished in 2014, my favorite picture books (I had a small collection of my own even before I started collecting nephews), and a few lists promoting collections in the Electronic Library New Brunswick.
The list I update the most often, and refer to most often, is my list Books I'm Waiting to be Published ... I'm one of those folks who likes to know of when the next book is coming out from an author I enjoy or a series I adore. I use this list to keep track of the schedule of when these books are coming out.
This list uses a feature that I really appreciate about BiblioCommons: you can list things that aren't in the catalogue, or aren't in the catalogue YET. If you search for a book to add to your list and don't find it, you get the option to import it from Amazon. I've done that for books that haven't come out yet, annotated the list with their expected date of publication, and sorted my list in publication order. Geeky, huh?
You also have the option to add a web address to a list. I'm thinking of making a list of the local histories and related resources that I'm reading after "The Town That Drowned". If I do, I can add the interesting thesis I'm reading about the Mactaquac Dam to the list as web resource.
On Goodreads, I'm Rainey, too.
My favorite social feature in the catalogue is the Lists feature. I have existing lists on a couple of different topics: the stuff I've borrowed and finished in 2014, my favorite picture books (I had a small collection of my own even before I started collecting nephews), and a few lists promoting collections in the Electronic Library New Brunswick.
The list I update the most often, and refer to most often, is my list Books I'm Waiting to be Published ... I'm one of those folks who likes to know of when the next book is coming out from an author I enjoy or a series I adore. I use this list to keep track of the schedule of when these books are coming out.
This list uses a feature that I really appreciate about BiblioCommons: you can list things that aren't in the catalogue, or aren't in the catalogue YET. If you search for a book to add to your list and don't find it, you get the option to import it from Amazon. I've done that for books that haven't come out yet, annotated the list with their expected date of publication, and sorted my list in publication order. Geeky, huh?
You also have the option to add a web address to a list. I'm thinking of making a list of the local histories and related resources that I'm reading after "The Town That Drowned". If I do, I can add the interesting thesis I'm reading about the Mactaquac Dam to the list as web resource.
On Goodreads, I'm Rainey, too.
"I'm Not Getting Any Emails from the Library!", or, Troubleshooting Email Notices for Patrons
Do you occasionally hear from your patrons that they are not receiving their expected emails from the libraries? What advice can you give them?
Be Aware of the Timing
Some very connected and very active patrons may simply pick up their holds before the system has time to notify them. The holds pickup notices are sent out in batches twice a day: at around 6:00 in the morning and at around 3:00 in the afternoon. So if a hold is made available at, say, 10:00 in the morning and the patron notices it in his or her account and picks it up in the early afternoon, they would never get the notices.
Double-check the Address in Their Patron Account
Double-check the email address in the patron's account. Is it entered correctly? There would be no spaces, commas, or semi-colons in an email address. The email address must be entered in the EMAIL field of the patron record or the system can't find it.
If you are entering multiple addresses for a patron, put them in the same EMAIL field (separated by commas, not semi-colons) rather than separate fields.
Is it spelled correctly? When Sympatico and Xplornet were picking service names, ease of spelling for their clients was not their first thought. There are a multitude of plausible misspellings for those ESPs :-)
Ask Them to Whitelist our Auto-Sender, in the Webmail Interface
Some email service providers (ESPs) start blocking the libraries' autosender as if we were spam or junk mail. If the patron uses an email client which downloads the emails (like Outlook or Thunderbird, or the Mail app on an iPad/iPhone), rather than using the ESP's webmail interface, they may not even appear in their junkmail folder.
So what can the patron do? They can enter the email address used by our auto emailer as a Contact or Safe Sender (whichever their ESP calls their personal whitelist). If they do, the ESP is more likely to decide that we're sending real mail, rather than junk. And they should do this in their ESP's webmail interface.
After they have, you can do a test for them. Add a hold to one of the 'This is a test' records in the system (one item ID is 1265180-4001) and trap the hold. Wait to see if the patron receives an email at 3:00 p.m. that afternoon or 6:00 a.m. the next morning.
As a Last Resort, Get the Symphony Admins to Check the Email Log
We (and yes, as it happens, that is the royal We in this case) recently found where the Symphony Linux server keeps a log of the patron emails it has sent recently.
If you've tried everything else and there is a persistent problem for a patron, double-check to see if the system is even trying to send email out to them. Send the email address to Lorraine or Amanda or Dave and ask them to grep the sirsimail.log file for the patron's email address. That will at least let us confirm if the system has sent an outgoing message to that email address in the recent past and, if so, when.
I'm not sure if this is useful, or just going over stuff you already know, but there it is :-)
Be Aware of the Timing
Some very connected and very active patrons may simply pick up their holds before the system has time to notify them. The holds pickup notices are sent out in batches twice a day: at around 6:00 in the morning and at around 3:00 in the afternoon. So if a hold is made available at, say, 10:00 in the morning and the patron notices it in his or her account and picks it up in the early afternoon, they would never get the notices.
Double-check the Address in Their Patron Account
Double-check the email address in the patron's account. Is it entered correctly? There would be no spaces, commas, or semi-colons in an email address. The email address must be entered in the EMAIL field of the patron record or the system can't find it.
If you are entering multiple addresses for a patron, put them in the same EMAIL field (separated by commas, not semi-colons) rather than separate fields.
Is it spelled correctly? When Sympatico and Xplornet were picking service names, ease of spelling for their clients was not their first thought. There are a multitude of plausible misspellings for those ESPs :-)
Ask Them to Whitelist our Auto-Sender, in the Webmail Interface
Some email service providers (ESPs) start blocking the libraries' autosender as if we were spam or junk mail. If the patron uses an email client which downloads the emails (like Outlook or Thunderbird, or the Mail app on an iPad/iPhone), rather than using the ESP's webmail interface, they may not even appear in their junkmail folder.
So what can the patron do? They can enter the email address used by our auto emailer as a Contact or Safe Sender (whichever their ESP calls their personal whitelist). If they do, the ESP is more likely to decide that we're sending real mail, rather than junk. And they should do this in their ESP's webmail interface.
- Aliant: http://webmail.bellaliant.net
- Xplornet: http://www.xplornet.com/webmail
- For Gmail or Hotmail or another web-based service, just use their web interface
After they have, you can do a test for them. Add a hold to one of the 'This is a test' records in the system (one item ID is 1265180-4001) and trap the hold. Wait to see if the patron receives an email at 3:00 p.m. that afternoon or 6:00 a.m. the next morning.
As a Last Resort, Get the Symphony Admins to Check the Email Log
We (and yes, as it happens, that is the royal We in this case) recently found where the Symphony Linux server keeps a log of the patron emails it has sent recently.
If you've tried everything else and there is a persistent problem for a patron, double-check to see if the system is even trying to send email out to them. Send the email address to Lorraine or Amanda or Dave and ask them to grep the sirsimail.log file for the patron's email address. That will at least let us confirm if the system has sent an outgoing message to that email address in the recent past and, if so, when.
I'm not sure if this is useful, or just going over stuff you already know, but there it is :-)
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