Tinfoil + Raccoon

Nice Catch, Dr. Google!

A couple weeks ago, I went in for my not-quite annual wellness exam. I told my doc I was feeling pretty good, aside from the usual intermittent stuff--migraines, fatigue, etc. I went in to the appointment with a list of things to talk about, and we finally got to the last item: my thumbnails.  I'm not sure when I first noticed it, but both of my thumbnails have been bumpy for awhile. I told her that it wasn't anything I was particularly worried about, but wondered what was happening in my body to make both thumbnails bumpy.  She noted that I pick at my cuticles and said that that can lead to infection and irregular nail growth. I said that I'd been picking at my cuticles for several decades and had never seen bilateral weirdness with my nails.

At that point she turned to her computer and said, "As a patient, I don't know how you feel about Google, but let's see if we can find anything."  I laughed and said, "Well, as a librarian, it's my starting point for a lot of research, so let's give it a go."  I think her initial search was something like ridges thumbnails which pretty quickly brought up the term "washboard thumbnails," also known as "transverse ridging of the thumbnails."  I gave her some search tips, like taking away quotations marks, and pretty soon, we kept seeing results that had the words thyroid and hypothyroid in them.  Ah ha! I have a diagnosis of chronic fatigue/fibrymyalgia, so wouldn't ever think to overly complain about brain fog, fatigue, headache, etc, since it's stuff that comes and goes. But, there's a huge amount of overlap between hypothroidism, chronic fatigue and perimenopause (another thing we've assumed was going on).  Given the addition of the bumpy thumbnails, the doc decided to test my thyroid levels.

Last week, while sitting in the hotel lobby at Computers in Libraries, wondering why I was feeling so absolutely crappy when I hadn't been up til 3 am doing karaoke, I got a call from my doctor's nurse. She was telling me all the stuff that came back okay, and I kept thinking, "something didn't come back okay or she wouldn't have called me to say that stuff was okay." Finally, she said that my thyroid test had indicated that I have clinical hypothryoidism and that the doctor wanted to start me on Synthroid.

Jeeze, that sucks, I thought. But after a few minutes, I was pretty happy about it because it explained so much. Admittedly, I am older than most of my CiL peers, and past my partying prime.  Excited as I was to be at CiL and as much as I was enjoying it, I felt really out of sorts. I really pushed myself to participate, socially, as much as I did, and was wiped out for much of the conference. It seemed out of proportion the other factors--age, amount of sleep, etc. I was also getting bummed out by my lack of motivation to be more professionally active, compared to my peer group.  Intellecually, I want to be in the game. I want to be writing, presenting, creating.  My friend Matt always asks me "what are you working on," when we haven't talked for awhile. For the past several months my response has been, "uh....nothing."  Inevitably, we talk about projects we could work on together, but  the conversations have never gone past that.   

Everything makes sense now, or at least I hope it does, as I'm feeling pretty relieved to know that there's a reason behind my lack of energy and engagement. There was a prescription for levoxothyrine waiting for me when I got home, and I fired up Doctors. Google and Ebscohost to learn what I could.  The downside is that it could take several months for me to start feeling better, depending on how long it takes for the medicine to get my thyroid levels back to normal. The upside is that I can stop beating up on myself for not doing more more more. I'm going to cut myself some slack, say "no" without feeling guilty, and give myself time to heal and feel better. And, yes, I already have a follow-up appt scheduled with my doctor, the real one, to supplement what I've learned about online. I'm most grateful for Dr. Google, though, as I'm not sure I would even know that I had a problem if it weren't for such immediate availability of information. 

CiL Day 1

Oh, where to start?  Last night I slunk up to my room early, tired, socially overwhelmed, and wanting to go home.  Today, I'm back in the groove and very much appreciating the Computers in Libraries experience.   Attended two sessions that gave me lots to chew on and one that had me cracking up the whole time. The chewy ones were: a) how the New York Observer overhauled its website from straight-up news reporting to become more of an online community, using open source and social networking tools; and b) a quick, but dense overview of how mobile search and searchers are different, with a quick overview of bunches of search mobile-specific search apps.  I will wait till I can get my hands on full-sized keyboard before I tackle those notes.

The presentation that had much of the room in stitches was the Library Society of the World panel discussion and demo.  All I'm going to say about it right now is that it was a powerful, if silly, example of community-building via social networking applications (with bonus Rick Astley soundtrack). Outside of making me laugh, I was particularly pleased at being given an opportunity to do some outreach before the session. I was headed into the room when the door monitor stopped me and asked, "are you one of the bloggers?" As I proceeded to give her an entirely too-complete answer, she politely stopped me, dropped her voice and confessed that even though she had a blog, she didn't understand RSS. I gave her as brief a jargon-free tutorial as I could. After a couple minutes, her eyes lit up and she finally understood what RSS was. She had more questions, all of them very basic stuff, so I gave her my email address and said I'd be happy to help her along. It was a great interaction and an excellent reminder of how the patrons I provide service to daily aren't necessarily looking for the newest and hottest stuff. It's good to be mindful of this as I run around the CiL candy store this week.

On My Way to CiL

My open-ended ALA sabbatical really started when I witnessed  the birth of my accidental family, the ragtag, attention-deficited kids of The Library Society of the World about a year ago.  But today, I am officially off the teat and climbing out from under the saggy, smothering bosom of my library association mama and looking to see if I can get my minimum daily professional development requirements elsewhere.  After years of longingly following the adventures of Computers in Libraries  (CiL) and Internet Librarian attendees from afar, I am just hours away from my very first CiL.  I'm not sure what my expectations are, in terms of professional development.  My last several years of ALA attendance was almost wholly spent in governance activities.  It's been a long time since I went to a conference as a n00b and as a learner/consumer.   

I'm also going so that I can get the lay of the presentation land.  It's time for me to think about sharing my expertise from out behind the keyboard, so I'll be studying presentations and presenters as much as I will be their content.  Mostly, though, I am excited about meeting my new Library Society of the World and Twitter pals, and seeing old friends again.  All the snazziest PowerPoints in the world are nothing compared what I expect to get from the intensive, fun, F2F with some of the funniest and smartest people I've had the pleasure to meet.

Don't cry, Mama ALA!  I'm not running away or disowning you.  I just want to get out of the yard and run down to the playground to see what the other kids are doing.

Is Your Library in the (Adult Entertainment) Zone?

A couple weeks ago, I was grumping to a non-library friend about a surge in the number of porn trolls at the library.  I'm not talking booty-shaking videos, I'm not talking scantily clad women or pictures from naturist sites. I'm not talking breast cancer research. I'm talking hardcore, purely prurient, obscene, boom-chika-wah-wah stuff.  At my previous library we had filters, courtesy CIPA, that we were legally obligated to turn off when requested by an adult patron.  We were advised by city legal that we, as librarians, could not determine what was obscene, and should not be policing content at all.  So, we steered the trolls to recessed monitors and tried not to get too much of an eyeful when asked to turn off the blocking software.

We don't block or filter at my current library, which I'm fine with, since it's been my practical experience that it would just create a different set of problems. Owing to a snazzy new incident reporting system, though, we're much better able to track habitual problem patrons of all stripes, porn trolls included. At this point, anyone who is viewing obscene material gets one warning and told that they will lose internet or library privileges if it happens again.   

It doesn't happen ALL the time, every day, but when there are several IRs in a week, many of them for viewing obscene material, it wears me down, personally and professionally It's got nothing to do with being a prude (don't even go there with me)--it's just a generally stressful situation for a lot of librarians and occassionally, patrons when it happens.     

So, back to my friend. After I finished whining she quipped, "You guys aren't zoned for that, are you?"  It was a funny, throw-away line, but the more I started thinking about it, the more sense it made, so I decided to see what our municipal code had to say about Adult-Oriented Entertainment. Some municipalities have specific zones set aside for adult entertainment businesses.  Ours does not, but does have specific guidelines for Adult-Oriented Establishments, per Chapter 7.01(T)*.  There are two critera that we do not meet, making us ineligible as a venue for viewing adult-oriented entertainment. Briefly, the partitions between viewing booths computer workstations are not tall enough (need to be 6') and our flooring material is (ewwww!) not non-absorbent.  Sorry Porn Dude, you are in the wrong zone. Buh-bye.

******

* I really appreciate our municipal code for giving us such precise language to work with. See 7.01 (T)(1)(g&h)

Happy 17th to Juniorette

Olivia is 17--Mar 5, 2008
Originally uploaded by rochelle, et. al.

Juniorette (aka "Olivia") woke up to her 17th year and cheesecake for breakfast. My instinct is to be a bit sad with each increasing year, thinking about her flying the coop soon. But, she continues to assure me that she's going to live with me forever. Check back in 10 years to see where we are with that model.

Happy Birthday, Girlie!

What are Your TechNOTs?

Jenna Freedman picked up on my post in which I confess that I ain't all that when it comes to tech applications, and comes clean about her techNOTsaviness.  Her confessions include:

I'm dreading this whole DTV conversion, cuz I have an oldish tv at home, and no cable.

I didn't have sound on my computer at home for years because I'd misplugged the speaker cables. And I used to be a theater electrician, so I know something about plugging.

I won't call this a meme or call anyone out, in particular, but what about you? Are you perceived as a techie or a "computer person" by your friends, but have areas of tech brown-out or ennui?  C'mon! Share your ignorance and techrankiness with the rest of us.  Who are we to mock? I just made my first chart, ever, in Excel only yesterday. In fact, it may have been my first ever use of Excel for a real project.   

Digital cameras leave you cold? Do you still literally DIAL your phone?  Still holding out for a revival of Betamax? Do you feel faint when a patron whips out an SD card and asks how he can put his picture on Match.com?  Do you think about a career change when you read proposed tech competencies for librarians? I know I have librarian friends whose only computer access is at work, by choice.

I'm not looking to hear from those with active loathing of all things tech, or from any evangelizing whiz kids (unless you are an evangelizing whiz kid with a secret shame you need get off your chest).  Most of us fall somewhere between Lud and Geek.  This confessional assignment is for you.    

Historic Steamboat Photos

Anita Doering, Manager of Archives at La Crosse Public, just sent a link to the now-live collection of steamboat pictures that marks the launch of the UW La Crosse Historic Steamboat Photographs collection. It's part of the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center. Anita says that the project was launched with about 500 photos, but that there are a few more to go. Pretty nifty. More about the project.

The UW-La Crosse Historic Steamboat Photograph collection consists of over 40,000 black and white photographic images of steamboats on the inland waterways of the United States, primarily the Mississippi, Ohio and Missouri rivers and their tributaries. The photos depict steamboats in every phase of their life span — from construction to destruction — and every aspect of their daily operations from the 1850s to the present.

Confessions of a Technofaux

Michael Stephens wonders if my fondness for Kindle (despite its uselessness for libraries) could be characterized as “technolust.” I chewed on this for awhile and came to the conclusion that I need to come out of the closet as kind of a technodud. I think I may be a bit ahead of the curve, measured against all of LibraryLand, and a bit more ahead compared to library users but am definitely on the uphill side of the curve compared to my fellow bloggers.

Basically, my interest in the Kindle, and my occasional forays into ebook reviewing have had very little to do with technology and everything to do with my steamy relationship with the written word. I'm still very hopeful for an excellent ereading experience in my lifetime. I love to read and I love to write. I came to blogging not because it was a new tech app, but because it gave me an easy way to start writing again. I don’t love gadgets. I don’t exactly hate gadgets. The most charitable thing I can say is that I am gadget-neutral and tech tepid. I present you with the evidence:

I have a ridiculous cell phone. It’s a Pocket PC that has baby versions of Windows and Office. Mr. Raccoon, goddess bless him, is frequently giving me new software apps in an ongoing attempt to make my phone more than a deluxe Solitaire machine. Basically, I use the phone to visit Twitter, Gmail and weather.gov, to take kinda crappy pictures when I don’t have a real camera, and to play Scrabble, Bubble Breaker or Solitaire when I’m stuck some place and forgot to bring a book. I don’t sync it to anything. When I do remember to carry it, the ringer is always off in public.

Despite being an early booster for gaming in libraries, I’m not a gamer. A lot of games make me carsick. Seriously! The Raccoons, Jr. have tried to get me interested in the DS, but I just don’t enjoy gaming. This is not tech-specific, though. I don’t like playing cards and I’ve never been much of a board game player (well, except Scrabble). I did kind of like those old school text-based games I remember from my 386. “You are in a brick dungeon. There are two exits. One exits west. The other exits south.”

I never did learn how to program my VCR. Seriously!

The biggest TV in my house is 19”. And there’s nothing flat about it.

I’ve never taken to online voice chat, especially when there are more than two chatters, and I don’t go out of my way to listen to podcasts.

I haven’t had a boom box or stereo for a few years. Just today I realized that my DVD player, which is hooked up to some most excellent speakers, plays CDs. So, now I have a stereo. Juniorette guffawed when I shared my discovery. “You didn’t know that?!”

I don’t have an iPod or mp3 player. I think my phone-on-steroids can serve as an mp3, but have never cared enough to put music on it.   

If you can present me with a tool that is truly useful to me or to my patrons, I'll have a go at it. I'm not tech-averse, and I can be sporting and adventurous when presented with something beyond my immediate grasp. I've gapped my own spark plugs, and have even looked under the hood of a PC to install memory. So, what tech tools do I use and value? Twitter, Meebo, Gmail suite, Bloglines, Typepad. If someone gave me a Kindle or a Sony Reader, I'd be most grateful. What I love about all these apps is that they are all about readin’and writin’. Now that’s hot, Mr. Stephens!

Amazon says Okay to Loaning Empty Kindles

Big thanks to Norman Oder at Library Journal for passing along what LJ learned from Amazon about libraries loaning the Kindle to patrons.

Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener told LJ that a loan of a Kindle without content is OK but sharing a device loaded with content "with a wide group of people would not be in line with the terms of use."

Did you hear that, folks? If you have a Kindle, you can share it with patrons AS LONG AS THERE'S NOTHING ON IT.  Does anyone have a Black's Law Dictionary handy to look up the precise meaning of "wide group of people?"   If we buy a print book from Amazon, can we only loan it if we tear out all the pages and just check out the gutted cover?  I'm gonna pass on any further commentary about ToS, as I bet y'all have something to say about it. I will, however, probably do one last review before I pass the  Kindle on to another staff member.  After I've scrubbed it of all content, of course. 

Never Mind Legal Issues; Kindle not good choice for most libraries

(edited 1/30: Changed post title with qualifier "most libraries.")

(Screeching brakes)  Whoa. Wait a minute.  Stepping back from my Kindle krush and putting aside the question of whether or not it's legal for libraries to loan them, I considered the Kindle issue through the eyes of a public library manager who has to make decisions about how to get the most out of a budget. Duh!  It's a no brainer. There is no way  I could justify deploying Kindles, given the present model. The machine itself is 400 bucks and can hold up to 200 titles. Let's say that the average price of a Kindle title is 10 bucks. That all adds up to almost $2500 tied up in a resource that can only be used by one person at a time.  For that much money, I could buy more than 100 titles for check-out, a few reference sets, a year's access to a database, a bunch of cds, audio books, or DVDs,  a couple of display units, some comfy furniture, conference registration plus travel and lodging for a couple staff members, a contract with a coffee vendor, honorarium for program speakers.... 

How does it make any sort of sense for a library to loan out a $2500 resource to be used by one person at a time for 2-4 weeks? That's the equivalent of allowing only one person at a time access to Ancestry online for two weeks.  Or to check out the entire World Book set. Those ideas sound outrageous. Because they are.  It would demonstrate impeachment-level poor stewardship. Even if the price were to come down drastically, it would still be an irresponsible allocation. Now, if Amazon or someone could come up with an affordable e-reader with the same functionality as Kindle, that patrons would want to buy, along with becoming a vendor of affordable, multi-format ebooks that libraries could offer to patrons for EASY downloading, that'd be something to text home about. 

If there are practical reasons why loaning Kindles is a good thing for libraries to do (outside of trying to prove our out-of-the-boxiness), please educate me.