June 2005

There were 33 posts published in June 2005 (this is page 4 of 4).

Library Journal Techblog

It’s alive!

Today Library Journal put up the new Techblog as part of their whole site revamp. I’m lucky enough to count myself among the nine or so contributors, who you can read more about under the ‘about us’ page on the blog.

We’ve even got our own RSS feed and everything. Posts are a little scarce at the moment, but given time I’m sure it’ll fill up.

The LJ Techblog is my first experience with group blogging, and I’m really excited to see how it goes!

I’m sure I’ll be writing more about this in coming times. But for now, I just wanted to get the word out there – the blog seems to be rather buried and not linked from the front page. Again I’m not sure how permanent that placement is; any new site has its share of growing pains.

Weekend at Library Instruction’s

I was really stretching for a pun in the title, give me a break 🙂

I had my first ever weekend class over the last couple days. To be honest, I thought I was going to hate it. 6-9 on a Friday night, and 9-5 on Saturday do not sound like a recipe for fun. But the topic of Library Instruction sounded too interesting to pass up on registering. I’m so glad I gave it a chance! I learned more this weekend than in some of my entire semester ‘normal schedule’ classes.

Friday night kind of surprised me – we ended up talking mostly about entering the job market. Resumes, portfolios, web presence, interviews, etc. Very practical, and very appreciated by me. I’d never really considered the need for a portfolio of my work to show employers before. It seems a little more focused towards the academic library jobs, which I’m not as interested in as public, but pulling one together can’t hurt. I’ll add it as a link in the upper right of the site when I’m done; probably in a few days. I also got the idea to put a link to this site on my resume, which for some reason hadn’t crossed my mind before.

Friday night concluded with some discussion of different user groups and how their needs from library instruction differ. We departed, and returned the next morning.

Saturday was a wonderful intro to running library education sessions. We covered the basics of lesson planning, some public speaking issues, more about user groups, had a guest speaker from a school library, and a number of smaller topics.

Saturday was one of those occasions where I walk out of the room entirely fired up about being a librarian and helping patrons out. Both professors are practicing library instructors, with a wealth of experience to impart to us. 8 hours is a long time to sit still on a Saturday, but they made it worthwhile.

P.S. Does anybody have any tips on surviving a few days without hot water? My good ‘ol landlords have struck again.

P.P.S. My brother has started blogging! He’s still working up a theme for the content, but the site is up: www.DeuceNet.com

iPod reviewed

As I mentioned briefly before, I got an iPod as an early birthday gift! Its a standard 20GB model, no fancy photo features or anything which I probably don’t need anyway. And I love it!

I’m primarily amazed at the usability of the interface. Everything I want to do with the unit is right where I expect it to be, even if I’ve never used the feature before. Putting music on it via iTunes is a breeze as well. Much simpler than I expected it to be, given my past experience with using proprietary software to transfer files.

I also got an FM transmitter/charger for the iPod, and utilized it to great effect on my 5 hour return trip to Pittsburgh yesterday. Much more powerful and better sound quality than my previous attempts at such devices.

One thing I haven’t figured out so far: is there a way to delete songs from my computer, but leave them on the iPod? My main laptop hard drive is only slightly larger than the iPod’s, so if I ever reach the 20GB mark of music it would get quite cramped in here for other software.

I really only have two complaints.
First: the mirrored finish on the back of the iPod is far too easy to scratch and mar. The unit looks so nice aesthetically that the accidental marks are really a shame.
Second: the included headphones (despite being a status symbol) rather hurt my ears while resting in place for more than a few minutes. That problem was easily fixed with a replacement pair, but I’m surprised Apple hasn’t redesigned the earbuds since I’ve heard others complain as well.

Now I’m off to dig up the blog posts I saw a couple weeks back about various things to do with your iPod!