I have not had great luck with these templates because I am picky. When I first created this blog, I picked the most obnoxious one available--the hot pink one. Then, I tried to find something a little nicer-looking, so I did some Googling and found a neat one with a pretty hillside scene for a header. Unfortunately, this one came with some links embedded somewhere in the template that I couldn't find--something about GeckoFly and Blogcrowds. I didn't want to advertise for someone else on my class blog, so I tried to switch back to a normal Blogger template. For some reason, even when I changed templates, those stupid links were still attached to the top of my blog, and I couldn't figure out how to get rid of them. Today at work I played around with it some more and landed on this green-blue template--which, you probably won't even see because by the time you read this I will have moved on to something else...

Just for fun, I kept track of the technology-related things I did during my 4-hour shift at the reference desk this past Sunday.

Sadly, it seems that the main purpose of a librarian or public service associate (PSA) at the public library is to hand out guest passes to use the public computers. This particular branch has 37 public computers.

• 1:00-2:00: 21 guest passes, not including telling 2 children that they can use the numbers two times when they asked for another pass (1/2 hour each for 1 hour on the computer).
• 2:00-3:00: 20 guest passes
• 3:00-4:00: 15 guest passes
• 4:00-5:00: 12 guest passes

My total: 68 guest passes. There were 2 other librarians/public service associates on the desk today--I did not keep track of how many they handed out. I also did not include time "refreshes" for the woman working on a resume (we use our judgment on time-refresh privileges).

Printing:

• Showed at least 3 people how to retrieve their print jobs (click the "Click here to retrieve your print job" button; type in whatever you called it when you sent it to the printer; click on your print job; click "cash payment"; insert money; take your papers and go on your merry way)
• Refilled the paper
• Used the staff password to find a print job for a girl after she forgot what she named it
• Un-jammed the printer after a little old man tried to print labels on the public printer (no touching!) about 30 seconds before the library closed. 2 girls were unable to print due to the jam

Miscellaneous computer support:

• showed a woman how to open Internet Explorer, type in the library home page, and find the employment opportunities page (oy...)
• learned that newer flash drives have built-in security measures that aren't compatible with our public computers, which is a pain for people who came to the library specifically to print whatever is on said flash drive
• told a man and his son that they aren't allowed to download a homework answer-checker program onto our public computers, even if the kid's school's computers have it.
• explained to a boy that he can't take a picture from his cell phone and upload it to his MySpace page (at least not on our computers)
• Printed a 2007 1040 D-1 2-page form from the IRS website (I do my taxes online, so sadly I am sort of ignorant about how to file on paper...which is how everyone who comes to the library wants to do them).

I guess my point is, I feel kind of like a babysitter when working at the public library. Because I like to work with technology, this isn't the kind of job I could do once I finish my MLS. But, it will do for now...

When I began my current job in August, I had never used Lotus Notes for email and calendaring; I was quite familiar and satisfied with Microsoft Outlook. They basically do the same things--email, calendar, contacts, tasks, etc--but with a few extra bugs thrown in there by Lotus Notes.

I don’t’ know if it’s my company’s policy or if it’s a problem with LN, but we’re only allowed a certain amount of space in our accounts—mine was nearly full by the end of my 4th week on the job. Underneath your name, you can see the percentage of space you're already using--when you reach 100% or more (yes, you can be above 100% full), you can receive email but not send it. Archived emails count against your total, and I work in a regulated environment, meaning we need to save pretty much EVERYTHING we get.

One trick people have figured out is that you can "reply" to emails in order to get around the 100% capacity block and still send emails. Some people have even designated a message in their inbox "USE FOR EMAILS"--they just open it, hit "reply," and change the addressees and subject.

Another option is to archive everything yourself by saving all your emails that you don't need everyday as PDFs and putting them on your personal drive on the LAN. I prefer this, because I have this issue with letting my email get out of control--in my personal email account, I reply to, delete, or archive emails as soon as I get them--I hate having a lot of stuff in my inbox.

LN also limits the types of files you can send as attachments. For some projects, we share .zip files. LN does not permit this, so to get around it, we save them as ".sip" files (not a real file type), and then the recipient has to save the file, then change the extension back to .zip in order to open it.

Lotus Notes is intended to help people organize their tasks and do their work in the most efficient manner possible. Unfortunately, this is not the case for me!

This is my first post for Library Systems, S554. I have used Blogger before, both for classes and personal use. I’ll say right up front that I’m not a good blogger—I’ll get into it for a few weeks, and then get busy and stop posting. This class will force me to keep it up! In the past I've tried to write about my running schedule and kept a personal blog for friends to read, but haven't updated either in months. I've had the best luck with my running blog, though--when I DO have time to get outside or to the Y, I record my workouts in a running log set up by a college teammate--so when I'm training for some race, it's not too hard to find something to write about related to training. When I was training for my first Mini (2006), I was pretty good at updating the blog.

I have taken two VIC classes—one through SLIS as a participant in the VIC classroom on the IUPUI campus, and another as a distance participant (in high school--I cannot stress enough how hard it was to learn AP Chem through the TV—sooooo frustrating!!!). I live in Indianapolis so I don't need to rely on distance learning to finish my degree, although I have taken some online classes when my work schedule didn't allow me to take any other classes "live."

I like to read blogs and message boards in my free time, but I rarely contribute—I’m more of a “lurker.” I’m very comfortable with computers and technology; I have taken a few classes where we looked at blogs, creating audio and video for the web, and Second Life. I subscribe to several library listservs (AUTOCAT, LIBREF, NEWLIB, LIBSUP, to name a few) because finding a library job, figuring out what I still need to do in order to put myself in a good position to get a library job, etc, is one of my current obsessions. I'm sort of overwhelmed by the amount of information I get in my inbox every day. I use a Gmail account to handle all my listserv messages, and have it set to automatically sort them into folders so I can read them when I have a moment, which helps.

oh, I had to add: I'm not really a "pink" person, but I didn't like ANY of the default templates on Blogger. Maybe I'll figure out how to make a better one...