A Wandering Eyre

For the next three days I will be busy drinking with my family and getting married. Tonight, I am taking a brief interlude from drinking with the family to drink with some librarians who are in town for the Texas Library Association meeting. It should be fun and I need a night off. From all that drinking.

After that, Mr. Rochester is whisking me away to Scotland before I change my mind and have this almost marriage annulled. We will be drinking scotch, partaking of good beer, and maybe even eating haggis. It is entirely possible that I may stay in the land of Bonnie Prince Charlie for good.

Either way, I will be gone from this space until the second week of May at which time, I will bombard you with endless pictures of the Land of the Heather.

–Jane, try not to cry in my absence

Proof

Originally uploaded by Wandering Eyre.

If you look closely at this picture you will be able to read the name on the envelope. That’s my brother holding the envelope and the name clearly says Christ J. Boule.

I always knew I was related to God.

T minus three days and counting.

–Jane, hung me on a line

Yesterday, I came home to a sparkling clean house, courtesy of the in-laws. My house was clean before they came, my mother raised me that way, but they got all the cracks and crevices I tend to ignore. You know the cracks and crevices I am talking about, things like fan blades, dust boards, and those pesky spots that are hard to get rid of on your sink.

Libraries are like that sometimes. We clean house. Build new buildings. Add things to our collections. Vacuum. Dust every year or so. Straighten up the public desk areas and staff areas when some one “important” is on their way. But we forget about the small things that we like to ignore. We ignore them because cleaning them is a pain in the arse. Like fan blades, we do not want to have to drag out the ladder to get the perspective we need to see all the dust.

It is hard sometimes to look critically at that old policy that everyone subscribes to but which hurts the users or sometimes it is the staff. Maybe it is a person, not a policy, that is no longer performing their job duties, but coasting along on past successes. As hard as the process may be, I strongly believe that any organization that wishes to not just survive, but to thrive, must re-examine operations every few years. By “few” I mean no more than 5 years. We can always improve the things we do and we should strive to do so.

At MPOW, we are going through three simultaneous processes that will change the way we do things, hopefully for the better. We are going through an extended LibQUAL process, restructuring half of the organization, and wading through a strategic directions process. I hope that we are not simply participating in an elaborate smoke screen. I want there to be some fundamental changes that come out of our processes. We should come out leaner, meaner, and serving our customers better.

What do I want in particular? To take over! Well, sort of anyway. I want technology to have a fluid role in the library’s life. I want staff to be well trained in technology (maybe by me) and be comfortable with trying new things. I want us to be responsive to change in a good way and see it as opportunities, not as the death knell.

–Jane, for whom the bell tolls, but not today

Mr. Rochester thinks I am bad, but this guy was actually injured while impersonating one of the BDH. (video requires Quicktime)

I am participating in the ALA Library 2.0 Bootcamp. Everyone gets their own blog to write about their path of discovery, we are using Squidoo (a fun new tool), and we have an RSS reader to keep track of it all. Luckily for me, much of this stuff is not new. I am glad that ALA is finally taking steps to get on the Cluetrain. We shall see where this motley crew will take us.

If you would like to keep track of me during this period, you can read my blog for the project here. My byline: This ain’t your parents’ library.

Don’t worry. I will still be boring you from this URL as well. Please, no gratitude is neccasary.

–Jane, a person of the Earth

I have discovered two words that make the pain of being in the same room with both your parents and your in-laws go away: Bottomless Mimosas.

Two days. Two restaurants. Two brunches. Many, many glasses of that orange bubbly drink.

–Jane, T minus 5 days

MPOW is considering moving towards a learning commons. In preparation for this, we have conducted a survey and a focus group in conjunction with campus IT. The things that came out of the focus group were not that unsurprising. Some of the key complaints were

• The library is not open long enough (our central computing site is open 24/7)
• There are no quiet computing areas for test taking and serious paper writing.
• Because the library is open to the public, there are safety concerns from students.
• The library’s computers were seen as having out-dared software and did not have enough flexibility for the students. (This was a major concern for them)

The last point is a concern for me too. As I said in my previous post, our technology policy often troubles me. We give a lot of excuses for the way things are the way they are, but excuses do not solve our problems. Why can’t we have the latest version of software on our computers? Why do I know more about solving Office problems then some of the library IT guys? Our students want more tech support, but they are stuck with a truly hit or miss with whatever librarian is at the desk and library IT guys whose forte is not always the software on the computers.

Are there ways that we can be more open and protect our systems at the same time? Our campus IT site lets the students do more and they have not spontaneously combusted. Are there any IT people reading this who have solved this problem in your libraries?

–Jane, wants to solve the problems, not just bitch about them

(below you will find a ranty rant)

I do not want to wait for IT to install things on my computer. I do not want to call them every time I need a new version of Quicktime or to put software on my computer that I need for a class, only to have it not work the next day because my permissions have been put back to their original “drudge” level.

I am not a child and do not appreciate being treated like an idiot with a box. Yes, there are some people who would be unable to handle this responsibility, but give them a chance and if they mess up their machine, they can have it revoked.

How about a little staff training instead of a locked down technology policy that takes up my time? How about we punish the people actually making the mistake instead of the ones who are stuck with a policy created for the handful of idiots that would not know a CPU if it dropped on their toe.

And yes, I completely see the irony in me whining like a child over being treated like one.

–Jane, still feels justified in whining

One of my favorite people in the world left for Iraq today. I worry by nature. I can feel the tears in my throat for him though I never did cry while we were talking on the phone or when I first found out about his new job.

He will only be there for a handful of months, but he better come back in one piece. If you do not post to your blog, Adriel, semi-regularly, we are going to have some problems. The kind where I kick your sorry arse and make you drink too much frosty beer.
–Jane, safe travels, my friend