Refinements

This past week we worked on and worked on hammering out the basic philosophy of the new website; things you've read here but put all together in one piece. The purpose of this piece is to better understand and then develop what staff need to know about the new website - for themselves and to talk to patrons.

We also consolidated the major work into buckets of work and have attached hours to them. So, onward and upward we progress!

To digress from website work, did you watch the Apple announcement of its new device, the iPad? Being a Mac family at home, we were engaged with about the first half of the presentation. My daughter was excitedly saying, "I want one, I want one!" The jury is still out, rather you can't get your hands on one yet but I'm on the edge of my seat waiting to see if this changes the reading community. If you can play games on the iPad with its larger (more senior-friendly?!?!?) screen, then is reading going to be easier and more enjoyable? Publishers are just beginning to create interactive books where you read the print but can follow along on a website for additional content. The iPad might provide a 3-D experience of reading where you see the location or can see the action as it happens. Will the concept of imagination be lost to us?

In the meantime, welcome snow! At least we're not on the East Coast digging it all out!

Website Work Continues/Book My Love Contest!

Website preview parties have been in full swing introducing the new website to staff. Thanks to all staff who have been able to come and preview - interact - ask questions!

We continue our work and prioritization of it so that the major issues can be resolved sooner than later.

In the meantime, please check out our teen Facebook. We're running our Book My Love contest through February 15 to name your favorite teen title! To enter, you only need upload the cover on the wall. Check out other entries on the Fan Photos Wall. Got any bets for which title might win?

It's a great Monday ~ no posting last week due to the libraries being closed.

On the website front, we are working a lot on the internals - technical work that still needs to be accomplished and taking the website to staff for them to discover and interact with the site. I am so very pleased to report that the feedback has been so positive! Staff are interested, are setting up accounts and are posting their reviews on library materials! Wow - it is so intriguing to see what is being posted to the site - I hope you will be as interested as I am when it opens to you - the public - as well! (ps the image is a book cover of From Slave Ship to Freedom Road that I just posted to the new site.)

Progress!

Progress is hearing the sound of the school bus running again after the winter break....

Progress is not seeing the dust on top of the refrigerator, even if you had to get the step stool to reach in the first place.....

Progress is marking off "to-do" items from the website list and that is continuing on an ongoing basis. We made considerable progress in the mystery of "why won't some records import?" - and we think it has to do with accents and other such characters added to letters which somehow became a dam and prevented import. Now that we've got that working, many more records are now in our website. Whew - it did not help when the illustrator of the Harry Potter books became the "stop" because of her name!

On another front, we are updating information on sites such as Librarything Local and even our Google maps presence in order to be in the places where users might anticipate finding us. Should you see Arapahoe Library District in the virtual world with incorrect information, please post the link to this blog - your help is much appreciated!

Happy New Year of the Tiger!

For those of you who follow the Chinese calendar, 2010 is the Year of the Tiger. In our extended family, we celebrate together with special foods (for luck and for health, of course!) and we find out which family members celebrate their "year."

The latest work on the website has been to prioritize our list of to do's. Part of this is based on the input received from our management team and part of it has been an internal list we've been keeping. In getting more organized we are moving away from our multi-tabbed spreadsheet to our internal ticketing system for better process and flow. We still have a number of known issues we are working on and ask for your patience as we continue to work through these. Continue to check the blog and/or the website for the announcement of our beta launch. The website will be previewed for staff during January.

In the meantime, health and happiness to you in the Year of the Tiger.

With a ho ho ho

Work on the website last week consisted of compiling and contemplating the results received from our leadership team's homework assignment. They were given three tasks to complete and provide input and insight on their experience. Early results indicate that we need to work on the "my account" part of the site to make it work better so plans are now underway.

In the meantime, this blogger has been working on making our library information more visible on Google Maps and ensuring that our information is accurate on Yahoo Local. Should I even be surprised that our information can appear in so many places online? If you heard a vague thunk as you read this, it was my brain exploding as I created yet another username and password in which to manage all of this! Sidenote: read more about openid to see how this might help!

So with a hearty ho ho ho in the hopes that your cookies have been baked for Santa and your stockings have been hung with care, wishing you the merriest of holidays!

Do you need to go on a techno-diet?

A study, How much information do we consume, comes out of the Global Information Industry of the University of California at San Diego. They say that Americans consume 34 gigabytes of information - daily! Excuse me, but that sounds like techno-overload! Granted this is for the year 2008, and it does include tv and radio as part of our information consumption. All in all it says that we consume information about 12 hours daily and 100,000 words per day (either through reading or listening). Think this sounds outrageous?

Offering a quick update on the website, we presented it to our management team here at ALD. They each have a task to perform on the new site and report in. These insights will be gathered and prioritized for to-do's prior to beta launch next month. Look for an update next Monday - I will try to summarize any major findings.