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.

It its December, it must be time for presents!

The website has received an early present - the gift of more movie and music covers! Thanks to sleuths Jill and John for cracking the case. Their investigative work resulted in our being able to harvest many more covers from our vendor due to understanding the import process and where those elusive identifying numbers are located! This is one instance where the new website and its presentation of materials will be more full-bodied than the original catalog will be!

The website will be presented to management this week and plans are being made to roll out to staff next month for their input.

We will continue to hone and polish away!

Out with November, In with December

It's hard to believe that I am turning my calendar over for the last time in 2009. It's probably too early to be thinking about 2010 resolutions when Santa's visit is coming upon us soon.......

As for holiday wishes, we will soon be beta-launching the website. We've worked on a number of issues with formatting the website for all browsers. You would not think this is such a big deal unless you're working at it from the back-end! We have placed the format icon on the materials for ease of use and have uploaded most of the item covers for a nice display of the collection. From the website you can almost feel like you're right in the library stacks! We continue to load and tweak content - like dusting before company comes over.

Back to Monday Updating!

Where was I last week? We were all hands on keyboards as work continues on the new website. Things that have been crossed off the list of to do's are the shopping cart. We continue to import images for our items and records that have been added to the catalog. Troubleshooting continues with every aspect of the site - from search to formatting to technical issues.

Please check back next Monday to see when we might be beta-launching the site! In the meantime, may you enjoy your Thanksgiving and all of the festivities involved.

Wednesday update

here's to egg on my face - it seems to be the norm with me any more.......

the work continues on polishing the site to a sheen or to at least a nice glow. we continue to fix bugs and test and fix bugs and test and work on content and revise and input more data and test and generally do all of the "moving in" things that one does with a new website. i'm happy to report that we're feeling closer and closer. this week's breakthrough occurred with the cart working in a more than asked-for fashion - yea john with the magic fingers!

stay tuned to next monday's post (really, i can remember to post on mondays!) for word on our soft launch.

What ... another Tuesday post?

It seems to be the habit of posting on Tuesday instead of my regular Monday and the apology sounds like a broken record.....with the same reason as last week's post.

Since the move inhouse, we've been putting up pictures and arranging the furniture ~ so to speak. We continue to input content, test and work on bugs and fixes. Stay tuned as we release the site to you ~ very soon! You will see a story on the website's homepage linking you to the new site. Thanks for your patience!

In the meantime, getting your Thanksgiving plans together? Have a favorite Thanksgiving recipe or website? Share here!