Moving Closer

As the month winds down and we can see the start of a new month as we gaze over the week view in Outlook, so also do we move towards finalizing the website. Code is being written to migrate the database inhouse! Stay tuned for next Monday's blog for more updates on website work.

I will change direction and point you towards Arapahoe Library District's presence via Gizapage. There have been a number of online social aggregation or business card sites that have crossed my screen. Intrigued, I created an account which holds most of our online presence. Right now it does not interact with myspace or youtube but I hope these are just temporary! Other sites that I've heard about are card.ly, dandyiD and hi.im. You might want to scope out chi.mp, as well. No real rhyme or reason for choosing Giza over the others. Take a look and let me know what you think. Would you use something like this? Does it help to have a jumping off point at one place?

Rainy Day Monday

or I'm glad I picked the cucumbers and beans from my garden yesterday! The cooler weather is a prediction that winter is probably not that far off. As I was enjoying the sun and the warmth yesterday, I could not help but gaze at the large tree in our backyard and wonder if this coming weekend was the start of leaf-raking, apple cider, and pumpkin lattes......

This week's post brings you cheery news to break through the gloomy day. The shopping cart or transaction function is working - a big hip hip hooray to Todd and to John for making this happen. We will continue this week to test the transaction. We will also look at our database to see if all of the records have been loaded. Once we can get these pieces in place it will be marrying it all together on one server and then the real testing begins. We will be running lots of searches to ensure the experience is what you are accustomed to.

Meanwhile, I leave you with this question which has nothing to do with either technology or the website work - what is your favorite fall experience?

Am I littering?

The thought occurs to me that i might be a virtual litterer....... The upstanding citizen that i try to be makes me shiver at the thought of leaving behind litter on the internet. To further explain, i have accounts in twitter, facebook, linkedin and goodreads. I have a presence in worldcat and on amazon and librarything, too. I post photos to flickr and confess to lurking on lots of blogs, posting occasionally. I monitor sites like socialmention.com and yelp.com to see if and when Arapahoe Library District is discussed (if there are other sites like this that you know of, let me know!)

with all of this activity i feel like i'm leaving pieces of myself all over cyberspace. if anyone followed a trail of online dna, what would they find out about me? does it matter to me? how much does it matter?

studies have shown that we (the royal "we") are caring less about privacy in favor of socializing online. "we" are happy to engage as much online as in person. now there are even websites where you can aggregate the bits and pieces of you into one place (e.g. card.ly or dandyid). how comfortable are you? since google can show you what my house looks like, i'm thinking there's not as much left privacy-wise in our lives.

to post an update on website work - we continue progress on loading records and on moving the data to our own server - whereby i will be busily engaged in input and testing - and will have no time for further littering the cyberworld. looking forward to your thoughts.....

More, more, more!

More website work, more records loaded, more progress made. It's fitting that this is blogged after Labor Day - normally a day of rest but not for all of us. We continue to make progress on the search function which is almost a "wrap." The checkout process comes next and then we begin the tidying up process to ensure all is working and all content is loaded on the new site. We've even started to talk about a timeline and in the near future, we hope to offer you a live link for your initial peek at the new site!

In the meantime, here's a new twist on reading - the digi-novel. You read the book and engage with the website for value-added information. According to the article you don't have to go online, the book can stand alone as is. And the book? It's called Level 26 - a a crime novel by Anthony Zuiker. Read the book, read the website, write your experience here!

Technology in the hands of babes

Well, almost babes ~ how about grade schoolers? My email is sometimes like Christmas - it delivers a gift that sends me off and running after new knowledge and new content! The gift/email that was delivered sent me to the topic of technology in education. A recent study called Pockets of Potential: Using Mobile Technologies to Promote Children's Learning is a fascinating study of the use ~ or largely nonuse ~ of mobile tools to promote education. Those age 12 and under represent one of the fastest growing segments of users of mobile devices (because they have smaller fingers - in my humble opinion!) Part of it comes from the lack of standards but some of it comes from educators, too. Does providing your third grader with a cell phone so the teacher can send him problems improve his ability to learn? Time will help sort this out, I hope, so that we can maximize our use of tools to further enhance learning.

I enjoyed the appendix which lists some of the forward-thinking endeavors being made in marrying education and technology. It also brings to mind how libraries follow along with this effort. Do we make our content available for mobile devices? Will we check out mobile devices like books? It's an exciting future for us all!

This week I have nothing new to report on website development progress. Even our developer deserves a vacation so work on the new site has gone on vacation, too. We continue to pull records out of our catalog into the new website for testing search sometime in the near future.

How can we not communicate in an electronic world?

Good Monday morning to us all! As of this writing, most every parent I know has gone through the routine of sharpening pencils, buying new clothes and waiting with bated breath for the start of school. Did we also buy any new electronic gizmos? A new laptop? An iTouch? Upgrade the phone plan for texting? For internet? We've come a long way when getting ready for school had nothing to do with batteries or anything electronic!

It occurred to me, though, that we can still not be good communicators when we are so wired and plugged and online most all of the time. I observed a friend who was trying to catch up with another friend at a large community gathering. With so many people, it wasn't just "hey I'll see you in the parking lot!" but more of "where are you going to be and when so I can meet you." Now both parties did have cell phones so they could communicate but they did miss their meeting (although they happened to find each other later). In thinking about this, my conclusion is that regardless of the tools ~ you still communicate the way you communicate ~ whether it's good or bad. Even with the best devices, we may still not be better off getting our messages to the people we need to!

Is this a decent segueway into website work or did I read you through a rough patch here? Our communications intent with the new website is one of providing you easy and eye pleasing ways to access the collection. We think this is your number one reason for visiting us and using us. We hope our communications/website matches the intent.

I have no updates to provide at this time for the website; work continues with the developer.

Update for August.......

Records are loading

Carousels are filling

Stories are populating

We continue to move closer to finishing parts and pieces for the website to become one whole cohesive working unit of ease and functionality in finding great reading and listening and watching recommendations.

In the meantime, this blogger discovered (by reading other blogs!) the power of Google. No, don't stop reading! You probably use Google anyway, right? Well, when you perform a search you now see a link called "show options" - clicking on this provides many new ways to slice and dice your results. How about the wonder wheel view? I think the timeline view might be a good reference tool - showing the popularity of your search term. Even the videos and reviews is a nice way to limit the search if this is what yr seeking anyway. What do you think?