Alaska Bush Library Service

I thought I knew a lot about MARC records until I had to map the MARC records to meet the new database. I will be posting this question to the Koha listserv as I feel stumped.

One of the features that I like about using Koha will be the uploading of library budgets into the program. This will let the aides know what their budgets are. We will set up a purchasing program so that library aides that want to purchase books will get the training they need to purchase quality books that support the curriculum. For library aides that don’t want to purchase books, I will be able to keep them informed about what is coming to their schools.

I am uploading the first set of records into the program. Hopefully, I will be able to see results soon. I am bracing myself for their not to be success at this level. My goal is to know what I need to work on tomorrow.

I am amazed at how busy in service weeks are. I keep the library open until 8:00 or 8:30 every night so that teachers can use the media center while they are here in Unalakleet. I give away a free book to each teacher that comes by. This year added a coupon to Amazon Grocery store for 10 dollars off a 50 dollar order.

I did this as part of providing information that people didn’t have. This is what our libraries need to continue to do if we would like to stay relevant. Part of the in service training to the teachers included our need to provide relevant information to our teachers and how do we do that.

I am able to work on Koha now. I am doing the initial set up while it is on a server that is not our districts. It will get moved over at the end of next week. Tomorrow I should be uploading the library records. It will be great to see what it looks like then.

I have a technology person working with me that got me to the point of getting shell access.  Dan Foot, the tech person, is someone I had worked with before when dealing with tech issues in my previous school district.  He is a patient person that works well with people over the phone.  I am now glad that I had the roadblock because he will check to make sure that running this program won’t interfere with other databases that are on the same server.

In-service is next week.  Next on my list is to gather the materials I have been collecting for the library aides so that I have them ready to hand out.  I am also going to ask for suggestions on what they would like to learn more about.  I thought about setting up a wiki, but I think that might be a roadblock for some and I wouldn’t get the information that I need to have before they get here.

After spending all day yesterday playing with Koha and trying to get it started on the Linux machine it is loaded on, I came into work this morning to find an email with the announcement of an upgrade for Koha. I will now start over with the upgraded Koha and see if I can get something moving on this before I have all the librarians in my district show up next week for training. I would love to be able to train them on Koha, but it is doubtful that I will be that far along in the project.

The main problem for me to figure out is how to talk to the machine that has the programming on it. I have read enough of the instructions to know how to type in the commands, but it is maddening to be stuck on something simple. I keep reminding myself that feeling this way is a part of learning something new but, part of me feels like a two year old: “I want this knowledge, and I WANT IT NOW.” I know I will appreciate and remember the information longer if I work for it, but I really wish someone would invent a machine to do brain scans and then transfer the information from one person to another.

Today we have uploaded Koha.  Now I will spend some time getting to know it.  I am really excited about moving in this direction.  That is the good news.  The bad news is that it looks like it an Alaskan school district would rather censor the Internet than teach their students how to be effective Internet users.  I always thought our job was to teach not police.

Here are a couple of pictures of my recent travels.

This is Diomede Island.  It looks as if it were carved out of the rocks on the beach.  The group I was with were great.  It is scary to be weathered in with people you don’t know that well.  You never know if the stress of not getting home will turn a normally great person into a grouchy person that wants to take everything out on anyone nearby.  We had none of that.  Everyone stayed cheerful.  It was nice to get home on Friday.

A hot bath felt just as great as I had been dreaming about.  Water is an issue on Diomede.  There are not the conventional ways to gather water that you see in most towns or even villages.  It is likely that Dimede residents will be without water at somepoint in the Spring.  Conservation is a year round thought.  Showers were discouraged.  I think each of my group managed to live with only one for the week. Living like that for a week changes your perception of how to use water at home.  I have talked to at least one of my traveling companions that said that they thought twice before washing a dish or using water in a normal way this weekend.

This was the weather as we flew from Wales to Diomede.  It was a beautiful day.  When it was time to leave on Wednesday, the waves were coming up on top of the helipad.  We  knew we weren’t leaving that day.  Same thing for Thursday.  Friday the weather looked better from the morning, but it sure was cloudy.  Finally, we got the word, the flight was on.  While I would have preferred to keep the original schedule, it did take until Friday to make sure the library was up and going. Kindergartner through fifth graders came in to check out books twice while I was there.  All in all, it was a very successful week.

I think I have come late to podcasts. I now know that they can be played on any computer, you don’t need an iPod to play them. The goal for this morning is to add information to the Alaska School Library Association Wiki about podcasts that people may find interesting. I have learned a lot from Library Geeks, SirsiDynix Podcast, LibVibe, and the ALA Web 2.0 podcasts. I hope more school librarians will get into listening and learning through these resources.

I have been in Little Diomede for the past seven days.  This was originally planned as a five day trip that the weather man has extended to seven so far…

For the most part my time was spent in the library doing maintenance.  On top of the fact that I wasn’t able to get out here last year, there isn’t anyone in charge of keeping the library in order.  I taught the middle school students how to put books away.  Four students volunteered to come into the library twice a week to put books away.  Pod 1 students learned about the everybody section and how to find books by their favorite authors.  Pod 2 students learned that there is a system that puts all the same subject books in the same place on the shelves.

With the extra days here I cleaned off shelves that had interesting bits of winners and losers on the junk index. Losers included software from the first library cataloging system we had, Library Pro 1.2 and a pencil sharpener with no collector for the pencil shavings.  The winner was a file folder of copies of the government documents that have allowed people from Diomede to travel to Russia and/or blocked travel to Russia.  These letters were a find for me that someone had put a lot of time in to gather them up.  I made sure that the principal knew where the file was.

If we don’t leave today, there may be a problem.  I am drinking my last Diet Pepsi.  While the local store does have soda in plastic bottles, none of it is Diet.