Alaska Bush Library Service

It is sometimes hard to judge how your year is going mid-year. I have been recently thinking that I am not doing enough. Then I came across several things to help me rethink that.

1. A list of accomplishments from the yearly report of my predecessor. Quick check shows me in line for accomplishing a similar set of tasks that she had done. (I still feel she was one of the best school librarians in the business.)
2. Reading a blog post that used pictures from one school that participated in our Battle of the Books program. The students look happy with the program they are participating in. One of my main goals of my life is that students are happy with reading.  Seeing student’s faces as they get a school banner for their Battle Book win.
3. The support from people in my office when someone questioned a book that is in the Battle of the Book program for the year that is winding up. Support from coworkers is a definite sign to me that I am doing a positive job.
4. Comments from colleagues about the materials that I send them when they are looking for new teaching ideas. People tend to be surprised by the wealth of materials that we have to cover the subjects they are teaching.
5. The work that I am doing on Koha. I am learning more and more each time I sit down to it. I keep thinking there has to be an end to the learning curve, apparently not.
6. Purchases that I have made this year to build a collection that has a more digital bent. I have found a lot of dvds that I know will help teachers in their classrooms.

What I hope to accomplish this year:

1. ILTL Grant - Finish the write up by this weekend 2/10/08
2. Send grant proposal to others to get their input. Encourage input on the goals and activities in the grant to get other’s good ideas.
3. Visit schools that I haven’t been to.
4. Planning Fall In-service for library aides.
5. Set up a system for books with duplicate barcodes. We need to rebarcode the books.
   1. Determine which books have duplicate barcodes.
   2. Make new barcodes for those books.
   3. Find an easy way for the books to be rebarcoded.
   4. Go to sites to help with this process.

This should be enough to get me through this year and maybe next school year.

I am working on a Toshiba laptop that I have put Ubuntu on.  I thought it would be easier to get Koha working on it.  This has been a year of cleaning and organizing the library though and not working on the computer.  Going into Christmas break, though, I plan on taking the computers and learning more about the Linux system.

Koha 3.0 should be released this week or next.  I am excited about the changes that may be coming.  I am hoping to be able to use MySQL to organize the Marc records better.  MarcEdit is great, but I need to put the records together by ISBN number and I am hoping that I can sort and merge them using MySQL

I have learned how to shell into another computer from a Macintosh.  The word a Mac uses is ‘terminal’  With that I was able to put the Linux machine under my desk and just work on one machine.

This year we are reorganizing the media center and trying to organize the database for Koha so that it looks better.  This will be a long process that will only be accomplished with small steps along the way.

Last week, I went to Shaktoolik.  I uploaded a bunch of books and got them processed and set up for their students.  I just went into the OPAC and looked at recent arrivals for Shaktoolik.  Each of the books show up just as they should.  Their location has their school abbreviation and shelving location.  Their ISBN’s don’t have anything extra so their pictures show up like they should.  It seems funny, but just seeing that these records work like they should give me the energy to work on the older records and make them look better.

Wow,

It is hard to believe that the 2007-08 school year is upon us already.  Today is the first day of the year.  I didn’t get my list of things that I wanted to before school started, so I am starting tonight to finish consolidating the MARC records before we reload them to Koha.

I need to order Harry Potter #7 for all schools and Battle Books for schools that wanted them.  Cleaning the desk was the first job and it is done for the most part.  I still have a lot of books that need to be set up and ready to go, but I can see the top of my desk which is a plus over this morning.  Here is a list of the upcoming events that I need to finish.

1. KOHA record integration.
2. Battle Book orders.
3. Harry Potter orders.
4. RIF distribution box up.

I also need to set up for the AASL conference that will be done before the week is out.  Boy, I hope this all gets done.

I had a lot of plans of what to finish this summer.  I need to get a list started and put a few hours a day into working on it.  I want all my MARC records to be combined into a union catalog, I want to run Linux on a computer and start my own programming, and I want to digest all the information that I received at the NECC 2007 conference.

I know that it shouldn’t be hard to have a program compare ISBNs of books and combine the records.  That will probably be the next step.

Koha version 2.2.9 was released today.  I will try to upload it to a machine that is running Linux Ubunto today.  I hope that all goes well and that I can see what the Opac looks like before I send off records or updates to Dan to upload, only to find that I don’t like the changes.

Book Expo 07 is shaping up nicely.  They have a scheduler in which you can check off the sessions that you want to attend and print out a schedule to follow.  I say print off, because I feel that I will have enough books to gather that I won’t be carrying my computers with me.  That in itself will be a different experience.  I don’t think I have attended a conference without a laptop in eight years.  I wonder if I can still take notes in the normal way.

A new website that I found today through the ACRLog post about how to keep up with technology.  I want to Web 2.0 applications  has listings of new Web 2.0 technologies that we may want to know how to use.  They are categorized by what they do.  I will use this site a lot over the summer to teach myself some of these technologies.

If I can get to all I want to this summer, I will be busy and productive.  That will be a lot of fun.

I have been trying to build a Linux machine on an eMac.  This has caused me an unending supply of brain hurt.  I think I have given up today and will purchase a base machine with Debian on it that can be a machine that I can play with Koha a bit on here at work before I sent the information to Dan to upload.  If anyone has put Linux on an eMax, I sure would appreciate an email. dgrediagin(at)bssd.org

     I have to admit to getting tired of Marc records.  I worked on records for about ten hours over the weekend.  I am glad that summer is coming and I won’t be sitting in front of my TV because the weather outside is bad.  The goal is still to be able to update the records in a comprehensive format by the end of the summer, but I think I need to take a week and not work on them at all.

I see MARC records as a puzzle.  How do we put it together so that our users get the most from our resources.   Right now I have spend 10 hours a day working on the records to delete unnecessary information, correct the item types, and remove extraneous information.  Last night my problem was that the program I am using wouldn’t make new reports for me.  Without the reports, I couldn’t continue fixing things.

That was a wake up call for me.  I had spent my whole weekend in my house.  The weather outside is above freezing.  It would have been easy to do lots of things, but I chose to work on the records.  If that doesn’t say, you need a life, I don’t know what will.

This morning I answered a phone call and emails from a district that is converting to Koha.  I was trying to explain why I didn’t use LibLime as they are planning on doing.  The best explanation that I could come up with is that I don’t have a life and wanted to learn something new.  LibLime is a great company that has been helpful in answering my questions and would be a good alternative to going it on your own.

I know I had an entry titled this before, but I do love OSS programs.   Yesterday I mentioned that I would look at Pines because I like the tool it has to merge MARC records.  Today a Koha developer emailed me to let me know that he is working on this for Koha and it should be available soon.  I can’t imagine getting that kind of service from a vendor.

I forgot what it feels like to be back in the school.  There was a lot of work this year in the office.  Last Monday I traveled to Brevig Mission to help the library aide there put together the library.  The library had been a classroom the first half of the school year until elementary wing was finished.

It was nice to work with students.  I gave a lesson to high school students on recognizing hoax Internet sites.  That is always a favorite lesson of mine to give to students.  I had purchased books for the library last year.  The library aide and I were able to process the books and get them on the shelves.  Kindergarten students enjoyed “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus” and “Diary of a Worm”.

I am thinking of looking at Pines.  They have a feature that I would love to be able to use in order to merge MARC records together and keep the best record that you have and  integrate the items into that one record.