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.

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.

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.

This weekend I will work on merging the MARC records.  That job does not work if you have other people around to interrupt you.  This weekend will be a good one to work on that.

Last night I couldn’t sleep and I had the interesting experience or watching the sunset merge into the sunrise.  I thought we were too close to fall to see that at this time of year.  The sky does get dark for a while, but you can always see the rim of light at the edge.

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 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.

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 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.

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