Work

Clarification for those of you that read my blog for non-library-related information: this is library related.

I just got an email from one of the sales associates (I somehow got added to the list) on a new product that can be incorporated into the PAC: NoveList Select.

Polaris is pleased to offer NoveList Select - a quick and easy way for patrons to find books similar to those that interest them. NoveList Select pulls from a database of over 4 million titles and retrieves only books that are included in your collection. What's more, a "Find more like this" link appears right in the PAC and sorts results by popularity, making it easier for readers to find additional books they will enjoy.

I can't recall if other PAC software does this either by default or with a company-supported plugin (I know there are third party plugins), but I'm quite happy to hear about this. I'd imagine it works under a library consortia running Polaris just fine, so now I guess I just have to hope our consortia decides to take a serious look at this.

Posted by Brendon Kozlowski

I've been rather quiet on my blog for the past few months, and I might be for the next few as well. The reasoning is simply because I haven't had a whole lot of interesting things to talk about, I've mostly been designing and redesigning our "new" website's look and feel. I've been quite embarrassed to tell people where I work simply because the website was not of my own creation and did not reflect my talents. As I am a one man band here (except for PC repair and networking, my boss does that and I assist him), I do graphic work, design, programming, cost/benefit analysis, future planning/research for technology, and a slew of other mindless yet time consuming things -- I haven't been able to work through this as quickly as I had envisioned. Not only that, but getting a consensus in a new design, knowing that everyone deciding on it had liked it (and not just thought that anything is better than our current design) was a difficult task. I'm still having trouble getting any help on actual content...due to this fact, it's more of a visual redesign than an overhaul, which is quite unfortunate.

Regardless, since I'm itching to show off the website, I'll give a small treat in its place...

Continue reading "Coming to a Library Near Me!"

Posted by Brendon Kozlowski

Okay, so... Working for a library, but also knowing all about ownership rights and the blurry lines between proper usage and improper usage, it always irks me when I don't know what the correct thing to do is.

Many times, I'm asked to place up imagery on our website that is not our own. We do not own the material, it is not from a free* clipart library, and it was not created by me (or in the case of generalization - anyone else within the organization). More often than not, it is book cover imagery directly from our "Patron Access Catalog"...the web-based book/item search for libraries. Now, the vendor (maker of our PAC) has an agreement with Syndetics and therefore with all of the book manufacturers to license these images, and it extends to our use of it within our own organization for use within the PAC.

However, does this grant satellite libraries with their own website (namely, us) the exclusive right to also pull these images and use them? Amazon also allows users of their API to pull book cover imagery, and because of that, I would think if I were to use that, I would be OK in doing so. But - am I? Is it really lawful and legal to use these images for our own use of marketing and publication (in either instance)?



* "Free" depending on the terms of use from the author and distributor.

Posted by Brendon Kozlowski

Although this is not meant as a marketing scheme (we've had wireless for a very long time), I couldn't figure out what to title this as. At our library, such as many medium to large sized libraries (and even some smaller ones now) offer free wireless internet access for their patrons. However, this sometimes brings in the oddball PlayStation Portable (PSP) gamer, the "sit in my car outside the building with my laptop" internet surfer, and the creepy "oh sweet, porn!" people in to the library. Some of it isn't bad:

- Oh, I see you have a playstation portable. If you're interested, we have some game play strategy books for you.
- (While walking back from lunch break) Hey, nice laptop. You know, if you actually want to come inside the library, we do have a café with coffee, bagels, deserts, sandwiches... We also have some DIY books that show you how to extend the range of your computer's wireless signal.
- ....ok, so I can't think of anything for this guy except maybe pointing him towards the picture books of modern dance or realistic painters/sculptors, but then I'd be ever afraid to go near those books again. We usually kick them out anyway.

However, today, we had something a little different. Can you see what's odd in this picture?

Read on for a close up and explanation...

Continue reading "Free Wireless at the Library"

Posted by Brendon Kozlowski

I've been doing a lot of design work lately, and have had very little time in doing any web-related programming or similar activity. This is no different, but because I've been working in the new Microsoft Office 2007 product suite (mostly Microsoft Word), I've had an opportunity to learn a few things I didn't know how to do before. Today, I needed to try to prevent an image from being modified (moved, resized, removed, changed, etc...) within a document (a redesigned organizational letterhead). This worked fairly well, except I had used a document header and footer which also needed to allow for modification (in the header), but preventing changes wouldn't let me access the header. Regardless, the instructions and steps used in the article I'm about to link you all to were extremely useful and quite cool. I know some of these existed in earlier versions of Word, but even so...

"What Does Structured Editing Mean, Anyway?"
I hope this can help someone else someday.

Posted by Brendon Kozlowski