My Own Travel 2.0

So next week (I hope), I'm off on vacation. Since spouse works for an airline, we fly "standby." This is not my idea of a good time, but he prefers to take advantage of this perk. I'm crossing my fingers, and toes, and anything else I can cross without being a safety hazard.

But in the spirit of 2.0, I revisited my Travel 2.0 posting. The Travel 2.0 blog reminded me that airlines charge fees for a lot these days, including bags (I don't think we stand-byers have to do that, but this may have changed.) I still haven't decided if I'm taking my new netbook, or we'll be bringing a couple to share for the family (it will depend on how much carry-on weight/bulk I want to deal with), but I probably won't be keeping a travel journal on Mapness. I think it would take away quality time from La Famille. I hope to be on Facebook, though, so I'll still keep a hand in the 2.0 world. So far the ratings on TripAdvisor for our hotel are positive, so once we get there, we should be fine.

I have a new error message to add to my collection. Yesterday I was trying to get into our content management system to update some web pages, and I got this friendly error: "Several Java Virtual Machines running in the same process caused an error." Yeah, well, what does that mean? There's too much going on somewhere, I get that part. Does that mean it's on my computer, at the other end, or somewhere in between? And what should I do about it? What process were they involved in, and is it legal in all 50 states? In the end, the brower crashed, so all the windows I had in that brower disappeared (at least it wasn't ALL of my browser sessions.) Will the new Millennium eventually bring error messages that make sense to non-techs? I'm not holding my breath on that.

This morning's hailstorm

We had hail this morning. It was worse in the cities around us, but we had weather enough to keep us home longer than usual and away from the windows (although we did have to look when the hail started.) They'd been talking about golfball-sized hail on the radio; we didn't quite get than, but some was definitely 3/4-inch size. I said, "I should use my new Netbook to take a picture or something." (Yes, the Netbooks are configured, and I've used mine a little bit. Her name is Harriet Jones, after the Doctor Who character.)

My husband said, "I'll take a picture on the digital camera, and you can upload it." So he walked my through it, first on Facebook and then onto my email (I hate the new Outlook web access; it's SO hard to look up an email address, and move around your email, grrr.) The Netbook has a slot on the bottom for a memory card, of the kind our camera uses. Now I'll see if I can upload it here. It worked! I feel so very 2.0 today.

A puzzlement: it's pretty easy with the right tools and a bit of help to do this sort of thing (upload a photo, make a video, etc.) Why does it seem so difficult at work? How much of it is my being used to the old, hard way of doing things, and how much is that I just don't have the right equipment?

P.S. My one fan asked what happened to my avatar. I didn't do anything to it, but it seems to be messed up. I'll have to try troubleshooting it sometime. And the paragraph spacing at the end of my post is being flaky - what's up with that?

It's time for Laundry 2.0

I've been using Facebook for almost a year (I started it in connection with 23 Things on a Stick.) My non-work friends became a critical mass earlier this year, so I check in every day or so to see how people are doing. Given my circle of friends, I thought my post this week about the website recreating the Apollo 11 mission, We Choose the Moon, would stir up some interest. But no. What got people commenting this week? Laundry.

I noted that my family had been asking about laundry this weekend, since we'll be on the road soon. I said, "Who needs clean laundry?" Well, a goodly number of my friends had thoughts on laundry, whether it can be planned, how it can be done, and who should be able to do it. (I agreed with the comments on red clothes. Only once have I had something bleed significantly that wasn't red, and it was a dark green t-shirt from Wales.) Who knew that laundry would be such a hot item?

So given this flurry of interest, I propose that it's time for Laundry 2.0. Dare I paraphrase from A Librarian's 2.0 Manifesto?

• I will recognize that the universe of cleaning culture is changing fast, and that laundry and cleaning services need to respond positively to these changes to provide what users need and want.
• I will try to educate myself (no promises here) about cleaning culture and look for ways to incorporate what I learn into laundry services.
• I will not be defensive about my laundry, but will look clearly at its situation and make an honest assessment about what can be accomplished.
• I will become an active participant in moving my laundry forward. [There's got to be something about user contributions in this - hold on - yeah...]
• I will recognize that homes and cleaning processes change slowly, and will work with my colleagues to expedite our responsiveness to change.
• I will be courageous about proposing new cleaning processes and services, and new ways of providing cleaning services, even though some of my household will be resistant.
• I will lobby for an open laundry room that provides personalized, interactive features that users expect in modern cleaning environments. [!]
• I will encourage my household's administration to clean.

What do you think? Will it ever take the place of night baseball?

What can I do to improve patrons' lives?

Al Franken was sworn in this week as Minnesota's junior senator, many months after the election. In his remarks after taking the oath of office, he said (quoting the late Paull Wellstone) that he's going to "wake up every day saying, 'what can I do to improve people's lives?' " As I librarian, I find that very inspiring. Here's why.

At my institution, we are intensively weeding the print reference collection, to remove resources that are no longer relevant. The web has changed how students and faculty do research, and it has changed the kinds of questions we get as reference librarians. Statistics in books? If they can't download them, they don't want them. Quotations? They look on the web. Big encyclopedias? Why come in to look at books - the library may not even be open when they're doing their research.

We acquire online databases, and monographs - to the point that we don't exactly know what "reference" works we have right now. The print reference collection was a collaborative effort, librarians working together to recommend titles, including titles not in their subject areas. The online collection is often developed in a vacuum, or at least done solo - fewer discussions on how this fits into the greater collection, or gaps we see in others' subjects. I feel sad to see the old collections going away, even as I know it's part of modern reference work.

Then I hear a quote like Franken's, reminding me that my job, the reference librarian's job, is to improve patrons' lives. To help them find their stuff. The patrons are online, so we need to make sure they find their stuff online. Some will continue to use print, or need to use print for their disciplines or topics, but we need to have the stuff online. And we need to know what we have online, so that we can connect patrons with it. One of Ranganathan's laws of library science is "every reader his (or her) book." Which today might be "every researcher his/her source," be it online or print, pdf or html or ILL or paper. And I wonder if I can live up to the call of waking up every day, thinking about how I can improve patrons' lives. I'll try.