What’s on your library-technology wishlist for Santa? OPACs that users can use without training? Jam-free printers? A conference without any PowerPoint? Let me know by Tuesday, November 15, and I’ll consider it for a TechSource article appearing later that week. Of course, you could just stay mum and then comment on the item, but this way I can interview you, if need be, and make make you say all purty and everything.
I am, as always, badly behind on my TechSource postings, but a complaint on Web4Lib that TechSource authors were ignoring the news about the Google CSE made two little horns pop up from my scalp and an evil grin appear on my face. Hey, fella, I’ll write about Google CSE! Like, show me the API. So of course, that’s on my wishlist for Santa.
Posted on this day, other years:
- Powder featured on NPR - 2008
- Don't stand so close to me - 2007
- MPOW SWAG Arrives! - 2004
- Amazon's Search Inside the Book - 2003
- IL Con-Grunt: Final Kibbles and Bits - 2003
Note – I don’t know if your blog automatically shows email addresses in comments or not – but I’d prefer it not be there, so if it has to show – just don’t approve the comment =)
on to my actual comment-
Around my library we ought to be singing “all I want for Christmas is to automate, to automate, to automate…”
Seriously – for that matter I even would accept not automating if we could just EDIT THE STINKING CATALOG… (we have an OPAC that we have to send the MARC records into the company for them to add – so its a nightmare to delete or change anything…)
Number one on my list? Time.
Time to read the project management books, the usability testing books, the information architecture books.
Time to wrap up the things that are already on the go before the next big thing hits (and I can already see it on the horizon).
And time for my own little projects, which are what keep me interested in the job while I’m working on the big institutional projects.
Not to worry, I can see the email addresses behind-scene, but they do NOT display! I will modify the template so that’s more obvious to commenters when I upgrade MT later this month.
Time… yes… how it slithers away…
Hi,
If I could have anything for my library it would be time for me to finish all the projects that I want to do and if I was greedy and asked for two gifts a self cleaning desk is definitely second in line.
As for the automation software. Check out Koha. I am moving my automation there in the next couple of weeks. We are loading it on a server now. I want not only the ability to upload my own records but the ability to learn to write a program to update my automation system like I want it. Most of my entries on my blog have to do with this migration. After I get it set up and running I will keep the ins and outs of teaching staff how to use the program.
Wireless, which is slowly coming along despite local Luddites having forced it to a public hearing at the city council’s public works committee. I don’t think we’ll get there by Christmas, the wheels of the city grind exceedingly slow.
Spell-check for the catalog. Innovative has it, but those silly beans don’t realize it’s a core catalog function and should be a built-in feature they could be bragging about. They make it a product you have to add on. We may not have the (relatively modest) cost of the product right away.
The ability to run PERL scripts at work. The way the city’s IT department secures our PCs, I can’t have it. There’s a variety of chores that I take home and run on my home PC. I think about work at home a lot, but I get cranky when it’s extra time I’m OBLIGED TO spend.
All I want for Christmas is…a clean library database. (We don’t call it a catalog around here. I’m not entirely sure why.) We switched vendors a few years ago, before either I or my supervisor was with the company, and let’s just say that minimal thought went into the conversion process. As a result, our current database 1) is missing large chunks of data, including the location data for everything in my library, 2) has the data thrown together in fields that make no sense, and 3) semicolons, semicolons, semicolons everywhere. It’s my personal nightmare.
If I can have a couple of extra gifts from Santa this year, I’d also like my database to be appealing, professional-looking, and efficient, and I’d like 1 full-time paraprofessional so I could actually get something done for once.
Fair warning. Koha is very buggy, or it was 2 years ago when I dealt with it. I hope that you have a good library programming staff.
What I want for Christmas is for all this to start making sense. I am new to the field, (I’m in GSLIS at UofI) and there just seem to be well, oddities. I am no computer whiz by far, but I seem to be a walking example of The Stupid User of Library Computer Resources. My search terms are no one else’s, apparently. Keywords? Don’t make me laugh. This was all well and good when I was just a patron (sorry, I’m old as well), and could turn to my handy dandy librarian, but now that I will be the one doing The Search for Joe User–it’s a bit intimidating……You seem a sensible sort to me, and I have found much comfort in your scathing disparagement of OPACs etc. So, thank you. So, what I want for Christmas is this: will controlled vocabulary ever make sense to me?
I just want ergonomic workstation for all staff according to each person’s need – including the reference desk. And,if it’s not too much to ask, a vertical mouse for my desk.
I just want ergonomic workstations for all staff according to each person’s need – including the reference desk. And,if it’s not too much to ask, a vertical mouse for my desk.
What I’d really like is more support for “not-exactly-cutting-edge” technology from my system. In my state all public libraries are part of several larger systems, and some are more tech-savvy or tech-willing than others.
In my system, several suggestions have been made that we start using interactive technology (i.e. blogs, IM, interactive calendars) to make our jobs easier. Unfortunately it seems that the IT department at the system level is frightened of what could, possibly, go wrong.
What is really frustrating about this is that we’re not asking them to adopt untried technology. Other systems are using these technologies, individual libraries in their system are using them as well. We have the know how, and the willingness to help the system, but this has fallen on deaf ears.
Some days I get notification of events and services that are being offered in different systems and I just want to pack up and move our library.
I want to stop double-posting. That’s what I want. Yeah.
An affordable, i.e. cheap, OpenURL resolver. Something that small very-budget strapped libraries could afford and easily install.
Since you bring it up, I want an OPAC that patrons can use without training. And one that pushes non-book content like webpages and subscription databases in a user-friendly, natural way. Some vendors seem to be edging toward this, but I don’t think anyone’s there yet.
These are all such great ideas. I’m mulling over the themes I see–something bigger than just the sum of its parts.
Oh, I want that OPAC, too, Andrea! And I want it integrated into the rest of the library site, so that the OPAC isn’t some “other database” you have to go to.
Oh, and Miriam, a BIG lump of coal to III for charging for spell-check. That reminds me of when a vendor tried to charge us extra for valid HTML! Spell-check is hardly an “innovation” at this point, lordy lordy.
I’d love to see that print / internet management system we’ve been dreaming of for the commons finally come to fruition. It seems like it’s always “just around the corner.” Only – as we approach the corner – a new ILS update appears with vicious fangs and rancid breath — and the management system cringes with fears of incompatibility!
sigh.
If I can’t have my other wishes, or perhaps in conjunction with them, I’d like Eli Neiburger and John Blyberg.
I wanna I wanna … I want libraries to stop being treated like the poor cousins of the “sexy” information delivery – I want them to BE the sexy information delivery. What’s sexy? Whatever is delivered by “knowledge managers” or “Chief Information Officers” or consultants with similar-sounding names and enormous hourly bills presented in a hairy, suit-clad hand (yes, I’m making a gender generalisation here. Bad Me).
What’s not sexy? Whatever is (even figuratively) delivered by in a slender, ring-clad hand with the faint (even virtual) smell of musty books in the background (more generalisations).
What bugs me BIG time, from someone who has been on both sides of this fence, is that there are two types of people doing the same sort of thing, but those who come from the IT side are given respect and kudos, and those who come from the librarian side are given the dregs of the budget and scant respect.
So yeah. All I want for Xmas is plain ol’ respect 🙂
Another thing I’d really like is for our Web site to use proportional width pages.
My Santa wish is wireless electrical power. http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1116/p14s01-stct.html
We have 50+ year old building and we are past maxed-out on electrical capacity. We circulate 120 wireless laptops and recharging batteries is big issue. Power bricks are available, but they get used in unsafe places – stretching across aisles, etc. We’re shopping for new furniture for a 150+ cluster of desktops and getting power to those in a neat way is a huge piece of the puzzle.
Yeah, baby! Wireless electrical will change the world. I’m with you on that 100%.