Odds and Ends:

Save Ohio Libraries is the rallying cry as well as the focus of this week’s activities.

The Save Ohio Libraries Facebook page is rapidly approaching 12,000 members (and has gone from 11,543 to 11,768 as I have written this post).  If you are a FB member, add to that number.  Also, become a fan of Governor Ted Strickland and post a message on his board.  As events around the world in recent months have shown, social networking has an impact, and one of the ways to have an impact is a large group of people all taking a step in the same direction.

Rallies are being planned in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Centerville, London, Portsmouth, and (just organized tonight) Columbus.  If you can add a few bodies to the gatherings, do so!

One additional thought to add to this:  this is growing beyond Ohio.  There are many people from other states who are watching this with concern and support.  The success or failure of these efforts (both the efforts to drastically reduce library funding to help balance the state’s budget, as well as our efforts to preserve library services) will make it easier/harder for other states to do the same.  Broadcasting the understanding that cutting library services only hurts recovery efforts by the states will not only benefit libraries across the country, but will also benefit the overall economy.

Make yourself heard!

Libology’s Scriblio installation.
Scriblio, the open-source Library OPAC that runs on a WordPress installation, has been installed on Libology.  Several notes about this software installation:

• The library catalog contained within this installation of Scriblio is Capital University’s, located in Columbus, Ohio.  I could have used any of dozens of libraries, but since I work there, it made sense to create something I could use on a regular basis.
• The software is fairly close to the default installation, although I plan to tweak the design over the next few weeks.  I have several projects on my plate, and I am happy to have reached a “live” status for this, so I may put it aside while I finish the book.
• Many of the links, especially the related subject and author links, do not work.  I haven’t looked into this yet, so it may be something I didn’t do, or activate, or something.
• It runs very slowly, most of the time.  I am not sure how much of this is due to my hosting service’s specs (a new service, for me), how much is due to database clutter (I have neither indexed the tables, nor adjusted the cache settings yet), or how much is due to factors in how I set it up.  The database is about 2GB, so I would imagine that it might take a bit of time to conduct a search.
• Most of the time delay over the past couple of weeks has been due to my chasing a ghost in the php code.  I had been attempting to set up the “real time status” reporting (this tells the location, call number, and availability of each item), and couldn’t get it to work.  As I am relatively new to php, I assumed that I was missing something there.  It wasn’t until I decided to try to work backwards and find the reference in the html code that I found out that it wasn’t working because it was made invisible via the style sheet.  From there it was a very quick fix.
• To see a very well implemented Scriblio installation, check out Plymouth State University’s Lampson Library’s OPAC.  They have nearly twice the number of records in their system, but their response time is much faster.  They have also done a great job with the page layout… very little wasted space.

My feeling about the software, at this particular point, is that it is an incredible demonstration of what can be done with a solid piece of software (WordPress) and some well-focused creativity.  Casey Bisson and the rest of the people who created this software have done a terrific job.

The downside is that it seemed, to me, harder than it should have been to get my installation this far.  To set things up properly one needed be comfortable working with WordPress, PHP, HTML, and CSS.  And this is only to get everything installed, imported, and configured to show the real-time status of the items.  I am not complaining… this is a young project, and what might be easy for one library (or one developer) might be tougher for others.

So, the question is : should you try to do this.  If you are interested, I say go for it!  If you have ever installed WordPress before, then there isn’t much that won’t be familiar (mostly editing URLs in PHP and editing a style sheet).  This is a great way to push your own envelope, and to learn a few things along the way.  This has certainly been a good learning experience for me….

Columbus is an exciting town when you are interested in libraries.  This was driven home by the Code4lib Conference Proposal : Columbus, OH page of Roy Tennant’s website.  Take a look, and see if you agree.

The Code4Lib Conference has been something which I have really wanted to attend, but haven’t been able to travel to do so.  2009 may be my year!

Today’s horrific news, the campus shootings at Northern Illinois University, has struck fairly close to home for me.

Before moving to Columbus, my current residence, I lived in DeKalb for 18 years. I have attended NIU; my former wife was a graduate student in the Geology department. I suspect that I have even been in the lecture hall where the shootings occurred (I have definitely been in a lecture hall with a stage in that building).

I likely know emergency responders who were on-site, and medical personnel at Kishwaukee Hospital’s ER. I know professors, staff, and students at NIU.

I won’t know until names are released if I know any of the dead or injured. Chances are good that I have met one or more of them through my work at Kishwaukee College, the community college located a few miles away from NIU. I am bracing myself for the possibility that someone I knew as an acquaintance, or perhaps even a friend, will be among the dead or injured.

If you have seen the news coverage, you will likely have seen the campus library building. It is just across a small parking lot from Cole Hall, and I know several people who work there. They are understandably very shaken tonight; friends, co-workers and fellow students have died today. Without knowing the motives of the gunman, it is just as easy to visualize this happening in the library.

Why do I bring this up? Simply to say that events like these always happen on a local scale. Most of the time we view it with a wider lens: Columbine, Nickel Mines, Virginia Tech… and now NIU. Where next? And if it happens to be your locality, what should you do to prepare?

I feel the most important thing is to recognize that everything is local to the people who are there. Accept this shared humanity, balance the wide-lens view with the local view, and strive to avoid being afraid. Fear of the negative possibilities serves only to rob us of our ability to live fully and to give our strength to those who need it.

The next most important thing is to review your library’s and/or institution’s disaster policies. Make sure that your plans are general enough to be easily applied in whatever disaster you may experience, but specific enough to allow for clear action. It is tough to find this balance, just as it is tough to balance our view of news stories such as these, but the effort will be worth it.

Bacon as a Bookmark?  Librarians Tell All is the title of Mike Hardin’s column in today’s Columbus Dispatch.  He details various objects found inside returned library books, as described by Columbus area librarians.

The “cat in the bookdrop” library happens to be located about one block from my workplace.

I know a librarian in Illinois who found a strip of uncooked bacon in a book, but I cannot remember who it was… can anyone jog my memory?