library+instruction+technology

I've been busy this month. I just haven't been blogging. I plan on writing more about some of the bigger projects soon. Here are the highlights…

• Reactive weeding and shifting in our reference collection to eliminate a row of shelves to make more room at the computers.
• Withdrawing those weeded reference books from our catalog.
• Selecting books in the juvenile collection for weeding after education faculty confirmation.
• Adding a "Book Quick Search" to go with the existing "Article Quick Search" on the library's web site.
• Adding a MeeboMe widget to the library's web site.
• Decommissioning the Reference Desk in prep for a combined Service Desk at our existing Circulation Desk at the start of Fall term. (How many times can I say desk in one run-on sentence? If you answered three you are correct.)
• Getting ready to switch offices with Brian in two weeks.
• Getting ready for the OPAL conference.
• Finalizing the changes of the redesign of the OPAL catalog.
• Tearing out the kitchen at home. This is the last room to be redone since we started working on the house in July 2004.
• Finding a brick floor in this greenhouse/stall/thing attached to the garage that was full of junk when we bought the house.
• Going to the farm to see my mom and sister who was on vacation for a couple of weeks.

Stay tuned for more details. I may also share the fun as we begin our final descent towards the first day of classes…only four weeks for those last minute projects! 

Oh how times have changed. When I was a growing up, network programming sucked in the summer. This is not the case with cable in 2007.

I was already anticipating the new season of The 4400 . I can now get ready to set the DVR for new (to the US) seasons of Footballers Wive$ (with Joan Collins), MI-5, and Hex.  Now, if we could just convince the BBC to show Torchwood on this side of the Atlantic.

May went by way to fast. I suppose two weeks of vacation helped move things along.

I spent my first week of vacation back at the beginning of May working on outside projects. I scraped paint. I mulched. I also did a day trip to the 'burgh to visit some friends and see the old houses.

I hadn't been to Pittsburgh proper since we moved to Ohio. It was kind of sad visiting the old neighborhood.  It also doesn't help that Trader Joe's is now in East Liberty.  Wal-Mart just doesn't cut it. Oh great and benevolent Target site selectors, please build a store in Zanesville! Oh, and thank you Chipotle site selectors! We love your burrito goodness.

I spent a lot of time at work in the middle of the month extracting holdings data for specific publishers from our shared catalog. I wrote a proposal identifying a couple of ways to allocate cost shares for e-book collections. My preference is to follow the OhioLINK formula since that is how OPAL's share was derived, but the directors need to make the final call on how we are going to split our share of the costs.

I'm enjoying the remaining hours of my second week of vacation. I spent most of this last week at the farm. I went up on May 26 and came back late this past week to attend an OhioLINK meeting on Friday. Yeah, I know, lame to do a meeting during vacation. I still have a couple more days to use before the end of June. We're under the "use em or lose em" policy at "Fish with Teeth Grrr" College. 

I wonder how fast June will go? ECSTI students tend to keep us busy. My trip to DC for ALA Annual will also make time fly.

Chipotle opened a store in Zanesville this past August. (Yet another sign of Zanesville's slow transformation into exurban Columbus.) I was happy that they built a store here and I am very appreciative today, because I had a free burrito for lunch.

Chipotle celebrated Tax Day by offering a burrito refund for each burrito (or taco or bowl) bought on Saturday or Sunday. They distributed a fun little burrito refund form to fill out. The real point was to educate the customer about continued efforts to find suppliers for naturally raised chicken and beef. Great marketing ploy and I enjoyed my free chicken fajita burrito with roasted corn chili salsa for lunch.

Muskingum County is under a Level 3 Snow Emergency. The College is closed. I wish I hadn't been so specific on the Library's home page yesterday before I left. The College use Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Contribute as our content management system. I don't have Contribute installed at home. I do have Groopz installed, so I can cover our OhioLINK chat shift at 1 p.m. 

No, Vanilla is not visiting. College was closed at 12:30 p.m. due to the snow and ice.  The drive home wasn't bad. I stayed off of I-70 and took 22/40 back to the 'ville. I think this is the first time since I've been at Muskingum that we've closed for bad weather. Muskingum County is currently showing pink on the Weather Channel's radar.