I’ve been working on my ALA schedule the past few days, especially now that the Conference Planner is now available. Of course, I’ve had a spreadsheet for weeks 🙂 It’s a Google Doc now, so take a peek if you want.
(link updated 6/7/07)
I’ve been catching up on my GoogleReader feeds today and noticed these from BoingBoing. You may have already seen them, but they were located very close to one another in the feed, so that caught my attention as well.
Man who claims FBI is after him puts entire life online
Report: Microsoft building apps to personally identify anyone online
The first one is kind of amusing, until you get to the bottom of the story and realize that this man’s website has hits from the “Pentagon, the Secretary of Defense, and the Executive Office of the President, among others.” So apparently, they are watching.
The second one is just plain creepy. Fortunately, there seem to be several people pointing out that not only does it violate privacy, it’s probably illegal in many places.
SerialsSolutions has recently updated their ERMS (Electronic Resources Management System). They changed the name a couple months ago to 360 Resource Manager (which is kind of annoying, but whatever). There was a big fuss about this on the SerialsSolutions customer email list because there was no warning for the name change roll out. I’m of the mind that if they want to change the name, no big deal. Warning would be nice, but the functionality was the same, so no biggie.
However, following the name change for all their products, they rolled out an upgrade to their 360 Resource Manager. It’s now based on the .Net architecture, which has caused major changes in the navigation and the way things are entered. They sent out emails asking for test subjects and I volunteered. Unfortunately, the supporting documentation that they sent was not helpful. I poked around in the beta version for a bit, and then filled out their survey letting them know how I felt, both positive and negative. I haven’t looked at the support center again since then, but I got an email saying it had been updated.
The updated version of 360 Resource Manager is supposed to have a place for users to input cost information and a way to group things into collections. When I logged in to the test version, I could not get the cost or collections options to work. I checked the Support Center to see if there were any clues there, but neither cost nor collection management were mentioned in the Support Center. I then checked the documentation that was attached to the email containing the link for the test center. No mention there either. So I continued to look around in the test center and get a feel for the other features. I have some minor issues with some of the new navigation features, but I’m sure that I’ll just have to get used to those.
In addition to the test period, SerialsSolutions also offers webinars of their products, including the upgraded 360 Resource Manager. I signed up for one this week, and was pleased by the overview that was given. The focus was mainly on the changes that had been made, with differences pointed out. When we got to the cost and collections management features, I asked if everyone was supposed to be able to see them. Turns out, we are all supposed to have those features. However, instead of giving the primary account holders automatic View/Edit permissions for those features, the primary account holder must go in and turn on the permissions on his/her own. This was not mentioned in any of the documentation that I received, and would not have been mentioned in the webinar if I had not asked about it. I’m not sure why SerialsSolutions opted not to give people the automatic rights to the new features, but they should have at least mentioned that if you don’t see them, this is what you should do.
There were a few other tough questions in the webinar as well – about why you can’t enter a fiscal year as two years (2007-2008, for example) – they were handled very well by Leslie Lapham, the SerialsSolutions trainer leading the webinar. One other thing I would like to see is for databases to be able to be included in more than one collection. Right now, each database can be in only one collection. Which is useful, to a point, but not as useful as it could be?
SerialsSolutions is still working on completing this upgrade. Overlap analysis and statistics have been temporarily removed, and the e-catalog is only on the home page for now. Also, they will be adding report generators in the future, which should be very useful, I hope.
Overall, I am happy with my experiences with SerialsSolutions. They have never been anything less than helpful with my questions and issues. I’m just going to have to get used to the new navigation in the upgrade. And the new names, which are really kind of annoyingly long.
Any librarians (or others) in Nashville interested in meeting for lunch/dinner/coffee sometime?
Leave a comment if so!
We had a meeting today at MPOW to discuss switching from the print and card version of Choice magazine. Happily, it was my director who posed the question that is the title of this post – “Is online always better than print?”
The answer to that, I think, is no. Which, as a “nexgen” librarian, makes me feel like a fuddy-duddy or something. But I think, in this case, that it’s not necessarily better. I think that the Choice cards are a good thing, and less forgettable than accessing an electronic resource. One of my coworkers commented that she would likely vote for the electronic/online version of things rather than print because it’s easier to access and more available. Which is true, but I am afraid that our professors who are supposed to be using this resource won’t actually use it because you must have a computer with internet access. Print cards you can look over in bed, on the commute home, over lunch or dinner, basically anywhere you are. Unless you have a laptop and wireless internet everywhere you go, the same cannot be said for online resources.
I’m not trying to be all old-fashioned and “print only”…I’m just trying to be a small voice of reason and make sure that we aren’t just jumping on the all online bandwagon simply because if it’s online it must be better.
Just a little bit about this blog before I truly begin.
This blog is supposed to be my “professional” blog. I’m hoping that it will become a place that I can write about the variety of things that are happening in my little corner of library-land. I’m an electronic resources librarian, so I’m trying to figure out “Library 2.0” and management of electronic resources as I go.
Comments are welcome, but they are moderated.
Okay, look. You guys decided to hold training on this program before I started working here. 3 days before I started working here, in fact. When you knew I was coming. Fine. Whatever works for you. I’ve had *one* 90 minute phone call training me on how to use this stupid thing. And yet it is the *main part* of my job. So if you have a problem with the way I’m using it (or not, whatever the case may be), please for the love of God don’t contact the vendor. Contact me. Let me know what I’m doing wrong. I’m very aware that we have some major communication issues. I’m working on it. We’re both behind and ahead of the times on this. And I’m muddling through the best I freaking can. So back off.
(not that these have anything to do with, you know, the *content* or anything)
1. To meet men in the library world, go to a tech conference.
2. If you go to a tech conference, take a laptop.
3. Pimm’s Cup’s are tasty.
That’s all 🙂
I’m applying for this: http://lb.princetonlibrary.org/emerging_leaders.html
But in order to do that I have to write this: “Three ways in which I have demonstrated leadership potential: [500 words maximum. You may attach an additional sheet.]” I hate these things. I hate having to write about myself.
I also have to contact my references and ask for yet another letter :^) That’s going to be fun. Blech…
What are your personal memories of September 11th?
I was thinking about this on my drive in to work this morning.
I was in class at the time. It was my Junior year of college. I had a computer class – something on MS Office. We were all sitting and working on class stuff when the professor’s daughter came in and said something. So then we all tried to get on the internet, only to discover that all the major news sites were down. That freaked me out more than anything – I thought something even bigger had happened. We were able to get snippets from Yahoo! Headlines, but not the actual articles. After that class, I went and stood in the University Center and watched the TV they had hanging there….there was a big crowd. I was there for about 10 minutes, then I went to my next class. That professor said “Yes, there are major things happening, and it’s scary, but there’s nothing *we* can do from here, so we’re having class like normal”. I actually appreciated that because it kept me from totally freaking out before we knew what had happened. I think I spent the rest of the day glued to the TV with my roommates.
I do remember seeing loads of people watching the TV in the UC in the following weeks, and when the president spoke, everyone shut up. I knew it must be major if everyone shut up to hear the president instead of talking all the way through.
My roommate and I went to give blood the next week. I couldn’t because I had been in Europe less than 6 months before, but she was able to.
I also remember us talking about what would happen if East Tennessee was targeted because of Oak Ridge. We lived in Chattanooga, which isn’t really all that far from Knoxville (when you’re talking nukes and bombs, anyway) and we decided that we’d probably be goners. There’s a nuclear power plant just outside Chattanooga, too.
I also remember my 3 roommates and I all gathering to watch the latest presidential address or other news and then discussing it. Those are some of my favorite memories of college, because we were able to have reasonable discussions about all sorts of things. I really missed that when I moved in to my own place.
Library Chic 