Wizards of the Coast has announced that in May, 2008 they will be releasing the 4th edition of the legendary Dungoens and Dragons RPG. According to Bill Slavicsek, R&D Director at Wizards,

"The game mechanics have been amped up to eliminate the game-stoppers, accentuate the fun factors, and make play faster and more exciting. In the future (now only eight months, 29 days, 23 hours, and 50 minutes from now!) D&D Insider provides its members with immediate access to Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine, to enhanced and expanded content tied to the newest physical book products, to an amazing suite of digital tools to make Dungeon Master preparation and campaign management easier to handle, to a Character Creator that provides not only an interactive character sheet but a visualizer that lets you determine the exact look of the characters you create—and, D&D Insider provides a digital D&D Game Table that turns the Internet into your kitchen table. This amazing application, which we’ll talk more about as the weeks go on, allows you to supplement your face-to-face gaming 24/7, helps you find a group to game with if you don’t happen to have a face-to-face group, or lets you hook up with gaming buddies who long ago scattered to the four winds."

I am alittle hesitant about the whole thing but also abit excited. I've spent tons of money on 3.5 ed supplements and core books which is a pain and had also spent money on 3rd ed supplements and core books. But the idea of being able to play DnD with a truely useful internet interface which would support people playing the game as opposed to computers is my idea of progress in the RPG field. Anyway it is 9 months or so till the release so we will see what happens.

I am finally back online! It is over 2 months since my stuff left Gander and over a month since I left Newfoundland. My work here is VERY interesting and challenging! The only part of this which is missing is my dogs. Harley and Emmie are still on my sister's farm near Minnesdosa, Manitoba. I wish I could go and visit them but right now that isn't possible. I am hoping that will change soon tho - Maybe in the fall. In the meantime it is Nunavut Day here which celebrates... Nunavut. So have a great day everyone and I'll be in touch!

Congratulations to Anne Chafe and Jeanie Pardy for their fine efforts in the Boston Marathon yesterday. Under awful conditions of rain and cold ann turned in a legion performance finishing in 4:09:50. Jeanie finished in 3:41:14. Hats off to both of them for working extra hard. In looking at the data on both runs one of the things which impressed me is the discipline they both exhibited in keeping to their pace. Over 42 Km that alone is no small achievement.

Well my big news is that I will be moving to Nunavut in about a month to assume the position of Manager of the Nunavut Public Library System. This is a very exciting opportunity. I will be leaving Gander to live in Baker Lake which is roughly 500 km north of the Manitoba border. It is not quite at the Arctic Circle but fairly close to it.

The NPLS is composed of 11 branches serving the population over an area of approximately 2 million square kilometers. I am quite excited about this as it will be a good career move but also a good opportunity to implement some of the new social technologies which are being adopted by libraries in the south. Also the people I have talked to in the government of Nunavut have been very friendly and positive about the position and appear to be looking forward eagerly to my arrival. I am so very excited!

I will be extremely sorry to leave Gander and Newfoundland. I have created a wonderful home here and met many wonderful people. Mark and Anne Maire, Elaine, Natalie, Susan, Glenda, Howell and too many others to mention. But this is too good an opportunity for me to pass it up.

As it stands I finish up here on April 30, 2007 and will begin with the NPLS on May 16th so there are lots of things to do in the meantime such as getting Emmie spayed so that I won't have any little accidents!

I have two friends who will be running in the Boston Marathon this year. Ann Chafe (Bib # 19370)and Jeannie Pardy (Bib# 16038). Ann was my boss at one of my first jobs with the provincial government and continues to be a great friend and Jeannie Pardy here in Gander who runs Nan's Pantry (which is described as on of the best places to buy health foods in central Newfoundland). Ann was the winner of her age group in the Shamrock half-marathon in Virginia Beach held on March 18, 2007.

Good luck to both of you on this exciting endeavor!!!

Last January when I atteneded the OLA SuperConference I found alot of people talking about LibraryThing. This is a website which allows you to list your books and then to share information about them with the public. You can tag the books and write reviews and there are discussion groups for people with different interests. This is like crack for librarians.

 When I got home I looked at LibraryThing and after a couple of weeks joined. Since then I have put my entire library on it. You can see a widget on the right side of this page showing covers from the catalog of my books. I even went so far as to purchase an old "cueCat" scanner so I could get the information into LIbraryThing more easily.

 This is all quite cool and I was very happy last night when I finished the job and had all 755 of the books in my personal librarything catalogue. But as a Librarian I still craved more control, greater access and standardization of my collection.

Using the Lex Systems product Lexfile I have a stand alone catalog and circulation system but no MARC records for the system. MARC records are the library standard for use in library catalogs. I have the ISBNs for 93% of the books in my library thanks to the work I did on LibraryThing. From Library of Congress catalog I can use those ISBN's to find and download MARC records for free but I also need a batch search and retrieve software which will get the records I need.

I couldn't find this last piece until yesterday. MARCedit is a free piece of software which has a bunch of tool in it to assist with catloguing including a batch search and retrieve function with the z39.50 protocol. I was working with this last night and retrieved 221 Marc records for my library.

 I have not completely mastered the downloading via z39.50. Server settings can change on a regular basis and so it is difficult to keep the 300 odd z39.50 sites included in MARCedit up to date. I am hoping that I will be able to properly access the Library of Congress OPAC this evening in which case I expect I will get the majority of my work in this stage finished.

 After this I ill have to develop a classification and location system to show where the books are and I will have to make some decisions about barcodes. I guess there will also be issues with item types but I will worry about that later. If I can get standardized records with a good bibliographic description I will be very happy.

 Or else I could go out and socialize with people abit. Maybe make some friends...

UpDate April 9- I did some work on this on the weekend and got around 350 records downloaded from various sources. However, what I hadn't counted on was getting duplicated which my CAT couldn't get rid of. The upshot of this is that I need to get a simple database installed on my conputer so I can run a couple of SQL queries after each download to remove found ISBNs from the search list. As it is I am stil terrifically pleased with the way this is working out.

This is funny

Ryan Deschamps has an entry in his blog about what you (the public) would like us to keep and what you would like us to throw out. One of the little known facts about libraries is that we throw out books. Often the public gets very irate when they realize we are doing this but at the same time if we did not get rid of the old books and the ones no one is reading there would be no room left for the new and the popular stuff.

I know that in the system I work for the rule of thumb is to throw out a book which has not circulated in five years. This is a fairly conservative rule. Additionaslly with Reference Collection use in the basement and Non-Fiction circulatiuon stagnant the question of weeding/retention policies is critical to our redevelopment of the public library as a relevant institution. But what do you think?

Someone has finally come up with a nice social tool to help librarians in Atlantic Canada (the maritimes and Newfoundland and Labrador). Ryan Deschamps has used "Ning" to start the Atlantic Librarians group. It looks fairly snazzy and has about 36 members so far.

I am particularly pleased about this as there is still relatively little sharing of professional information across the region. I am not sure why this is so but it amuses my cynical side that the information professionals seem to be so bad at sharing information. There is probably a lesson in that.

Diane Darlene Fichter has an article at Information Today about marketing using Web 2.0 Her basic points are,

1. Learn about social media. 
2. Create a Web 2.0 marketing plan. 
3. Participate! Join the conversation. 
4. Be remarkable. 
5. Help your library content travel. 
6. Be part of the multimedia wave. 
7. Monitor engagement and learn as you go.

And her final point which is one of the Mantras of the Web 2.0 world

Think Creatively, Then Make Good Choices

However this is only the tip of the iceberg. Read the article and see if your library can use these ideas!

One of the things Public Libraries do worst is market themselves to their communities. I have a number of theories about why this is the case but I just wanted to point to "Librarian in Black" who notes that ProQuest is offereing a free Marketing Kit for public libraries. The package includes,

• How-to guide on Marketing Your Library’s Online Resources
• Sample database descriptions that speak “patron” rather than library language
• Customizable promotional flier and advertisement
• Customizable press release template
• Getting Started Demo – a digital “ad” that can be downloaded to the library’s homepage 

This looks like a great resource!

I just got an email from our IT dept. saying that Sirsi-Dynix is suspending plans to upgrade Horizon users to the 8.0 version. Instead we will all be moving to their new platform "Rome". This is confirmed in a press release on their webpage.

The email states,

Rome is built on the architecture of the industry-standard Unicorn Library
Management System - with its record of stability, quality, and performance -
and will include an impressive set of new solutions created as part of
Horizon 8.0/Corinthian development. The first release of Rome will be
available in the fourth quarter of this year. The target time for the second
release is late 2008.

I am not sure what this means for us in the NL public Libraries except that after spending $250,000 in 5 years we will have to pony up another chunk of change, do a wack of new training, buy new equipment (again)  if we are going to go on to "Rome". I guess the question is "Do all roads lead to Rome"?.

This article illustrates one of the major directions libraries are taking in their attempts to get teenagers and "youngsters".

AS I TYPE this, R&B singer Jaheim's new album "Ghetto Classics" is blaring from a speaker overhead. A dozen or so teenage boys are clustered around a honeycomb of computers, chewing the fat while a couple of them watch an Akon music video and the rest surf Myspace. And just a little ways over, by the Xbox projector, a group of boys and girls decked out in their finest goth attire are brainstorming the video game of their dreams.

"You should be a dragon so you can burn people!" a guy exclaims.

"It should be set in a futuristic past and you could speak a mix of French and Italian!" throws in another boy.

"You know what?" cries one girl. "You should be able to squish insects. I love killing nasty bugs."

As we keep struggling to bring young peopl into our branches more public libraries are resorting to the innovative strategy of giving themn what they want(!). These are mainly games and an environment where they can get together with other kids to share their gaming experience. This is innovative for libraries mainly because it means bending or breaking some cardinal rules we used to associate with libraries. Food is in the library and so is noise.

Well that is the direction I am thinking we have to go in, but getting there is a slow process. There is a culture in my profession which has been built up over centuries and is only breaking down slowly. We cling to our cardigans and index cards like , like... big clinging things. It must be too early in the morning. I need more coffee

Librarian in Black reports an interesting story about how she was informed of a campaign to save a popular TV show.

i got a MySpace friend request from a "Save Stargate SG-1" profile.  I had not even known Stargate SG-1 was slated for cancellation until I got this message.  I promptly sent e-mails as requested to the officials responsible for this bad decision (as requested by the site), went to their main campaign website, and signed petitions 1 and 2.  I'll also be sending some postal mail as well. 

The point is this--I was sent a message because I had listed "science fiction" as one of my interests.   And not only am I grateful to them for letting me know about this, but I also became an active member of the campaign within two minutes.  Fabulous!

Why can't we look for people who list "Reading" or just about anything else as their interests (movies, music, technology, games--so, just about anyone), and ask them to help with library issues?  I think this could especially benefit institutions like ALA or state library associations, when national or statewide issues arise...as it's sometimes harder to pinpoint people by individual library jurisdiction.  We need to use the tools available to us!

That is an excellent example of how librarians might be abler to use some of the Web 2.0 technologies to to develop similar interest communities across the web.

I was flipping through John Blyberg's blog and saw that he has discovered that his blog is blocked by the Chinese gov't. I followed the link to Great Firewall of China and discovered that I am not a threat to the chinese gov't.

For some reason this leaves me feeling oddly disappointed. Obviously if I put more effort into my blog that might not be the case.

Many people might not be aware of the critical role the US governement's Library of Congress plays in the world of Librarians. It is mainly because the US governement does not claim copyright on the LC classification or subject headings that we have so many excellent public and academic libraries in North America. However, recently with the development of metadata and evolving "folksonomies" the role of LoC and their library tools are changing. In late February, the Library of Congress announced it was holding an “open” meeting on March 8, 2007 at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California. Comments were invited. Karen Scheinder wrote this scalding comment. One of her comments which resonated with me was this one.

... we are behaving like the train companies, who thought they were in the train business, not the transportation business, and like them, there are already signs that the “train business” we do is on artificial life support. We are not even close to being the first service of choice for information seekers; we are pretty much down there with asking one's mother.

That is one of the most accurate and damning comments I have heard about libraries and it pretty much echoes my own opinions. We as a profession are fiddling while Rome burns. The ultimate result of this will be that we will increasingly become a niche service foir the aged until they decide to move us into the old age homes. In the meantime Libraries by another name, Internet Resource Centres will evolve and that will be that.

This is a cool little video from youtube on the nature of web 2.0

This is an amazing and remarkable video about autism and the nature of POV and communication