Change is Sweet

Aristotle said “Change in all things is sweet.”  The Library has been doing a lot of changes lately.  The next one is a change to our ILS – our online catalog system.  On March 29^th we are joining a state-wide consortium called NC-Cardinal, and changing to a new system called Evergreen.  This change is being sponsored by the North Carolina State Library and is being paid for by an LSTA grant (That’s Library and Technology Services Act – a federal program that supports libraries nationwide.)

What does this mean for our library patrons?  Initially, a better, faster online catalog that is easier and more intuitive to use, and doesn’t have timeout messages.  Eventually, there will be a statewide network of libraries at your fingertips.  We are one of the “early partners” in this consortium, but a few other libraries are already up and running, including Buncombe County.  If you want a sneak peak  at what the catalog will look like you can go to here.

What is an ILS?  It stands for Integrated Library System.  It is the automation system that includes the OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog) and the circulation system.  In other words, it’s the software and hardware that allow the library users and staff to find and use the library’s resources.  The ILS catalog keeps track of all the items that are available for library patrons to check out or use, such as books, DVDs, computers, puzzles, etc.  The ILS presents these items to the library uses and staff in a searchable interface called the OPAC or online catalog.  The ILS also has a user database of who can check out those library resources, and what they currently have checked out, on hold, etc.  This is the user’s account information that they can access through the OPAC.  The ILS, as you can imagine, is a massive and expensive system that connects all out libraries together and allows us to serve our public as efficiently as possible.

We are about to change our ILS.  Fontana has been using the same ILS vendor for 18 years.  Both the Library and the ILS have gone through a lot of changes in those years.  But we have come to a parting of the ways.  There are new options available now that just weren’t around 18 years ago.  One of those options is called Evergreen.

Evergreen is a robust, open-source integrated library system best known for its unique ability to meet the needs of very large, high-transaction, multi-site consortia. However, it has also proven equally successful scaled down for even the smallest libraries. Evergreen now supports over 1,000 libraries of every type-public, academic, special, and school media centers across 4 countries, 31 U.S. states, and 8 Canadian provinces. The Georgia PINES, King County Public Library System, SCLENDS, and NC Cardinal consortiums are all currently running Evergreen.   (Yes, this is a quote from the vendor’s website.)

Speaking of the vendor, another quote:  Founded by the original Evergreen designers and developers, Equinox Software is a leader in open source solutions for libraries. Their goal is to engage and support a rapidly growing open source community while assisting libraries in moving away from expensive proprietary vendors and products.

That part about expensive proprietary systems is true.  It was costing the library a lot of money to license the old system.  And we also had to host the software in our own library, which meant buying and regularly updating, maintaining, and replacing an expensive server.  Now all that will be done by Equinox for a fraction of the cost.  In these tough economic times that means that we have been able to use the money we are saving from this change to keep from laying off staff or reducing our collections.  And going forward, it will continue to save money and provide the smartest use of taxpayer funds for the best service.

This is a big change for us, and initially, we expect there will be some days that the libraries will be closed to train staff on the new system and to migrate the data.  We will post those closings as soon as the dates as confirmed.  We also expect that, like any new system, there will be some initial glitches once we get up and running.  Stay tuned to this blog for more information about NC-Cardinal in the coming weeks.

There Were Two Trains…

My friend carved out a trail through a tangled bog  once and allowed me the pleasure of walking it when I had time and good weather.  For the privilege, I would take along my cutters and clip back the encroachments.  There were places along the trail where Multiflora Rose had taken over and when it bloomed, in May or June, it was like a beautiful waterfall of flowers.  My friend didn’t like the rose, because it tended to take over everything, willfully going wherever it wanted, and she was ruthless in cutting it back.  I thought it was beautiful and added enormously to the walk, so I only clipped the worst offenders and kept it to myself.

My thought patterns are a little like the rose:  they start out small, take root, proliferate, and there’s no telling where they will end up.    Others like to keep them contained;  I like to just let them run.

These are a few of the ruminations I’ve enjoyed lately.  I’ll bet you’ve had similar ones:

• Do the folks at PETA use sponges to clean their homes?
• If you pour used alcohol into clean alcohol, will it disinfect itself?
• Everything is made of atoms, so how do atoms know what to be?  And what binds certain ones together to form an object (outside the covalent or ionic bonds)?  In other words, how do they choose their friends?  And what keeps them from moving independently from one object to another and taking up residence?
• If there were no stars, there would be nothing else.  No planets, no life as we know it, no nothing.  Imagine how cold and dark it would be.  I would never get the ice off my windshield!
• Though the night sky is full of thousands of stars, space is mostly SPACE.  Think of the enormous distances between things.  New galaxies could move into distant neighborhoods and no one would know.  I wonder if we ever pick up refugees from other universes?
• I saw long grass growing in the fork of a tree the other day.  One of them has adapted, but I’m not sure which.  Maybe both?
• What would really happen if you threw a couple of shrimp on the Barbie?
• And from my friend, Evelyn: why does everyone get sick when there is a stretch of warm weather in the winter, but they don’t in the heat of the summer.

Shrimp makes a very good hat!

If you would like some brain-teasers to help pass the cold (?) winter days, try one of these books from the library:

Do Penguins Have Knees?

When Do Fish Sleep?

Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise?

Go Figure.

Have You Tried Mentoring?

January is, among other things, National Mentoring Month.  I learned this because I am a part of Big Brothers, Big Sisters, an organization which empowers young men and women through involvement with adult mentors.  Often these children and teenagers have no inter-action with adults other than their teachers.  They often come from one parent households or are being raised by relatives instead of parents.  Having  adult to talk to about their problems is a life saver for some of these young people.

The Fontana Regional Library is a good source for information on mentoring.  Books by well known people such as Tony Dungy, the former coach of the Indianapolis Colts and the late John Wooten, basketball coach of the UCLA Bruins and others are available from your local branch library.  Dungy’s book, The Mentor Leader, focuses on team building but some of the advice he gives is useful for one on one mentoring.  John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach at UCLA,  pays homage to the people whose lives he used to build the values he lived  and passed on to others in A Game Plan for Life:  the Power of Mentoring.  The co-author, Don Yeager,  also interviewed people Wooden mentored during  his long life.

Wes Moore is not as well-known as Dungy and Wooden,  in his book, The Other Wes Moore, he contrasts the lives of two men, living in the same city two miles apart; one  a combat veteran and a Rhodes scholar, the  other sent to prison for the rest of his life for his role in killing a policeman.  Moore gives  credit to his family for the support they gave him, even when he had brushes with the law as a young man.   As the reader sees,  in his telling of the other Wes Moore’s story, that kind of support was not present in the other man’s life.

Mika Brzezinski writes in her book, Know Your Value:  Women, Money, and Getting What You’re Worth, with regard to women in the workplace, “It’s very important for older women,  those who have gone before, to give a hand up and mentor younger women in a consistent, sustained way…”

Mentoring can be done in a variety of places in your life:  the family, a place of worship, the workplace, civic clubs, social groups, etc.  When we think of mentors in our lives, we remember pastors, teachers, supervisors, and peers among others.  You don’t have to be a coach, a teacher, a minister or anything else in particular to be a mentor.   Situations present themselves when you least expect them–sometimes called teachable moments–for you to mentor somebody, whether it  be a child, a peer, a co-worker, a team member, etc.

Work is a four-letter word!

First, let me post a disclaimer: this blog post is not about my current job!

It’s about some of the other jobs I had along the way to this one. That list  includes the  summer spent working as a farm laborer, and one working at the local drive-in (restaurant, not movie theater, for those of you who can remember that far back).

My friend’s parents owned a tomato field. At 7 a.m. and bleary-eyed, we rode standing in an open-bed farm truck from the downtown Shell station  to the farm field 5 miles out in the country.  The work was back-breaking and sweaty, bending over the seedling tomato plants and tying them up. As the plants grew taller, we learned to pull off the sucker shoots. To this day, I can tie and sucker tomatoes in my sleep. We camehome covered in  green plant stain and chemical pesticide. Is that what causes brain tumors? All that fun for about $1.35 an hour. As a side benefit, I got severely sunburned, since this was the days before sunscreen. I still have scars to prove it.

My next memorable work experience was a summer at the Point Drive-In. The Point was famous for its Slurpees, or some such sugar-and-ice creation colored with red or purple food dye, and we were told we could have all we wanted, but not to use the Slurpee cups, since that’s where the real cost was. The food was basic drive-in fare: burgers and fries, chili dogs, and Slurpees. There must have been some other drinks, but I honestly don’t remember. The amount of Slurpees I consumed that summer must have sugar-coated my memory. Or maybe it was the red dye.

Keep in mind that both these jobs were before I had a driver’s license, so my parents had to provide transportation. When the shifts at The Point got too late, or they wanted me to work on Sunday, my father put his foot down. End of job. Although before I left, I did  work one day up on the mountain at another business owned by the same man. This tourist attraction featured an Old West town accessible only by chair lift, complete with shoot-em-up gunfights. It was an experience I hope to never repeat. And, before you ask: no, I did NOT participate in the gunfight.

But enough about me. If you’d like a job that doesn’t feel like a four-letter word,  your Fontana Regional Library is the place to start. There are web resources accessible from our home page  at www.fontanalib.org, and books on topics such as running your own business and how to write a resume. Try Resumes for dummies or The resume and cover letter book to help you search for a new job. If you want to work for yourself, take a look at The everything start your own business book or So you want to start a business? or maybe Entreleadership.

However you choose to spend your time, your library is the best place to start a new job  search or career exploration!

Who’s up for the Dewey Challenge in 2012?!

Does this list mean anything to you:

• Generalities
• Philosophy & Psychology
• Religion
• Social Sciences
• Languages
• Natural Sciences
• Applied Sciences
• Arts and Recreation
• Literature
• History and Geography

Well, I’m guessing that unless you’re a library employee or a true library nerd, that this is just a list of topics, which is actually true.  But it’s not just any old list of topics, these are the 10 main classes of the Dewey Decimal Classification System, in order.  This blog post is not going to be about Melvil Dewey or his classification system (mainly because both topics have been covered here before by Deb and Don).

This post is actually about a CHALLENGE!  As it turns out, Christina at the beautiful new Jackson County Public Library, in Sylva, has challenged herself, as a sort of New Year’s Resolution, to read one or two books from every call range in the Dewey system in 2012.  Not only that but she is challenging YOU to do join her.

If you’re not up for this challenge yourself (gee, we sure do wish you’d reconsider), but would like to follow Christina on her journey, you’re in luck.  She’ll be tweeting about it all year long at the Fontana Regional Library Twitter Feed page and she’ll be looking for your feedback every step of the way.  If you’d like to recommend a book, pass along the title, author (and  Dewey Decimal Number) and why you recommend the book.

The first step of Christina’s journey will begin with The Black Swan:  The Impact of the Highly Improbable, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (call number - 003.54 T).  I’m particularly excited about this book because it’s a book that I was previously unfamiliar of, but appears to be right up my alley.  In other words, I can’t wait to read it too!  To learn more about this book, you can read a summary of the book, a couple reviews and the first chapter from our card catalog by going here and then clicking the A Look Inside tab.  You can also see a short video of the author explaining his premise here and an interview with author can be found here.

Just a reminder, the challenge isn’t to read every book Christina reads (even though I’ll be reading her first choice), but to read one or two books from each main Dewey class.  The goal is to read a few books that you otherwise wouldn’t and to share your experience with others.

Good Luck!  And Have Fun!

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 14,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Season’s Greetings

(Note: the comments expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the policy of the Library system or any other person or agency.)

Christmas 2005, Disneyland, CA

No matter what your particular beliefs are, this is a season of traditions, memories, and reflection.  So, I thought I would share some stories of my own.  My family is a mix of Scot-English and German.   I expect that this cultural heritage is behind a lot of our traditions, but I can’t say that for sure.  Like most family rituals, I grew up with mine and didn’t question where they came from.  It’s just the way we do things.

The Tree

We have a Christmas tree.  When I was little my parents would bring home the tree and then the family would all gather together to decorate it.  While we were decorating, we would all drink eggnog, and my parents and older brother would eat smoked salmon.  I never liked the salmon, so I got chocolate chip cookies.  I have no idea why eating smoked salmon was part of the ritual, by the way.  My father put the lights on, and then the rest of us put on the ornaments.  In those days they were made of glass with paint that would eventually flake off, and glitter that would get into everything for weeks after.  After the ornaments were on we would finish with the tinsel.  It was made of metal and hung perfectly – not like that plastic stuff they came out with later that blew around every time you walked past and kept sliding off.  Every strand had to be put on individually and pass my mother’s and grandmother’s inspection.  I still have a package of that old metal tinsel.  When I was in high school my mother sent my brother and I to buy the tree on our own for the first time.  We spent an hour wandering around a tree farm and carefully made our selection.  When we got it home we realized it was nine feet tall and wouldn’t fit in the house.  Apparently we were looking at the trees from the perspective we had as kids and forgot to take into account that we were a little taller now.  The tree always stays up until Epiphany January 6^th). 

The Food

My grandmother started baking cookies a week or more in advance and made at least 6 different kinds of them every year.  She would also make three or four pies, each different so that everybody had their favorite.  There was also lots of candy and a big bowl of mixed nuts in the shell.  Christmas dinner was pot roast.  Always.  When I grew up I found out that the reason for that particular tradition was that my grandmother didn’t like turkey, so she made pot roast, and my mother followed the tradition.  We still have pot roast every year, even though my grandmother and my mother are no longer with us. 

Gifts

Tradition in my house was that presents from family could be opened on Christmas Eve.  That was when we got sock and clothes, and wallets, and ties.  Toys only came from Santa and would not be there until Christmas morning.  But the best present I ever got didn’t actually come from anyone.  When I was seven years old I had a cat named Tabby.  If any of you remember the cat food commercials that featured “Morris” – that was what Tabby looked like.  About two weeks before Christmas Tabby disappeared.  He usually slept on top of the clothes washer in the garage.  One day he wasn’t there.  We couldn’t figure out how he had gotten out since the garage doors were all closed.  When he didn’t come back home for dinner or breakfast the next morning, I was heart-broken.  He never stayed away that long.  The only thing I wanted for Christmas that year was to have Tabby back home.  When I woke up on Christmas morning, there he was, sleeping under the tree.  He was thinner, his paws were bleeding, and he was filthy, but he was home.  My mother said that he had shown up, meowing at the back door, early in the morning.  We never knew where he had been, or what happened, but he was home, and it was the best Christmas for me, ever.

Remember, even though the Library is closed for a couple days, you can still download ebooks from the Library’s ebook page and use our NCLive resources.  The Libraries will be back open on Tuesday.  And feel free to share your own holiday stories with us.

Happy Holidays to you and yours, whatever and however you choose to mark the season.  And Peace on Earth, Goodwill to all. 

(photo by Deb Lawley)

The Paper Chase

The gray one there on the bottom...

You’ll be reading along, minding your own business, and there it is – a quote from some obscure author in some long-forgotten book that was published in 1923 by a publisher who went out of business during the Depression.  The quote is just the appetizer; you want the whole enchilada.  Where O where do you go from here?

Your first stop should be your local library.  There’s a possibility the very book you want is on our shelves.   But even if it isn’t, we have this wonderful thing called INTERLIBRARY LOAN, the greatest thing since the combustible engine.  You come looking for a book, we don’t have it, BUT we search until we find it at another library and then we borrow it for you.  It is shipped to us and you pick it up at our front desk, just like any other book. What a concept!   And, believe it or not, our trusty ILL Librarian almost always finds what you’re looking for.  Your only obligation with ILLs is to pay their return ticket home.  Usually that amounts to about $3.00 (give or take) for a single regular-sized volume.  Not too bad, for that “can’t-live-without-it” book.

OK, but what if we can’t get the book on ILL?  It does happen now and then, sad to say.  Your next best bet is a digitized version online.  First you could try our new e-book site at e-iNC.  (The link is also on our homepage.)  When you get to e-iNC, you just log-in with your Fontana library card and you’re good to go.   Of course, most of the books there are new bestsellers, so you may have a little difficulty finding that depression-era tome.  You might like to try a few of the e-book sites that deal mainly in classic works.  Project Gutenberg has over 36,000 free ebooks, many of them important scholarly works with great historical significance, like some of the rare books published in the Middle Ages. (And while you are there you can read about Michael Hart, who invented eBooks in 1971.)   You might get lucky and find your book there.  Or you could try Classic Reader or Planet eBook. They have thousands of classic ebooks free for the reading.  Another huge library is available at the University of Pennsylvania site, called The Online Books Page, with over one million free ebooks available.  Your search could end at one of these sites.  But, then again, it might not.

At this point, if you haven’t found a reading copy, you will probably have to buy the book – if you can find it for sale.  You can begin this type of search right in your own backyard, so to speak.  We have both new and used bookstores right in the community.  If they don’t have it and can’t get it from their regular vendors, some bookstores offer a finders service and will complete the search for you.  Just ask.  Please don’t forget to check our Friends of the Library used bookstore, though.  They offer thousands of titles at very good prices.  Maybe the book you want is just sitting there waiting for you.  But if it isn’t…

Move on to one of the many booksellers on the Web.  Amazon, of course, comes to mind first.  You can often find older books at Amazon for a very reasonable price.  And when you search their marketplace sellers, you are searching all over the U.S.   If Amazon doesn’t have it, there are other sellers who are as reliable, like Alibris, Barnes & Noble, Bookfinder, and AbeBooks, just to name a very few.

When all else fails, you might special-order the book.  Lightning Source, a print-on-demand (POD) book publisher and a division of Ingram Book Company, is a good starting point, if you hope to buy something that has long been out-of-print.  If the title is one they offer in their catalog, they will print you up a new copy of the book at a very reasonable price, usually, especially considering the high quality of the paper and bindings.

(Not all POD publishers offer a catalog of works to be reprinted, however.  Some of them are in business strictly to publish works created by their customers. You will probably need to research that a bit.   This site (click here) lists a comparison of publishers, but you would need to verify if they can print a random book, rather than your own work.)

I hope you’ve found your book by this point.  If not, I hope you have at least enjoyed the chase.  But always be sure to check with your library first.  It might save you a lot of time and money!

What Dimension Are We In?

Do you know what a quark is?   How about a brane?  Have you ever heard of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)? If you read books or watched television shows devoted to new theories of physics, you probably have.  If not, I hope I have peaked your interest.

To listen to a scientist talk about the latest theories in physics one wonders if he, she,  or you has stepped into the “Twilight Zone.”  When Lisa Randall,  Michio Kaku, or Bob Greene appears on the “Daily Show”, “Colbert Report” or some other popular television show to discuss their latest book on quantum physics and you can understand what they are talking about, you know something has changed.

The other night I found myself watching a talk on Book-TV by Lisa Randall physics and the importance of science education. Ever since the Russians launched Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite, in 1957, educators and scientists have been talking about the importance of science and math in American schools.   The theme is still relevant.

In my old age I’ve gotten interested in our place (the world’s) in the realms of space.  There is an irony in that interest:  when I was in school I stayed away from science and math because I didn’t think  I was smart enough to understand them.   I still don’t think I am that smart,  but more scientists are writing so lay people like me can understand what they are talking about.  Lisa Randall is one of those.

Lisa Randall’s latest book, which she was discussing of Book-TV,  Knocking on Heaven’s Door  and her earlier work, Warped Passages: Unraveling the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions deal, at least in part, with theories concerning hidden dimensions in our world and beyond;  with smallest (particle physics) and the largest (Cosmology).  Randall reveals the hidden dimensions are so small they are visible to naked eye.   She also tells the reader about the work of the Large Hadron Collider which will hopefully lead scientists to the origin of dark matter and proof of extra dimensions.

Similarly, Brian Greene has worked to make the work scientists who study  quantum physics understood by the lay person.  Beginning with The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory, and continuing with The Fabric of the Cosmos:  Space, Time and the Texture of Reality and Hidden Reality:  Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos, Greene as the subtitles reveal has similar interests to Dr. Randall.

In addition to Randall and Greene, John D. Barrow, a British scientist, has explored a number theories of the universe in his book The Book of Universes:  Exploring the Limits of the Cosmos.  Universes are the theme of Barrow’s book:  all sorts of universes.  Universes we can see  and those we can’t, because they are in a different dimension.

But these theories are not new to the 21st century. If you are an aficionado  of the Nat Geo, Science, or Public Television channels, you are probably familiar with Michio Kaku, another theoretical physicist.  Kaku,  the co-founder of the string theory, wrote Hyperspace:  a Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension in 1994.  Ten years later Randall, Greene, and Barrow are elaborating on his ideas.

After you have read even one of these books, you will understand the theories prevalent in contemporary physics.  You may even know what the Large Hadron Collider does and why it won’t create a black hole to swallow the earth.

What’s in YOUR attic?

As a child,  I was intrigued by the disappearing  staircase at my grandmother’s house.  Because my grandmother, being a rather large woman, was afraid to climb those stairs, I was even more interested in what might be lurking just above that ceiling!

My parents’ house had a boring attic, which was easily accessible by full-sized doors off the bedrooms at each end of the second story. No secret staircase, no rope to swing from. And no fun.

Eventually, my mother and I ventured into my grandmother’s attic. There was a trunk of clothes, which included my mother’s wedding dress (which I couldn’t fit into even at age 12) and several prom dresses from her college years. I remember one in particular: a beautiful smooth yellow satin gown. Alas, it didn’t fit me, either.

Years later, I  climbed alone  into my grandmother’s attic and rescue two of my most prized possessions.

One was an old quilt someone had left in one of her rental houses, and the other was my grandmother’s  Dazey churn.

Turns out  it’s a good thing I grabbed those two antiques. Not long after I visited, my grandmother had a stroke and ended up in the nursing home. While she was there, someone broke into her house, climbed up those same stairs and broke or stole whatever was left.

Although I’ve never used the churn, I did spend the whole next winter wrapped up in that old quilt, mending it while it kept me warm in my chilly post-college apartment.

Other attics I have known and sometimes loved include the one across the street from my parents’ house. The Wasilik attic was a treasure trove for the neighborhood kids. On rainy days, we’d play in the upstairs bedrooms, which had convenient access to the attic crawl space under the eaves. There we discovered an old Victrola phonograph, along with musical recordings on wax cylinders! Because the attic had no lights, it was a good and scary place to tell ghost stories and play hide and seek.

More than a decade ago, I was faced with cleaning out my parent’s house–the only one they ever owned. All three levels, basement to attic, were full of things they had accumulated during their 45 years of marriage, plus additional items from their own parents. When I got to the attic, it was hot and I was tired of having to decide what to do with all that stuff. There was one last trunk in the back, and I was almost afraid to open it, fearing there were important papers I’d have to sort through.

But in that old trunk were beautifully tailored women’s suits from my mother’s first teaching jobs in the 1940′s. Vintage clothing, as it’s now labelled–and all of it too small for me! Sadly, I had to get rid of it, too, along with my great-aunt’s fur coat and my mother’s wedding dress –remember that from my grandmother’s attic?

One way to rid yourself of all this stuff is to sell it on EBay. Your library has lots of books to help you, from  Absolute beginner’s guide to EBay to How to do everything with EBay. Otherwise, there are lots of thrift and resale shops who are glad to take your items. If you’re really serious, you can even learn how to start your own store: Start your own clothing store and more.

On occasion, I have to pull down my own staircase and disappear into my own attic. That’s when I need the books about decluttering.  Who put all this stuff in my attic, anyway? Library to the rescue! There are books like Lighten up: love what you have, have what you need, be happier with less and Toss, keep, sell! which can help you make those difficult decisions.

So…what’s in MY attic? Not nearly as much as there used to be!