I’m actually working on a proper reader’s advisory for a new AW book, but RL is distracting. So that will be up later this afternoon (possibly this evening).
In the meantime, I give you the latest edition of your friend and mine, Dingo Librarian:
Library Hijinks
And Now, a Damage Recovery Project
Writing is a set of permanent thoughts, or, as a famous Gelfling once said, “words that stay.” I tell my students that a book is just about the most effective method of data storage and transmission ever devised. It’s a set of transcribed thoughts organized by page number and cross-referenced both by sequential progression (TOC) and also by subject (index). Computers can make the retrieval process faster, but engineers haven’t quite come up with a better method of storage. (Yet.)
But books are fragile. They don’t weather the elements well. Stone tablets will last for millennia. Paper lasts for a century at best, and mass-market paperbacks won’t last more than a few decades. (It remains to be seen what the lifespan of e-books are.)
Worse, disaster can strike without warning. Like when the water sprinkler on the floor above your library goes off and water cascades into your open stacks and onto your computers. Which is what happened to the MCNY library Saturday morning.
Water is the enemy of every library. Humidity breeds mold, which eats through paper like a college student goes through pizza and Froot Loops. There are ways of recovering books that have been affected by fungus, but they’re expensive and not always reliable. As in medicine, the best fix is to prevent it.
The good news is that most of the collection is fine. The bad news is that about a thousand books got drowned. We have a circulating collection of about 20,000 books, so 5% of our stuff needs to be dealt with on an emergency basis.
In some cases, water pooling on the carpet is all we had to deal with. That’s not too awful. The fix is to move in mobile AC units and up the heat over the weekend. That was done, and it worked.
Many books were pulled off shelves pre-emptively, before the worst could happen.
Many more volumes were soaked and were moved into the server room, because it had the best air flow.
This is where we are now, with piles of books awaiting triage. Over the next week I’ll go through them one at a time. The dry ones will be replaced in the now dry stacks. The soaked ones will probably be discarded. The merely damp ones will be dried as best they can and replaced in the stacks. If mold has set in, they’ll be discarded as well.
In the meantime, all other work stops. The current mission is recovering what assets we have.
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My Books
[author_books amount=”3″ size=”150″ type=”random” name=”jonfrater”]
NYTSL 2015 Spring Reception and Program
Just as a (not so) brief reminder, NYTSL’s programs are running their usual course. Here’s the latest announcement for the spring reception and spring program, which went out the other day:
NYTSL 2015 Spring ReceptionPlease join us for the Spring 2015 New York Technical Services Librarians Annual Reception for Librarians, Information Professionals and Library School Students.When:
Friday, April 10, 2015
3:00 – 5:00 p.m.Where:
Butler Library
Room 522-523
Columbia University Libraries
535 West 114th St.
New York, NY 10027FREE
Wine & Cheese will be served.
Why:
This is an opportunity for librarians, archivists, and information professionals from the metropolitan area to meet informally. It is also a chance for library school students to learn about the various professional organizations in the metropolitan area and to meet future colleagues and employers.Library students who attend will be entered in a raffle to win a myMETRO membership. You are welcome to bring announcements of professional opportunities to the reception.
Reception co-sponsors welcome. If your professional organization would like to co-sponsor the reception, please contact us to make arrangements.
Due to limited space, registration is required and we will not be able to accept walk-in registration for this event. Register online at http://nytsl.org/nytsl/nytsl-2015-spring-reception/
NYTSL 2015 Spring Program – Disaster Recovery for the Digital Library
Our presenters will present two real-world library disaster recoveries in New York City and how to better prepare for the future.When:Tuesday, May 5, 20155:00 – 7:30 p.m.Where:
The New York Public Library
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, South Court Auditorium
476 Fifth Avenue (at 42nd Street)
New York, NY 10018$15 for current members
$30 for event + new or renewed membership
$20 for event + new or renewed student membership
$40 for non-membersSpeakers:Frank Monaco, Frank J. Monaco and Associates LLCFollowing the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, nearby Pace University faced emergency conditions in implementing a less than perfect IT Disaster Recovery plan. This presentation will first review, from the point of view of the then current Chief Information Officer, what his organization (and the entire University) faced and how he and his team dealt with the situation. After this brief review, a discussion of what digital disaster recovery technologies have emerged since that fateful day, and how Universities, to include their libraries, can take better advantage of these DR developments.Neil H. Rambo, Director, NYU Health Sciences Libraries and Knowledge Informatics
When Superstorm Sandy made landfall in New York City on the evening of October 29, 2012, it produced an unprecedented storm surge along portions of the East River. The facilities and infrastructure of the NYU Langone Medical Center were overwhelmed by the violent flood. The NYU Health Sciences Library facility was destroyed. But library services and support across the Medical Center were only briefly disrupted. This review will focus on the recovery efforts made in the aftermath of the destruction, from immediate-term to the present. The focus of those efforts were and are on strengthening the digital library, increasing the presence of librarians with user groups, and redefining the nature and role of the library across the Medical Center. In parallel with these efforts and informed by them, the library facility has been reconceived and is now under construction, to be opened in late 2015.
Generals in the War on Ignorance
No fewer than ten people on my FB list have shared this and tagged me with it within the past two days:
Not a General
Guys, I love the sentiment and the fact that some many people I know think of me when they hear the word librarian. I hope every friend of every librarian shares this meme around. I object only to the word “Generals” being used when the pic is very obviously of an infantry soldier. The generals are the ones who run wars. The soldiers are the ones who fight them. There’s a real difference, and not just in the “‘Forward!’ he cried from the rear/and the front rank died” way.
Call it macho stupidity if you have to, but I’d rather be compared to a soldier.
But thank you.
My Books
[author_books amount=”3″ size=”150″ type=”random” name=”jonfrater”]
Dingo Librarian
Dave Mauzy and I made a thing. Dave is my backboard for nearly everything I come up with because he’s good at poking holes in the sillier ideas and offers useful observation on the stuff that has potential. He was instrumental in helping me through the rough patches while writing Article 9. But sometimes we get stupid (all right, I get stupid) and Dave is usually good enough to go along with it. This was one of those times.
Thus, I present you with Dingo Librarian.
I’ll post more as I think of them.
Share this one, around folks. Let’s see if we can make it into a thing!
Gun Toting Librarian
Just for the sheer heck of it (and to respond to the underrepresentation of liberals who enjoy guns in the general media), I’m putting up this picture of me at the West Side Rifle & Pistol Range behind the edit. Enjoy!
NY Public Library Sells Out for (Not So) Big Bucks
I’m the first to admit it: I am a big, fat, wallowing cynic and have been since I was about twelve years old. So news items like the following headline from Alternet.org don’t surprise me. They should–I would dearly love them to–but they just don’t and that is likely to say a lot more about me than it does about the unholy marriage between libraries’ need for funds and the cash-heavy world of Big Business. That said, this is hitting me in a very unhappy spot this morning.
To wit, feast your ocular sensory organs upon this tidbit:
NY Public Library Trades Naming Rights to Greedy hedge Fund Billionaire for Big Bucks.
You may commence vomiting at any time.
"But wait a minute, you pretentious, hypocritical, lout," you say, "did you or did you not slobber all over Andrew Carnegie in your last post?" Well, yes, I did. But I think I was justified in doing that, and here’s why. Carnegie amassed a fortune of about $1 billion, of which he left $300 million to fund public libraries all over the world. In 2008 dollars those values would be worth something like $20 billion and $6 billion respectively.
Got that? That’s a $6 billion dollar endowment in today’s dollars to build a world-wide system of public libraries. Nothing like it had ever been done, neither the gift nor the project it funded.
According to the linked article NYPL sold the name of their main building in exchange for a donation of $100 million. That’s it. 100 million stinking greenbacks that aren’t worth anything like what they were worth in 1914 and will continue to be worth less and less every year, considering the Federal Reserve Bank’s current attitude towards inflation (i.e., if it keeps the country working a bit longer, it’s worth it.) And that just to change the name on the main building. If there is an exchange of something of genuine value here, I’m not seeing it.
Granted, $100 million buys a lot of library resources and even in the world of Richistan is not quite chump change, at least, not yet. But it’s not $6 billion, either. In those terms, in my not so humble opinion, they should have held out for a lot more. If Stephen A. Schwarzman wanted to buy his way into history, then fine. But he should have paid what the related goodwill (as accountants call it) was worth. Had the call gone out for a $1 billion capital drive and had he written a check on the spot for the entire amount (or hell, even half the full amount) I could have lived with it. I would still be pissed since the NYPL is the jewel in the crown of the city’s public library system, but $1 billion (or $500 million) is real money and the gesture would have been genuine.
As the Yoruba say, "The world is the marketplace," and that’s fine. Public libraries are always short of funds and sometimes bend over backwards to encourage rich folks to jam crowbars in their wallets, and that’s fine, too. But this time did they have to settle for so little ?
Back on Track and On-line
SirsiDynix’s hosted account servers are back on-line and we’ve had nothing but consistent access to our catalog and ILS all day. The explanatory e-mail that we received from their tech people said that IBM, seeing a weakness in BellSouth’s service conduits, allowed their primary service system to fail to bring the secondary into play. That done–and the plan seems to have worked–they’ll take a good long look at the server to see what happened.
Huzzah!
Chaos, Catalog Migrations, and Beer
Everything is is chaos. If you own a house with a mortgage you may lose it if you’re not careful. The FDIC may not do much to preserve your bank account if push comes to shove. The financial elites are wrecking what’s left of the economy, the ex-spooks are suggesting that the rabble can analyze intelligence every bit as well (or better than) the CIA, and there are firm plans for the U.S Air Force and Navy to bomb the living crap out of thousands of targets in Iran. And, oh yes, all that jazz about eating locally is a pipe dream, although Suzi Steffen has put together a decent if small reading list on the subject to wade through.
Faced with all this mishegoss and woe, I did what any red-blooded patriotic American would do. I made beer. More on that in a bit.
But first I made sure that SirsiDynix actually migrated the catalog properly. (It did.) Then I did a check on whether the proxy server was tested on time (it was not). Worst of all, in the time I originally wrote the previous paragraph and the time I now resume writing, the proxy server situation has deteriorated to the point where beer news seems far more important to me as opposed to IP addresses, EZProxy configuration and authentication permissions and a lack of access to a number of electronic resources.
(I know, I know . . . nothing is more important to the library or its patrons then access to the necessary resources. All true. But the IT department is aware of the problem, I am aware of how to contribute to its solution and we’re doing what we can as quickly as we can to get things back to normal. In the meantime, I made beer.)
Architect Selected for Bush Library
The story is here. I won’t make any jokes about how much room they’ll need to house both books, but I am wondering of the book about the pet goat will be part of the collection. I’m pretty sure that Richard Clarke’s book about what went on prior to 9/11 won’t be, but that’s the cynic in me talking. Again.
Ah, well. A new library is a new library I suppose.
It’s The Little Things We’ll Miss Most
We’re officially beginning the migration of our catalog from a 13-year old in-house server whose performance can only be called "less than satisfactory"–I’d use stronger language considering what I’ve heard about the device’s past history both at the technical and political level, but I’ve only been here a couple of months (not even) and speaking ill of those no longer employed at MCNY seems rude–to a spanking new CMS account at SirsiDynix’s off-site servers. A proxy server will be brought online soon after and all operations should (I hope) be finished by the last week in August which would give us about a week to field test the new systems before classes begin after Labor Day.
At any rate, as I think about these things, it strikes me yet again just how much of our modern libraries’ livelihoods depends on resources we take for granted. Electricity is one. We don’t think about it much but so very much of our work depends on it being readily handy at the touch of a button or the flick of a switch. As an example of this we were emplored by the college president some weeks ago to please turn our desktop PCs off when we left the office at night. Doing so, she said, would save us roughly thirty thousand dollars a year in wasted energy. Thirty thousand dollars is a lot of electric power.
We don’t, granted, need electricity to run our libraries. But it makes everything infinitely easier. I mean, we don’t need XML or MARC or JPEG2000 or a million of the other modern tools we (all right, I ) use on a nearly daily basis. A case in point that’s been making the rounds has been the BBC’s recent story of the Bibliomulas, the book-carrying mules who are led through the mountains of Venezuela to promote reading to the country’s rural population. By the reporter’s account, people there seem to approve. People like to read, and they’re just happy that they haven’t been forgotten about.
Of course, in rural Venezuela, electricity is an option, and an expensive one at that. And I confess that I worry when I realize that I’m paying ConEd twice as much this year for power as I did last year without using twice as much of the stuff. And when I note that I note a major difference between the library here and the one I left at the Academy . . . MCNY doesn’t have a card catalog. A lot of libraries built after the 1980s don’t have them, either. Which means that electricity isn’t really an option anymore, it really is a necessity and we really do need it. I can’t pack our reserve and reference collection on the backs of mules to take them to students who might live in Brooklyn, Queens or upper Manhattan. The simple truth is that once power gets to be a certain price we’re screwed.
I’m not suggesting this is imminent but I do wonder sometimes if we librarians are as smart as we like to think we are (meaning smarter than me.)
At any rate, we’re migrating the catalog. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Webbys, Google, and The Ultimate Computer
First of all, a major round of congratulations to FactCheck.org which has been nominated for a 2007 Webby Award (in two categories)! [APPLAUSE] They’ve made it to the finals, in fact, and the RS wishes them luck in nabbing that sucker. For what my opinion is worth (exactly what you have paid for it), I’ve been in love with this organization since they first appeared. They truly are impartial in the dirt they uncover both from left and right wings of the political spectrum, and their analysis is consistently thorough and well-researched. For that alone they deserve to win. If you feel compelled to help them out a bit towards said winning, go vote for them here. If not, well, I have another question for you.
Clearly, Google now believes that it can catalog books for the Library of Congress. Well, maybe it can. That’s unfair–of course they can. Should they, though? That’s a different question.
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