Monthly Archives: May 2008

Death of a friend

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A short time ago I received word that a friend and librarian colleague, John Fawcett, died earlier today. I’d mentioned him and his family before a few times. His wife and little children really need prayer and support. I know it must have been unimaginably hard to see your husband and father waste away and suffer like he did.

Then too I was thinking some more on the way to work this a.m. about Maria Chapman, the little five year old daughter of Steven Curtis Chapman, who died after her older brother accidentally backed his car over her in their driveway late last week. (This kind of thing happens a lot more than people realize, I think.) We have a little five year old daughter as well and I can’t imagine how the Chapman’s are dealing with this sudden loss.

A free (yes, free) XML workshop

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Few people are as good as Eric Lease Morgan at explaining technical things in a way that is easy for just about anyone to understand. Eric has been at this for a long time and has a rich history of innovative applications for libraries and I like the way that he is so passionate about libraries and technology. Therefore I was pleased to read his announcement on the code4lib discussion list the other day about the availability of all of the materials relating to his XML in Libraries all-day workshop. I’ve never attended one but I am going to review this material very carefully and I am sure I’ll learn a lot of new things. Highly recommended. (And it’s free.)

Gearing up for summer teaching

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Time is going by fast and the start of my course is approaching. I think I’m about ready. This time around there are fourteen people who’ve registered from a variety of locales including Colorado, Alaska, New York, Oregon, the Chicago area, and Champaign-Urbana. As always it’ll be intense, but fun. I love teaching. I wish I could do it full time.

NASIG presentation work

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I am so thankful to have friend Sarah Morris as a partner in our upcoming NASIG presentation. She is always on top of things, always upbeat, always prepared. She has done the lion’s share of moving this whole project forward. Sarah was a 2006 NASIG Student Grant winner and like me is an alum of UIUC GSLIS. She currently works as library systems coordinator (and overseer of all things technical services-related, it seems) at a major international law firm in Chicago.

The theme for this year’s conference in Phoenix, AZ is “Taking the sting out of serials” and our presentation consciously tries to tie into that theme. We’ll be presenting on the topic of “E-Resource Management in the For-Profit World: Soothing the Sting.” There hasn’t been much in the way of past presentations that deal with serials and electronic resources management in special libraries that I can recall so I’m glad our proposal was accepted this year. As always, the coordination offered by the all volunteer efforts of NASIG members of the Conference and Program Planning Committees has been outstanding.

One aspect of our preparation that I wanted to highlight is the fact that Sarah and I have used Google Docs to work out what we want to present in terms of presentation slides, handouts, and outline. This has been the first time I’ve used Google Docs in a shared manner and it really has been easy and useful. What I would have given for such a collaboration tool when working on past presentations! We have definitely come a very long way.

Really annoying Microsoft Office limitation

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I am really annoyed by a longstanding Microsoft Office limitation. In its great wisdom, Microsoft decided to restrict hyperlink entries, e.g. in a Word document, to 255 characters. In this day and age it is routine to have URLs much longer than 255 characters. Get with it Microsoft! And oh by the way, if anyone, anywhere can just a viable workaround, please let me know. I am desperate. (Using a URL shortening service isn’t an option and the option in Word of setting a base URL doesn’t help either.)

Preparing for the next several weeks

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I’m not sure why this is true but every year around this time life speeds up to hyperspeed and I wonder how on earth I will ever make it through. That’s the main reason why I haven’t posted much lately; I am rather overwhelmed.

One thing I’ve spent time on this weekend is preparing for my upcoming class for the LEEP program at UIUC GSLIS. I love teaching the course but it is a lot of work to prepare for it and to figure out how to make it fresh and new each time. And there is always room for improvement.

Then there is the online course I agreed last Fall to create for NASIG. That is due sometime in July. But even before that I need to complete preparations for my presentation at the upcoming NASIG conference in the second week of June. I’ll actually be co-presenting with friend Sarah Morris and we’ll be talking about managing electronic resources in special library settings.

All work-related projects seems to implode upon themselves at this time as well, and I am scrambling to keep up with lots of stuff there, too. One of my staff members left for greener pastures in March and he is strongly missed!

Sometime soon we will be going on a mini-vacation to do some fishing and enjoy the outdoors so that is something I’m really looking forward to. In addition, Keegan will be out of school soon.

This morning we went to church and I’m glad (as always) that we did, because we received refreshment and encouragement there. This afternoon we went to a few stores and mostly drove a bit in the countryside just north of us over the border into Wisconsin.

The next several weeks will be quite hectic but I know that our Heavenly Father will meet all our needs. Along that same vein, would you please pray for some people in my extended family and friends? My sister-in-law’s brother and his youngest son (age 11) suffered severe injuries and burns in an accident a week ago or so. They and their family need all the support and care they can get. Also, someone I wrote about some time ago, John Fawcett, who has battled a recurrence of cancer for several months, has decided to not continue any treatment. I imagine this means that he could die at any time and I know his wife and young children also desperately need prayer at this time.