IOLUG Spring Meeting Details Announced

The Indiana Online Users Group Spring Meeting will be held on May 14th, 2010 at Indiana Wesleyan University Indianapolis Education Center North.  The theme is “You Can Take it With You: Libraries Moving Into Mobile.” Details and registration can be found at http://www.iolug.org/index.php/programs/spring-2010-program/ .

The keynote speaker will be Jason Griffey, Head of Library Information at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.  His talk is titled “The Future is Mobile.”  I will be sharing a session with Bill Helling, Assistant Director and Head of Reference (former Systems Librarian) for the Crawfordsville District Public Library.  Our session is titled “How Friendly are library Websites and Databases?”  Bill’s session will be titled “How Does Your Library Website Really Look Like?”  This focuses on how to create a library website that usable for mobile devices.  My session “Bill Helling, Assistant Director and Head of Reference (former Systems Librarian) for the Crawfordsville District Public Library” is on accessing commercial and free databases with mobile devices.  I will demonstrate using an iPhone.  Right now I am looking at demonstrating EBSCOhost, WorldCat, Encyclopedia Britannica, and USA.gov.  I may add in additional databases if time permits.

Registration is $45 for IOLUG members and $65 for non-IOLUG members.

Windows 7 – So far, I LIKE IT!

I built a new PC for my home last week and this is my first experience with Windows 7 and I have to say, I’m impressed.  First off, let me say that I never used Vista at home or work, so this is quite a big change for me.  Second, this PC replaces my old PC which is now 5 years old.  It was high end at the time, but not so much now.  My old one had an AMD Athlon 3000 with 1 GB of RAM (later updated to 2 GB),  256 MB A ATI video card.  My new PC is a monster… Intel  i7 920, 6 GB RAM (3DDR), 1 TB hard drive with a 32 MB cache, Radeon 5570 video card with 1 GB cache a high quality case and power supply and Windows Professional,  64 bit.  So the performance is greatly improved.

What I like about the Window 7:  I like the new task bar.  That allows me to avoid having to use RocketDock.   However, you can’t add ANYTHING to it.  Some things are tricky to add like directories and I don’t think you can add libraries to it.  I also THINK I like the “Libraries” concept although I am not sure if I will be using it to its fullest extent.  For instance, my “Photos” library may only link to photos in my “Photos” folder and not from other places.  I am too much of an organization and control freak for that.  I want to know in my head where all my files are.  I also like the search capabilities.  Searching for files in Windows 7 is so much faster than in XP.  I also like the customization options and the background themes.  I know that is window dressing (no pun intended), but I still like it.

What I don’t like:  I am not crazy about the start menu and how that expands.  Maybe it can be customized, I don’t know.  I also don’t like how when I click the Explorer button in the task bar when I already have an explorer window open, that it just opens that explorer window.  I want it to open another one.  As it is, I have to right click it then select it to open a new explorer window.   I’ve only been using it for a week and so I know I have tons to learn.

This summer, Rose-Hulman will be doing a mass migration from XP to Windows 7 for all faculty, staff, and student computers.  I am not sure how they plan to handle this transition.  The last time they did this was 2002 for Windows XP.  Back then, just about every version of Windows was being used on campus and so that summer, many many new PCs were purchased to meet the computing needs for XP.  I am sure a similar situation will need to be dealt with this time.  However, not only is it a matter of CPU and memory requirements, but software as well since Windows 7 offers a 32 bit and a 64 bit version.  Previously they only supported the 32 bit version of XP.  I hope they do not choose to go solely with the 32 bit version, but either both or only the 64 bit version.  The library staff members all have PCs that are 64 bit, but some of our work stations (circulation desk, reference desk, back room, Ariel computer etc.), are all using Pentium D’s so I am not sure if all of those will need to be replaced.  If also, it will be a significant expense to the library.  So I will have to deal with this transition in addition to our migration to a new ILS system, weeding project, etc etc etc.  But I welcome us switching to Windows 7.

Everything you need to know about USB 3.0

http://thisthatotherthing.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/everything-you-need-to-know-about-usb-3-0/
This article explains the ins and outs of the new USB version 3.0.  For those who don’t know the difference between version 1 and 2, version 2 was 40 times as fast as version 1.  Yes, VERY fast.  That is why Firewire lost some of its wind.  Well, USB 3.0 os 10 times faster than USB 2.0.  Lets out this into perspective.

The new specification is rated 10 times faster than USB 2.0, which has a maximum transfer speed of 480Mbps.
In comparison, USB 3.0 has a theoretical peak throughput of 5Gbps. This means that USB 3.0 is capable of transferring a 25GB file in approximately 70 seconds.
If that doesn’t warrant a shout of “whoosh!” then what does? In contrast, USB 2.0 would take around 14 minutes to perform the same task. And you’d be twiddling your thumbs for around 9 hours if you used USB 1.1.

I can see this coming in handy for our Digital Archives project when I have to transfer folders of huge TIFF images from the workstations my students work on to my PC for upload into CONTENTdm.  It will also come in handy for when I back up my data at home onto an external hard drive.  I’ll be building a new PC next Feb or March.  I’ll have to make sure I get a motherboard that has USB 3.0.  For the full article, go to http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/everything-you-need-to-know-about-usb-3-0-638185

Copy Machines – Paper Still Beats Going Green

OK, so it’s early and it may take time to catch on, but get this number.  17,495 – 41.  No, that is not an Indiana State University football score.  That is September’s copy statistics for a new copy machine we added at the beginning of this school year.  Before this school year began, we got rid of our two older copy machines and leased a single machine that can either make traditional paper copies, or scan pages to a digital format such as PDF, TIFF, or JPG.  The copier has a USB port so documents can be saved to a thumb drive.  We placed a sign over the machine alerting our users of this option.  The result in one month’s time…17,495 paper copies and only 41 pages scanned to electronic format.  Regardless of how technology oriented our students are, there are some things they still prefer in paper over digital format.  In this case, paper has definitely won out for reserve materials which get the brunt of our student’s copy needs.  We fully expected more print copies to be made, but by that margin?  WHOAHHH!   It’s still early so it may catch on, but by that margin, I don’t expect a dramatic shift any time soon.

Newer Public Printers = More NOISE!!!!!!!!!!

Printersetup Now / Older printer to be used

Have you ever noticed that as printers designed for fast and high output get more advanced, that they also get LOUDER and take a much longer time to warm up and cool down?  This has become a problem for our library, at the reference desk in particular.  At Rose-Hulman, we have two printers in our reference area.  We used to have two across the wall from the reference desk which mean every time we were working with a student one of us would need to get up and walk to the printer to retrieve an article we just printed.  Back in 2003, we redesigned the reference area, placing one printer in the far end of the reference section and one right next to the reference desk.  It took me less than an hour after setting up that arrangement to realize that I would now have a public printer right next the ref cranking out noise all day.  We are on our third printer (managed by the institute IT department) since that time and each one has gotten bigger, faster, and NOISIER!  Not only does our latest version the loudest yet, but it also it takes forever to warm up and even longer to cool down.  Just last night I was speaking to a student and when the printer finally quieted down, I had to drastically lower my voice.  And I can hardly even reach the page(s) I just printed from my side of the desk.  I have to do some serious stretching

My solution, move this printer to the back of the room with the other printer and recycle an older desk sized printer for placement on the reference desk.  This printer will only be used by the reference desk staff and the nearby circulation desk for when they need to print something other than a small circulation receipt.  The only thing holding me up is that each location is on a different subnet so I am waiting on someone from our IT department to switch the public printer to the other subnet.  I will post a picture when I have the new setup completed.