Hecticness

One of those days today when you don't actually get around to finishing things... One of the first things was finding an email in the inbox from someone telling someone else that certain info is available in the library. I guess sometimes it is worth going to meetings as that's where I made it clear that the library had this info. Coincidentally, someone else on that project popped in later so it was lucky that I'd dug the info (old newsletters) out of the archive. I arranged to catalogue the newsletters and drop it off when they are done (if they are catalogued and issued they'll impact the monthly stats - I think it really is worth working for every issue). The parting shot was "I don't have to do anything do I, I don't do libraries". The answer was "No". People are too busy to deal with complicated procedures - I really beleive that you have to make borrowing items as easy as it can be - even if that means putting a bit of extra effort in. The moral of this was "There's something for everyone in the library - they just don't know it yet!".

The rest of the day was mostly about stats - the figures look good. Loans are up about 5-10% on last year so I really need to be shouting about this to turn it into benefit for the library. I also need to be shouting about the value that the library adds - if everyone who borrowed from the library this year bought their own copy then the cost would have been ten times as much. I'm collecting these little facts like a man obsessed at the moment - trying to mash them all into something I can sell to the bean counters!

Later in the day (after chasing a colleague for some stats) they let slip that they'd seen some photos from a recent library event. I hadn't seen them yet so that again was fortunate - more fodder for the folder...

Also did some professional reading today - learnt about a possible schism in Java that Google Android may cause and also a new release of Spring - this stuff is way down the line but it all builds to the background subject knowledge. It's slow going though - I think RSS is going to help. I'm a big fan of my newly found Google Reader and hopefully I can play around and get some uses of RSS for the library website - I know what I want to do but it's just about getting it there...

Also found Google Notebook today which is a cool little app - especially when working on more than one machine. I've been keeping it open today to add thoughts for blogging as I think of them...

Anyway - enough of this - time to "Go and do something less boring instead".