The Library Mall and Other News

I promised a few pals that I'd take photographs of the newly-renovated Library Mall, so here they are. The improved space and addition of many benches has encouraged greater numbers of students to use the space--I see them eating lunch, reading, and talking in the area all the time now. The main changes were the addition of two long fountains and the front fountain with the waterfall, the replacement of much of the old concrete with brick walkways, the addition of the tan stone, and the addition and more trees and benches. (See more photos.)

I had to record our great environmental display tie-in (for the Denton Reads program in April) in the GovDocs department. One of our staff members and several of our students gathered documents and colored printouts of animal masks (from some Texas documents) and really spruced up our area (see more photos)!

A new albino squirrel has arrived!! K.T. Shiue, who took all the photographs of "Baby" the albino squirrel for the calendar we've mounted in the Albino Squirrel Memorial area of our Cyber Cafe, recently caught sight of a new baby albino squirrel at Maple Hall, very close to the library (see more of his albino squirrel photos).


Today was the wrap-up lunch for Denton Reads, graciously hosted and catered by the TWU Library (see more photos). We're quite pleased with our success, and will get together in a couple of weeks to begin organizing the 2008 program (which will be held in October of 2008). With 18 months to plan, compared to the 6 months we had this year (and how well it came off despite that), we think 2008 can be spectacular!

Denton Reads Slideshow

Denton Reads Event Photos: Finis!

Yes, that's right, I've uploaded the last of the Denton Reads photos to the Flickr account. To view photos by specific events, see:

• Author Lecture / Booksigning
• Denton Reads Dinner
• Tree Dedication
• Children's Festival
• Film Festival

Wading Through Wednesday

Thanks for all inquiries--I did arrive home safely last night.

I had a librarian nightmare last night (not metaphorically; it really was a dream). Patrons were rushing the desk, screaming at each other about who got there first and why everyone else's question was stupid. One patron in particular kept talking about how another patron was weird and didn't I think so too, and wasn't his information need ridiculous, and I had to keep patiently explaining to her that I was here to serve everyone, and that no one's need is weighted any differently than any others'.

I think I had this nightmare because during my service desk shift last night, patrons kept asking for pens. Asking in the way that I intuitively knew meant that these pens would not be coming back.

Completely off-topic from patrons... my task on Denton Reads is nearly done! I've got the Children's Festival photos yet to edit/upload, and probably 20-40 other photos to edit/upload, and I also have to archive the existing website. Then I get to update the website with the "events went successfully!" kind of copy and post/link photos. Then I'll be done.

I think.

Great news: we've got RSS for the UNT Library Digital Collections searches (check out the spiffy orange RSS icon at the right)!!! Now, you can save frequent searches and get updates when new items arrive... much like the RSS feeds now available for wishlists in BookMooch (free online book trading service).

Unrelated Banter

• I found a story about how UNT's new President Bataille read "Hoot" to some 6th graders as part of Denton Reads. I'm really hoping that someone photographed the event...
• My talented colleague Kristen pointed out this spiffy (beta) newsletter collection from the Library of Congress: Chronicling America. Thanks!
• FGI has a great page of resources for Spring DLC Denver.

Denton Reads Film Festival (photos)

Last night, the Denton Reads Film Festival double-feature at the Movie Tavern went beautifully. We've got a whole smattering of photos from the event on the Denton Reads Flickr page; click here to see more like the ones below.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety-Jig

Things I learned while in Denver:

• the altitude really does affect you
• there's a surprising number of documents librarian baseball fans
• if it's a presentation/discussion about digitization, UNT's name will come up
• regionals have widely varying opinions on digitization and title 44
• John Phillips really is that great

As well as, when attending two conferences in the space of a week:

• stick to bland foods
• you won't get much sleep

I've started typing up my notes in my wiki (including notes for TLA), but they won't be done for a few days. Keep checking back; I'll get them done. I'll also be posting in the near future some observations / thoughts on the conference proceedings; I think it will take typing all my notes to re-digest that material.

So, the emails are just about caught up (in stark contrast to the laundry), the Albino Squirrel Memorial looks great, and I'm about to go photograph the Denton Reads Film Festival at the Movie Tavern. Now, if I could only find the time to finish that book review and my research paper for Rare Books...

Also, a big thanks to my interim department head for reading my blog post and getting LAN to up my RAM! Woohoo--thanks, Mel!

Update: There's a great story about the Albino Squirrel Memorial at the Denton-Record Chronicle website, that includes some photos!

Docs in Denver

So, here I am at DLC. My brain's a bit confused from having just been in San Antonio--I spent Saturday and Sunday attempting to decompress at home (as well as finishing up calendar pages for the UNT Albino Squirrel Memorial to be unveiled tomorrow at Willis Library's Cyber Cafe). Note to self: if job continues to heavily emphasize graphic design, be sure to somehow procure a faster computer and more network drive space.

At some point, I'll have to get my impressions of TLA down in a post... for now, I'm ready to finish this post and sit down with my highlighter and my book to review. I took a lot of hard-copy notes that I want to get into my wiki as soon as possible... I fear that may be difficult to do, as emails and work have no doubt been piling up while I've been playing the jet-setting traveling librarian. The highlights of TLA in a nutshell, however, were:

• seeing my new boss's (yes, it's official!) passionate presentation
• Lesley Williams's incredible session on promoting e-collections
• hearing UNT's name mentioned in every single session I attended on digital intiatives
• going to lunch with my mom (former high school librarian, now art league librarian), three UNT colleagues, and my future boss

And I've got to say--Denton Reads is paying off in a huge way not only for the community of Denton, but for the community of Denton librarians. Because of my involvement in Denton Reads, I knew a TWU librarian and a Denton Public librarian at TLA. I think this program has really brought Denton librarians together in a great way, as collaborators, and I'm excited to see what an effect this has on our library community in the future.

Current Distractions From the Annual Review...

WHOOT! NPR’s CyberCemetery story made the ALA Direct newsletter!

Unrelated Banter

• One of the local public librarians honored me with the moniker "Rockstarr" today when I quickly re-did the Denton Reads bookmarks in a 2-color format (to lower printing costs).
• An ingenious way to display information: U.S. housing prices, adjusted for inflation, plotted as a roller coaster. (Thanks, Mark!)
• ALA Annual heads-up: D.C. offers a “National Treasure”-themed self-guided tour where you follow clues from the movie. Now there's something that will really tempt my husband to accompany me in June.
• Also from ALA Direct: some great April Fool's pranks.
• And on a personal note, one of my favorite graphic novelists, Ursula Vernon, was mentioned as a notable new novelist (of non-graphic note) in Library Journal!

Mark Your Place

This evening on short notice, I was able to design bookmarks for Denton Reads... and that likely signals the end of the Graphic Team's responsibilities on Denton Reads for 2007. This image is the front (you can view the back image on flickr).



Unrelated Banter
An item from one of our GovDocs digital collections (WWII poster: "Use it up, wear it out") will soon be a DttP cover image!

I See the World in Pixels

Whew. Here's the mock-up for the large, 22" x 30" poster. I wish I had some idea of how it would look printed at that size.... I've tried to zoom in on every area of it to be sure it doesn't look nastily pixelated anywhere, but even more so it's hard to determine what kind of font size to use in an image that large. This is certainly stretching my skill set!



...So, you want to see all the official Denton Reads graphics at once? Well then, go check out the Denton Reads flickr account.

Digital Projects: Progress Report

We're making great progress on our two newest GovDocs digital projects.

A-Z Retro-Cataloging Digitization

• A-Z project: retro-cataloging and barcoding items by starting with the A's and checking every shelf
• digitization criteria: everything in the A-Z project that is pre-1960
• fate of the print copies: throwing out items in need of preservation, unless worthy of archiving
• number of metadata records completed: 172
• these are currently in the Digital Projects Unit queue and are being scanned

FCC Record Digitization

• digitization criteria: all of the FCC Record
• fate of the print copies: throwing out (except the cumulative indexes)
• other: all GovDocs staff is learning how to duplex-scan FCC volumes, to get better acquainted with the digitization process.

On another note: if Photoshop reports a "fatal error" one more time this evening... I may have to scream. Yes, on the library's designated quiet floor. It's that bad.

I'm working on the 22"x30" Denton Reads poster now, in an effort to get it done by tomorrow afternoon. I already have a mock-up completed for the 22"x30" version that will be going up in Denton ISD schools, as seen below.

...And Photoshop Didn't Crash!

So I've been dealing with converting text to outlines and such to finalize the file to send the poster to the printer today. So many fun things to learn!

We've finalized the 11x17 poster design, and now I'm working on half-sheet sized handouts (in lieu of bookmarks, which are more expensive to print). Then it's on to the large, 22x30 posters--one general design and one specific to the Denton ISD schools.

PhDs, Palimpsests, and Presentations, Oh My!

(I could actually add "photographs" and "politics" to my list of "p" words for this post, but ah well. That's what you get for letting an English major have a blog.)


To continue the "To PhD or Not to PhD" discussion, my husband Alex sent me a link to this Census Bureau document yesterday: "The Big Payoff: Educational Attainment and Synthetic Estimates of Work-Life Earnings." Not only is it a fascinating report, but it shows that I've got my husband using govdocs now!

This is a fascinating Smithsonian article about X-rays revealing a hidden text by Archimedes--it had been scraped off and the parchment re-used for a prayer book. (Thanks to my Rare Books classmate--and GovDocs GLA--Tessa Powell for this link!)

This Thursday at 1pm CST, I'll be co-presenting about wikis with Chad Boeninger for Five Weeks to a Social Library. Chad will be presenting "The Wonderful World of Wikis: Applications for Libraries" and then I'll present "The 'How' of Wikis." Our webcast will be available archived afterward; I'll post the link.



I just posted the "best of" from our photoshoot for the Denton Reads project on my Flickr account. I took these last week to use for flyers and posters. I'm printing them to take the to DR meeting tomorrow at Barnes & Noble, so that committee members can decide which images they'd like to use for various purposes. Chuck and I have a Graphics Team meeting Friday to discuss our progress on the poster and bookmarks, and to brainstorm what events will need flyers.

I've also rasterized the logo so that it can be blown up to larger sizes, and I'm trying to do the same with the logo text... but Adobe Illustrator keeps crashing.

If I'm going to continue to be involved in producing various library graphics, I'm really going to need to take a graphics design course at some point. I think I'll consider taking one in the fall.

A geek's view of politics: reviews of presidential campaign websites.

Publicity, Of Several Kinds

This week Catherine Cuellar, a reporter for local NPR affiliate KERA 90.1, interviewed myself along with Cathy Hartman (assistant dean of UNT Libraries) and Garret Rumohr (UNT-L Web Server Administrator) about UNT's CyberCemetery (which I maintain). The 4 to 5-minute story will air soon on KERA's "Morning Edition" show, perhaps as early as Monday, 2/19 (the show runs from 5am to 9am). You can also listen to KERA streaming online.

For more about the CyberCemetery, see the recent UNT InHouse story on it.

I've already mentioned the Denton Reads blog, but wanted to stress that there have been a number of updates to it and the official Denton Reads website, such as the addition of Book Club information and publicity materials.

Monday, I'll be testing the OPAL webcast software (along with my nifty new headset/microphone) in preparation for my March 1st Five Weeks to a Social Library presentation on "The How of Wikis." (Hopefully by then I won't still sound so stuffy--I had the flu earlier this week, and I still sound ridiculous.)

Denton Reads...

I've been so busy with work, the Denton Reads project being just one of my current tasks, that I don't even have time to blog it all here.

Briefly, I've made some updates to the Denton Reads website, and also created a Denton Reads blog. I really love using blogs for things like this--the ability to add multiple authors, categories, widgets, photos, and other fun things just thrills me.

I'm currently working with the other member of the DR Graphics Team to create a poster, book club flyer, bookmarks, and other promotional images for publicity purposes. Next week, I hope to take the photo that will be the main image in the poster, and then I'll probably have to give myself a crash-course in using Adobe Illustrator (oh, mercy).

And the logo has had one more change: the courthouse is larger, and the outline is thicker. This is it. I promise. No, really.