GLAM
We Don't Want Your Donation
GLAM Blog Club's theme this month is Donation which instantly sent shivers up my spine thinking about all the terrible books people bring into the (public) library to donate. As Hugh's example shows, it's often the things we don't put into our collections that make a library. In my own professional life I have seen two types of librarians in regards to donations. One being the accept almost everything librarian, and the other decline's almost everything. I am of the latter persuasion. In one wor
Low Bar
Recently I had the pleasure of attending a talk by Alice Procter entitled Muddling the Museum. It looked at ways museum collections and interactions were being decolonised by external groups, as well as critiquing the internal processes of these colonial institutions. The event was filmed and hopefully it will be available for others to view as Alice is an exceptional speaker and was able to provide a clear picture of the complicated and often messy nature of decolonisation. I came away from th
DoDeDoDo (Production)
It’s been several months since I posted up my prototype of an RFID based library reference tracker that I lovingly called the ‘DoDeDoDo’. Since then I’ve worked through several variations of case design, code, and wiring. I even added a blinky light to it! I feel now that it is fit for reproduction and have ironed out the many, many bugs that came with not really knowing what I was doing. I still don’t but I’ve learnt a lot along the way. If you are looking to replicate this system and roll it o
DoDeDoDo Web – Reference STAT(S)!
Back in July I wrote about an RFID location based enquiry tracking system (DoDeDoDo) and two months later I’ve moved on from prototype to production and they are working relatively ok. There are some bugs to work out before I present a new write up and I’ve modified the code slightly to make it easier to troubleshoot and added an LED because blinky lights are awesome. In the meantime I created a locally hosted, web based solution for staff in the workroom that I’m pretty happy with and wanted to
DoDeDoDo – A Location Based Enquiry Tracking System
The Problem For years WA libraries have been tracking information requests/enquiries that staff (mostly front-of-house) handle in their day-to-day work. From this financial year onwards we are now required to break down these enquiries into five categories: * Reference transactions and information requests * eResource enquiries * Technical enquiries (including public PC and photocopier/printing help) * Community information and Government services enquiries * Any other enquiries (Includ
the GLAMR of DEATH
Content warning: Death, & dying. I was invited to speak at Museums Showoff WA this month about anything that interested me. After going through several options I settled on death positivity and GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums), especially as I spent half the night thinking about it. As it turns out I'm quite passionate about death positivity, I even have the t-shirt. Nine minutes isn’t long enough to cover everything I want to talk about so consider this to be an introduction
Angelheaded Hipsters
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked... - Howl, Part I, Allen Ginsberg. It's the end of what feels like a long month and here I am, quoting Ginsberg. This is for a combination of a few things. The first being that the newCardigan GLAM Blog Club theme is 'watch' and that line was the first thing that popped into my head (well, that and Watchman. Quis custodiet ipsos bibliothecam?). Secondly, I re-watched Hackers while I was in Melbourne for V
Ideas For Your Next Conference Presentation
Inspired by @jinglefrisbee's latest blog post Ideas For My Next Conference Presentation I decided to throw some ideas I've been sitting on for a while out into the world. Sadly the soft focus stopped working on my camera so there won't be any cool bathroom mirror, lip-sync type shots, sorry. It should be noted that these are all sessions that I would like to see or think we need, not ones that I want to run myself. Mainly because for many I am the last person (white, male) who should be runnin