Anyone know if it’s typical for libraries to send overdue notices only after the book is over a week late? Since I live in the hinterlands we don’t usually even have overdue fines, much less automated email communications with patrons. If you have advice for that particular patron, leave it in the comments of that post.
Tag: thisisbroken
this is broken: brief story of me
Libraries, sometimes when you stick those barcode labels on the front of your books, you obscure information on the cover, sometimes changing the meaning of the title entirely. Seriously, there are lots of places to put a sticky barcode, why the front cover?
ALA membership renewal
I’m back from my trip and reading through email. On my “to do” list is to renew my ALA membership before the conference since it expired at the end of the year. I figured since ALA had my email address, they might send a reminder about this and they did… today! It reads, in part, “Thank you for this past year of ALA Membership. Your membership year ends December 31, 2005 ” Please note the present tense of the word “ends” my membership ended a few weeks ago. Now, this is my own fault for not staying on top of my professional association dues over the holidays, but you’d think that even an organization like ALA could manage a reminder email that went out before my membership had expired, maybe?
Additionally, I just bought my plane tickets for San Antonio and found that I had to stay an extra day in order to stay for the full Council meeting on Wednesday since all flights for my small airport seem to leave at the crack of dawn. This tosses a small wrench into my plans lodging-wise, so if anyone has tips for cheap/free places to stay in San Antonio on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings the 24th and 25th, please let me know.
two posts on michigan library tech
Two worthwhile stories from Ed Vielmetti’s blog Vacuum.
- Sony rootkit music off the Ann Arbor District Library’s purchase list – a story about Ed’s librarian telling him of their decision to not buy music from Sony that installs “rootkit like” technology. These music CDs install nefarious software on a user’s system, ostenisbly to prevent illegal copying, and DRM circumvention and is highly controversial.
- Interlibrary loan system MiLE in Michigan irrecoverably hacked – hacking is malicious vandalism, granted, but this is a confidence shaking security breach. Electronic ILL service in a good deal of Southeastern Michagan is broken beyond recovery until the roll-out of the next version of the software, at least a month away. This is a large-scale failure that should have been avoidable. Disasters sometimes happen. Are you preapred for yours? Joyhn Blyberg from the Ann Arbor District Library outlines steps libraries should take to secure their system, not later, now.