Archive for the ‘library’ Category

Photoshop part 2 and others

April 10, 2008

I got side tracked  the last two weeks at work.  I now have the Photoshop Elements software package on my work machine and I have been messing around with that version instead of the free one. Examining the version is next on the list to do. One would think darkening text on a photo would be easy. Nope! It required whiting the area out and typing new text. 3 full hours of eye strain and a whopping headache.

More and more people are getting interested in locating old material such as pictures, diaries or other items for local history and genealogy research. Housed at Michigan State University is a project called the Making of Modern Michigan. It is a web site of “donated” digital collections from libraries throughout Michigan. The long term goal is to help smaller libraries build their digital collections and safely store them off-site. They have the usual pictures of court houses, churches, and events, but MSU placed their old cookbooks from the 1800’s on the site.  For you Toledo, Ohio folk, the Toledo Luca County Public Library has their own version called Images in Time. Just hover over the Library Collection tab on their site to find the link. You can search by address or keyword.  Fun stuff to pass the time.

jessamyn west

March 25, 2008

A coworker pestered me to go to a worshop called Teaching Technology in Libraries. The whole reason is to hear Jessamyn West as the keynote. Am glad I went. She truly is a great speaker who captivated the audience of about 70.

There were 5 presenters speaking on various topics involving libraries and technology. How to structure basic computer classes? How to teach/deomstrate gadgets(ipods, kindles, etc)? Why are were technology trainers? Does New Horizon or the local con ed program handle that? Well, not for most of our patrons. And that was the theme. A chunk of patrons who cannot afford classes come to us and boy do we need all the help to get them past the beginning.

Jessamyn was able to put all the frustration and daily life of a librarian helping others with technology in plain yet hillarious terms. Helping one person with there mps player to cursing the computer for locking up and then ending the day with helping a person submit a resume online. Oh, they do not have an email. Need to do that first. have they used a computer? No! They were just told to do it at the library. SOmetimes you can help and other times they walk out frustrated.

Check out jessamyn’s blog at librarian.net. Many aspire to be as good and cool as her.