Librarian meeting prep @ Lunch

Creating another post title with "@ lunch" I noticed how many lunch posts there have been lately. Naturally I then added an "at lunch" tag for blog posts and immediately looked through recent posts to apply the tag (10). Regardless, because of my annoyances with blogger from home and my unwillingness to leave the library in nasty weather, I have none the less been spending more of my lunch hour secluded in my office with my computer.

I am getting quite a bit of technology experimentation/playing (chat, calendar, widgets, IM) accomplished while my reading shelf languishes. Earlier in the week it was decision time; renew my shelf of juvenile and YA books (again) or release them back into circulation for others to enjoy. I would like to say I chose the high road and returned them to the collection for the greater good, but the truth will out prompting me to reveal new books are now on the cart downstairs and at least 150 juvenile titles are due to arrive in the next week.

In one hour I will attend a faculty librarian meeting. At this meeting we will be presenting our Meebo chat function and detailing its use to the other librarians. Chat is ready to go; all we need is policy in place regarding operation of the service. Everyone will be interested in seeing the demonstration, knowing it will work, and discussing the different variants in place for customizing the widget. Realizing everyone needs to participate for success, instructing others how the service works from a technology standpoint and agreeing on said policy statements may put a damper on things. As long as the service was in the discussion and experimentation phase all was well. Reality may be a tough sell.

During that same meeting I will be pressing to move forward with the library web site re-design sans template. I had permission to send out an email (ten days ago) discussing how we could move forward and requesting input regarding vocabulary and page layout within the proposed template's editable region. Included within the email message was a link to the site map and gentle reminders that any top level menu vocabulary suggestion and decision would need to flow with existing pages. I did not have the courage to discuss how many pages I think should be eliminated. That proposal is for another day. I am crossing my fingers, trying to stay positive, that serious time and thought was given to the task at hand so we may move forward. If we don't get started soon ...