Themework - Google does it again

I hated "themes" in high school English. I hated them so much that I opted out of senior English and took journalism instead. My classmates would expound "Moby Dick is an illustration of Man vs. Nature," while I am thinking "Moby Dick is a book about a guy that obsessed about catching a fish and went off his nut."

About 5 weeks ago, I had noticed that Google added a new interface on their Igoogle themes page that allows the rest of us to add new theme bars to the directory. This was in keeping with the easy interface that they added to Google Maps that allowed the non-XML programming people in their audience to add pages with useful and graphically interesting material. As someone who had an archive of many hundreds of images concerning Ireland and New York, I couldn't wait to get started.

They make it easy, yes and no. You start with a simple interface that says "upload a file" that allows you to browse for a directory of images on your hard drive. They don't tell you this in so many words (or actually, any words at all) but it won't take your file if there is a space or nonalphanumeric in the name). Then you get to the really hard part. They put up your image and you get to mark out the area to be covered, and then it shows you what you got. Then you find out that the picture of the bridge you thought you were loading shows nothing but sky. Get ready for some trial and error. The best technique, I found out after many, many errors, was to create your original file with the dimensions 1400X190, then use the entire picture. That will get you a banner that fills all of the needed area, but will also display in full wide-screen monitors.
Before that, I found that the picture you okay and allow to be added to the directory may have wide blank spaces to either side, and then it is too late to take it back. Your image is reviewed, and almost everything is chosen within a week or so.

When the themes show up in the directory, you will see that there are fewer than 100 subscribers. At first, I thought "Sure thing. Me and my dog." After a month of this, I found that four of them were going past 100 subscribers at one time or another, so these do get used. One final thought - avoid the natural instinct to make the center of attention display in the center of your theme, or you'll find it blocked by the search box.

Opus 100

Those of you of a certain age will recognize that title from the 1950's when Philip Wylie used it as the title of his 100th book. This is the 100th posting of Librarian on the Edge. It began on March 14, 2005 when I was automation librarian at Quinnipiac University. In the ensuing years, Quinnipiac would send me to Ireland twice, England, New Orleans, Nashville, San Francisco, Savannah, Cocoa Beach, Salt Lake City and Anaheim. Many of those trips involved speaking engagements. In 2005 I held faculty status and speaking engagements were counted as scholarship by the university. That changed abruptly a year later when the university president got rid of the faculty union and then declared that librarians were no longer faculty. Because he said so.
I still did the occasional speech whenever I had something to say.

Also in this four year period my son went to library school, graduated, got a job as a reference librarian at the Queensborough Public Library, and seems to be on his way. Since my wife is a public librarian on Long Island, that completed the Trifecta. When we attended Book Expo last month, we noted that this was the first conference we'd attended when all three of us were certified librarians. After faculty status went away at Quinnipiac, I went through a time that I was happy to put behind me. Anyone who has lived through a situation of being treated like someone administration had to put up with knows what I mean.

I January I took an opportunity to work at the New York Law School's Mendik Library doing what I do best - systems librarian work. I've been like a kid in a candy store working through a vast backlog of problems that had built up in the months and years before a systems librarian arrived. This gives me one last chance to use the knowledge of Innovative Interfaces systems that I've built up over the last two decades. I may hold the record for being the first librarian to bring up Encore in two different libraries. Also, it doesn't hurt that I go to work in one of the most fascinating parts of Manhattan. The things we are doing here are interesting enough that I may be writing Opus 200 in another four years.

Saving a library

Recently, Library Journal announced that the Queensborough Public Library had been named library of the year. That's not a surprising choice overall - in more than 60 branches they have an annual circulation that often leads the entire country. Their branches are thriving social centers - vital to their divergent communities for employment information, access to the internet, ESL and countless other services. One other important fact about the library - Mayor Bloomberg had created a doomsday budget that would eliminate most weekend service in Queens and force the library to lay off more than 200 employees. Many of those were young librarians hired in 2007.

In the news release announcing the award, Library Journal said they would fight to save the library every day. Now the fight seems to be over. The mayor and council worked out a plan this week to put back most of the money and save the library from layoffs and major service cuts. As New York librarians, we are grateful to LJ and to the mayor for seeing the light of day. As parents we are extremely grateful, because our son Bob was one of the young librarians hired in 2007. Unlike librarians who moved to Queens from other parts of the country, Bob would have been lucky enough to have a Plan B option on Long Island. More to the point, he works in a branch that serves a Korean neighborhood in Flushing, and he absolutely loves what he is doing.
I can't remember ever getting a better Father's Day gift.

Right back where we started from

I was told by my new employers, the New York Law School, that I would only be sent to one conference this year. The choice was easy. The Innovative Users conference held in Anaheim the week of May 18 would be my 14th out of the 17 that have been held. My immediate supervisor, Paul Mastrangelo was there to accept an award for being present at 16 of them.

I had told my wife how easy it is to take the train to Queens and then the monorail to JFK. With an 8:10 flight, we felt confident that taking the 6:07 train from Merrick would get us there in ample time. The monorail, which supposedly runs every 6 minutes, took at least 10 to arrive. Then, at every stop along the way they waited for 2-3 minutes, even though nobody was getting on. Finally we got to the JetBlue terminal only to find out that they had moved into a new wing, and we had to walk a half mile to get to the ticket counter. Then security took forever, so we barely made our flight.



The flight across America was long but uneventful. There were low clouds over LA, so we could not claim to have seen both oceans before noon. We caught our cab easily enough, but the cabbie overshot, ended up miles south of Disneyland and tried to take us to the wrong hotel. At the right hotel, we got right into a room, but it was right over the swimming pool. No matter, because we were off to Disneyland and California Adventure for an afternoon of concentrated fun. Donna had read up on the system for getting advanced passes to the more popular rides, so we made out extremely well that first evening, finishing off with dinner at the much-sought Blue Bijou restaurant. This is a very up-scale restaurant, but it has to adhere to the strict Disneyland rule of No Alcohol. Otherwise, we were very happy with our meal.

After six hours of Disney fun, we were not only jet-lagged but exhausted. We always try to stay up until at least 9:30 or 10 on coming in to California, but I passed out at around 8. Later, Donna said something like - "Were you shaking the bed?" No. Back to sleep. That was that until the next day when somebody mentioned the 5.0 Earthquake that hit the LA area the past evening.
Just my luck, sleeping through the whole thing.

The next morning, I was walking down Harbor Blvd. to get to the Hilton in time for the opening ceremony. Jerry was polite enough to keep 1000 people waiting a few extra minutes until I sat down. This was the 17th IUG gathering, and awards were given to people who had made it to at least 15 of them. This was my 14th, so I just missed the cut, but they told me I may be in luck next year in Chicago. In spite of the economy, attendance was fine and the number of IUG institutions was growing slightly. Jerry then spoke briefly about the state of the company, which is doing quite well. Disclaimer here - in past years I was told not to report on anything at IUG that would be of use to their competitors, so I will not talk about any new III products or services, but rather concentrate on things like CSS and Javascript that are not unique to Innovative.

The keynote speaker was Michael Johnson, from Pixar, who is in charge of the development of new motion picture projects for the wildly successful company.

He said that they have a similar problem to librarians – providing analog materials in a digital world. He quoted a friend: “Pain is temporary. Suck is forever.”

He came into the company later and didn’t know the reason for the name. The most likely is a blend of pixel and artist. They merged with Disney in the 1990s when they had 800 employees. Takes about 3 or four years to go from an initial idea to a finished film.

Storyboarding is the art of story re-boarding. Movies are recorded before the visuals are created. “Do something so we can change it:” the story reel. B&W prototype of the entire film. Notes will go out about problems with the film. Solutions re proposed in a timely manner. In the case of the Incredibles they eliminated a pilot character who was killed off early in the original script. “Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity.” (I prefer my own aphorism: "Reality is only a theory"). Most of the early visual work is done without computers.

“An animator is an actor with a pencil.” Walt Disney

Did 125,000 pictures in storyboarding Wall-E. Johnson worked out way to get storyboarders working in digital format – easier to share, format. “Passion will get you through.”

The first program I attended was one I planned to see even before I found out that my good friend Karen Perone was speaking. This was an introductory course in CSS, which I sorely needed. I'd been able to manipulate a few of our CSS files since coming to NYLS, but it was trial and error, with an emphasis on the latter. With her usual calm demeanor and great command of the facts, Karen helped me along quite a bit. We saw her later, and I promised her that I would treat her like I do Bob Duncan: If I've hit an absolute brick wall and can't get anywhere with a file, I'll ask her to help.

She suggested the following tools for improving CSS files:

Firebug add-in from SitePoint. Tools.sideburner.com/codeburner gives an add-in to Firebug. CSS Validator: Jigsaw.w3.org

The next day I went to a program about leveraging online content into an opac. The presenter had added a lot of the obvious free marc sites like Making of America, but the thing he was most proud of was getting links to things like NASA records working when he had no specific informaiton about the web site - just the title and SUDOC number. He took the time to hand check each URL in his spreadsheet before generating a marc record and adding it to the catalog.

Next was the single most useful program I've ever seen at an IUG: Richard Jackson from the Huntington Library speaking about Regular Expressions - a shorthand way to generate massive searches of a catalog in list creation. The classic example is a search of the records for anything that has a check digit of 4, but the 4th digit is not a blank or a quotation mark. I tried this when I got back to New York and found a few dozen records that were lost to a title search because they were mis-tagged. This method is used in other systems, but Jackson was the first to realize the true potential of this for Innovative systems. You can see more at

sciug.ucr.edu/docs/sciug2007_matches.pdf . Strongly recommended.

The blur that is my life on the express train to Penn Station

It's been two months since I began my new job at the New York Law School. This is a total change of lifestyle for me. I had a very staggered schedule in my years at Quinnipiac - a combination of very long workdays and some shortened to allow me to get home to Long Island before everything got crazy. Here it is 5 identical workdays - eleven hours if you count the time I leave the house for the train until the time I get back to my driveway. Between the walk to the train from the parking lot and the walk from the Canal St. station, I have walked at least a half mile. Depending on circumstances, I may have also walked up the equivalent of a five story building. This has made me a bit tougher over time, but at the expense of some very sore knees and hips.

On days that I drive to the station, I take the 7:32, in which Merrick is the third of three stops before going on to Penn Station. When Donna drops me off, I take the 7:43, in which Merrick is the first of three stops before the city. Either way, I get to the library before anyone else in technical services. Lately, I listened to a Philip Glass orchestral piece while travelling through the more industrial section of Queens and it was liking having a live-action Koyanasqatsi. One building between Woodside might be taken for a prison with its gray walls and iron fences, but it is a church with gold lettering from Lamentations: "Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?" The rest of the passage is: "Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like to my sorrow, which is done to me, with which the LORD has afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger." Must be a lot of fun on Bingo night.

In my first week here, I was presented with a long document representing problems that they had been experiencing for months or worse. In the first week, when I should have just been listening to people and staying out of trouble, I started going through the list of problems. After two months, there is almost nothing left on the list.

One of the things my new library director asked me to look at was the way the library handled table of contents information to distribute to faculty. The way they'd done it for years was to make an image of each TOC as a new journal came in, save that as a pdf and put links to those on a long html page. I found that by saving the images as jpgs rather than tifs, you could cluster twenty pages in a pdf. As part of this work, I found out that many law journals place their TOC on a web page. Not only that, but most of these pages provide free access to the content. That led me to create a file that has dynamic links to 25 top law journals. This has now gone live at http://www.nyls.edu/library/research_tools_and_sources/current_awareness_sources/top_law_reviews_-_current_issues .
With the volume of journals we are cancelling, this kind of list will be more important in the future for tracking current content. One colleague suggested making this a graphic selection. The mockup for that is being tested now - see image on the right.

I'm also working on a Google Map of the world that has placemarks that link to our library's holdings on each country or state. This is open for view at Once we've completed the catalog link for each country we can go back through and add new layers of country information. A few weeks ago, I was reminded that the library had purchased PathFinder, the Innovative Interfaces product that can take a search in the catalog and rerun it in selected databases. Getting to work on this, I created a web page with links to law libraries that had also purchased this. That is at http://www.terryballard.org/nyls/lawlibswb.html We were surprised to see that many libraries had made a very small number of databases available here. We went the opposite direction and added more than 20. You can see the results by going to lawlib.nyls.edu and making any search, then choosing the "Other resources" button at the top of the results screen.

On lunch hours I am able to pursue a project that I had envisioned for my retirement - walking every block in Manhattan and taking a picture of each one, adding those to Google Earth and blogging each entry. The only rule is that each block has to border one that I had covered previously. This work is also covered in different degrees in Google Maps and my PBase account at http://www.pbase.com/terryballard . Working in this historic and important section of Manhattan is a dream come true.

The end of spin

I've had the sneaking hunch for some time that the DVD is fast becoming obsolete, along with the CD-ROM, cassette tapes, VHS and the phonograph record. Fuel was added to this when I started my new life as a Long Island Railroad commuter two weeks ago. My wife checked me out something from her library - a device called a "Playaway." It is an audio book on an ipod-like device that is devoted to that single title. No moving parts. Just hit the play button every morning and it picks up where it left off on the 5:19 train the night before. For the record, my initial book was "Marley and Me."

Nine years ago when we first opened the Arnold Bernhard library, our reference desk was famous for a box of floppy disks which were freely distributed to students who forgot theirs. It was not a unique experience to hear from a student holding up a floppy disk, saying "My whole semester's project is on this, and now I'm getting an error message." By the time I left, floppies had disappeared in favor of flash drives carried on keychains or worn around the neck. They may fail someday too, but I haven't heard about it. While I'm at it, I should throw in a plug for my favorite future improvement in computers: get rid of hard disks. When a computer boots up today, it does the same thing that it did in the 1980's - checks the hard drive, loads a number of processes, and finally lets you do something. The main difference is that the number of processes has increased exponentially. I've never heard anything that explained to me why a computer can't start up like an Ipod: power it up and it's ready to work.

Ipods are an insidious system. My Nano has done something that would have seemed impossible a year or so ago - it has moved me into the world of Apple. For decades I have taunted my Mac-loving friends - "Buy a real computer." Now Apple is becoming a surprisingly large part of my life. I hardly ever buy CDs any more - just go to the ITunes store and pick out a song or even a whole album. When I found out that my new library is not outfitting me with a laptop, I made the plunge - ordered a Macintosh notebook. It's on its way. The first day it went from Shanghai to Anchorage and then to Indianapolis. The second day it went to Newark, and there it has sat all day. After sitting in Newark the entire weekend, the message changed two minutes after I left for my train on Monday. The laptop is on Long Island and the truck is on the way to my house. Way to go, FedEx.

Changes, Changes

After more than eleven years of living on Long Island and working in Connecticut at Quinnipiac University, the time has come. I have just been hired by the New York Law School as their Assistant Director of Technical Services for Library Systems. My last day at Quinnipiac will be January 23rd. This means, among other things, that I will be in my Long Island home 7 nights a week. When the weather is nice, I will be able to pack a sandwich and eat lunch, watching boats drift by the Statue of Liberty. Two hour drives to work will be replaced with train and subway rides.
In the transition period between interviewing and being asked to accept the position, I enrolled for another session of teaching library science to new students at the Southern Connecticut State University. My new library director, Camille Broussard is working out a way for me to work half days on Tuesdays to facilitate this. This will mean that I can also make a brief appearance at the Side Street Cafe in Hamden where my four friends, the Wing Nuts, have been gathering on Tuesday nights for all of this century.
When I started changing my details in MySpace and Facebook, it started to occur to me that Facebook has become a viable community for me while MySpace has not. Every time I log in to MySpace I see ads that tell me that young women in my town are looking for older men. Sure thing. Most recently, I have a new "Friend." I never okayed this friend who has filled my page with pictures of hot young party girls from the next town. Even though I have MySpace friends that I actually like such as Steve Earle and Barack Obama, it looks like time to shut down that account.
Eleven years is the second longest tenure I've had at a job. My first library job was at the Phoenix Public Library, where I served 24 years and seemed to be on track for a gold watch. Instead, I got my MLS and have had an amazing career. I don't intend to slow down now. Like Robert Heinlein's Lazarus Long, I'm ready to keep climbing to the next branch to see what I can see.
Finally, take a look at this clip from Lindsay Anderson's 1973 niche classic "O lucky man!" -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXjeJSsjcxw&feature=PlayList&p=7A11713A8B423961&playnext=1&index=60