Is anyone out there working in a non-tech library? Is anyone else frustrated by this?

There are a lot of reasons I love my library. I truly like the people I work with, I like the patrons, and we have a nice facility. Most of the time the job is not stressful, and most aspects of my job are enjoyable.

But...

We are behind, in my opinion, in the tech realm. We have public internet computers, but we block all forms of chat and IM, as well as MySpace, which means that I am constantly saying "I'm sorry, but MySpace is blocked." Naturally, the teens don't come in to use the computers now. We don't offer any formal internet instruction classes, which means that a good deal of my 15 hours per week is taken up with helping people one-on-one with email, online job applications, and resume creation. We have a blog, but I am the only one who posts to it - I've been told outright that "No one reads it, so what's the point?" So, again, since I am only very part-time, it doesn't get updated as much as it should. Our website is in serious need of updating, but currently no one on staff has the skills to do that (except me, and, um, I simply cannot undertake that with my schedule), so there it sits with all of its dead links.

The reasons for these things run the gamut from, "we can't afford to pay anyone (like me) to do these things," to "the patrons in this community don't need/want this stuff" (not true). It seems to me that when a new program/idea/technology is introduced, if it doesn't take off immediately, it's deemed a "failure" and nothing more is done. And the final piece of the puzzle is that my coworkers are either knowledgeable-but-not-interested in pursuing these things, or they've never even heard of "library 2.0."

I can't be alone in this.

If anyone out there uses TypePad and was thinking of adding the Library Links blogroll to their blog, please let me know if you run into problems working with the code. At least one person can't get it to work in their sidebar - apparently it messes up the other stuff in the sidebar. And since TypePad is one blogging platform I have not yet played with, I am at a loss in how to help.

The code on the page is javascript - and perhaps this is the problem. If it is, I can supply different code.

Thanks!

Due to the change in publishing profile, please make sure your bookmark for this page is now
http://librarytalk.coollibrarian.com. Using www.coollibrarian.com/librarytalk will no longer work (even though it's technically correct) because the DNS redirect only attaches to librarytalk.coollibrarian.com.

You should also update your feed, especially if you used the Feed Burner version. I have updated the RSS button on the page, or you can use the "autodiscovery" employed by most readers. I would just go ahead and re-subscribe. If you are using a valid feed, your reader will most likely tell you that you already subscribe to this blog - and in that case, you're fine. If it takes you through the regular subscribe process, just be sure to delete the OLD feed from your list.

I'm sorry for the inconvenience - I hope this will be the last of the publishing quirks.

I am hoping that I have been able to resolve the publishing issues that have been haunting me all morning, and have caused annoyance for other people posting to this blog as well.

Blogger, especially since going BETA, has had a notoriously hard time publishing blogs via ftp that are hosted elsewhere. Most of the time my efforts to publish this blog, as well as my personal blog, have met with a string of publishing error messages, all of them inaccurate. And most of the time, the blog really has published, even though the errors have indicated that it has not. This morning, however, this blog was NOT publishing or updating.

So, I have decided to try Blogger's new DNS publishing option. This particular config allows me to use my domain name, but the files (from here on in) are actually hosted by Blogger (Google). While I would RATHER host the archives myself, in the end my priority is to have the damn blog(s) publish correctly.

Naturally, I didn't encounter publishing problems with my WordPress blog, which was also hosted on my server. This is one of the ways the WP is clearly superior. But since WP drives me crazy with it's heinous sidebar interface, I'm going to stick with Blogger for this blog (for now) and see how well the DNS thing works. So far, so good. Posters, please let me know if you run into problems.

Been having problems publishing all day...

On one side of the room, we've got Sarah Clark's two posts on the "dark side" of Library 2.0:

The Dark Side of Library 2.0, Part 1: "It's the Patron, Stupid!"

The Dark Side of Library 2.0, Part 2: new bridges...new divides?

On the other side of the room, we've got Laura Cohen's rebuttal to Sarah's posts:

Is There a "Dark Side" to Library 2.0?

Laura's overall argument is that while Sarah raises some good points, her concerns really have nothing to do with Library 2.0.

Not to sound wishy-washy, but I think both of them make important points. In the end, I'm inclined to agree with Laura that the "dark side" Sarah's worried about isn't really a dark side to Library 2.0. But I'm eager to hear what other people think about this. Is there a "dark side" to L2.0? If there is, is it what Sarah's writing about?