That's it for 2010...

Before you start protesting, I know we're still officially three weeks away from 2011.  Ideally I would've waited until the last week of 2010 to write this post, but that week will be extremely busy.  Sharon will be away, we'll be knee-deep in inventory preparations, and I'm sure we'll have a horde of patrons coming in to use our wireless access to try out the gadgets they received for Christmas.  As a result, I'm wrapping up 2010 today.

So what major things happened around the library in 2010?

1. Changes in command -- we had three different people heading the library in 2010, a record that will hopefully not be surpassed.
2. Rearranging -- this time last year, we still had a reference U at the front of the library and a closed off mess of an archives area.
3. Fundraising -- Sharon raised a record amount of money for the Summer Reading Club, and we've branched out into other fundraising efforts such as our White Elephant Sale in June and our cakewalks the last two months.
4. Whiteboard -- the rec centre staff kindly hung the library's unused whiteboard, and I'm having tons of fun drawing random stuff on it and naming a new phobia-of-the-week every Friday.

2011 will be a fantastic year for the Tumbler Ridge Public Library, and will be better than 2010.  Why, you ask?

1. We will have a fantastic, knowledgeable head librarian who will be in place all year.  I did my best from March to November, and I don't think I did a bad job by any stretch of the imagination.  However, it'll be good for the library (and me!) to have an experienced hand at the helm.  Paula has only been here a month, and it's already weird thinking back to before she came.
2. We'll be completing inventory *much* faster in 2011 because we know what we're doing this time around, and we've fixed a number of issues that slowed down the inventory process in 2010.
3. More rearranging is on the horizon.  Paula, Sharon, and I have talked about the library and its setup, and Paula has noted quite a few odd things that we've never paid attention to.  For instance, how many people have ever noticed that almost all of the library's shelves run perpendicular to the banks of lights?

In short folks, 2011 should be a good year for the Tumbler Ridge Public Library, and we're all anxious to get started ... once the holidays are over.

On that note, I'm signing off of this blog for 2010.  I'll see you in the new year!

Caffeine: the fuel of our library

When you think about businesses that run on caffeine, your mind probably sticks to a few common ones like long haul trucking, computer programming, and 24-hour convenience stores.  Libraries probably don't come to mind.  I certainly never thought about libraries being caffeine-fueled -- at least not until I started working at one as a full-time staff member.

Over the past two-plus years, I've seen that the library runs on caffeine just as much as other businesses do.  Now, we don't have a coffee pot plugged in at all times and in fact, coffee is *not* the caffeine isotope of choice.  But if you take a quick look around the library at any given time, you'll see our caffeine-delivery systems.  Cups of tea, cans of Pepsi and Coke (the cola war is still going strong in our library) and energy drinks litter our desks and fill up our recycling bin far too quickly.

Does our caffeine consumption affect anything around the library?  Not really.  There have been a few days when one staff member or another has expressed a *need* for caffeine, and then has taken steps to fulfill that need, but that's about it.  Do caffeine buzzes affect our work?  I doubt it.  I don't think I'm any more or less productive when I've had a few cans of pop.

Over the past few years, I've tried to cut down my caffeine consumption somewhat.  If you take a look at the Wikipedia entry for caffeine, you'll see a picture taken of a spiderweb that was spun after the spider consumed a quantity of caffeine.  The picture is undeniably creepy.  While caffeine doesn't affect humans the same way it does spiders, it did make me think about how much caffeine I consume.

When I was working on my bachelor's degree, I used to think that 4-5 hours of sleep a night was plenty.  But then I'd have 3-4 cans of pop each day to stay awake, and would often crash in the afternoon anyway.  I don't do that anymore.  Most days I have a single can of pop.  Though I have an occasional latte when I pass a Starbucks if I have a long drive ahead of me, I'm not a coffee drinker by any stretch.

Anyway, in the past month or two, I've thought about trying for a caffeine-free week.  I'd pick a week, announce it on this blog and my Twitter feed, try to recruit some sympathetic co-workers, and go without caffeine.  Given that I'm on the low end of the caffeine consumption scale, I imagine I'd mostly be okay, but I still think it would be an interesting week, especially if I keep everyone up to date on my progress.

So that was the plan.  Then last night I had trouble getting to sleep, then woke up at 4 and didn't get back to sleep until five.  Today will not be a caffeine-free day.  In fact, today will probably be a 3 CU day.  (I wrote on my Twitter feed last week that CU stands for "Caffeine Unit" and is defined as the amount of caffeine in a standard, 355mL can of Pepsi or the equivalent).

Well, I'll try a caffeine-free week at some point, and you'll hear about it on here and through my Twitter feed.  Stay tuned!

(All-)Star Tech

Yesterday was a fantastic day.  We had a five hour visit from one of the techs who works for IT North (the library's tech support company), and he fixed a ridiculous amount of technical issues in that time.

First off, our patron printer is working again.  The tech resolved the issue that kept the printer from working at all over the past few weeks and also dealt with a long existing issue that required library staff members to find the printer on the patron computers every time they were restarted.

Second, our patron wireless access is available again.  It went down a few weeks ago with an error I could not correct.  The tech reconfigured the wireless router, and it's up and running.  So all of our patrons with their own notebooks, iPads, etc. can use the Internet at the library again.

Third, the library has been without a staff wireless router (necessary for our notebooks to sync with the network) for around a year.  The tech installed our new one, and it's a pretty spiffy looking piece of white and black equipment.

Finally, the tech looked into the trouble we've had over the last two weeks with the Internet access on our staff network.  He wasn't able to identify the problem, but did tell me what I should do the next time it goes down so that the people monitoring our network can find the problem and deal with it.

The library's technology is working again, and working technology makes Jacob a happy camper!

Explanation of attempted pun in post title
The tech from IT North who visited did an incredible job, making him an all-star, and "tech" sounds reasonably close to "trek."  The post title is a really bad attempt at a Star Trek pun.