Has he left the building?

Rachel Singer Gordon, webmaster for LISjobs.com, wrote a book called The Accidental Systems Librarian. Her work experience was much like mine. She started a job working in reference and agreed to be responsible for the technology at her library without the formal training. She eventually learned that a lot of librarians take on these responsibilities and after interviews with them, her book came about. Emporia Public owns her book and I was looking forward to hearing her talk.

I also attended a talk about how the LOUIS consortium of libraries in Louisiana handled Hurricane Katrina and Rita. Especially hard hit was the University of New Orleans which is on Lake Pontchartrain. Two-Thirds of their campus was damaged by water. Even though the library was on higher ground and escaped a lot of the damage, the university's infrastructure was down. Before Katrina there was 47 employees at the library. Afterwards 46 were displaced outside of Louisiana, 68% were homeless and 11 decided not to return to work for various reasons. The presenters also offered some advice on what a library could do better to handle emergencies. Much of their disaster plans were based on recovering data and books, not on how to communicate with staff without phones and Internet access.

We have a new account manager - Laurie Chase. I met with her and she asked if we had considered moving to IBistro. IBistro is an upgrade to WebCat that closely resembles an online book store like Amazon or Barnes & Noble. I told her we had thought about it at one time but there were issues with the cost and we were still getting used to having an online catalog. I guess we can discuss it again.

At the exhibitor booths I came across Overdrive which is a company that provides access to downloadable audiobooks. Our own State Library is setting up an account with this company to provide titles.

Two events that stirred up the day: a conference attendee fell asleep and snored in one of the sessions and I saw Elvis complete with gold and white jumpsuit in the men's room.