Although there is no doubt that public libraries have received large chunks (£120m) of funding from National Lottery Funds, the thing that has been lacking is the ongoing funding. It’s all very well buying a bunch of computers 5-10 years a go, but now that those computers are wearing out, where is the commitment to replenish every 2 to 3 years?  For those buildings that have been ‘made over’ with £80m Big Lottery Funds, in 10 years they will need to be ‘made over’ again as long-term commitment to fund the public libraries seems to be absent from Local Council thinking. The library authority I visited today has just bought a shiny new library management system, and within 2 weeks of going live had to close a whole branch library. They now have three libraries.

The policy statement goes on to say:

But, as every good librarian knows, public libraries are not about sitting back and passively waiting for people to borrow your books – they are about active engagement with the community, making links to other public services, and responding to the policy imperatives of the day.

My impression of public libraries, is that they spend all their time chasing after involvement in whichever national and local ‘policy imperatives’ are flavour of the month. They are all short term plans. What ever happened to framework for the future? did that achieve anything? or just lead into a fresh round of “well that would be nice, but we are being job evaluated; restructured; forced to make ‘efficiency savings’, so won’t actually have time to think long-term because my job won’t be here in two months time”.

Whatever happened to keeping a good range of books on a wide range of subjects? I have first hand experience of finding a perfectly good book being withdrawn from stock because it had not issued in almost a year.  When a gentleman came to the enquiry desk and asked for it I was happy to tell him that although we had withdrawn it, I knew where it had gone, because I had rescued it and sent it to another library where I knew it would be valued. My point? Well, If we discarded every book that started to look tatty or had not been issued for years, there would be nothing for future generations to use. Today’s tatty book, is tomorrows antiquarian bookseller’s dream!

rant over… for now…

I went to collect a book I had reserved at my local Wolverhampton Library, and as I had the item issued, I was offered a free tea bag.

Bemused; politely; I said no, thank you, I don’t drink tea.

P.S. Wolverhampton Libraries, why can’t I reserve a book on-line if it is NOT on loan? quite often I would prefer you to send the book to my local library if it is in the Central Library on the shelf. And I know your system could do it!

Anyway, the view from the bedroom window was still fairly spectacular for the high mortars, so I couldn’t resist a few firework shots. Here is one to wet your appetite.

View the full set

“To improve the accuracy of your account, we’ve changed the date when your next bill or statement will be issued.
Your next bill or statement will be produced on or around 08 February 2010 and will cover a shorter or longer period than normal.”

Now that’s accurate!

Scalextric – multilevel 2

So the book should come to you. Right?

How radically different should a mobile solution be?  What could it be?  What are the difficulties? Why would you want to be able to have some sort of book related service that was not tethered to a physical library location?

How about imagining that a man comes to your door, via car or scooter, and delivers a bundle of books that you chose earlier on the library’s website. Maybe that man is a volunteer with a local charity? Maybe you haven’t left your house in years, not least because there is no one to take you to the library?  Imagine that in the five minutes the man was at your doorstop, he was able to suggest that you might like Author B because you had already read several of Author A, and could also check to see if there was a copy of that book your saw on telly last night, “withering something or other”? Maybe the man at the door is also your social worker and provides books as an extra little service?

Imagine that you could set preferences for your book selection and that 3 of your 6 should be chosen by serendipity?

Imagine that you were only staying at a hotel for a couple of nights, but the hotel could get you some books to read from the local library so that they were ready for your arrival? Maybe you travelled by plane and didn’t want to carry in your baggage that 800 page hardback epic that you were in the middle of?

Imagine that for a small subscription you could have a selection of DVDs delivered to your door along with related reading material?

Imagine that a youngster on a moped with a box deliveres your reserved book to you as soon as it becomes available in the library?

What would a library service that was mobile mean to you?

This is something I have been thinking on for a while now, and I am convinced that libraries could be a whole lot better at reaching out to the ‘unlibraried’ if they were more mobile, and if the system for managing the mobile stock was a combination of user driven on-line processes and basic functionality hosted on a hand-held device.

So I read with interest that discussions in the font foundries and throughout the web design industry are moving a-pace (a perhaps slow pace after 4 years, but then I work in a software house, so I should know…).  The sticking point is, “How do you stop people from stealing fonts”.  Un-surprisingly Microsoft tabled a technology (EOT) offering that has been soundly bashed by others wanting a more ‘open’ platform.

Then there is the old issue of browser supportability for some of the existing font delivery methinds (e.g. Kernest).  Usual story, some do some don’t.

So I just installed firefox 3.5 to have a look at the Kernest website as firefox 3.5 upward supports this.

Mmmm, liking….

Last time I redesigned the website I stuck to a 800×600 minimum screen size.  This time I am going for a 1024×768 minimum fluid design, and I think I will throw in some webfonts of some description.

I was also having problems with Compiz-fuision causing something (most likely Xorg) to crash and leaving me with a blank unresponding screen. Consequently I tried many different combinations of drivers and settings, while shying away from the ultimate “Roll back the Xorg version”, or trying to roll back to Intrepid Ibis.

However, I think the problem is not inherently with Xorg.  Last week, after a routine update of various xorg patches, I couldn’t start the xserver at all. So I uninstalled some of the additional drivers I had tried, uninstalled and reinstalled Xorg, and it still didn’t work right.  I could get a Gnome window manager running, but the desktop was showing all black, and Compiz performance was drastically less than it had been.

So I installed xfce and tried that to see if I could get anything.  Well, that worked. AND. The performace of Xorg with xfce is blindingly fast compared to the 15% average idle cpu usage I was getting before.  So looks like the culprit may well be Gnome and Xorg or Gnome and compiz.

All I need to do now is to get Compiz working in xfce and to fix the annoying ability for something somewhere to forget what the volume was set to from the last reboot.