iHCPL: The Next Generation: Maps #32: Current Events

ACTIVITY 1:
1. Look through the list of "100 Things To Do With Google Maps".
2. In your blog, note a hypothetical question that you could best answer through visualization, and list the site you would use to answer it.

Q. Where can I find a wireless hotspot in Crosby at 2 a.m. in the morning?

A. According to hotspoter (http://hotspotr.com/spot/8529-crosby-branch-library), Wireless can usually be picked up from parking lot of the Crosby Branch Library 24 hrs a day. The parking lot is located at 135 Hare Rd, Crosby, TX 77532, USA. Does this completely answer your question?

ACTIVITY 2:
1. Explore Global Incident Map, Terra Server, or National Atlas.
2. Find a map or image that interests you.
3. Post it or a link to it in your blog and write about something you learned.

I looked through all three.

• The Incident Map had the nicest graphics. After all if you're going to be scared, why not make the images as vivid as possible -- like in true crime books.
  


• I was a bit disappointed in the National Atlas. Not much to show in Harris County.
  


• I used Terra Server to find pix of the best wireless hotspot parking lot in Crosby and compared it to Google Map of same. Terra Server at highest resolution is on the left; Google at its highest resoulution is on the right.

iHCPL: The Next Generation: Maps #31: Have Map, Will Travel

View Larger Map

I’ll confess right up front. I did things out of order again. Last week I edited a Google map. This week I watched the Google Create a Map Tutorial. Here’s what I did in a state of either blissful ignorance or intuitively following the directions on the site.

My original purpose for poking about in Google Maps was to follow up on some customer feedback that I’d received by postcard. I was trying to get a satellite picture with enough resolution to see if the flowerbeds were really in as bad a shape as a customer said they were. The resolution wasn’t good enough to properly diagnose the health of the flowers or the shrubbery. A human agent will be sent to investigate the flora. But, while I was there I noticed the marker for the branch was a block closer to FM 1960 than the branch was, so I dragged the marker over to the branch driveway. Then I labeled it Atascocita Branch Library.

But now the plot thickens. After feeling smug about having done so much of the exercise in advance, I clicked on iStar’s link to HCPL Locations on one map. There was Atascocita, but my carefully relocated marker had moved back to FM 1960. Looking back to the Search Results on the left, I realized that there were two listings, one for “Atascocita Library” and one for “Atascocita Branch Library.” Same address, same phone number, but they had two listings and two markers, one about a block farther up Pinehurst Trails Drive than the others.

[Warning: library humor below]
Gentle Reader, I was shocked. My cataloger’s heart was chilled to the core. I was the victim of an unpremeditated folksonomy. It was tagging run amok. Horrified, I decided to try a more general search term on the main Google Maps page to see if innocent customers might be led astray.

At first I keyed in just “Atascocita” and got "Atascocita, Uninc Harris County, TX." It was on 1960 just past Kings Parkway. At this point I got distracted because I started to wonder what a Uninc was and if might be married to an Auntic, or perhaps he might be working as a security guard at a harem. Then I had a moment of enlightenment! Perhaps Uninc might be a nickname for Unincorporated Place. That relieved my mind somewhat, but I still thought it was careless of someone to leave it out in the middle of a busy street like that. I mean, zoom in as close as you can and you can see the oncoming traffic! As soon as the library opens I'm going to call them and get the number of Uninc Protective Services. [Just kidding]

Then I modified my search term to “Atascocita Public Library” and that returned:

Results 1-10 of about 3,949 for Public Library near Atascocita, Uninc Harris County, TX
Categories: Libraries Public, School Public

Atascocita Library - more info »
19520 Pinehurst Trail Dr, Humble, TX - (281) 812-2162

Kingwood Library - more info »
4102 Rustic Woods Dr, Kingwood, TX - (281) 360-6804
Atascocita Branch Library - more info »
19520 Pinehurst Trails Drive Humble, TX 77346 - (281) 812-2162

The library I was searching for turning up twice in the top 3. My fears of misdirected customers vanished. I shall sleep better tonight. :)

iHCPL Spring Cleaning #30: Take a Load Off Our Drives

Exercise:
1. If you have never used the S: drive, place a file there. Then go back and delete the file.

I have extensive experience with the S drive. It’s where I put the current illustrated edition of the agenda for the next branch meeting. When I post a new one; I delete the old one. I’ve also used it to share work with other committee members for One Desk, Roving Reference, and Staff Awards and for sharing pictures of furniture, furnishing, and equipment with branch librarians. For LPC and iHCPL I use their respective wikis.

2. Look over the P: drive and see if you have created any and determine what can be deleted/moved and if need be combine into a new folder for better organization.

Much to my surprise the P drive has flown under my radar since I started working here. I see it every day when I use Explorer (formerly known as Windows Explorer) to navigate my computer, but I’ve never had any occasion to use it. So I had nothing to clean out.

3. Repeat step 2 with your personal folder on the Z: drive. Write an entry in your blog about what you found. What was the oldest file you were able to delete or move to another location? Did you find you were more organized than you thought?

This was like cleaning out the basement of the old home in Tennessee before I moved to Texas. However, I’d lived there for thirteen years and I’ve only been here for two-and-a-half. How did all this stuff accumulate? Surely somebody else must have saved some of those files. I never checked those files out of the library; I don’t even recognize them; I don’t even read files like that, and besides I retuned them on top of the bookdrop at least six weeks ago during the big rainstorm. [<-- Library humor :)] I arranged all the folders and files by date and worked my way through them from oldest to most current. I either deleted or moved to my portable jump drive anything that I thought might be useful in the future. I saved 44,171,264 bytes of space on the Z drive and added only 7,948,439 bytes to my jump drive. I plan to trade in the 36 million plus bytes profit I made for one hour of training credit.

The oldest file I found was a Word document "Combining School and Public Libraries" 33KB last modified at 3:33 PM on May 9, 1997.

Spring Cleaning #28: Don’t Clutter Up Expensive Cyberspace

Discovery Exercise:
1. Read about GTD.
I read the Wikipedia article to refresh my memory. I read Getting Things Done: the Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen in August 2007. Although there is a more to the book, what I found most useful was his suggestion on page 14. Get it off your mind and onto paper. To do this, “describe, in a single written sentence, your intended successful outcome for [a] problem or situation. …Now write down the very next physical action required to move the situation forward.”

2. Try one of the online calendars or to-do lists.
I signed up a Ta-da List account when we were planning this module a month or so ago, but I still have been unable to imagine what use I might make of it. I prefer my own ancient (33-year-old) to do list which made its great leap forward in 1995 when it migrated from legal pad to excel spreadsheet. I carry it around with me in my flash drive or print it out for gadget-free MBWA(Management By Walking Around).

3. Write a post about how you can use GTD or what organizational system you already use.

My basic system that I've used for about a decade now is Barbara Hemphill's Taming the paper tiger: organizing the paper in your life (Washington : Kiplinger, 1997), while it says little about computers, the system is not significantly different from Allen's. At a presentation she gave for the Tennessee Library Association in March 1997, Hemphill referred to the in-tray on the desk as a pile of guilty procrastination. It certainly rang true for me. Like Allen she recommended putting everything in a big pile to sort. After this there were only three things to do with each piece of paper in the tray.

1. Toss it in the wastebasket. The art of “wastebasketry” is an essential skill. Put a trash can next to the fax, the meeting room, and the file cabinet.
   
2. Act on it
   
3. File it for future reference
   

Alas, searching the web now for information about Taming the paper tiger only returns the software that Kiplinger is currently peddling. Fortunately, the 2002 edition of Taming the paper tiger at work is available at your local public library.

Run

Run / Ann Patchett. – New York : HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.

295 p. ; 24 cm.

ISBN: 9780061340635

1. Boston (Mass.) – Fiction. 2. Domestic fiction. 3. Family secrets – Fiction. 4. Interracial adoption – Fiction. 5. Maternal deprivation – Fiction.

813.54

On a cold and snowy night in Boston, an adopted son of the former mayor is almost run over by an SUV. At the last moment he’s shoved out of its path by an unknown woman who is hit by the vehicle. In the hospital his family meets her family, an eleven-year-old girl who says that her mother is his birthmother.

Patchett tells a richly textured tale of family relationships, bereavement, spirituality, parental expectations and achievements that subtly juxtaposes economic divisions in American society.

Walking the Choctaw road

Walking the Choctaw road / [sound recording] / [by Choctaw storyteller Tim Tingle; read by the author]. – [El Paso, TX] : Cinco Puntos Press, c2004.

4 sound discs : digital ; 4 3/4 in.

Statement of responsibility from container.

"Stories from Red People memory"--Container.

Contents: Disc one. Crossing Bok Chitto – The beating of wings – Trail of tears – Disc two. Bones on the Brazos – Caleb – The Choctaw way – Disc three. Brothers – Lizbeth and the madstone – Tony Byars – Disc four. Archie's war – Saltypie – We are a people of miracles.

1. Choctaw Indians – History – Anecdotes. 2. Choctaw Indians – Folklore. 3. Tales – Southern States. 4. Indians of North America – Folklore. 5. Folklore – Southern States.

398.2089973

This book comes in two editions, an audiobook on four compact discs (0938317822) and a 142-page print version (0938317741). The print version has a glossary of Choctaw words, lyrics for two hymns in Choctaw, a short bibliography, photographic illustrations, and some introductory material not included in the audio. The audio, however, has the voice, intonation, accent, and timing of a master storyteller. The print version is a handsome book, but compared to the audio it’s like reading a play of Shakespeare silently versus attending a performance by the Royal Shakespeare Company. It’s interesting supplementary material, but it might only be interesting to the reader who’s experienced the original mesmerizing performance.

The eleven tales and concluding poem are arranged chronologically and geographically beginning at the beginning of the nineteenth century in Mississippi and Alabama and moving with the Choctaw people on their Trail of Tears to Oklahoma to Mr. Tingle’s own childhood in Pasadena, Texas and on to the beginning of the twenty-first century. There are supernatural stories of shape shifters and Christianity, of good and bad people, pride and humiliation, history and miracles. It is a trail well worth taking.

iHCPL the next generation Spring Cleaning #29: Email

I set up a Gmail account before I moved to Houston. It’s useful not only for personal mail, but also for listservs, that way they don’t overwhelm my work mail, and I can read them without distraction at home. The only downside of this is that I now have two e-mail inboxes to keep up with. Which leads right on to the next topic: keeping them up-to-date.

Oooo, I did it I went through every single e-mail I had in my work account following the mantra:

• Do
• Delete
• Defer
• Delegate

I did all the ones that I could do in two minutes or less. I deleted all the ones that were out-of-date or unnecessary. I deferred by converting anything that I thought might be useful in the future to a text file and saved it to the Z drive, and occasionally I sent it on to someone else and asked them to deal with it.

I arranged by date all the e-mails that I had in my Furniture Fixtures & Equipment file in Outlook and deleted everything that was older than three months, because any quotes that I was saving in there would have expired by now. I arranged by date everything in my sent file and deleted everything over six months old. I did the same with my deleted file but deleted everything over three months old.

For the next ten minutes my screen looked like this:

I updated my Contacts in Outlook. There were a number of @nhmccd.edu addresses that had to be changed to @lonestar.edu and a few people who had retired or otherwise left the employ of the library to be deleted.