Daily Thoughts 9/28/2010 (Spook Country, Electric Cars, Directors Station)

English: Painting "Still life with red material", by Russian artist Anatoli Nenartovich (1915-1988), 1979
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nenartovich-Anatoly-Still-life-with-red-material-pos04bw.jpg

Daily Thoughts 9/29/2010

Today I took the train up to Chappaqua.  We had a user group for Sirsi Dynix, Directors Station.  Mostly it was about how to get circulation statistics for books.  There were a few other surprising applications.  Someone was tracking fines with it, another person was generating lists of missing items, another librarian was checking for duplication, and another person was keeping track of the last activity date patrons used their cards to determine if they should be kept on the mailing list.

The reports were exportable to microsoft excel which allows people to change a few things so they are more useful.  The auditorium was fairly nice and it was easy follow.  It was a chance to meet a few of the library directors and people working in the library system.  They served coffee and cake. 

I'll probably try to get a better sense of it tomorrow. 

The day went well.  I printed up some bookmarks on material on AIDS & HIV.  I also did some checking in the oversize 300s and regular 300s.

While reading through Publishers Weekly, I noticed the book Jolt The Impending Dominance of the Electric Car by James Billmaier.  This is very interesting.  If you follow http://www.teslamotors.com/ like I do, you might see some very interesting things coming up with electric cars, specifically the S Class sedan.  Also Phoenix Motors is promising as well http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/  I know it is a bit off topic with this one.

I read some more of Spook Country by William Gibson on the train home. You could call the trilogy The Bigend Trilogy. On P.106 of Spook Country , there is an excellent quote which says a lot about the book."Secrets," said Bigend beside her, "are the very root of cool."  This ties a lot of the themes in the book together.  His characters in the series are partaking of or searching for secrets.  Their jobs are usually cool; fashion is cool, spies are cool, music is cool, locative art is cool, and even advertising is cool in the novels.

Web Bits

Blio the new ereading software from Baker and Taylor was released today.  http://www.blio.com/