My Kansas Library on the Web is upgrading to 2.9 and cloud hosting a wee bit ahead of schedule. Amazing how an attack can push ahead a plan.  A few silver linings to go along with the long hours and sore eyeballs – our wonderfully capable Network Administrator, Liz, is learning all about Amazon EC2 and advanced scripting.  I tell her she’s fighting off Alzheimer’s with all of this new knowledge and brain exercise.

Our grand plan was to slowly migrate to the cloud and then upgrade to sites to 2.9 and then roll out training and do it all with no downtime.  Well, that was blown to hell a few days ago and now we’re taking advantage of a bad situation to fix, repair, upgrade and move the server to a safer (and cheaper) environment – all in about 4 days.  Not that I’ve done much more than provide moral support and some PR/marketing help.

The attack happened sometime in the early hours of Tuesday, December 29.  She may wish to correct this, but I believe Tuesday was spent configuring the new server space, yesterday was spent on scripting and today she’s slowly bringing sites back ‘on line’ while making steady improvements to her scripts.  The goal is to get the process automated enough that a site can be relaunched in about 2 minutes.  We love efficiency.  She’s starting with the A’s and moving down the alphabet, by town name.  Speaking of efficiency, she’s very proud of a script she wrote that farms email addresses from each site to auto-populate a new KLOW mailing list.

We have done some damage control and are posting updates on the state list and project site, but we have a long haul ahead of us.  Thankfully the WordPress codex is updated with instructional materials for 2.9.  I think we will have to rely heavily on the Community for training materials, as we really don’t have time in the next few days to create anything new!

I’m just excited that our libraries will have all of the cool new features of WordPress 2.9 (or you can watch the video)

I guess all of this turmoil hasn’t scared anyone off – we just got a request for a new site!

Had a great webinar with the planning committee of the 23 Things Kansas project on tap for next year. I volunteered to share my love of JING!  I don’t have to present until the end of March, but I definitely want to promote this to my libraries (including big ones like Olathe and Lawrence Public).

The Very First 23 Things project was designed to expose folks to all things 2.0 – social networking, blogging, Web-based software, and such.  We have included a mix of software, social networking and hardware (Flip Cameras, for example).  I’m excited.  I’m most excited to be sharing WordPress with so many people!

http://23thingsonastick.blogspot.com/2007/12/what-are-23-things-on-stick.html

Heather locked herself in the NEKLS Lab this morning to create our Project Web site (KLOW, of course):
http://www.23thingskansas.org (granted, there’s nothing there yet…we just got access today)

The Content (What the presenters have to present):

• Broad description as the introduction
• How does the tool fit into our broad categories (sharing, productivity, community)?
• List of resources, which includes comparisons and contrasts of different tools and WebJunction tie-ins
• Full set of instructions for using one of the tools
• An action activity where they use the tool (which they should write about on their blog, which they created in lesson 1)
• Optional: Module can include videos, handouts, and other content that seems appropriate

The Agenda:

January 11-15
Lesson: Blogging
Primary Author: Erin Downey Howerton

January 18-22
Lesson: Online Communities (Facebook etc)
Primary Author: Janelle Mercer

January 25-29
Lesson: Online Meetings (OPAL, Wimba, etc)
Primary Author: Brenda Hough

February 1-5
Lesson: PhotoSharing (flickr etc)
Primary Author: Royce Kitts
Secondary Author: Patti Butcher

February 8-12
Lesson: RSS and feed readers
Primary Author: Chris Rippel
Secondary Author: Rebecca Brown

February 15-19
Lesson: Tagging and Social Bookmarking
Primary Author: Rebecca Brown
Secondary: Amanda McConnell

February 22-26
Lesson: Microblogging (Twitter, etc)
Primary Author: Heather Braum

March 1-5
Lesson: Cloud Computing
Primary Author: Diana Weaver
Secondary: Erin Downey Howerton

March 8-12
Lesson: Instant Messaging and text chat
Primary Author: LaDonna Clark

March 15-19
Lesson: Video Sharing
Primary Author: David Lee King

March 22-26 Break

March 29-April 2
Lesson: Screencasting (Jing, etc)
Primary Author: Sharon Moreland

April 5-9
Lesson: Presentation Sharing
Primary Author: Cindi Hickey

April 12-16
Lesson: LibraryThing etc
Primary Author: Amanda McConnell
Secondary: Erin Downey Howerton

April 19-23Lesson: Wikis
Primary Author: Eric Gustafson

April 26-30 Wrap-up webinars

Just to illustrate the Awesome Power of WordPress, a story from today’s Web site Work Day…

Lisa came from Ottawa to the NEKLS office this morning with a mission…to update the library Web page.  While Liz futzed with log ins, I used the nekls.org site to demonstrate the simple Write and Manage features of the blog.  We also used the list of KLOW sites at upgrade.mykansaslibrary.org to preview different themes, finally deciding on Basehor Library’s Atahualpa theme (also used by Baldwin City and Paola – a very versatile theme.)  Then, after Lisa was able to get into the Dashboard, we fixed a few more bugs and finally activated the new theme.

Fun commenced.  Lisa learned how to nest pages under pages using the parent/child features of WordPress and we went through some of the bazillion Theme Options for Atahualpa and tweaked the site to her specifications.  We changed out the default logo with the new customized Ottawa Library book logo and added an Hours text box and Event Calendar and borrowed some great HomeworkKansas clip art from another Kansas library web site (LOVE ‘copy image location’ option of Firefox).  Lisa still wants to organize and clean up the site’s content and then teach patron computer classes on using the site!

Liz and I helped Duane from the Atchison Public Library not so long ago when they, too, dumped the old Anaconda theme for something new and shiny.

So, in 3 hours, the Ottawa Public Library Web site went from this:

to this:

Brenda gave my name to Rikki Kite, author of ROSE Blog: Rikki’s Open Source Exchange, for an e-interview for linuxpromagazine.com.  Liz was invited to respond, as well…I hope she does and comes off sounding a bit more polished than me!

The Interview

Also new this week: Training videos for the NExpress Shared (Regional) Catalog.

Liz learned about Jing through one of her feeds and I played with it this week.  Very simple to install, use and save the audio/screen capture videos.

After two weeks of online training for WordPress 2.7 using the Wimba rooms of WebJunction, narrating a video on Koha was easy.

OK, it’s snowing and I have some reading and coffee-drinking to do…all while watching my cat chatter at the birds I’m feeding on the front porch.  Her ears are folded down and everything.

Seriously, I forgot about the blog again.  Oops.

In the Feburary Computers in Libraries, an article about KLOW (www.mykansaslibrary.org) was published in the open source issue.  Enjoy.

Is that an indication of job-related stress when you forget about a professional blog you started??

The most exciting thing I’ve done since Internet Librarian is write an article about the Kansas Libraries on the Web project the February Open Source issue of Computers in Libraries.  Liz co-wrote it and Mickey helped by re-writing the thesis statement for me – based on what completed article.

You can hear about Life with Koha at the MaintainIT blog I write from time to time.

Next up – re-training everyone on WordPress 2.7 so we can let people upgrade across the state, if they so wish.  (I have 2 wordpress.com blogs that were automatically upgraded to and 2.7 is COMPLETELY different than 2.6).  I actually like it.

On Friday, NEKLS hosted another Final Friday Web Site Work Day for our libraries with WordPress sites through the My Kansas Library on the Web (KLOW) project.  KLOW was the fabulously great idea of Brenda Hough, the former Technology Consultant at NEKLS, and Liz Rea, our System Administrator.  NEKLS wanted a way for libraries with limited staff, limited budgets and limited HTML skills to have professional-looking Web sites and WordPress was the solution they found.  While at Tonganoxie, I jumped on the KLOW bandwagon early and ditched the FrontPage site I had created early in my tenure with a new site complete with a Flickr badge and lovely buttons for HomeworkKansas and the State Library’s Audiobooks, Music and More program.  I thought it was much fun and so easy to complete ‘redesign’ by just selecting a different theme.  All of the coolest Web 2.0 features–commenting, tagging, 3rd party widgets and IM chat via Meebo–are available as plugins or can be easily incorporated using a text widget.  I’m still a big fan and get much gratification out of offering these low-stress work days for librarians to come and play with their web sites.  The next one is November 21, because the Final Friday is the day after Thanksgiving and I’m not THAT dedicated. Sorry.

Und zum Einstand gleich mal nen Weinbrand ein Spiel.

http://www.mazapan.se/games/BurnTheRope.php

Unbedingt die Boxen einschalten am Ende! Tolle Sache.