Future of Libraries - Darien, tomorrow

It's very disappointing that no one from my org has signed up to go to tomorrow's "In the Foothills: A Not-Quite-Summit on the Future of Libraries"... I know that our leader is totally embroiled in a number of critical issues right now (not the least of which relates to our budget and our institution's future)... I can only guess that we're all feeling the crunch so much that attending even an event as exciting as this one isn't an option for the people at my org. I'd dearly love to go, but really another day away when CIL is upcoming and I have like a dozen projects that are way overdue? no, it's just not realistic. Remember The Milk is making that painfully obvious to me.
But if you want to go - it's tomorrow - you can sign up at http://futurelibs09.wikispaces.com/... did I mention that it's free and hosted (once again) at the lovely Darien Library? I'm always impressed by a library that provides such leadership helping other librarians and libraries... it doesn't have to - but it is an exemplar of how all libraries (and librarians) behave when they are at their best - sharing ideas, helping one another to move forward - all for the greater good of our patrons and society as a whole.

*****

So we talked about Use Case Scenarios for our website at today's Web Presence Committee Meeting. Though none of us are (clearly) very experienced in developing such scenarios, it was a good exercise. We probably should've id'ed our actors much more specifically (as many use case scenarios seem to do - e.g, Attorney Smith, who's 65, near to retirement, an immigration attorney, male, etc.) But we didn't. Still the way we did it, generic though it may have been, got us to think about actions and the people who do those actions. Next go 'round we'll do it better. I have to transfer these to the intranet & publicize to staff so they can add a bit.

*****

This has been the week of peripheral projects requiring some attention. I need a staff. I really do. Like at least a few folks. But anyhow. I've been working on a grant-funded website / Drupal installation to support it & talking with folks about migrations of websites... one may be an ASP .NET site moving to Drupal??? And then I've been conferring with folks on our own migration. And I still have so many issues left to deal with - big projects - most seemingly database-related / centered. Joy.

But let me just say this, I'm a Drupal moron. I can't get all of the nice WYSIWYG editor features to work & play well with one another. Plus, I'm SO disappointed in the YUI editor, which held so much promise. A few things I just couldn't get it past (a) no source code option; (b) appearance of text in Arial, not the sitewide style - until published; (c) preview not working; (d) fixed font sizes, as opposed to relative (which = an accessibility issue); (e) doesn't automatically create hyperlink from web address you've copied/pasted into your content. But I did love how it handled inline image uploading. It was a thing to behold. Then I switched back to FCKEditor, since YUI editor clearly wasn't making the grade. I activated IMCE & cited that as the image uploader in the FCKeditor settings (I believe it was). It was there and seemed to work, but hung on the image's upload.

And how do I get cron to run when I don't have a cmd line interface (I don't think - will have to see about my ISP's options... plus to remember the cron format...)? Will the Reports start working (stats & all) if I get cron running?

Rrrrggghhh.... back to my saying ("I love technology --- when it works") or my other saying ("So many things in the world to feel bad about"). Ah that great Drupal flexibility. One day, I'll be so used to the system, will have figured out how to get it to do the necessary backflips, I'll be telling others about how easy it is to work with. Right? ;)

Related articles by Zemanta

• Drupal.org update - staging site (disambiguity.com)