idea soup

[flea]

Maybe it's the glorious southern fall weather (75, breezy, full sun) or the vast amount of sugar I've consumed in the past 3 hours (7 Whole Foods truffles, about 20 mini chocolate chip cookies, big Sprite). Maybe it was the cool lunchtime talk by a coworker on Web 2.0 apps in libraries. But I'm all sparked and wanting to accomplish cool stuff like:
-dynamic linking from catalog records to web page with maps of floors allowing you to actually find the book. I've been pushing this for a year now, and the group in charge of OPAC technology either decided it couldn't be done in our interface, or it wasn't worth the bother to do it. Or they hate me. Given that our books are moving all the time becuase of the reclass, more important now than ever.
-help pages like UT Austin's, which are a database of searchable pages with keywords (http://www.lib.utexas.edu/help/), and have the most popular/most searched float to the top. (We are working on a new structure for pages helping and teaching patrons how to use the library and online tools.)
-allowing patrons to tag/comment on catalog records (imagine a prof tagging all books he recommends for use in his class, so students can go in search of them, and they can tage their own, too).
-allowing patrons to tag/comment on our help pages, helping us make them better, 'cause they SUCK.
-dynamic Subject Guides.
-implementing LibX (a Firefox extension) for our catalog, so searching for books to order in BIP, then checking the catalog manually, is rendered obsolete (still problematic with multiple editions, as it searches by ISBN/ISSN only).

Then I think, I am interested in all this cool stuff, but have neither the technological know-how nor, really, the aptitude to make it happen. I'm so much more a content person than an implementer, and one of the reasons we haven't done any of this yet is the breakdown between the "cool idea" and the "make it work" side of things (that, and bureaucraxxy and fear of the new.) Eve if I went to Library School, I don't know that I'll ever have the mad skillz to do more than watch other people make cool stuff happen. But today, I want to be in CV's job, or at least work in CIT.

Comments

[gchick.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry I missed that (and the fact that I was taking the GRE's in order to get into library school really doesn't help). I've seen earlier versions of the dynamic-subject-guide and patron-tagged-help ideas, but they don't excite me half as much as the floor map idea does right now!

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Watch for the slides in the intranet. But I'm thinking it would probably be less new to you than to most of the audience. Alas, none of the second floor people attended.

[gchick.livejournal.com]

That seems like a shame - so many fabulous ideas (at least half of them from that particular co-worker. I mean, damn, dude's smart!), so much utter inertia keeping things from being done until the second floor has hemmed and hawed over it until sometime in the middle of the next strategic plan!

Incidentally, I disagree with your assessment of your own place in relation to all this stuff. People who can implement this stuff aren't all that hard to come by; people who will -- well, now we're back to the bureaucraxy -- but neither of those are the people who say (and it often needs to be said to both sides) "our users really badly need this -- whereas that other thing is useless shiny bullshit." You're seriously good at that (although when I put it that way, I can see why you might get dinged for not keeping your mouth shut).