Most of my time during the past several months has been dedicated to creating a new course called Emerging Technologies and Libraries. After getting steering committee approval back in March was just the beginning to getting ready to teach during the first Summer session hear at Indiana University in Bloomington.  I really enjoyed putting the course together because it gave me the opportunity to do several things that are really of interest to me teaching and learning about new technology.

Doing all the preparatory work before the class started made it easier for me during the session to concentrate on grading and answering questions.  As it turned out, I had more information and things to talk about then there was time.  On the positive side, I learned quite a bit and was able to look at things from several different perspectives.  It was an opportunity to talk with other people and discuss how technology can be used within the library environment. Patrons and librarians may not be ready for everything that is available so therefore we need to make decisions on what to use or not use.

In putting together the class and teaching the underlining theme that came out of everything are people.  People in this scenario reefers to everyone that is affected by technology within and outside of the library.  For example, the information technology department needs to be able to maintain the equipment that is used throughout the library.   The IT department along with librarians are always learning new things and have different priorities and concerns.  The largest community of people affected are the patrons themselves.  We need to find a balance between technology and people.

This is just a short explanation about my experience during the past several months.  To find out more about the course please visit the course blog at http://www.patrickrunfit.com/s603.

In order to get the blog too look like the rest of the site took time, patience, and understanding of learning a new piece of software.  After installing the blog and configuring it so it would appear within the blog directory it was time to get to work on its appearance.  If you are not familiar with Word Press like myself it took a while to learn how to use the software application and understand all of its different components.  After exploring the software and experimenting it was time to get down to the task at hand.

Word Press uses themes to determine the layout and appearance of your blog.  In looking through all of the different themes, I stumbled upon one called Sandbox.  This theme is very basic in nature that is black and white allowing a person to customize it so it will appear the way they would like it to.  After finding this layout it was downloaded from the Word Press theme web page and added to the themes directory of my installation.  After placing the theme in the directory it was then possible to select it from within the blog.

After installation it was time to roll up my sleeves and start my learning on how CSS, XHTML and PHP are used to create a theme.  Without knowing anything about PHP made it some what challenging to understand the relationship of all of these items.  This was also the reason that a theme was chosen instead of creating a new one from scratch.  Learning about these relationships took some trial and error until it was possible to get things to start looking the way that I wanted them to.

Without knowing PHP, I worked on learning how the XHTML and CSS were created by looking at the source code of the main page of the blog.  After taking a look at the source code, I copied it and saved a copy of my local computer along with the CSS for the SandBox theme.  I then worked with these two files to customize both the XHTML and CSS too look like the rest of the website.  This was the easy part because it did not involve working with Word Press or requiring any knowledge of PHP.  Once everything appeared in a way that, I was content with it was time to go back to the blog.

The first step was to replace the CSS inside of Word Presswith the CSS on my local computer.  After replacing the CSS in Word Press the blog was not looking the way as it was intended.  To get things to look ok some of the PHP tags had to be moved around to match the layout that was needed to have the columns in the correct order.  Once the columns were in the correct order from left to right it was time to edit some of the XHTML that appeared on some of the PHP pages.  Additions were made to allow for the global navigation of the website to appear in the left hand column and for the breadcrumbs (Home –> Blog) at the top of the page to appear in a certain way.

This is a brief overview of how the blog section of this website was customized to appear like the rest of the website.  It is far from a perfect masterpiece but it does look very similar and hopefully does not cause to much confusion to people viewing this part of the site.  Both the blog and website need a few modifications to make them look more like each other.

At this age she is very curious and learning something new each and every minute of the day. As a Librarian, I am also interested in learning new things all the time; However, not as much or as quickly as my niece. One of my greatest assets is my own curiosity and thirst for knowledge. There is always something new to learn or a new question to answer. Watching how quickly my niece is learning new things makes me a little envious. On the other hand, I have a variety of experiences both good and bad to really on.

Prior to sitting next to me at the dinning room table my niece was sitting on my moms bed with her books scattered about hither and yon d. There was a shout from the bedroom “Patrick come pick out a book!”. Walking into the room, I was handed a stack of books and was then asked to pick one. I tried to look at my choices, but was told to take a particular. When handed a stack of books, I was only supposed to take the top when even though it was mentioned to pick one from the stack. After taking the book, I was then allowed to select a different book. The moral of my lesson is that a three year old is always right and you are only along for the ride.

While finishing a paragraph my mom informed me that my niece needed my library card to check out a from her library. Fortunately, I had by library card handy and was allowed to check out a book from the library. After getting out my library card it was scanned along with my book. This reminds me that I need to turn back in the book to the library because it is only allowed to be checked out for three hours.

Now that my book was turned back in (now fine charged), I can get back to writing this post. Who knows maybe my niece will end up going to Library School. Did you start your interest in libraries at age three? This is a special day that, I will remember for a long time to come.

So what do we have in common with someone so young that loves the color pink. Maybe you too like pink, but for me it is the curiosity, trial, and error when it comes to learning something brand new. I also have many questions about many different things and will continue to ask them. I definitely have more questions than answers, but will try and answer mine and others through this blog.