Wonder if you have a secure password or one that’s easy to crack? Check out this list of the 500 worst passwords of all time. If yours is on the list, please consider changing it. Contact the NEKLS Tech staff if you need help doing so. Have a Happy New Year!
Can’t immediately get ahold of Liz or Heather when your library’s technology decides it needs to “rest” for a day (or week or forever)? There are some great Web resources that will help you troubleshoot on your own, until we can help you out — you might even fix it on your own! The NYTimes has a great article that highlights technology troubleshooting Websites and tips for how to determine if the site is good or not. Check it out!
HT: Lifehacker (check out the comments section for other suggestions from their readers)
Libraries get a humorous mention 
HT: The ‘M’ Word — Marketing Libraries Blog
HT: Megan Schultz at the State Library of Kansas
There is an extremely important Microsoft Security Patch released yesterday that fixes the major Internet Explorer vulnerability mentioned in Tuesday’s tech blog post.
It is extremely important that you find a couple of hours in the next few days to run your Windows Updates – and continue to run them until no more updates are available (after the first set of updates are installed and the computer reboots, sometimes there are more updates waiting when you run Windows Updates again, especially if you haven’t run the updates in a long time.)
If it is going to be awhile until you can find time to run all these updates, and you know which version of Internet Explorer your computer is running (In Internet Explorer, go to Help–>About Internet Explorer, look for the version, either 6.0 or 7.0), you can directly download and install the patch for Internet Explorer and at least get the major hole patched for the time being:
As always, please contact the NEKLS Tech Staff with your questions.
From Lifehacker:
A serious scripting hack that can grab passwords (or, potentially, do worse) from any version of Internet Explorer is leading security and malware experts to suggest switching from Internet Explorer to Firefox, Chrome, Opera, or any other browser, if only for the time being. Microsoft itself is, of course, asking users to just be cautious while it works on a fix. The BBC article thumbnails security tips, including switching IE’s security settings to “High,” if you won’t be migrating (or can’t switch at work)…
If you’re not using Firefox, Chrome, or Opera already, we highly recommend you download, install, and use one of those three browsers. The staff at NEKLS uses Firefox as our main Internet browser and we highly recommend it for a much safer and more secure browsing experience.
Here’s more info from Yahoo! Tech. Please consider encouraging your patrons to use Firefox, Chrome, or Opera on library computers for the time being. Please contact the NEKLS Tech staff if you have any questions or concerns.
Hello,
Information about Tech Atlas on the Web Junction Site: http://www.webjunction.org/techatlas
Actual Tech Atlas: webjunction.techatlas.org
I have example Tech Plans I can send out.
Sharon
Leave it to some straight-laced librarians to get together and change the name of our first Kansas Koha Users Group Summit to Koha Explorers Group, so we can call future meetings “keggers.” All joking aside, this summit/unconference went very well and ideas were flying among us with abandon.
We had a broad range of attendees from other library systems, individual libraries, community college libraries, and the State library (plus folks I’m leaving out…sorry). Some folks were brand new to Koha, like Robin from Ottawa Library and others were there to listen and learn before making a decision about switching to the Koha open source ILS. Jim was the master of ceremonies and started the day by inviting three library systems in the state who are implementing Koha to share their stories: Central, Southeast and us.
Kathy Rippel from Central Kansas Library System shared her experiences working with the Great Bend Public Library, the first of many libraries they plan to migrate from Athena to Koha. While they hit a few fine-related snags at the time of go-live, Kathy still complimented the system for its flexibility. From a patron’s point of view, the new ability to place holds from home was a big hit with the folks at Great Bend Public.
Mickey did a fantastic job (and I don’t say that just because he was up there instead of me) of explaining both our experiences migrating a shared catalog with unfettered sharing between libraries from Sirsi to Koha and some of the overall structures of Koha. He also spent time discussing how our relationship with LibLime, who hosts and supports our installations of Koha, has functioned and grown. We have worked to overcome some ‘growing pain’-related issues, for example by setting weekly or bi-weekly progress meetings with our project manager.
We did get into an interesting side discussion about how Koha seems to have a disconnect between the programmers who created the program and the librarians who have to use it. We think a lot of things need to be gone over by a librarian. The reports module and system preferences came up, specifically. Regardless of staff client problems, Mickey repeated the sentiment that as far as patron’s are concerned, it’s a very good system.
Roger Carswell and Joe Tholen shared details about how they’re managing the migration of 11 libraries, some automated, most not, to Koha. I was interested to hear how these different teams managed data mapping and cataloging fundamentals – how they used Item Types, Collection Codes and Shelving Locations. All three systems chose different solutions.
One of Roger’s libraries had to move their Holds shelving because they ran out of space – more proof that for patrons, Koha is a HIT.
Joe brought up a point that we struggled with in the beginning, what we call the “open source business model.” Open source works under a different relationship than the traditional vendor-client relationship. (Liz brought experience with this through WordPress and the KLOW project to our team.) As Joe said, “it’s a different mindset” and one that their libraries and they as the administrators have had to adjust to. SEK-n-Find, their shared catalog, is a new consortium of libraries and that has a different mindset as well. We were fortunate to skip that particular learning curve with our Phase One group who all came from the Kansas City Library Consortium environment. But training on ‘what it means to be part of a consortium where we ask you to share your materials with patrons from outside your taxing district’ is a challenge.
After lunch was the unconference portion of the day, where we suggested breakout topics and split up into groups. I facilitated the Reports discussion, which ended with the decision to bring in a MySQL trainer with Koha experience for collaborative state-wide training. How cool is that?? I’ll go into that more over at nexpresslibrary.org. I started upstairs at the Migration/System set-up session next, but moved down to the Circulation discussion. Shared our Firefox ‘hack’ that allows for automatic receipt printing. Also learned how Great Bend is using the Lists feature when cataloging new books to not only keep track of them for future maintenance, but also to facilitate placing holds in the staff client and searching for new books in the OPAC. This idea will be shared far and wide.
We ended the day back together to discuss future enhancements and future cooperation. It was quickly decided that the enhancements discussion would have to be a separate meeting, but that the desire to work together on sponsored programming was there.
A day well spent. Please comment. What did I leave out?
Sharon
Judging from the feedback gathered at Fall Assembly, the Final Friday Web Site Work Days are a success! We will continue them in 2009 and open up the lab for an additional monthly Technology Work Day. Mark you calendar for the Premier on Tuesday, January 13 from 1 to 4 p.m. featuring basic Microsoft Excel. Here’s the catch – we will let WebJunction do the training and Tech Support staff will be available to answer any Excel-related questions you bring. Need to troubleshoot a formula on a spreadsheet you inherited? Want help automating your monthly statistics? Have a spreadsheet that you feel is worth sharing? Bring it.
The plan is to use this format–opening up the lab for self-paced online training with WebJunction supplemented by Tech Support staff–to cover Office 2007, Word, Publisher and whatever else YOU tell us to cover. We also want to take the Technology Work Days out to our member libraries (once we find a few folks willing to host us). Our hope is to expose everyone to WebJunction and support your technology training needs by providing the time and place to explore what’s out there in a fun and informal way.
We also invite you and your staff to escape the library and come to the NEKLS computer lab for self-paced WebJunction training whenever you feel the need. Give us a call to see if it’s available (which is 99% of the time) and be sure to grab a CE form to record the time you spend learning in the lab. We can’t guarantee that a Tech Support staff member will be available for question-answering, but if we are here, we’ll help. The hope is to make WebJunction a habit!
PLEASE use the Comments to suggest topics. (Tables? Mail merge? Flyers? Annual report? Basic maintenance? Video/audio? Photo management? Audiobooks, music and more?)
