It may seem strange that a student would start a blog dealing mostly with libraries when I’m not enrolled in a library degree program or a current librarian. The truth of the matter is that I’m a perpetual student whose major changes like the wind direction and who just happens to work at a library. I also have a lot of hobbies, many of which are technology related.

In a former blog life I wrote about technology in education. I have plans on restoring the archives of that blog and may post some of my old thoughts here if they are still pertinent. Though my major has changed continually since then, my interests haven’t. I like to work with technology and more specifically how people can (or do) use it.

What you’ll see in this blog are my ideas of possible technology solutions, responses to other peoples’ ideas and the occasional rant. Feel free to leave your comments as I’m always interested in other peoples experiences and opinions. It’s probably important to know where I’m coming from though. During my stint as an education major, I worked with kids of various ages and a few teachers, all of which rarely had more than very basic technology skills. The children were often those with learning disabilities or what would be labeled by the school as a "problem child". It may seem that I’m dumbing things down sometimes perhaps too much. Feel free to call me on it, but in some cases I will have to say there is no excuse for something to be so complicated. "Easy things should be easy, hard things should be possible." is a saying that should be considered.

For those who think their users don’t fall in this category, I reserve my doubts. I currently work as tech support for my library. This includes non-tech related questions as well and I assure you there are plenty of patrons at least at my library that have problems with the library that may be overlooked by librarians or others. I hope to share those insights as much as I can.

On a side note, I will often mock-up examples of what I’m talking about in order to help illustrate my ideas, as I’m sure my explanations would be helped by them. These are all quick hack-jobs and may not work by the time you see them. I’m hosting this on one of my servers at home and my internet isn’t the greatest. My development skills are also lacking in many areas. Also many of these examples will say MSU Libraries. This is mostly because that’s where I work and it helps me learn more about my own library by specifically using their resources (linking to their catalog, etc.). This blog and these pages are not endorsed by or are official pages of the MSU libraries, though some of the staff there read this blog.

Well that’s a quick round-up. Feel free to comment.