Its been radio silence here for awhile due to me switching jobs and getting up and running. I recently accepted the position of System Administrator at Ann Arbor District Library. It wasn’t an easy decision as I wasn’t actively looking for new employment, but sometimes you have to take opportunities when they come. I’m still impressed daily by the culture and innovation present here.
Many of us in the technology area of AADL are fans of open source software and work with it every day. I’m hoping to post more often about some of the technologies and solutions we’ve found. John has in the past. There is now a page that lists the software/code we have released under the GPL.
In a similar vein we’ve soft lauched a developer blog on the AADL site. I’ve posted a quick one about using IRC for staff communication. Expect more in the future once I actually get time. I also suggest reading some of the other posts from our great IT team. If your an III library you may want to glance at Glen’s Library Card Expiration Notification Script (and sonnet).
I’m hopeful to get more information and documentation about the code up in the near future as well as possibly svn/bug tracking for it so there is a little more community and feedback than just some static tarballs. I personally believe there needs to be more sharing of knowledge and expertise between libraries, technology-wise, and others seem to feel similarly. If anyone has suggestions for what they would like to see please feel free to drop a line.
You’ll probably see some more “official-ish” posts over on that blog with my personal opinion remaining here in all it’s glory.