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Wednesday, June 25
Saskaboom
by
Jason
on Wed 25 Jun 2008 10:54 PM CST
No, not the catchy Feist song...
Instead, "Saskaboom" was the name given to a feature that CBC's "The National" aired last night on Saskatchewan and our booming economy. The piece included a feature on Weyburn and the impact of the oil sector on the local economy. So if you want a taste of the city where I've spent most of the past year and a more positive spin on the Peak Oil idea that I wrote about the other day, watch the video clip. It was interesting to hear the Mayor of Weyburn talking about losing city employees to the oil patch. We're seeing something similar in our library region. I would say that traditionally, the bulk of our branch librarians were stay-at-home moms and housewives who were married to farmers or other people earning an average (or below-average in the case of most farmers  ) income. Now, with the booming natural resource-based economy, it's harder for us to find women wanting to supplement their family incomes because their husbands are making around six figures in "the patch". Or, if the wives do want to work, they can find higher paying employment with longer hours fairly easily since many gas stations and restaurants are offering $10-15/hr with all the hours you want just to get workers. (And lest anyone think I'm being sexist by talking only about female employees, I will mention that of the approximately 100 employees that SRL has out in its rural branch network, fully every single one of them - ie. 100% if you like easy math - are of the female persuasion. Sadly, the only males in the entire organization are the four professional librarians, our van driver and our shipping/receiving clerk.) In related news (to the "boom", not to the issue of "who has boobs"  ), Shea and I drove out to Stoughton, a town half an hour east of Weyburn for the local library's presentation on "Surface and Mineral Rights" as this is something that is of personal interest to both of us.
(I'll preface this by saying "as I understand it", since I always tend to get these things slightly wrong. But, basically, surface rights are where an oil company pays the landowner an annual fee for the right to be on your land as they explore for oil or for continued access after a well has been drilled. Mineral rights are when you earn a percentage from any producing wells that are found on your land. Mineral rights are, by far, the more lucrative although someone with a few producing wells on their land could make a decent annual wage, just from the surface rights.) Now, a quick quiz - what's the most successful library program you've ever attended? How about 150 people in a community hall where said community has 653 people according to the last census? Of course, they'd advertised quite widely and a lot of attendees, including Shea and I, were from out of town. But still, that'd be like getting 45 000 people out to a library program in Regina! (Hmm, maybe the RPL should become the RidersPL?)There's definitely a lesson in there about running programs that meet your community needs no matter the size of your community. Plus, the opportunity to promote the library and its services is huge, especially for a non-standard program like this. (Although it was embarrasing to hear one Government employee who was presenting ask, "Do you have Internet in the library here? I know we do in Regina but I'm not sure about here." Ouch!)
Anyhow, I'm off to sing myself to sleep...
Old dirt road,
(Saskaboom, Saskaboom)
knee deep snow
(Saskaboom, Saskaboom)
Watching the fire as we grow
(Saskaboom, Saskaboom)
o-o-o-o-old
Friday, June 6
Friday Fun Link - Read at Work (and an unrelated story of why Shea is a computer genius) (June 6, 2008)
by
Jason
on Fri 06 Jun 2008 10:10 PM CST
Read at Work
is a site from the New Zealand Book Council that allows you to read classic books, poetry, samples from selected New Zealand authors and more, online and formatted to look like either the Windows XP interface and Powerpoint presentations. Very fun and cool (though I do not, of course, advocate performing non-work activities such as this while at work! Of course, if you work in libraries, this *is* work related...sort of.) (via Reddit though I don't have the original link handy - you can search if you really need it)As for Shea being a computer genius, I'm sitting in a hotel room in Swift Current right now. We made sure the room had an Internet connection as I've brought my laptop with me. I plugged it in when we got here, checked e-mail then trundled off to the pool with Pace and Shea. When we got back, Shea went to the computer and asked, "How come it won't turn on?" I pushed the power button, sure I'd left it running when we left. Nothing. Again, holding it a few seconds. Nothing. "Oh fuck" is the non-paraphrased thought that came to mind. I ran through the checklist...did the screen give out? The motherboard? The hard drive? Hopefully the motherboard - that's the least bothersome major error. The hard drive has a full back-up but would be PAINFUL to redo everything. We're in a poolside room...maybe the humidity just temporarily short-circuited it or something? Wishful thinking but maybe it'll work tomorrow if I crank the air and say a prayer to the techno-gods before I fall asleep. So I'm laying in bed with Shea and Pace and Shea goes, "How long were we at the pool? Do you know if the plug in you used was working? Maybe it wasn't and the battery died?" My battery life is down quite a bit from when it was new (now I get maybe an hour whereas back then, I got 3-4 hours) but w weren't at the pool that long...were we? I plug the laptop into a different outlet and...voila...it boots no problem. So I must say my wife is a brilliant computer-engineer level of intelligence that I am daily in awe of. (Also, I was up and out of the house by 5am today to go do weeding in a distant community. So I drove 3 hours round-trip, did six hours of weeding, then drove another three hours to get here. So hopefully that's an excuse for being such a moron at why my computer "died" tonight.) God, I need sleep... (Oh yeah, I didn't plan to get up at 5am but I had a dream about being at the library weeding and the branch librarian had got her whole board of 10+ people there to help - but in exchange, they wanted me to help them move their entire library...which is in reality a big part of the reason why I was going out - to do a major weeding to help them prepare for an impending move. But yeah...I dreamt about weeding. I think I've reached the next level on the Librarian Nerd Scale! )
Wednesday, June 4
Time To Read Gala Windup (& Five Non-Library Related Reasons I Love My Job)
by
Jason
on Wed 04 Jun 2008 11:51 PM CST
Today, I went to the wind-up of Time To Read, a joint project of Southeast Regional Library and the Prairie Valley School Division. I was part of the initial steering committee for this project which started last summer but had to reduce my role when I went on the road for most of January, February and March. The wind-up was a blast - hundreds of kids in a school gym, prizes, a great slideshow (I'm hoping the steering mounts it online eventually) and an appearance by everyone's favourite rodent, Gainer the Gopher (the beloved Saskatchewan Roughriders mascot for those who may not know.) That couldn't have worked out better - we were discussing possible celebrity partners early in the project and the idea of approaching Gainer was raised by our coordinator who had a connection with the Riders. Gainer turned out to be perfect - he has appeal to kids of all ages plus parents and other adults we were trying to reach, he's a province-wide icon who could be used again if this project becomes a template for similar partnerships between other school divisions and regional libraries in the province and little did we know when we got him confirmed but the Riders went on to win the Grey Cup last fall for what, only the third time in their entire history? Perfect timing!So what was my point? Oh yeah, a list that has been percolating as I've spent many miles on the road the past few weeks doing branch visits for weeding, some final computer training, mini-workshops for librarians who couldn't make our semi-annual training session due to bad weather and so on.FIVE REASONS I LOVE MY JOB
(THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH LIBRARIES)
1. I get to travel lots Some people don't like driving or spending time on the road but I've always enjoyed it, ever since my days selling cable TV subscriptions door-to-door around Saskatchewan during undergrad. (That's a whole different entry I'll do someday!) Semi-related but not worth a point of its own is the fact that our region has company vehicles so we don't have to use our own vehicles as was always the case everywhere else I've ever worked.2. We are a small organizationI report directly to the Library Director. We only have four professional librarians in the entire organization, maybe a dozen staff working out of headquarters and somewhere around 100 staff regionwide so there's not a lot of extra layers or bureaucracy. There are monthly Supervisors' meetings where issues are hashed out and decisions are made. If needed, we can change course very quickly. 3. We have a beautiful HQ building
I haven't seen any other regional headquarters but have heard that ours is one of the nicest in the province. It only makes sense since my boss grew up in his family construction business in Ontario and oversaw the design and construction of this building. Great, high ceilings, a massive board room, a design that creates quasi-cubicles for clerical staff but in a way that doesn't make them feel like cubicles, an exercise area with free weights and a treadmill plus cable TV to watch while you work out (or so I've heard - if you've seen recent photos of me on this blog, you know I haven't visited it that often), a parking garage for company vehicles and the coolest photocopier I've ever had the pleasure to operate in my life (it still jams on me on a regular basis though!)
4. We have a great team.
Many managers think that things would be perfect if only they could get staff who thought exactly like they do. But the reality is that the ideal staff has a wide mix of personality types, perspectives and attitudes. It's more of a challenge for the senior manager(s) but creates the most effective workforce.
5. I have an office It's a small detail but I have colleagues in different libraries who are working in cubicles, sharing workstations with co-workers or who don't really have *any* space to call their own. So having an office is a pretty big deal for a new librarian apparently. (I've always had an office in my previous workplaces and though I'd heard of "cubicles", it was a term I mostly knew from Dilbert so didn't realise how rare this might be.)
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