You can teach an old librarian new tricks

by Jan Pease, Litchfield children's librarian
4/14/11

You can teach old dog new tricks, but did you know that an old librarian can learn new tricks, too?

A patron asked if we could occasionally put up a list of newer videos. I thought that was a great idea, and decided to give it a try. After all, how hard could it be? I remembered that our library catalog lets you sort out videos, so that’s where I began. Just to see if it would work, I simply typed dvd in the keyword search, and limited the search to the Litchfield collection. Incredibly, this simple search was all I needed to do. (I remembered this all as being more difficult). I had 1161 dvd titles. They happened to be sorted with the newest titles first.

I decided to try making a list with a book cart, which lets you save titles and request them all at once. I clicked on the little icon that looks like a shopping cart. I added the 26 newest titles to my cart; unfortunately, you have to click on each title to add it to the cart. I clicked on view saved titles, and then chose “view and export your saved records.” The result is the information in the citation and even by choosing “brief records,” there was more information given than I needed.

The next step was to get that information into something that I could use. This wasn’t difficult, but it took some time to pare the pages and pages of catalog information down to a usable list. I sent the list to the local disk, which put it into Notepad. I copied that into Word and started deleting. Again, this was not a difficult thing to do, but it took some time, so I’m very happy to share the list with you, and may be persuaded to generate another list - in another three months.

Then there was a second new thing I learned this week. (I know, this is getting to be a lot.) Our library webpage is in transition. We’re grateful to the Litchfield Chamber of Commerce for putting a link to the catalog on their webpage of information about the library. Just go to litch.com/library and click on Litchfield Public Library. Our hours, phone number, fax number and email address are all on the page. We’re sorry for the inconvenience caused by this transition.

The next problem to solve was where to post a library article so my fans (just joking) can read it online. I revived my old blog at blogspot, http://janp23things.blogspot.com/ to have a spot to stash articles. Occasionally I update it with pithy comments, but I have learned once again that I’m really not a blogger.

That’s three things, more than enough for a week. See you at the library!

The List of movies with 2011 in the catalog citation:

127 hours
30 for 30.
The best that never was
Bambi
Black swan
Dogtooth
Downton Abbey
Elmo's World: Penguins and friends
Felicity : an American girl adventure
Howl
Inside job
Journey through the shadows
Complete guide to slowpitch softball [book and dvd]
Secretariat
Skin
Tangled
The Fighter
The Social Network
The Ten Commandments
The Wiggles: Let's eat!
Tintinalli's emergency medicine [book and dvd]
Tron: legacy
VeggieTales: 'Twas the night before Easter
Waste land
Women without men
Yogi Bear