DIY Librarian

I knew I hadn’t posted in a while. Things have been busy at work. Things have been busy at home. I took a much-needed vacation.

But I had no idea it had been a whole month since I last posted! Things will probably be slow for a while, too, as I catch up on my reading.

I did, however, find a few minutes to complete Michael Stephens’ “Who are the ‘Blog People’?” survey. If you’re a library type and you blog, help him out with his research and take the survey.

Dear Internet Explorer:

When I set up this blog, I tested it in both Internet Exporer and Mozilla, and everything seemed to work fine. (Well, except that you default to the “smaller” text size, and I can’t figure out how to change the default to “medium”, but I’m trying to tolerate your quirks.)

Now that I’ve become a prolific blogger with several posts to my name, I’ve noticed that when I scroll in IE, the pretty borders that I spent hours making get strange glitches. I really don’t want to scrap my pretty borders, but I also don’t want my blog to look like dookie.

In case you’re curious, I used the technique described by Søren Madsen at A List Apart.

Much love,
DIY Librarian

As far as I can tell, I have successfully upgraded this blog to WordPress 1.5.2. Hooray for small victories.

I’m involved in a project at work where we may be using WordPress (I’ll post details when it goes live) so I’m using this blog as a testing ground for some of the things we’re hoping to accomplish. As it turns out, hosting a WordPress blog is much easier on a server designed for hosting software like WordPress, and working with myself is much less complicated than working with 5 other people. Go figure.

DIY Librarian has moved from a free site hosted by my employer to its own domain, marking a new beginning for my blog. The old posts, at least for now, are still available at www.personal.psu.edu/tem10.

Because the blog is now in its second incarnation, I thought it would be a good time to pause and reflect on what I’m actually aiming to do here. In my very first entry, I wrote:

I started this site as a place to collect resources on librarianship and the punk/DIY aesthetic. Most of the resources right now are links to other sites, but I hope to add my own ideas and, who knows, perhaps some contributions from others.

I am now restarting this site as a place for me to collect resources, news, and commentary on the DIY aspects of libraries and librarianship. I will also write about other things of interest to me, including comics, music, movies, books, and copyright. Over time, I’ve discovered that some bloggers stick to a defined mission, and post only about things that relate to that mission. Other bloggers post mainly about a defined topic but frequently post about other things. Still others refuse to set any limits on their subject matter. I would guess that DIY Librarian falls into that second category. I often enjoy the tangential discussions on other blogs and hope that some of my readers, should any such creatures exist, might also.

This incarnation of DIY Librarian has several new features thanks to WordPress, including categories, a search box, and comments. Feel free to leave comments or email me at taraemily at gmail dot com.