[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] 226 subscribers

[morosophe.42251708 at bloglines.com]

Wow, this has been fascinating.  I feel kind of intimidated by the company,
but here goes:

I've always been fascinated by open-source stuff, as witnessed
by the fact that I run Ubuntu on my personal computer (on a hard-drive dual-booting
with, alas, Windows), despite the fact that I know close to nothing about
how it all actually works, or how to set it up.  I leave all that to my husband,
who is a sys-admin and Unix nut.  My computer science minor did give me some
knowledge of programming, or at least a nodding acquaintanceship, so I might
eventually be able to do some little modules that work with the code, if I'm
given plenty of help.  (I can't wait until the O'Reilly book on Evergreen
comes out.  It'll have big pines on the cover, right?  Hey, I can dream!)


Besides being a geek-wannabe, I am the stay-at-home mother of a two-year-old,
so I welcome any excuse to go at something that requires sustained concentration.
 (At the moment, for instance, my message-writing is somewhat interrupted
because my son keeps losing his ball under the couch.)  Until last December,
I was able to sublimate the urge by working towards my Masters in Library
Science, but, alas, all good things must come to an end, and I now am the
possessor of a freshly inked certificate and very few job prospects, due to
the fact that a) I refuse to spend five hours a day commuting and b) I hope
to have more family, and contracting or part-time jobs don't seem all that
plentiful in the library world, and particularly not in my area (see a).

It also turns out I went to the wrong school to learn much about being a
Systems Librarian, (or even working with Serials,) although they were good
at the cataloging stuff that also interests me.  So, to learn more about library
systems and hopefully make myself a little more employable, I'm working on
installing a test Evergreen server (or making my husband do it--so far, he's
set up an Ubuntu LAMP server) and playing around with it a bit at my house.
 

There's a practical side to this, as well (or more than just working
on my librarian skills); my church is currently in the process of building
its own structure, and once that's up, we'll finally be able to have our own
church library.  By the time that happens, I hope to have made an evaluation
of whether an Evergreen installation is suitable, or whether the church should
stock up on 3x5 cards (or whatever else seems more appropriate).