An Eyeopener

The tragic suicide of two teenage girls in Victoria has sent shock waves around the country. PM John Howard in reaction to the deaths urged parents "to be responsible for their children's behaviour". The girls, both 16 years old, apparently went out to shop last April 15 but failed to return home. After a week long search and a plea from one of the distressed fathers for the girls to come home came to an end when the bodies were found in Dandenong Ranges last Sunday, April 22.

The mother of one of the girls said that her only daughter loved listening to music and using the Internet. Both had MySpace accounts.

Having growing kids of my own who can spend an entire day in front of the computer if I allow them to, which I don't, I would think that seeing them in front of the PC is better than having them out of the house without any idea where they are or what they are doing. But do we actually know what they are doing in cyberspace?

In today's online issue of The Age, one of the grieving fathers issued a warning to parents to spend time with their kids and to monitor their use of the Internet.

In another story from the Herald Sun, a psychologist offers some advice to parents like me that we:

• become the world expert on our offspring; know where they are, who they are with, and what they are doing;
• take an interest in what our kids doing online and we should do so early on;
• should monitor and supervise not only what they are downloading but also what they are uploading; and
• should have an Internet family contract that will govern what the children can say and do online.

Except for the last item, my husband and I have been doing just that with our sons. Looks like it's time for me draw up a contract. The bottom line is very clear: monitor and supervise.

Please don't let the Internet babysit your children.

Jimmy Wales in Oz

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, is here in Australia to keynote a series of seminars that will do the rounds of the major cities in the country beginning today in Adelaide and will end here in Melbourne on Friday.

This is something I wouldn't want to miss had I known about it earlier but it's too late now to ask to officially attend the seminar given that it's supported by ALIA. And while it's not too late to register, I don't have the $300 to pay for the registration, which is too bad. Thankfully, the organizers have a blog and I hope they include posts from his presentation.

First it was Stephen Abrams, now its Jimmy Wales. I wonder who am I gonna miss next?

Wireless Stocktake

I've long waited to post something that's tech-related in my line of work and am just glad to have finally found one.

As noted in my previous post, we have just finished conducting our annual inventory, otherwise referred to as stocktake. But what's so special about this year's stocktake is that we did it using wireless technology. I'm talking about Bluetooth and WLAN using SirsiDynix's PocketCirc.

I was pretty excited to coordinate the activity becauase it was a first for all of us. Reading about the technology and actually being immersed in it made a lot of difference.

PocketCirc uses a PDA (personal digital assistant) and a handheld scanner. The PDA is loaded with SirsiDynix's Unicorn software and is connected to the library network via wireless connection and the handheld scanner sends data to the PDA through a Bluetooth connection. Using this system allowed for online, real-time inventory right on the bookshelves. This pair could also be used for circulation functions.

Flashback to the Philippines in the summer of years 2004 and 2005. The last time I did an inventory of AV materials I still had a shelflist which I carried around the stacks area and manually checked each slip and books were taken out of the shelves and hauled in trolleys to the nearest PC terminal with a scanner for an online inventory.

Fast forward to the present. Using wireless technology has certainly made stocktaking a lot convenient although it's not without its drawbacks. First, the hardware. Feedback from another library who used the same equipment warned us that the PDA needed to be recharged every now and then as it owuld not last whole day in oepration. Not daring to test the limits on our two PDA units, we came up with a stocktake schedule that allowed for a 30-minute PDA recharge during the morning and afternoon tea break and an hour's recharge during the lunch break. This schedule extended a projected 4-day inventory to six days.

Still on the hardware, the scanner emitted a poor laser beam that made scanning a bit tricky at times and one unit vibrated each time it scanned a barcode. There were times, too, when it won't send scanned data to the PDA.

Second, the software installed in one of the PDAs kept malfunctioning, going offline every now and then. Although there was no loss of data, this meant logging back into the system each time which was really a hassle.

Our IT people still need to tweak the software beacuse as of this writing, I haven't been able to upload data scanned offline.

Notwithstanding all these, it was still a fun exercise and it was a lot less gruelling than conducting an inventory the old-fashioned way. I'm certainly looking forward to stocktake by RFID. I wish!

Last Friday the 13th

I am not superstitious that's why I wore my wedding gown before my wedding day and had my pictures taken while I was pregnant. (This reminds me of a former colleague, who is now in the UK, who got pregnant and because she's superstitious stayed out of the camera's lens for fear that something may happen to her baby. She went full-term with her pregnancy but in the end gave birth to a stillborn baby.) I have lived through a lot of Friday the 13ths but last Friday was different.

I tried to wrap pup our stocktake/inventory last Friday by running an inventory report but the system wasn't running. All other functions of our library system were working except for the reports and so I wondered what I was doing wrong. I attempted to run the reports a couple more times when I noticed I already spent half an hour just trying to schedule a report that gave me the same negative results. This was when I decided to seek the help of a senior librarian.

When I approached her with my problem, we walked through the process I've gone over earlier and tried to generate reports just for the sake of it and got the same results. Then we looked at the other reportst that were supposed to run last Friday and noticed that not any one of them generated any results. Just to make sure, we rang a colleague who scheduled a circulation report earlier and asked whether she got any results ang got a negative response. It wan only then that we concluded that somthing was wrong with the system. I left the report generation at that seeing that I couldn't do anything to fix it because if was certainly a systems problem.

I completely forgot about this incident as the day went on and while I was waiting for my train home reading a freely circulated tabloid (like Inquirer's Libre), I saw this article about Friday the 13th. Interesting....

So I thought, has Friday the 13th brought me bad luck or was it mere coincidence that technology simply failed me on that particular day? I guess I'll never get to find out because just this morning, the system was working fine and I was able to generate the report I needed.

Meron din kayang palaspas? : Holy Week in the Land Down Under

This is going to be our first Holy Week here having celebrated our many firsts here in Australia: first Christmas, malungkot and first New Year, sinalubong namin ang taon ng tulog (nakikinita ko na yung mga mapamahiin na umiiling =) sabay sabi na mailap ang swerte sa min ngayong taon).

Yesterday Palm Sunday, on our way to church, my husband asked me "Meron din kaya silang palaspas dito?" In jest I replied "Wala siguro kasing walang nagbebenta (ng palaspas) sa labas ng simbahan e".

But yes, there were indeed palm fronds at the church. Instead of seeing vendors hawking palm fronds in various colors and designs complete with ribbons and other adornments as is the scenario in the Philippines, churchgoers in our parish picked palm leaves from branches tied around the church posts. Others just brought their own branches from whatever plant they have from their gardens. And during the mass, I spotted a number of people fashioning crosses from the leaves which looked simply marvelous, although they obviously weren't paying attention to the homily.

Nevertheless, there was nothing different in terms of the liturgy and now I truly appreciate the universality of the Catholic Church.