Choosing a Web Host

I’m con­sult­ing with three groups that are con­sid­er­ing a change in their web hosts. Since my own host has made me a lit­tle grumpy lately I’ve decided to move some of my domains to a new host. I have some expe­ri­ence at this (I’ve been through at least five hosts by now), but it’s been a few years since I last switched and I’d like to prac­tice on myself—practice not just at mov­ing hosts, but at pick­ing them. Read more…

Syncing Zotero Between Two Computers

I’ve been using Zotero for the last few months and really appre­ci­ate it. But I had a prob­lem: I alter­nate between a work­sta­tion and a lap­top, and keep­ing Zotero in sync between the two com­put­ers was prob­lem­atic. Read more…

Installing Koha 3 on Ubuntu 8.10: A Tutorial

I’ve posted a rea­son­ably exten­sive tuto­r­ial for peo­ple who’d like to exper­i­ment with Koha.

My tar­get audi­ence is… well, I guess it’s me a few months ago: some­one who’s com­fort­able with tech­nol­ogy and not scared by a terminal/command prompt, but who isn’t yet an expert on either Linux or Koha.

The guide begins with a clean Ubuntu instal­la­tion, treads lightly through LAMP con­fig­u­ra­tion, explains how to install Koha and work through likely instal­la­tion issues, and ends with a reflec­tion on what you need to think about before host­ing your own live Koha implementation.

Thin Clients in Libraries: A Brief Reflection

“Thin Clients” are inex­pen­sive com­put­ers, throw­backs to the days of com­puter ter­mi­nals. The thin client itself has very lit­tle power, instead con­nect­ing to a pow­er­ful shared server for most of its smarts. In many sit­u­a­tions these com­put­ers can save orga­ni­za­tions money in pur­chas­ing, setup, and maintenance.

I recently devel­oped a brief, 12-minute overview of “dumb” com­puter access devices begin­ning with dumb ter­mi­nals, end­ing with thin clients, and touch­ing on their poten­tial appli­ca­tion in libraries. Read more…

Talking Points: Presentation Principles and Techniques

This week I’m giv­ing a 1-hour pre­sen­ta­tion about… giv­ing pre­sen­ta­tions. It cov­ers prepa­ra­tion, visual aids (Pow­er­Point and oth­er­wise), man­ag­ing your time in the pre­sen­ta­tion, encour­ag­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion, and more. I’ve uploaded the Pow­er­Point and the accom­pa­ny­ing Word hand­out. Read more…