In a recent comment to our latest poll, Dave Jackson offered his thoughts on his favorite tools (or lack thereof) for learning:

"When it comes to new software, I always avoid the user manuals, How-To books and resources, and other such tools until after I've grabbed the software (or whatever the technology is, such as a handheld device, etc.), installed it, and fired it up.

How a library IT Manager supports her system’s computers today, while keeping an eye on the future

In the northernmost part of Kentucky, Boone County Public Library is a relative newcomer to the 210-year-old county. It was only 35 years ago when the library was imagined, and has been a part of Boone County for 32 years. Since then, the library has wasted little time in catching up: today there are five branches meeting the needs of over 100,000 people. Boone County's rapid growth (it’s been among the top 50 fastest-growing counties in the United States) and prosperity have given the library the added benefit of an unusually generous budget.

This month at the FLA conference in St. Pete Beach, FL, Sherry Millington, the Director of Suwannee River Regional Library, took part in the MaintainIT presentation, "Leading the Way: Stories from the Front Lines of Public Computing." As part of her talk, she spoke about techniques her library uses to save money and to keep aging technology out of the landfill. This is no easy task: Suwannee River Regional Library serves a rural community, and Sherry admitted that implementing green technology practices can be a difficult proposition.

Want to start a new project, but don’t know what to do first? Feel strapped for time?

I just came out of a meeting with our Tech Department Director and am finished with my victory lap around the library. I thought it might make a good blog to mention a small success (that's taken 3 years) for the library's web presence. I mentioned before that the attitude from IT in the recent past has been "it's just a government website" and that we were limited by incredibly strict formatting templates.

Cool news from the TechSoup blog:
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Are there tech resources you're having trouble finding? Technology challenges you're facing? Support you'd like when using TechSoup?

If you read the title to this post, and said to yourself, "I don't have anything to share... we're not doing anything that the MaintainIT Project would care about," I have a challenge for you:

Use this form to get in touch with us, and we'll find a reason for you to change your mind, and say,

I went to an hour long presentation at Aspiration Tech on Wednesday night, where Allen “Gunner” Gunn talked about the potential pitfalls of hosting your data online. However, he used this subject as a jumping off point to discuss the broader topics of data privacy, data security, planning and documentation.

Have a bit of bad news, and a ton of good news to report about the Flickr for Good partnership with TechSoup:

First, (because it's good to get the bad stuff over right away) there's one major mistake on the Flickr for Good web site that I'd like to clear up here:

Today, Flickr and TechSoup joined forces to offer a terrific program for public libraries and non-profits, called Flickr for Good.