Dan Scott @dbs@code4lib.social

Today I discovered a self-proclaimed copyright expert copied a large chunk of a CC-BY-NC-SA text verbatim into their own publicly posted copyright advice document, without applying the same license or providing attribution.

I can't even...

I suspect management expects at least one of the technical people to make a heroic sacrifice and save their asses, but they're the ones who put us in this godawful position to begin with.

They signed a migration contract binding us to this timeline even though our entire department urged them to choose a different timeline.

So fuck them.

Two weeks ago I joined a meeting with a set of timelines for a system migration. I pointed out that the technical work requires people who are either on sabbatical, or on vacation / doing scholarly activity and thus unavailable.

Vendor & execs agreed to talk about it offline.

Today, I joined a follow-up meeting. Same set of timelines, starting next week. I pointed out that there are still no technical people available.

Vendor & execs agreed to talk about it offline.

Manager of operations at our library emailed librarians today asking what PPE we would need.

Without providing any context as to what in-person services they're expecting us to resume, or when, or what expert advice is being relied on. We haven't been involved in any of the discussions about reopening. Just "need to know by next week what you need and how much!"

WTF!?!?

Me: Can I access this VM console that I've been waiting for since February?

IT: Yes VPN to <hostname1>

Me: Thanks! Where do I find info about the VPN?

IT: <hostname2>

Me: Thanks! But <oldhost> shows all of the VMs as disconnected. Is there a different VM console I should be using?

IT: Yes <hostname1>

Me: Duh! Missed that in my focus on VPN!

/me connects to <hostname1>, has to create an /etc/hosts entry and accept two self-signed certs to access it...

Hey @adr I had reason to link to https://archive.org/details/Access2008LibConfJohnFinkDanScott today and noticed a stark difference between speakers in the audio visualization. Hello #monotoneDan!

So if the reason oil prices are tanking is that there's nowhere to store all this oil that's still being pumped out of the ground, why don't we reverse the pipelines and pump oil into the massive pits left behind in the tarsands?

Think outside of the box, Mr. Kenney--they'll pay you to increase Alberta's oil reserves!

It's a long term investment.

Reminded an administrator that it's helpful for everyone if they keep me in the loop about discussions or decisions regarding areas for which I'm the coordinator

And it continues!

My 11-year-old co-worker is singing Counting Stars a capella.

It's really sweet. I welcome this particular distraction :)

Our university just announced that they're closing all buildings (except for residence) tonight at 8:00 PM and locking the doors to all staff, "so if you have anything in your office that you need come and get it now".

Would have been nice to maybe spread that out over a couple of days to avoid lots and lots of people in one place methinks? I have a few plants I need to go and rescue, as I normally commute by foot. So I'll see how that goes...

Uh-oh. Colleague then exported the Google Doc to Microsoft Word, deleted the Google Doc (wiping out all of the comments, in which several significant decisions were documented), and copied/pasted from Word into an email (which screwed up the formatting).

Back to unbest practices.

The changes have all been accepted! Colleague admits he's still getting the hang of this "collegial editing" thing. Excellent!

Colleague shared a document in Google Docs and asked for edits from our team. It was pretty rough text, so I added about 20 suggested edits. He sent me a reply by email, saying "Thanks, good edits" but left them all as suggestions in the document itself.

I've recommended he actually accept the changes so that other members of the team can read the modified text and make their own suggestions...

I managed to overcome a clever barrier to submitting expenses at MPOW: they removed the entry for the reimbursements form from the menu.

Luckily, emails for previous reimbursements still link to the page. Took me about 15 minutes of navigating fruitlessly before I tried the "check old email" route.

I'm sure they didn't remove the menu entry deliberately, but this is likely going to cause problems for lots of people.

Cool cool, our president is taking students they can borrow a Chromebook from our library while our acting UL had said they're reserved for staff to enable them to work from home.

Hey @adr Congress finally said they're going online: http://www.congress2020.ca/novel-coronavirus-covid-19-and-congress-2020

I sent a nice "Hey it looks like when you updated our page without telling me, I lost the ability to update it. Could you revert the permissions change and coordinate with me in future if you're going to make a change?"

I've been updating the page _for years_ now so it's a bit annoying. But I understand, people are trying to do the right thing.

Ah what a great time to lose access to updating our library & archives home page.

Well we almost have an FAQ together detailing what services our library is going to offer while it's closed.

Wouldn't have been so fucking painful if library admin had called a meeting so we could discuss this in advance, say last week right after all classes were moved to online?