We've been hearing a lot lately about the wonders of the state master contract. In most states, the government has negotiated deals with a variety of vendors, obtaining steep discounts that local government agencies can take advantage of. You can buy hardware, software, supplies, even cars off of state master contracts. Not every state has this great arrangement, but most do. Also, the details vary widely from state to state.

Benefits of State Master Contracts:

• Saving money.
  

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?

I don't want to alarm any of you who live in the warmer climes (that'd be me, in San Francisco), but here's a photo taken today of wintry Minneapolis:

I'm alarmed, but also pretty excited to see snow! Wear warm clothes, sensible shoes, and hope to see you there. Please stop by the TechSoup booth #1842 and say hi!

Well, the library didn't respond, but Jeff Scott, the Library Manager from City of Casa Grande Public Library did.

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.

[Welcome Matt Beckstrom, our latest guest blogger! -- sarah]

I believe that one of the hardest lessons for technology people is learning how to help users help themselves. We have to remember that a major part of our job is to teach. I've often seen tech people treat users like lowly animals and talk about how stupid they are. These types of people talk down to users and confirm the users’ belief that they don't know anything about computers.

Something about that just isn’t right.

Sometimes we're inspired to delve into the deeper story of a librarian or staff person's experiences. When that happens, we write a Feature article about them, and post it on the Library Spotlight page.

This month, we focused on Loren MccRory, the director of Yuba County Library in Marysville, CA. The entire story follows, but if you want to print out a pdf, go to the Library Spotlight page. And be sure to read other Features, too!

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.

So much time and energy is spent thinking about and planning how to acquire new software, new tools, and new skills, and it seems like there's never enough time in the day or week or even year to figure it all out.

Lately a lot of librarians have been telling us about a tool that staff and patrons alike could benefit from, and guess what? It's already in the library.