Plinkit? What is that??

Flippantly, it's the project I walked in the door as the Project Coordinator (with no clue) that was expected to do a state-wide roll-out of 100+ libraries by the end of the year. So, within 2 weeks of being at my new job, I was off for a week attending Plone administrator bootcamp.

(Really, Plinkit (Public Library Interface Kit) is a Content Management System offered to empower small rural libraries in creating intuitive, dynamic websites with little effort and no technical expertise.)

Some much simplified background --

Oregon created a product that allowed libraries to choose from a variety of templates placed on top of PLONE - an open source CMS. Oregon, Colorado, Texas, and Illinois have come together in a collaborative to distribute the product to public libraries throughout those states.

In our state, we have the State Library which grant funds the Library Regional Systems. So, the first order of business was to train all of the technical contacts at the Systems offices, which was conducted in late April. Those technical contacts have been in charge of getting the libraries in their region up on Plinkit. To date, we have 7 or 8 live sites.

Tools for moving...

As a fairly recent MLS graduate and having also moved for both of my professional positions, I'm not only familiar with the job search, but also with gathering information on potential cities. I don't like to apply for positions unless I'm fairly certain it's a place I'm willing to relocate to. Thanks to a blog I frequently read, I've discovered a new resource to help with moving, neighboroo. It's a very cool site, providing information on housing, demographics, cost of living, schools, safety, health, climate and a couple of other statistics in a map format. And, you can get the information down to the zip code level. I checked out my current zip (having just moved here) and found the information interesting. So, check it out if you get a chance.

A couple of other sites that I like are: epodunk.com for city information, Find Your Spot, provides really nice city profiles and recommended cities based on a profile you complete, and the Move Salary Calculator, for finding out just how far your salary will go in potential future city.

HTML vs an editor

American Libraries Direct (February 28 issue) linked to a posting on TechEssence.info blog titled "CMSes, WYSIWYG -- why learn HTML?" The question is with editors like FrontPage and DreamWeaver why do you need to know HTML? I didn't learn to do HTML until I took a graduate class on web design as part of the program for my MLS. My instructor was of the opinion that you learn to code it, then you can use an editor. His reasoning was more than sound - if you can code it, then you can look at someone else's (or something else's) code to identify where problems are coming from. He also contended that if you code it yourself, it keeps the coding cleaner, making it easier for others to know what you have done. So, I learned HTML, some Java script, and some ASP.

Shortly after starting my first professional librarian position, I wound up re-designing my library's website. I tried using the university's template, but without their style sheet it wasn't feasible. So, I took our new design and I coded it out. In HTML. Using a simple text editor (a step up from Notepad). It won't win awards, but it was a definite improvement over the six year-old design of the existing website. I used cascading style sheets and a tad of ASP.

After I'd been doing it awhile, I was given MS Frontpage. Then I knew what my instructor was talking about. I simply used this as an enhanced editor. And, it did forms nicely. But, if you tried to use the visual interface, the coding was worse than messy. And, it can take what you've done and basically throw it out the window. I also looked at the process for cascading style sheets in FrontPage. I decided I was better off doing it myself. I learned quickly why I was taught to code it and why coding it is still probably the best way to go.

Here's a link to the blog posting: http://techessence.info/node/84