What’s Brewing - The Innovative Interfaces Blog » Sandy Hurd

The long hot summer.…

Sandy Hurd — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:11:38 +0000

It surely is that! And it’s only July! A succession of storms has been blazing through America this summer, bringing rain, hail, lightning, fire, thunder, flooding, you name it!

The power outages I’ve been experiencing for the last week at my office in New England are nothing, I know, compared to what our libraries have gone through in the Midwest; but they do bring on a new appreciation of how dependent we are on the niceties of life – like - electricity!

No laptop, no monitor, no fax, no printer, no desk phone when the reserve battery dies, no fans, no cell phone when the local tower is hit by lightning, no…. You get the idea, back to paper and pen.

I watched an old favorite movie the other night when I did have power, Faulkner’s The Long, Hot Summer with Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward (she went to high school with my neighbor Jean!), and the fabulous Orson Welles. Talk about heat, humidity, and no air conditioning! Dramatically, speaking, of course. Wonder if Faulkner was high tech and used a typewriter….

Please know that we at Innovative are thinking of our librarian colleagues and that we stand ready to support you during tough times. Let us help you develop a disaster plan for your system. Call us. Let us know what you need.

I hear thunder. Here we go again.

On the road again….

Sandy Hurd — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 22:36:04 +0000

No matter where you’ve been, there you are! I attended the 23^rd Annual North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG) conference in Phoenix from June 5-8. Don’t worry, it’s a dry heat…right! 100 degrees in the shade, but everything was blooming and the desert birds were singing. No scorpions were spotted! This was a terrific meeting for the over 500 attendees! Timely topics addressed by skilled practitioners of the serials art included real ERM implementations, discovery and e-resources, standards, technologies, are e-books e-serials, what they never told you about vendors in library school, poster sessions, and on and on. Each day began with a compelling keynote, or in NASIG-speak, vision session. Marshall Breeding (Vanderbilt), Mike Kuniavsky (ThingM), and Carol Diedrichs (Kentucky) balanced theory and real-world concepts for us. Next year’s conference is to be in Asheville, NC. Keep an eye out for the initial call for proposals later this summer, and do consider submitting your ideas. The newly re-vamped NASIG web site is at http://www.nasig.org/

Entree

Sandy Hurd — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 19:52:36 +0000

Hello everyone, I’m Sandy Hurd and I’ve been at Innovative for five years. I work in the Marketing Department and am Innovative’s director of strategic markets. What does that mean? Well, it means that I spend a lot of time attending the same kinds of meetings that librarians do. Not just national conferences, but meetings whose topics target academic libraries, discovery and delivery, standards, e-resources, and digital projects. I am always trying to learn more about the concerns of our librarian partners. When I hear something compelling—or even exciting—that is going on in the library world, I am able to share these ideas and projects with staff at Innovative.

I’m about to celebrate my 30^th year as a working librarian. Sometimes it doesn’t seem possible that there were no microcomputers when I received my library degree from Simmons; but it’s been the sheer amount and pace of change that has keep me engaged in my profession. There’s always something new just around the corner, and it’s especially fun to be at Innovative where we can put software into place that really makes a difference in the lives of our customers.