Some accomplishments

I just realized I don't think I have blogged about the one thing I've been most proud of, work-wise this month -- scanning and promoting an 1897 map of Victoria for cyclists. I saw the map come through cataloguing and knew right away that it was both a good fit for an existing digital collection and also perfectly timed to coordinate with Bike to Work Week. I asked my manager who said "Sure!" then scanned it in four pieces and stitched them together digitally. Next I coordinated with other members of the digitization team to get the metadata and "Zoomify" functionality, mounted it and talked to the Reference staff and our communications officer about promoting it.

The Reference staff asked me for a write-up which I provided; the communications officer asked for suggestions of where to promote it and off it went. The write-up was posted last Monday in the Featured Resources blog and on the front page of the Libraries website; late in the week the Times Colonist ran a story. It's been very satisfying.

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On the home front, the garden work seems to be paying off -- we have lots of potatoes, the radishes have started to sprout, the bok choy is growing well, and the onion sprouts are a few inches tall. Looking at the plum tree tonight, I was disappointed by the amount of insect damage but pleased to see lots of proto-plums growing. There should be a decent yield. I'm not sure the apples will do as well; I have excised several large tent caterpillar colonies but they've already done considerable damage. Fingers crossed.