Last week I read an article from a Twitter link (thanks Zach), about Libraries being a waste. I’ve been thinking about that statement for a few days now, and I must admit I agree. Most library systems are antiquated and cost more to run than they are worth. It’s time for an overhaul.

I’ve been a library user all my life. There are incredible resources available, but the simple fact is most people have no idea what’s there. Libraries aren’t just books anymore. You can find everything from Music CD’s to your local newspapers. More and more libraries are offering digital content, consumable on devices like the iPod or MP3 player. Libraries also offer access to large research databases, this was a surprise to me, and I’ve used this service on many occasions.

But let’s get down to the reality of how most people are using the library these days. Internet access and free video rental (an un-scientific observation). I visited three facilities this week, and at each one, there were more people using the computers, with it’s free Internet access, than were looking for books. I casually walked around glancing at what people were doing, and most were using Facebook, or email, or doing some sort of Internet search.

The next largest congregation of people were in movie and music sections. And as sad as it was to see, very few people were looking at books, except in the books on tape/cd. Here is what I think Cities and Counties should do with their libraries.

Go 100% Digital or Deliver
Almost every book that is published also has a digital counterpart. Libraries could save enormous amounts of money by investing in digital assets rather than paper books. Have you looked at some of the technology books on the shelves lately? I’ve seen books that help someone use Windows ME. What the? While literary books are timeless, the shelves are filled with many books that become irrelevant in a short amount of time. But the libraries insist on leaving them to take up space. Wasted space.

Another benefit to digital is no replacement costs. If a CD/DVD is broken, you have to buy another copy. If a book is torn, or lost, again, you have to buy another copy. Don’t get me started on VHS movies in libraries. Who has a VHS machine? The cost of buying and replacing VHS movies is another cost libraries can do without.

If a library really wants to provide physical books, ones you can’t get a digital version for, I say offer to ship the book to a patron. They could even charge a fee for shipping the book, or turn one of the now vacant libraries into a distribution hub, or a drop/off pickup point. Force everyone to check out books through the Internet, solving the problem of spending money to be an Internet Cafe, and a stale book shelf.

Partner With Content Service Providers
Rather than keep old VHS or even old DVD’s around, partner with a Netflix type of service to offer disk checkout. The cost can’t be much more than paying for hundreds of copies of the same movie. Plus you get the added benefit of the partner managing the distribution. Win! Now patrons can check out Blu-ray disks, and I’m not sure if libraries are even offering Blu-ray movies at the moment. Again, a sign that libraries are falling behind in providing relevant and timely content to the people who pay to keep it running.

As a tax payer, in my City anyway, I think libraries are a wast of money. I would rather check stuff out online, get digital versions, or have something shipped to me rather than spend time running around the library building. Managing workers at the library is another discussion, but I see a lot of librarians, is that the technical term still, sitting behind a counter, usually on the Internet, and waiting for someone to walk up and ask for help. How about being proactive? OK, my intent isn’t to harass the library staff, but their salaries are part of the overall cost of running a library.

Take a page from the Amazon and Netflix book. Streamline the process of delivering content and medium to your patrons.

Photo courtesy of boltron

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Amazon CloudFront Streaming
This new services gives you a world class media server in the cloud. You can now stream media files, audio and video, from a server using Adobe Flash Media Server. As with all Amazon AWS services, this is a pay for what you use, no upfront costs to start and no minimums.

CloudFront puts your files on the networks edge, delivering your content quicker, which is a great benefit when streaming audio or video files. No need to spend thousands on hardware and software.

Amazon EC2 Spot Instances
This is an interesting concept, your basically given the opportunity to bid on unused EC2 capacity. Minimum prices are set for the unused capacity, called a Spot Price, and as long as your bid doesn’t exceed that Spot Price, you can continue to use the service. I’m probably not doing it justice here, so read more about it.

Because this service may not be available for an extended period of time, suggested uses for this option would be video processing and conversion, processing research data, or modeling or analyzing data. There is some risk for data loss when using EC2 servers in this manner. You will need to make sure your price is high enough that your instance isn’t turned off in the middle of processing data.

Amazon VPC Unlimited Public Beta
This is probably the most exciting feature of the three. VPC stands for Virtual Private Cloud (similar to Virtual Private Network or VPN). It’s a standard used by companies allowing users and networks to connect with each other securely. Now the cool part. You can extend your current companies IT infrastructure into isolated Amazon compute resources via VPC, instantly adding secure private capacity to your existing infrastructure. You can also use your existing management tools to safeguard the server while on your network.

This is a hot new feature. It’s worth taking some time to review the options. If your organization often meets or exceeds existing resources, this could be an incredibly cost effective option to increase capacity, and maintain total control as if the servers were on your own network.

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1. Create your disaster recovery plan. The easiest part of a disaster recovery plan is to actually have a plan.This plan should include:

• A list of the sites you maintain
• A list of user names and passwords for your sites
• The databases names, server addresses or IP, user names and passwords, that are used for your list of sites
• FTP user names and passwords for each of your sites
• Your web hosts tech support number
• Have a backup web host decided in case for some reason you need to move quickly
• Know how to get into your domain registrar so you can change Name Servers if needed
• Name, number, email of a web professional that may be able to help restore your systems if needed

I recommend having it on paper, and online. Use Google Docs if you don’t have a word processor.

2. Create an automated backup of your site. This one step is vital to a disaster recovery plan. If you don’t have a complete backup, database and disk files, recovery is not in the cards. There are plenty of options available, and most hosting companies provide a backup mechanism. Automate if you can. At the very least complete a manual backup.

A word of caution here. Make sure you understand what your web host will and won’t back up for you. I found out the hard way when a previous host revealed they hadn’t been backing up my sites because I had to many files. Defeats the purpose of backing up.

3. Test your backups as least once a week. When you get your backups, whether they are in archived format or not, make sure the files are readable and can be use if and when the time comes. This is an advanced procedure, the longer between tests put you at greater risk for having a problem. For example, if for some reason you are unable to open the archives that hold your database SQL files, you would not be able to restore them again. This could be disastrous.

4. Put backups in multiple locations. If you keep all of your backups on the web server your sites are on, and it goes down, how will you get to your backups? I recommend you keep them in several locations.

• GMail is a great storage place for backups. Create a new account just to hold your backups.
• Copy your backups to a local hard drive.
• Keep a copy on another web site or service like Amazon S3.

5. At least once a month practice a recovery. If you run a critical web site, or you host sites for others, I would highly recommend you practice a complete recovery at least once a month, at the very least once a quarter. Using your plan to recover from you local backups, knowing how the restore process works with a database and FTP program to move files is important. Don’t wait until the something has happened just to find out you don’t have everything.

Technology fails. People fail. Both of these things can cost you time and money. You can never be too prepared. It doesn’t take much to get your plan in place. I’m sure there is more you can do, so by all means, add that to your plan. What else would you recommend?

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A neighbor is getting married today. That will be kinda cool for them, having 080808 as their wedding date. It will definitely be the subject of discussion for years to come.

Today is a Friday, and yeah, I’m working. the weather in Salt Lake City, UT is very cloudy, and in places it’s raining.

I purchased a single MP3 from Amazon this morning. It’s Tracy Lawrence, Find Out Who Your Friends Are. The cost was $0.99. I heard the song on Pandora.com, and they make it easy to buy songs directly from iTunes or Amazon. I buy a lot of songs this way.

What are you doing on 080808?

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