About

My name is David Cook, and I am the Systems Librarian at Prosentient Systems in Sydney, Australia.

I am originally from Canada and I worked in libraries there from 2006 until 2012 when I moved to Australia to work directly in library software.

This blog is my venue to share my library and technology experiences with all of you. While a lot of the content of this blog is inspired by the work I do developing the open source library system Koha and other systems at my day job, the content is my own and not at all associated with my employer.

My ultimate goal with this blog is to provide a record of tips and tricks, tools, ideas, criticisms, and all the things that relate to technology in libraries. I’m the kind of person that learns by doing, but hopefully some of you can learn a thing or two here, so you don’t have to repeat the same processes that I did. That said, don’t take this blog as fact; use it as a point of departure. My skills and knowledge improve with time, so older posts may not always be as accurate as newer posts. If I’ve learned anything in the years I’ve been developing software, it’s that you should use documentation as a basis for your work, but you can’t always trust it. The way something is “supposed” to work and the way it “actually” works are often two different things.

So I encourage you to read some posts and get your hands dirty. If you don’t know how to do something, learn! Use a new tool, play with a snippet of Javascript, download Linux!