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SELCO Librarian
Michael Scott, Assistant Director
On July 8, 2008, I had the opportunity to visit the Spring Grove Public Library in Spring Grove, Minnesota. The visit started off by meeting with Library Director Milly Halverson and other library staff members Dawn Johnson and Sharon Engrav. We discussed the programs going on at the library, including summer reading (which is in full swing) and several author visits that have happened recently. The staff noted that the library is a busy place and it was apparent during my visit, as the computer workstations were nearly full and patrons were coming in and out to check out books and other library materials.
The library is located in a beautiful space on the main street in Spring Grove. The day I visited, the children's area was all decked out for the theme of the library's summer reading program, "Catch the Reading Bug." There are several tables available for use to the patrons and a nice seating area tucked back into a quiet corner. The space certainly is inviting and teamed with a great staff, the Spring Grove Public Library is a great place to be. To see other photos from my visit, take a look at the Spring Grove section of SELCO's Flickr page.
Thanks Milly, Dawn, and Sharon for a great visit!
Aurora Jacobsen, Information Services Librarian
As we implemented WebReporter, library staff had a lot of suggestions for improving reports by adding about extra fields or columns to add reports. We logged these suggestions with the hope we could address these suggestions and implement some new reports at a later date. Staffing changes, however, delayed any new changes until recently.
New Reports added:
1. New Borrower Count broken down by btype
2. New Borrower Count broken down by city/county –
3. New Borrower Count broken down by state
4. New Borrowers by State—
5. Remove Iowa Patrons from the Bad CI/CO report
6. Weeding report by statcat that includes last CKO date
7. Expired Holds w/ Pickup Location (Updated)
8. Add copyright date to the Weeding Report—this report can only be run with publication date
9. Weeding Report w/ Dates
10. A new report that provides the average copyright age of a collection by Dewey range. The primary need for this report arose from a field in this year’s State Library Report for schools. We met the need for the report by running it on off hours, but the current database structure cannot support the regular running of this report. We can send it out on request, but cannot add it to the reports suite.
Unfortunately, we have learned that there is a limit to modifications we can make to reports in this database structure. We initially proposed 5 other reports we have determined are not feasible at this time. Those are:
1. Add ability to break down CKI/CKO/IHU Report by collection code
2. Add videos, CDs and other A/V materials to Titles with Best Circ report
3. Add columns for created date, last CKO date, item status, status date, barcode and copy to the Titles with Best Circ report
4. Limit for items added since a given date in the Titles with Best Circ report
5. Collection code added to Titles with Best Circ Report
This is the first phase of the enhancements process. We look forward to re-examining other enhancement requests and implementing new reports in the future.
Michael Scott, Assistant Director
I had the privilege of visiting the Caledonia Public Library on July 8, 2008. Marla Burns and Eileen Jacobson welcomed me to their beautiful library, which is located on the second floor of the city hall building in Caledonia. The library is a beautiful space with plenty of natural light filling the room. The children's area is inviting and many good book choices are on display atop the shorter book shelves. There is a nice seating area with two comfy leather chairs that is popular with library partons. There are 8 public computers available for library patrons to use, and as you can see from the photos on Flickr, they were all in use during my visit. The library was also buzzing with activity during my visit from people picking up requested items, kids coming in after swimming lessons to check out books, and other patrons coming returning items they'd checked out. It was certainly one of 'the" places to be in Caledonia that day!
I want to say a big THANK YOU to Marla and Eileen for welcoming me to their library and if you're ever in the area, please stop by and see them. They will be more than happy to show you around.
Donovan Lambright, Automation Librarian
Now that the agenda and packet for the July ILS Operations / Technology Joint Committee Meeting have been posted, it seemed like a good time to post a brief summary of decisions made at the June meeting:
- EnvisionWare-We have had difficulty getting answers to some of our questions regarding licensing, pricing, and technical operation of the software. We are deferring a decision until our July meeting, when we will (hopefully) have more information.
- Spanish-Language iPac-Based on level of interest shown in the recent survey, SELCO will implement the Spanish interface at three test sites, to include one of the Rochester Public high schools. After this test, the ILS Operations and Technology Policy joint committee will decide whether to continue implementations using anecdotal evidence from the libraries and statistics on catalog.
- Next-Generation Catalog-The joint committee will view web-based demos from Aquabrowser and MasterKey, a metasearch product from LibLime. One product will be demoed in each of the next two meetings (July and August) with schedule to be determined.
- Direct Purchase Requests in iPac-No action will be taken.
- Composition of ILS Operations Committee-This will be added to the agendas for the next Users Group and Advisory Committee meetings to gather further input. An election for the school media center slot formerly occupied by Shirley Taylor is scheduled for September. Further changes may still be made and this item will remain on the joint committee's meeting agenda as old business.
- Meeting Dates-Next two meetings are July 17 and August 21.
Donovan Lambright, Automation Librarian
Hot off the stage at ALA is the audio recording of this year's Ultimate Debate: There is No Catalog Like No Catalog. I haven't listened to this yet but it's on my iPod and I will check it out in the next few days. Give it a listen and let me know what you think.
Mollie Pherson, Regional Librarian
So, I leave for my long-awaited two week vacation to Florida tomorrow morning, which means I need to pack the perfect summer reads for the beach and for lounging by the pool. Last week, I was on a mission to find the perfect books for my trip and I found a great article on the best summer books in my REAL SIMPLE magazine. The author of the article, Sara Nelson, surveyed popular writers and asked what books they like to read during the summer months. Here were some of the authors' favorites:
- James Patterson: No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge by Evan S. Connell
- Danielle Steel: Anything by Jodi Picoult (her new book, Change of Heart, was mentioned in the article), Become a Better You by Joel Osteen
- Janet Evanovich: The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly, The Two Minute Rule by Robert Crais
- Jodi Picoult: The Third Angel by Alice Hoffman, Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian
- Augusten Burroughs: The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers, The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
I have already picked up a few titles for the plane ride! I was especially thrilled to see my all-time favorite book, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, make James Patterson's list!! It's always fun to see what favorite authors are reading! Happy Summer!
Michael Scott, Assistant Director
I had the opportunity to visit the St. Charles Public Library on Friday, June 27, 2008. I met with Sheri Grossardt, the St. Charles Public Library Director to discuss how things were going at her library. I also had the opportunity to meet two other staff members: Mary Kramer and Pat Zingler (Mary is on the left & Pat is on the right.) They are in the midst of Summer Reading Program, using the theme "Catch the Reading Bug." I had previously visited the library when I worked at SELCO back in the late 1990s and was pleased to see that they had done an expansion to the space. They essentially doubled the size of the library allowing for them to spread out their collection and seating areas, add a meeting room, and increase the size and functionality of their information desk. It is a beautiful space with a large amount of natural light. Additionally, they were able to add a staff workroom, which I know is a welcome addition to any library. A couple of other highlights include a refurbished bench at the front entrance that looks great with new paint and a cushion and an old record (i.e. vinyl LPs) cabinet with a new marble top that currently shows off a collection of books by Minnesota authors. You can see pictures of these 2 items as well as other pictures of the library here.
The day I visited the library, the place was BUSY! Children were checking out stacks of books and picking up prizes for Summer Reading (check out the photo of the orange life jackets.) The DVD collection the library has is very popular too. The computers saw a steady stream of users as well. I want to thank Sheri, Mary, & Pat for allowing me to visit their library. They certainly have made the library THE place to be in St. Charles.
More visits are scheduled and others are being planned. Wouldn't you love to have your library featured?
Aurora Jacobsen, Information Services Librarian
Washington DC is switching to one ID for all city services-- school ids, bus passes, and library cards included. The Washington Post has coverage here. While the article raises some questions, a good planning process would resolve these quickly. According to the article, even the ACLU has given approval that the one ID doesn't violate privacy. I would love this! Think about how many fewer cards I'd need in my wallet. Something to think about...
Donovan Lambright, Automation Librarian
SELCO entered the brave new world of online meetings this week at the joint meeting of the ILS Operations and Technology Policy committees. Two committee members, Renée Lowery of Buckham Memorial Library in Faribault and Stephanie Silvers of Harmony Public Library, joined the meeting remotely via the internet.
We used GoToMeeting for the online display portion of the meeting. Using this software, which was developed by Citrix, the meeting presenter's laptop display was made available to Renée and Stephanie on their PCs. For the audio, they each phoned into a call center which is also maintained by Citrix as part of the service. In the meeting room, we phoned into the same call center with a speakerphone. The call center set up a teleconference for us and, In this way, Renée and Stephanie were able to fully participate in the meeting.
SELCO has one GoToMeeting license on a free 30-day trial. At the end of that time, we will make a decision on how to proceed. With high fuel costs and staff budget cuts making it harder for libraries to send people to SELCO for meetings, it is clear that we need to offer a solution in this space. While we still have a lot to learn about running an online meeting, a few insights have already become clear:
- Visual cues are lost from the conversation. Nuances of facial expression, hand gestures, etc. cannot be seen by the remote participants. This requires everyone to be a little more descripitve when they speak. It helps a lot if the speaker introduces themselves before every comment with a simple "This is <stateyourname>".
- The meeting chair is required to be more formal in running the meeting. Moving from one agenda item to the next must be announced clearly and should be prefaced by a request for further discussion. Sidebar conversations should be discouraged as they muddy the conversation and make it even harder for the remote participants to follow.
- The mute button is your friend and should be used when you are not speaking.
- SELCO needs more microphones and speakers for its' teleconferencing phone system. We're working on that.
- The Citrix call center is available at no extra charge and works great. To make this possible, however, the calls are all toll calls. For the moment, SELCO is reimbursing meeting participants much as we do for milage. It may be more cost-effective to work with a teleconference service that charges an upfront fee and provides toll-free numbers for the meeting participants. We're working on some cost analysis to see what is cheapest.
SELCO will be offering remote participation for more meetings in the near future. Just watch the meeting announcements for further details. I would encourage those who participated in the meeting to add comments with their thoughts on how things went.
Paul Conrad, Workstation Technician
Thursday I made a site visit to the Wabasha Public Library to upgrade their microfilm reader’s host computer. It had been using an original Gates grant computer with Windows NT. My goal was to upgrade the computer to a more modern operating system, retain the special software used to control the microfilm reader scanner and to offer additional functionality that was unavailable with Windows NT. I ordered a new hard drive for the computer so if things went horribly wrong, I could always reconnect the original hard drive and no harm would be done.
I restored a Windows XP image from an identical Gates grant computer onto the new hard drive. Then I took the new hard drive with me to Wabasha. I documented the site specific information from the NT build, such as: printers, host name, which SCSI card was installed for the microfilm reader. Then I swapped hard drives, and customized the Windows XP hard drive. To keep things standard with Wabasha’s other public computers I customized a patron sign on for them, instead of creating a new one. The custom software for the microfilm reader was installed, and a current twain driver was obtained from Konica – Minolta’s website. When all was said and done, they now have a Windows XP computer that controls the microfilm reader along with its special custom software. Some of the new benefits from the upgrade: the ability to copy saved scans to USB memory sticks and to e-mail them via web based e-mail such as Yahoo!, MSN or G-Mail.
I am aware that there are other libraries in our region that have similar microfilm reader scanner printing devices. If you have one and would like to discuss your upgrade options with me, please contact the SELCO Helpdesk. I would be happy to consult with other libraries regarding upgrade projects of this nature.
Aurora Jacobsen, Information Services Librarian
I've seen a couple of articles regarding the Chicago Public Library's website upgrade that allows patrons to renew online. The first article, City Unveils High-Tech Library Upgrades, in the Chicago Sun Times, glowing reports on the new features. The second article, Library's Online Service Gets a Lift, in the Chicago Tribune, takes a more skeptical look at how high-tech this advancement really is. Interestingly enough, Carol Sheffer, president-elect of the Public Library Association, reveals that only half of the libraries in the US have this feature. If I hadn't just read the articles myself, I would never have believed this was considered a luxury for public libraries.
Michael Scott, Assistant Director
I came across a great series of posts from The Shifted Librarian about the Illinois Institute of Technology's Thinkering Space. IIT received a grant from the John D. and Katherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Digital and Learning Initiative to "promote and support thinking skills for the 21st century." The focus is on school-aged children in libraries. Take a look at a description of it and see what you think here.
As the Shifted Librarian states, "What I like about these ideas is that they expand on existing content in the library, using the library's collection, and mashing it up with users' ideas to create something new." It certainly has peaked my interest in yet another way to expand the use of library collections that already exist in a Web 2.0 world.
