November 10, 2008 -- The annual Hot Reads for Cold Nights Kick-off will be held on Tuesday, December 2 from 1 p.m.-3 p.m. at SELCO.  This year's kick-off will feature the SELCO Technology Petting Zoo.  SELCO staff members will demonstrate how to use new technology and attendees will get to try out the new gadgets themselves.  Programming ideas for each gadget will also be presented.  To access the program flyer, please click here.  If you'd like to attend the Hot Reads Kick-off, please sign up on the SELCO training page or call 1-800-992-5061.  Hope to see you there!

November 10, 2008 -- In observance of Veteran's Day, the SELCO office will be closed on Tuesday, November 11th. Automation Support will be available that day from 8-5 via the Help Desk number. If you have an automation problem, please dial (1-866)529-4469 or (507)529-4469 to contact our on-call staff.

There will be no delivery on Tuesday.

November 6, 2008 -- SELCO continues its search for a new Web Development Specialist.  The successful candidate must have a desire to support quality library service in southeastern Minnesota.  The primary job objectives for this position include:

November 05, 2008 -- SirsiDynix support staff will perform an upgrade of SELCO's Horizon ILS on Monday, December 08.  We expect the system to be down between four and eight hours, starting in the morning.  This is a major upgrade that will bring Horizon, iPac, and WebReporter up to the most current versions available.  The major focus of this upgrade are behind-the-scenes changes and bug fixes but there are some changes in functionality that will affect how the Online Libraries operate.  SELCO staff is preparing documentation on these changes and we will post them as soon as they are available.

Online Libraries who wish to use PC Reliance for offline backup circulation on this day should contact the Help Desk for assistance as needed.

November 3, 2008 -- Although it took a bit longer than anticipated, the reindexing of the iPAC completed early in the evening.  All iPAC searches will now be returning complete results.

Thank you for your patience.

November 03, 2008 -- We discovered a corrupted index on the iPAC over the weekend.  This corrupted index was causing some searches to not return correct results.  We started a rebuild of the iPAC indexes on Sunday night and it is still running this morning (11/03/2008).

Until this rebuild completes sometime this afternoon, searches on the iPAC will only return a portion of the correct results.  This reindexing will not affect searches in the Horizon staff client in any way--this problem only affects the web-based iPac catalog.

November 03, 2008 -- The SELCO/SELS Board of Directors has approved a recommendation from the ILS Operations & Technology Policy joint committee to purchase and install AquaBrowser as a replacement for the SELCO web-based catalog.  AquaBrowser provides a range of functions not available in the current catalog software including faceted browsing, superior relevancy ranking of search results, and automatic correction of search term misspellings.  Contract discussions are underway with AquaBrowser with implementation slated to begin in January 2009.  The new catalog is scheduled to go live by the end of June 2009.

The ILS Operations & Technology Policy joint committee will consider project plans at their next meeting on November 13, 2008.  Among other topics, the joint committee will consider how to best gather input from the Online Libraries while maintaining an efficient design process.

The evaluation process that led to the adoption of AquaBrowser has been documented in two blog posts to SELCO Librarian:

• The Future of the SELCO Online Catalog
• The Future of the SELCO Online Catalog, Part Two

In observance of Veteran's Day, the SELCO office will be closed on Tuesday, November 11th. Automation Support will be available that day from 8-5 via the Help Desk number. If you have an automation problem, please dial (1-866)529-4469 or (507)529-4469 to contact our on-call staff.

There will be no delivery on Tuesday.

October 22, 2008-- Spots are still available in October 28th marketing workshop. Each participant will be given a chance to work directly with a consultant on a marketing project for their library. Presenters Judy Hoffman and Denise Zielinski will being the day with brainstorming from their previous experience with Buzz Marketing. Projects that developed were wide ranging, including new building promotion, promotion of specific services or collections and training staff on word of mouth, day-to-day marketing. Registration can be found at the SELCO training site.

October 21, 2008 - Video of the ILS Operations & Technology Policy Joint Committee meeting held on October 16, 2008 has been posted to the committee meeting materials page:

• Meeting Video - Part One of Three (FLASH)
• Meeting Video - Part Two of Three (FLASH)
• Meeting Video - Part Three of Three (FLASH)

October 17, 2008 -- Ground was broken on October 9, 2008 for the new Lonsdale Public Library.  The library will be in leased space in the new Villages of Lonsdale retirement and assisted community development being built in Lonsdale.  A large crowd of Lonsdale city officials, officials from the builders and Three Links Care Center who will own and manage the development, community members, and library staff from Northfield Public Library and SELCO who have been assisting Lonsdale with the design of the library space were on hand to celebrate the occasion.  The development is schedule to open in Fall 2009.  Check out additional photos from the groundbreaking here.  Congratulations to Lonsdale!

October 15, 2008 -- A few minutes ago (at about 01:20), we experienced a Citrix problem which caused some users to lose their sessions.  This has been resolved.  If you were kicked out of a Citrix session, please attempt to reconnect.  If you experience further difficulty, please contact the SELCO Help Desk.

October 10, 2008 -- Day End processing has completed.  All notices and statistics are now available.

October 10, 2008 -- DayEnd did not run last night and has been restarted this morning. This process takes several hours and we will update this page when completed. Online Libraries can access yesterday's reports at that time.

October 9, 2008 -- We are all aware the battle against Spam email is an ongoing problem.  Nearly a year ago, SELCO installed a new Spam filter, that has greatly improved the amount of Spam getting into SELCO email boxes.  Like every solution, the firewall we have is not perfect, and Spammers continually strive to "beat the system" and get their unwanted messages through.  We recently loaded new features onto our Spam email filter.  We thought that it may be good time to point out again what we're doing to continue to battle Spam.  Please see Mick Reese's recent blog post about the new features that have been implemented.

October 9, 2008 -- The SELCO/SELS Annual Report (July 1, 2007-June 30, 2008) is now available.  Please click here to access the annual report.  The report is also accessible via the Studies and Reports webpage on our website.

October 08, 2008 -- Video of the October SELCO Advisory Committee meeting held yesterday has been posted to the committee meeting materials page.  To make the video more managable, it has been divided into three parts.

• Part One, covering roughly the first 1/3 of the meeting, starting at agenda item #1 and ending with item #4
• Part Two, covering roughly the second 1/3 of the meeting, starting at agenda item #5 and ending with item #6
• Part Three, covering roughly the last 1/3 of the meeting, starting at agenda item #7 and ending with item #11
  

October 6, 2008 -- Please join us to help kick off SELCO's Special Consultant Program with What's the Buzz:  Word of Mouth Marketing on Tuesday, October 28 at 9:30 a.m.!  Special guest Judy Hoffman from the North Suburban Library System and Denise Zielinski from the DuPage Library System will be presenting "What's the Buzz:  Word of Mouth Marketing."  Judy and Denise will share information about a number of recent marketing and publicity projects in their library systems in a repeat of their recent PLA program. After their presentation, each attendee will participate in small group discussions to formulate their own Buzz Marketing Plan.  Denise and Judy will also work with the small groups.  Lunch will be served in the afternoon.  To access the program flyer, please click here.  To register, please visit the SELCO training page or call 1-800-992-5061.

October 6, 2008 -- SELCO announces two scholarships for public library staff interested in attending the 2008 Minnesota Library Association Annual Conference.  The SELCO scholarships will cover conference registration, hotel accommodations, and other conference related expenses such as mileage and meals, up to $735 per scholarship awardee.  The deadline for consideration will be Wednesday, October 15.  Submit your name or the name of a public library staff member today!