News from August, 2008

August 5, 2008 -- Tracy Waterman joined the SELCO staff as LSTA Cataloging Librarian on Monday, August 4. Tracy's library degree is from the School of Information and Library Sciences, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, 2004.  Most recently she worked for the University of Michigan Libraries, first as a Special Formats Cataloger performing original and copy cataloging of electronic resources, print monographs and special formats (primarily mixed media) and then as part of the Electronic Resources Cataloging unit.  While working on her library degree, she did field work at the Southern Folklife Collection performing original and copy cataloging of LP and CD sound recordings.  Her undergraduate degree is from Virginia Tech with a double major in French and English.

August 7, 2008 -- On August 18, Rachel Gray will become SELCO's new Information Services Librarian 1.  She will share responsibilities for effectively staffing the SELCO Help Desk and preparing and presenting technology training onsite and at Online Library locations.  The need for additional staff was identified during the Technology Planning Conversations held September through December 2006 and approved in April 2007as part the joint SELCO/SELS Technology Plan.

Most recently, Rachel has been working in a temporary, part-time capacity as the Project Librarian for SELCO's FINRA Smart Investing project.  She has been preparing for the 13-program live television series produced in conjunction with KSMQ.  The first program and live webcast will air August 13.

Prior to working for SELCO, Rachel was the Campus Librarian at the Minnesota School of Business in Rochester and holds a Masters degree in Library and Information Science from Dominican University (2004) and an undergraduate degree in English from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls.

August 8, 2008 -- Libraries and schools have a second opportunity to apply for a free teaching tool called Picturing America, presented by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services(IMLS).  This tool provides high-quality of reproductions of great American art to public libraries and K-12 schools to enhance the study of history, social studies, language arts, literature, and civics.  Public libraries and public, private, parochial, charter, and homeschool groups (K-12) in the United States and its territories are eligible to receive Picturing America materials, which include:

• Forty large, high-quality color reproductions of the selected masterpieces (24" x 36")
• A comprehensive teacher's resource book providing a wide range of ideas and background information to support educators using the works of art in core subject areas
• Lesson plans and additional resources available through the Picturing America Website

Application information can be found here.  Applications are currently being accepted now through October 31, 2008, with delivery scheduled for spring 2009.

August 8, 2008 -- Are you ready to invest in yourself and your future?  Smart Money Connections is coming to KSMQ Public Television Wednesday August 13 at 6:30pm.  Sponsored in part by SELCO with a Smart Investing @ Your Library grant from the ALA and FINRA Investor Education Foundation, this a 13-episode live call-in show about personal finance and investing aimed at anyone under the age of 40.  Find out about the magic of compound interest, the dangers of credit cards, saving for your children's college education and much more.

 Each 30-minute program will be followed by a live webcast that will continue the conversation on the week's topic.  You can ask questions and get answers to help you in your investing education.

For more information, visit the Smart Investing website!

August 12, 2008 -- Abbey Thompson joined the SELCO staff as LSTA Cataloging Librarian on Monday, August 11.  Abbey's library degree is from the School of Information and Library Sciences, University of North Carolina -- Chapel Hill, 2008.  She has a BA in Music from University of California, Santa Barbara 2000, and a Masters in Musicology from UNC -- Chapel Hill, 2006.  Her recent library experiences include working at the Metadata Research Center in Chapel Hill where she worked with the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center to build a digital repository for published research data.  She has worked in the Rare Book Collection and cataloged 78-RPM phonograph discs into a proprietary, web-based database for the Southern Folklore Collection.  She is a published author of two articles on metadata.  Welcome, Abbey!

August 15, 2008  --  The meeting materials for the Joint ILS Operations and Technology Policy Committee has been posted to the SELCO website. Please click here to access them.

ILS Operations Committee (SELCO)August 21, 2008 -- A recent election returned several library directors and selected new representative to serve on the ILS Operations Committee.  Continuing will be LaVonne Beach, LaCrescent Public LibraryDirector, in her third term representing medium size public libraries.  Joining her, with a new seat just added by the Board of Directors, will be Sharon Grossardt, the St. Charles Public Library Director.  James Hill, Zumbrota Public Library, Director will serve as the elected alternate for this group of Online Libraries.

Two new individuals will join the ILS Operations Committee representing small public libraries.  Monica Erickson, Chatfield Public Library Director, was elected as one of two representatives and Michele McCaughtry, Wabasha Public Library Director will serve as the alternate.

A complete list of committee members, meeting materials, as well as a list of responsibilities is available on the Committee home page.

August 22, 2008 - Next Wednesday marks the third episode ofSmart Money Connections on KSMQ Public Television, which is funded in part by a Smart Investing @ Your  Library grant from FINRA & ALA.  The show starts at 6:30pm and is followed by a live webcast at 7:00.

Over the last couple weeks we have talked about why people should invest, and how to get started investing.  Next week's show dives into the nitty gritty of investing with common investment definitions.  Tune in and make the most of your money and your future by getting your finance and investing questions answered by area experts.

Check out our website for more information.

August 25, 2008 -- LaCrescent Public Library had five computers donated to them from their City.  Four of them will be redone as public internet computers and one as a new circ computer.  For further information on this project please see the link listed below.

August 26, 2008 -- On August 25, the Structures Study Committee approved responses to six questions regarding the possible merger of SELCO and SELS.  The questions were presented to the Committee, along with a list of affirmations, following the special meeting of public library directors on August 5, 2008.

August 26, 2008 -- The agenda for the September 2008 SELCO Technology Users has been posted on the Technology Users Group page.  The document also has descriptions of each session.  The meeting will be held at 9:30 AM on Tuesday, September 09, 2008.  An Inter-Library Loan (ILL) meeting will be held immediately afterwards.  More details will follow in this space.

August 27, 2008 -- Please join us after the User Group meeting on Tuesday, September 9, 2008, for An Afternoon of ILL:  Out of Region Items and Requests.  A light lunch will be served at noon and the meeting will begin at 12:30 p.m.  To view the event flyer, please click here.   The flyer was sent via delivery to all SELCO online libraries and via email to the ILL Contacts at the SELCO online libraries.  Hope to see you there!

August 28, 2008 -- Three times per year SELCO counts the number of items that pass through delivery.  The second count of the year was done on Monday, August 25, 2008 and 2770 items were counted.  A big THANK YOU to John, Melanie, Becky, Mollie, and Cindy for a job well done.  We couldn't have done it with out all of you!

August 28, 2008 -- Horizon is now up and running normally.  Please contact the Help Desk if you have offline backup circulation files to be processed.

Thank you for your patience this morning.  Barring more unforeseen problems, this is our final update.

Have a nice day.

August 28, 2008 --  Full power has been restored to the office.

We're still working on the storage server problem that is keeping Horizon down.

We'll keep you posted.

August 28, 2008 -- All essential services save Horizon are up and running.  The difficulty lies not with Horizon itself, but a storage server that houses information on everyone's user profiles in Horizon.  That server came back up but doesn't  want to talk to our Active Directory server.  We're working on this problem.

No word yet from RPU on restoring the down phase.

Thanks for your patience.

August 28, 2008 -- The phone system in the SELCO office is now up and running.  If you are having a problem unconnected to the current power problem, please don't hesitate to call us.  If you wish to call simply to see where we're at with the power problem, please don't.  We have a finite capacity to handle calls and need to keep the lines open for calls not related to the current problem.  The most current information really is on the SELCO website and in email being sent out to library Directors and Automation Contacts.

Thanks for your cooperation.

August 28, 2008 -- We have email and the SELCO website up and running.  Horizon is still down; please do not attempt to log into Horizon until you get an email/website message stating that Horizon is up and running again.
MetaFrame is also up but without Horizon, there isn't much for it to do.

We are working on getting the phones up and running but are not there yet.

We'll keep you posted via email and on the SELCO website with further developments.

August 28, 2008 -- This morning one of the three phases that supply power to the SELCO office went down.  RPU has confirmed that this is a problem with their equipment/lines and they are working on the problem.
The down phase supplies power to the server room, including the server room climate controls that keep the servers cool.  It also supplies power to the phone system.  Here's what we are doing:

1)  We are working on getting essential services moved to the two working phases.  That includes:
--Email server
--Web server
--All Horizon servers
--All MetaFrame servers
--Networking equipment (routers, switches, DNS servers, etc)

2)  Once we get the servers moved, we will start on the the phone system.
The fact that you are seeing this webpage shows that we are making progress on this task.  Updates will be sent out via email to Directors and Automation Contacts.  As soon as we get the web server up, we will also post to the SELCO website in the News section (on the home page).

Thank you for your patience in this trying time.

August 29, 2008 --  In observance of Labor Day, the SELCO office will be closed on Monday, September 1st. There will be no Automation support or delivery service that day.

We will be performing an upgrade to the SELCO email server over the weekend.  This will be performed in the normal tech time (after 6PM on Saturday evening).  I did want to send out a note to let everyone know that this is a planned outage.

During this outage, SELCO email will be unavailable.  Users will not be able to log into Web Mail or retrieve SELCO email by other means.

August 29, 2008 --  DayEnd process have completed successfully.  All reports and Notice review lists are now available.

Thank you for your patience.

August 29, 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.