News from December, 2008

December 01, 2008 -- The order form for the Winter 2009 Cooperative PC Purchase has been released and emailed to Online Library Directors and Automation Contacts.  The deadline for orders is Wednesday, December 31, with SELCO placing orders in the first week of January.  Equipment installations will be carried out as orders arrive.

December 2, 2008 -- A recent election returned three representatives and selected four new respresentatives to the SELS Advisory Committee.  This election resulted in all elected and alternate representative positions on the Committee being filled!  Congratulations to these new SELS Advisory Committee representatives.

Those members returning to the Committee include:

• Stephanie Silvers, Harmony Public Library, in her second term representing public libraries;
• Renita Irvin, Chatfield Elementary School, in her third term representing school libraries;
• Russ Dennison, Winona State University, in his second term representing public academic libraries.

Those members newly elected to the Committee include:

• Susan Hart, Rushford Public Library, in her first term representing public libraries;
• Chris Lannin, Kasson-Mantorville Schools, in her first term as the alternate representing school libraries;
• Erin Meier, Experiment in Rural Cooperation (ERC), in her first term representing special libraries;
• Walter Bennick, Winona County Historical Society, in his first term as the alternate representing special libraries.

A complete list of committee members, meeting materials, as well as a list of responsibilities is available on the Committee home page.  The next meeting of the SELS Advisory Committee will be Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 4:00 PM in the Avila Room at the SELCO office.

December 4, 2008 -- We would like to remind everyone that Horizon will not be available to you on Monday, December 8th. SELCO is upgrading three of our applications, starting with Horizon. For more detailed information, please read this blog post from November 5, 2008. At this time we do not have any other information to share. As it becomes available on Monday, announcements and additional information will be put on the SELCO website and sent out in email to Library Directors and Automation Contacts.

Thank you. Please contact the Help Desk if you have any questions not answered in Donovan's blog post on SELCO Librarian.

December 8, 2008 --  The Lake City Public Library was named a recipient of a Picturing America grant.  Picturing Americais a program for libraries and schools, and is an initiative from the National Endowment for the Humanities.  The program was founded to help students and citizens gain a deeper appreciation of American art.  The library received poster replications of American art masterpieces and programming materials that correspond with the artwork.    The posters were on display and the library had an "Art Gallery Opening" to introduce the public to the artwork.  Local artist Billie Hunt painted a patriotic mural on the windows of the library to honor the Picturing America display, and Lake City Public Library staff member Diane Spence created an "I Spy" game to encourage people to look closely at the displayed artwork.  To view pictures of the art at the library, please click here.  Congratulations to the Lake City Public Library!

December 08, 2008--The Horizon upgrade is nearly complete and Online Library staff can now login to resume normal operations.  The one exception is WebReporter, whose upgrade is still in progress.  For further details, please see this post at SELCO Librarian.  Further updates will be posted to SELCO Librarian and as email to the DIRPUB, DIRSCH, CONPUB, and CONSCH email distribution lists.

December 08, 2008--As previously reported, the SELCO ILS will be down today for a system upgrade.  During this time, all Horizon subsystems, including the staff  client, iPac, and WebReporter will be unavailable.  Progress reports will be posted to the SELCO Librarian blog, as well as to the DIRPUB, DIRSCH, CONPUB, and CONSCH email lists.
While this upgrade primarily fixes bugs and makes changes to Horizon behind the scenes, it also provides an exciting new piece of functionality:  Email Pre-Overdue Notices.  For further details on the upgrade, please see these previous posts on SELCO Librarian:

• Questions and Answers About the Upcoming Horizon Upgrade
• Pre-Overdue Email Notices in Horizon
• More Questions and Answers About the Upcoming Horizon Upgrade

December 9, 2008--  Five schools in the SELCO/SELS region have been ranked by US News & World Report as "America's Best High Schools". The schools are:

• Century Senior High (Olmsted County)
• Houston Secondary (Houston County)
• Mayo Senior High (Olmsted County)
• Spring Grove Secondary (Houston County)
• Zumbrota - Mazeppa Senior High (Goodhue County)

For more information, read the whole report here.

December 9, 2008 -- Gold Cross Courier has cancelled routes due to today's bad weather.  One route was attempted but, after the driver went into the ditch, that route was cancelled as well.  Delivery will resume on Wednesday, pending road conditions.  We apologize for this inconvenience.

December 10, 2008 -- The first batch of Pre-Overdue Email Notices went out today to 684 patrons with items due on December 12, 2008.  In total, Pre-Overdues have been enabled for 31,939 patrons registered to thirteen libraries.  Please see this post at the SELCO Librarian blog for more information.

December 15,  2008 -- The packet for the Joint ILS Operations and Technology Policy Committee meeting is now available on the website. This can be found here.  This meeting is from 3 - 5 pm on December 18th, at the SELCO building.

December 15, 2008 -- SELCO email users will have found a number of SPAM emails in their inboxes this morning. It is not necessary to send this email to spamwatch@selco.info, as we have already flagged these messages in the spam filter.  The best course of action is to just delete it.

Mick became aware of this spam burst and adjusted the filter yesterday.  Unfortunately, this batch of email was already out and the SPAMmers just moved on. This is the cyclical nature of SPAM, a never ending arms race to get it through to our inboxes. They are developing new methods of attack almost before the programmers of our filtering devices update the lists. Every once in awhile, they have a success and get a burst of email through.

This type of SPAM is structurally identical to the commercial advertising emails sent out by retailers such as Sears and Shopko. Legitimate emails will be blocked if we completely tighten down Baracuda and it is impossible to sort between this sort of email and the ads from Lands End. It is only after a SPAMmer makes it in that we, and our filtering solution Baracuda, can react. Realisticly, 90% of all email going out is SPAM and our SPAM solution is successfully blocking most of it.  Wikipedia has an excellent article on the subject and you will find many other informational sources available via a web search.

As you have other questionable emails in your inbox, please send them to spamwatch.

December 18, 2008

Bulletin Summary

Now that a vast majority of users connect to Horizon over Citrix, we have changed the naming convention used to identify the proper search to use.

The name for a z-search is no longer prefixed by "~Citrix" for users that are on a Citrix session.  When on Horizon over Citrix, the proper search to use only contains name of the remote library.

For instructions for PCs that use locally-installed Horizon, see the full bulletin for instructions.
Please contact the Help Desk if you have comments or questions.

December 19, 2008 -- Please save the date! Patrick Jones will present Connecting Teens and Libraries at SELCO on Tuesday, January 27 at 9:30 a.m. as a kick-off to our second set of Special Consultants.  To sign up, please visit the SELCO training page Email reminders and a flyer will be sent at a later date.

December 19, 2008 -- This afternoon, Governor Pawlenty announced his decision to unallot $271 million in state spending in order to balance the budget in the current fiscal year. The largest cuts were made in human services ($73 million), aid to cities ($66 million) and aid to counties ( $44 million). Higher education also took a significant hit, with the University of Minnesota and the MnSCU system each taking a $20 million reduction. No cuts were made to the K-12 education budget. The state agency operating budgets will be reduced by a total of $40 million, and the departments have until January 2 to submit proposed reductions to the Governor.

Governor Pawlenty's press release includes a detailed list of the cuts.

December 22, 2008
Bulletin Summary:

The ILS Operations committee has made a suggestion that pre-overdue email notices be sent out on weekends.  We have implemented this suggestion, and pre-overdue notices were emailed out on Saturday, December 20 and Sunday, December 21.  We will continue to send preoverdue notices seven days a week, excluding SELCO Holidays.
Pre-overdue notice language can be customized. See the full bulletin for additional information.

December 23, 2008-- In observance of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the SELCO office will be closed on Wednesday, December 24 and Thursday, December 25. There will be no Automation Support on Christmas Day. On-call Automation Support will be available on Christmas Eve from 8:00 am - 5:00 pm. There will be NO delivery service on either Wednesday or Thursday. Delivery will resume on Friday, December 26.

December 29, 2008 -- SELCO is happy to provide our members Techie Toyboxes containing new pieces of technology for training purposes.  These kits will provide a hands-on learning experience for patrons of all ages.  The Techie Toyboxes are meant to be self-directed and to provide a learning experience for the trainer, as well as the patrons participating in the library's training program.  These kits were purchased for the Techie Toyboxes at the Regional Public Library Systems grant, which was administered through the Arrowhead Library System. For the kit list and for more information, please click here.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008 -- In observance of the New Year's holiday, the SELCO office will be closed on Thursday, January 1.  There will be no Automation Support or delivery service that day.