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2008/02/04
Last changed: May 11, 2009 12:43 by SELCO Admin
Ann B. Hutton, Executive Director While bit earlier this month, Coffee & Conversation will offer a "Dialogue with your Delegation" as Rochester area legislators head to the Capitol for the start of the 2008 Legislative session. Come participate in this public forum. Saturday, February 9, 2008 --- 8:00 - 10:00 AM
John Marshall High School Cafeteria
1510 14th Street NW in Rochester
Last changed: Mar 04, 2009 11:57 by SELCO Admin
Michael Scott, Assistant Director I came across a recent posting on the Library Marketing - Thinking Outside the Book blog about Lafayette College Library's fun approach to marketing its personalized research assistance program. Interesting approach to marketing and good use of involving their intended audience in the process. Click here to read the posting and be sure to click on the link to view the postcards. My personal favorite is the postcard that uses the movie Jaws as its theme (love the guy in the upper left corner!)
Last changed: Mar 04, 2009 11:58 by SELCO Admin
Ann B. Hutton, Executive Director The new Federal budget, released this morning, includes proposed funding increases for libraries. On behalf of libraries around the country, the American Library Association offered appreciation and urges Congress to retain library funding at the levels proposed.
The Library Services and
Technology Act (LSTA) is the only federal program exclusively created for
libraries, and is administered by the Institute of Museum
and Library Services (IMLS). The law's definition of a library includes
institutions of all types and sizes, such as public, academic, research,
school, state, and even digital libraries. The law includes grants for Native
American and Native Hawaiian library services, as well as National Leadership
grants aimed at education and training, research and demonstration projects,
the preservation of library materials, and model projects between libraries and
museums.
2008/02/07
Last changed: Mar 04, 2009 12:03 by SELCO Admin
Aurora Jacobsen, Information Services Librarian
There are only 8 days left to register your blog in time to be eligible for incentives. A bigger incentive to starting the 23 Things right now might be the community that is happening between members on their blogs. The last day to register a blog is February 15, 2008.
As I've been reading the numerous member blogs, I've been impressed with the sheer wealth of creativity in our region. Within our own staff, we had a Friday afternoon where we blew of some steam and took the 23 Things on a Stick more literally.
 
2008/02/12
Last changed: Mar 04, 2009 12:05 by SELCO Admin
Mollie Pherson, LSTA Project Librarian As part of the Digital Audiobooks for Seniors LSTA grant, I have been making the rounds to the different participating libraries to give training sessions to local seniors. So far, each training session has been fabulous! In fact, the training session at the Chatfield Public Library was featured in the The Chatfield News this afternoon. Check it out! Here is the link: Digital Audiobooks Story
My favorite parts of this job are visiting the different libraries, teaching patrons something new, and visiting with friendly folks. Last Thursday, I made my way down to the Rushford Public Library to visit with eight local seniors and to teach them how to use audiobooks. After the successful session, one of the participants came up to me and told me how he just loved SELCO and thanked me for giving him the ability to check out books from everywhere. He was so appreciative of our services. It was a truly touching moment, and it makes me realize even more why I jumped into this field in the first place. I will be out and about until the beginning of May, so if you would like to come and learn about digital audiobooks, here is a schedule for upcoming training sessions: Monday, February 18 @ 1:00 p.m. Preston Senior Center
Thursday, February 21 @ 10:30 a.m. Caledonia Public Library
Thursday, February 28 @ 4:00 p.m. Lanesboro Public Library
Thursday, March 13 @ 10:30 a.m. Caledonia Public Library
Friday, March 14 @ 10:00 a.m. Hokah Public Library Hope to see you there!
2008/02/13
Last changed: Mar 04, 2009 12:07 by SELCO Admin
Donovan Lambright, Automation Librarian
Cross posted to The Lambrights
The New York Times recently published an interesting article entitled Pushing Paper Out the Door (free registration required). As you might guess, the article is about people using less paper as digital storage and access becomes more and more common. Among the anecdotal evidence and interviews is an interesting statistic: In the richest countries in the world, per capita paper consumption has dropped 6% from 2000 to 2005.
I don't see paper disappearing anytime soon. Remember the promise of the paperless office? Having said that, the article struck a chord with me. In the past year or two, I've been striving to cut down my use of paper in my personal life and at work. Honestly, it wasn't planned or carefully thought-out. It just sort of happened:
Maps and phone books are largely things of the past as Google Maps and online phone books have become my navigational tools of choice. I still print out my maps from Google, mostly because I'm too cheap to spring for a GPS unit or smart phone with Internet connectivity. When the price barriers drop a little more, I'll be all over it.
I've become much more likely to take my laptop to a meeting at work and simply access relevant documents online from the SELCO web page or our shared storage drive. Anymore, I don't even take a pen; any notes I take will be typed up in a text editor. Every once in awhile, I'll be embarrassed when I cannot come up with a document quickly enough in a meeting; I still find it faster to shuffle paper than to shuffle documents in Windows. This hasn't happened enough to make me go back to printing everything out before the meeting.
I still tend to print out documents if I have to compare them side-by-side. That is changing, however, as I now have a monitor large enough to display two standard size documents side by side. The annotation tools in Microsoft Word and Adobe Reader aren't second nature to me yet so I still tend to reach for my highlighter and Post-It notes when editing documents. The jury is still out on this one.
Two needs have driven me to trade electrons for ink:
The
need to find things more efficiently. I'm one of those people who
cannot stick to a personal filing system and I constantly find myself
digging through stacks of paper. I would much rather file this stuff
electronically and use tools like Search and tagging to find data. In
a similar vein, email has become my personal information management
system. Any conversation I have in email gets archived where I can
search it later. There are sophisticated software solutions for this
kind of thing but email still works for me.
So it may not be a
paperless world just yet but I think more people are going to embrace
this way of operating as digital storage becomes more ubiquitous. What
can libraries do to serve patrons who want to lose the paper?
Make
every communication from the library available electronically. Notices
should be available via email, text messaging, instant messaging and
whatever else comes up. Checkout receipts should be handled this way
too. Wouldn't it be cool if checkout receipts could be emailed as an
iCal or Outlook appointment? The patron could just drop it into their
calendar and get a reminder a few days before the item is due. I think
most libraries have gotten the word on email but support for the other
tools is uneven at best. Support from ILS vendors on this kind of
thing has been uneven as well.
More public access
computers for patrons trying to manage their lives on the run. I think
that libraries have mostly gotten this and have put out as many
computers as their buildings will allow. There are other ways to push
the envelope, however. Making sure that all the public access
computers are relatively new (thus fast) and not locked down to the
point that patrons cannot access their data and applications is a place
to start.
None
of these are new suggestions but they point the way forward. What
other strategies come to mind? Are you looking to lose the paper or do
you think this is just an updated version of the "Someday, we'll all
work in paperless offices" hype? Leave a comment and let's talk about
it.
Last changed: May 11, 2009 12:45 by SELCO Admin
Mary Beth Sancomb-Moran, Community Information Librarian The numbers are in for the past year's Interlibrary Loan, and as always, the region's libraries have been generous with their resources. This year, 52,079 more items were loaned than borrowed. The largest net lender this year was the Stewartville Public Library, with 6,562 items. The Austin Public Library was again the busiest ILL library in the consortium, with 20,856 items loaned and 16,571 items borrowed. The Owatonna Public Library followed right behind, with 20,165 items loaned and 14,211 items borrowed.
Small libraries are net lenders, too: the Lyle Public Schools were net lenders this year. For a mashup of all the net lending libraries, visit the ILL Net Lending page.
2008/02/14
Last changed: Mar 04, 2009 12:09 by SELCO Admin
Mollie Pherson, LSTA Project Librarian Every day, I walk past my stack of Newsweek magazines sitting on my computer desk waiting to be read. Yesterday, I decided to pick one up and browse through the articles. While looking at the Popularity Index section in the front of the magazine, a title really caught my eye: "The Way We Lived," an article discussing how Flickr.com and the Library of Congress are teaming up to find out more information about historical photos. Because it was only a snippet and the article wasn't in the magazine, I did some searching and was able to find the article. How Cool! I mean, the Library of Congress, the nation's oldest federal cultural institution, teaming up with Flickr, a Web 2.0 photo management application, is truly amazing! The two super powers created "Flickr Commons," a space full of 3,115 Library of Congress archival photographs where Flickr users can tag the images and hopefully provide more information about the photos. Very interesting! Collaboration is key in the library field, and regardless of the type or size of your organization, it's important to be aware of the give-and-take relationships you can create to help serve your goals. LINK TO ARTICLE
Last changed: Mar 04, 2009 12:14 by SELCO Admin
Michael Scott, Assistant Director The U.S. Government Printing Office, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Federal Depository Libraries have teamed up to offer an online reference service to answer questions from the public about government resources. According to the press release: "This service enables GPO and the depository libraries to help Americans answer questions about their democracy by connecting them to the expertise offered by Government reference librarians," said Ric Davis, Acting Superintendent of Documents. "This is another example of the strong partnership GPO has with the Federal Depository Library community in their commitment of Keeping America Informed."
The address to access the site is http://govtinfo.org/ There is a Minnesota connection here as the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis is one of the participating institutions.
2008/02/15
Last changed: Mar 04, 2009 12:16 by SELCO Admin
Mollie Pherson, LSTA Project Librarian The Center for Children's Books, a unit of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois, has announced the Gryphon Award winner for Children's Literature. Michael Townsend's debut children's book, Billy Tartle in Say Cheese, has won the 2008 Gryphon Award and was awarded the $1,000 prize. The book is for readers ages 4 to 8. Two Gryphon honors winners were named as well--Rufus the Scrub Does Not Wear a Tutu by Jamie McEwan and Spiders by Nic Bishop. Congrats to the winners!!
2008/02/19
Last changed: Mar 04, 2009 12:17 by SELCO Admin
Mary Beth Sancomb-Moran, Community Information Librarian
Angel was a hit here at SELCO, and is continuing her stardom at library visits throughout the region.
 Marybeth Garrigan and Angel at the Hot Reads Kickoff at SELCO.
Recently, Angel stopped by the Chatfield Public Library and wowed the crowd. Angel, by the way, is one of the the beautiful Bald Eagles from the National Eagle Center.
Chatfield Library Friend member Mimi Seamens wrote us recently about the experience and included a link to some terrific photos:
To Ann & Angela, and all of SELCO,
Thank you for helping to provide our library with a truly outstanding program.
Angel the Eagle visited the Chatfield Public Library on February 7th and caused quite a sensation.
Click Here to View Slideshow Photos of that evening.
Angel entertained over 70 people of all ages, from preschool to retirees.
Thanks again for your continued service to our local libraries.
Sincerely,
Mimi Seamens Thanks for the kind words, Mimi!
2008/02/20
Last changed: Mar 04, 2009 12:19 by SELCO Admin
Aurora Jacobsen, Information Services Librarian
On Monday, February 18, Jonya Pacey and
Aurora Jacobsen visited Buckham Memorial Library in Faribault for the
second of our Bringing the Training to You roadshows. Six staff members
learned about the databases purchased by SELCO, MnLINK and WorldCat. We fun looking up biographies of all our favorite musicians, court cases we knew someone associated with, car repair manuals and Jonya's MnLINK borrowing habits. We were able to hold the classes on the public Internet stations while the library was closed, giving the staff time to experience these tools without the pressure of serving patrons at the same time.
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