News from June, 2008

Michael Scott, Assistant Director

On May 22, 2008, I had the opportunity to visit two schools that are a part of the SELCO online system:  Plainview-Elgin-Millville (P-E-M) High School in Plainview and P-E-M 7-8 School in Elgin.  I started my visit at P-E-M High School where I met with Mike Cabaya, Media Specialist, and Deb Algadi, Library Media Assistant.  The media center at P-E-M High serves grades 9-12 and on the day I visited, the media center was very busy!  Students were finishing up reports and classes for the school year or just visiting. 

The media center had held its annual International Festival the previous week and there were still some great decorations done by art classes at P-E-M still hanging from the ceilings and the walls.  This festival was started a few years ago to really highlight the diversity in the local area.  Students were introduced to a number of different cultures and traditions, from the local Sons of Norway to henna hand painting from Bangladesh.  A number of members of different ethnic groups participate every year in this program.

One of the results of this festival has been the development of kits dedicated to various countries and/or ethnic groups.  These kits are made up of a number different items, such as costumes, books, or musical instruments.  The media center makes these items available (they come in large trunks) to other schools to use.  They are currently exploring how to make these available to a wider audience so stay tuned.

At the 7-8 school, I met with Mike Cabaya and Sara Olson, Library Media Assistant.  The media center was formerly 3 classrooms but now is one big beautiful space (I especially like the blue and white floor!) where 7-8 students can use computers and access a good collection.  It is located on the main hallway so there is high visibility.

Check on the photos from my visit on Flickr.  Thanks Mike, Deb, and Sara for being great hosts!

Aurora Jacobsen, Information Services Librarian

Michael Flores, Workstation Technician

With the release of Windows XP Service Pack 3 and Windows Vista Service Pack 1, our attention once again falls to Windows Updates and the question, "should I be updating my system?"  We approach this from two angles, public systems and staff systems.  I will talk about each of these and the impact of Windows XP Service Pack 3 and Windows Vista Service Pack 1.

Staff Systems are typically not setup with automatic windows updates as they sometimes tend to cause more confusion and software problems than they help.  We do update systems as we do repairs or during maintenance visits.  The impact of Windows Service Pack 3 or Windows Vista Service Pack 1 on these systems should be minor.

Public Systems are typically configured with the MS Shared Computer Toolkit or Windows Steady State and are set to automatically update themselves with only critical updates.  Since Windows Service Pack 3 is not a critical update yet and requires user intervention it shouldn't update to Service Pack 3.  Also systems using the MS Shared Computer Toolkit are not compatible with Windows XP Service Pack 3 and will not auto-update themselves.  As we move forward with maintenance visits we will be upgrading systems with new images using Steady State that will be pre-loaded with Windows XP Service Pack 3 or Windows Vista Service Pack 1, depending on the operating system.

As part of the Smart Investing @ Your Library grant SELCO received from ALA & FINRA Investor Education Foundation, we have formed a partnership with KSMQ, Public Television in Austin, MN. They are going to be broadcasting a live, call-in show on investing starting August 13 called Smart Money Connections.*

They are currently looking for people between the ages of 18-35 to take part in a taped focus group that will be part of this program. Taping will take place later this month, and participants will be receive a 1 GB flash drive and $100 cash. Are you interested in participating? If so, go to www.ksmq.org/smartmoney to apply.

*Smart Money Connections was produced by KSMQ Public Service Media, Inc. SMARTMONEY is a trademark of SmartMoney. Smart Money Connections is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by SmartMoney (a Hearst SM Partnership and Dow Jones & Co., Inc. partnership), nor does it represent the views or opinions of SmartMoney, Hearst SM Partnership or Dow Jones & Co., Inc. or their respective employees, owners, or affiliates in any way.

Donovan Lambright, Automation Librarian

Yesterday, a number of us from SELCO attended the first of MINITEX's Open Source ILS Workshops, focused on Koha and featuring an all-day presentation by Joshua Ferraro, CEO of LibLime.  Koha is an open source Integrated Library System (ILS), which means that the application was developed by a community of users rather than a commercial entity.  The source code for Koha is available under a license that permits users to use, change, and improve the software and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form.  Since no one company or group has the right to limit you, the result is free software that you can do whatever you want with, limited only by your vision and programming skills! 

Of course, not everyone wants to develop and program their own ILS.  This doesn't diminish the appeal of a system that allows you to implement changes based on your desires.  A system that isn't going to vanish just because a bunch of venture capitalists bought your ILS vendor and decided the next day to cease distribution of the system to which you had spent years preparing to migrate.

The answer to this dilemma is a company like LibLime.  They have taken Koha and developed their own version of it.  As you will remember, under the open source license you can modify the software however you please and distribute it.  Customers of LibLime are paying not for Koha but for the work and vision LibLime put into their "version" of Koha.  After that, it is much like dealing with a traditional vendor: They deliver the software and help you deploy it.  Or maybe they do all the set up work.  They maintain a support system that you can call if you have questions or problems.  They periodically roll out a new version.

Here are the differences.  While your library paid for support services, there was no initial licensing cost for the software.  The upfront costs, therefore, are generally going to be much lower than with a proprietary ILS.  LibLime is a relatively small company with 22 employees and 300 customer libraries, which gives them the potential to be very fast when it comes to updates and requested features.  Joshua gave several examples of libraries submitting ideas for improvements which were implemented in the next release (they do releases quarterly).  I couldn't help but wonder what happens as the customer base expands; presumably, they do their best to expand their labor force to compensate.  I don't know how successful they have been in this area but I do know that they had one employee and one customer library in January 2005.  I also know that there has been a steady flow of respected veterans of the ILS industry to LibLime.  They must be doing something right.

Getting back to the whole concept of feature requests, I was a little taken aback when Joshua stated that most new feature development into LibLime's version of Koha were driven by customer libraries.  He implied several times, in fact, that they are reluctant to add new features without a customer to "sponser" them.  Why would they spend resources to develop new features if they don't know that anyone wants them?  An interesting concept and one that I have mixed feelings about.  I suspect that Joshua was engaging in a bit of hyperbole.  I love the idea of a vendor that is committed to quickly filling new feature requests.  But I also love the idea of a vendor that is always looking forward, thinking about the future of library automation and positioning themselves accordingly.  The inability to do this has been one of the cardinal sins of commercial ILS vendors, in my opinion, and is at least partly to blame for the wretched state of the industry.

Joshua also implied several times that they are willing to implement just about anything if there are customers who want it.  Again, I love the idea but wonder what will happen when they have a few more customers and the requests start to conflict.  Having said that, I found Joshua's approach refreshingly positive and upbeat.  One gets the feeling that you could really get something done partnering with such a vendor.

The rest of the day was spent looking at the features and functionality of Koha, as developed by LibLime.  I'm not going into much detail on that.  It's difficult to adequately convey this kind of information in a blog post.  Suffice to say that I liked what I saw.  I'm not sure it's quite consortia-ready but they are in a good position to get there, in my opinion.  And LibLime has netted a number of consortia recently:  MassCat, WALDO, Central Kansas Library System, Northeast Kansas Library Systems, and Indiana Shared Library Catalog.

This is one to watch.

Michael Scott, Assistant Director

On May 27, 2008, I had the opportunity to visit Immanuel Lutheran School and Plainview Public Library.  My first stop was at Immanuel Lutheran School, a SELS member library.  Ann Mussell is the librarian at Immanuel for the past two years and also serves as the Preschool Teacher for the school.  The school, which is private, serves PreK - 8th grade students.  The library is located in a very nice space on the main floor of the school and provides its students a number of print resources and the school is working to get a computer workstation in the library (classrooms have computers with Internet access currently.) 

Kathie Roussopoulos, Library Director at Plainview Public, attend this visit with me.  Kathie has been provided assistance and mentoring to Ann with managing the library.  They've weeded their collection and redesigned the space to make it more inviting and useable for the students.  Check out the photos on Flickr to see the library at Immanuel Lutheran School in Plainview (especially the cute table with stools!)

After visiting Immanuel Lutheran School, Kathie and I returned to the Plainview Public Library to visit with her staff, Alice Henderson and Sue Tangen. 

The day I was visiting, the library was BUSY!  It happened to be after school had let out for the day, so as you can imagine, there were a number of children and young adults using the library.  The library itself has two main areas as you enter the front door:  a children's library to the left and the young adult/adult section to the right.  The children's section is really a great space with a large collection, a few computers for children to use, a nice space for story time (take a look at Big Blue on the SELCO Flickr site), and a separate check-out desk.  The young adult/adult section of the library has a large collection of materials (including a popular DVD collection and a leased books-on-CD collection), a computer lab (very popular), a nice young adult space (popular that day with 3 teenage boys), and a nice reading area with large windows.  Check out photos from Plainview Public Library here.

One item of note at Plainview Public Library is that they are a geocaching site. If you aren' t sure what geocaching is, go here to find out more, including how to find the "cache" associated with the library (I don't think I'm giving too much away!)  As the site says:

Geocaching is an entertaining adventure game for gps users. Participating in a cache hunt is a good way to take advantage of the wonderful features and capability of a gps unit. The basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the internet. GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the caches. Once found, a cache may provide the visitor with a wide variety of rewards. All the visitor is asked to do is if they get something they should try to leave something for the cache.

Thanks to Ann, Kathie, Alice, and Sue for a great visit in Plainview!

John Geers, Delivery Assistant & Custodian

On Tuesday, May 20, I had the privilege of attending the Enhancing Quality Staff in Changing Times Symposium held at the Radisson University Hotel in Minneapolis. This symposium was presented by the University of Minnesota Libraries.

The day started at 6:30 AM when the 4 class participants met at SELCO. One of the SELCO vans was provided for the day and since I did not have to drive , I enjoyed the ride along for a change. Usually when on family excursions I get to drive so I cannot check out the scenery and anything unusual that may come up. Melanie did a good job of driving. We arrived in time for refreshments of coffee, juice, and rolls while listening to the Keynote speaker, Janet Kinney. She gave an overview of the Laws of Library Service.

The three classes I attended were:

IDENTITY THEFT

Three speakers addressed the issue from their professional or personal experiences. The first was a police officer who gave pointers on the different aspects of identity theft, how to minimize your chances of becoming a victim and some statistics. The second person gave an account of her personal experience of her home being ransacked and robbed, her car stolen and everthing related to her identity. This happened in September of 2007 and she is still having problems getting everything back in order. She indicated that the police could have given better assistance and that she and her family had to do a lot of the recovery and investigating. One point made, do not leave your itinerary laying on the kitchen table for the thieves to see. Their car was eventually recovered , but the police department did not remove it from the stolen car list and as they were driving near the Albertville mall they were apprehended for driving a stolen vehicle and it took some time convincing the police that it was indeed their car. The third person discussed rules for safe computing, like using reliable antivirus software, and not opening email from unknown sources. This class made one realize just how vunerable we are and things we can do to prevent identity theft.

WHAT IS SO THERAPUTIC ABOUT HORTICULTURE

This class was an overview on the health benefits of working with plants and nature. We also learned about the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. I enjoyed this class because I like gardening, and planting a variety of flowers and trees especially native species. At the end of class we could take home a couple of Tomato plants and a Basil herb. Which I did plant and they are doing well.

SELF DEFENSE

Two officers from the University of Minnesota Police Department gave examples of how to achieve personal safety through knowledge, awareness and self-defense options. The examples given were simple, common sense approaches to personal safety. For example, keeping your car doors locked, parking in lighted areas, approaching your car with keys in hand and ready, walking with another person and being aware of your surroundings.

I enjoyed the day and would encourage others to participate.

Michael Scott, Assistant Director

I had the opportunity to attend the Health Sciences Libraries of Minnesota (HSLM) 2008 Annual Meeting on June 6, 2008 at Regions Hospital in St. Paul.  I've retained my membership with this group as I still have an interest in medical libraries and SELS does have members from the medical library community.

The annual meeting typically is a time when members get together to conduct a business meeting and have some sort of continuing education opportunity.  This year was a bit different.  Yes, the business meeting was held but instead of a continuing education opportunity, there were 2 presentations done by members.  The first presentation, on Emergency Preparedness & Response, was done by Paul Dahl, Library Director at the Minnesota Department of Health.  Paul serves as a regional preparedness coordinator for the Greater Midwest Region (GMR) of the National Networks of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM).  His presentation focused on the work being done at the national level through the NN/LM Emergency Preparedness & Response Committee to ensure that medical libraries have the tools and information necessary when an emergency arises.  One of the tools that might be of interest to SELCO/SELS members is the creation of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).  On the committee's website is a link to a model MOU that libraries could use if they wanted to establish a partnership with one or more libraries for assistance during an emergency or crises.  This certainly hits home to our region with recent and not-so-recent emergencies and disasters.

He also highlighted a number of resources on emergency preparedness & response, including the following books.  SELCO currently has the first two titles in this list in its professional collection.  We will be adding the last title and an updated edition of the first title to our collection soon.

• Disaster Planning: a How-to-do It Manual for Librarians
• Disaster Response and Planning for Libraries
• Protecting Library Staff, Users, Collections, and Facilities:  A How-to-Do-It Manual

Melanie Olson, Delivery & ILL Assistant

So many great classes, so little time. What a great opportunity to attend such a seminar! Kudos to the University of Minnesota Libraries for such a diverse wealth of subjects and knowledge presented that day. I really would have liked to take more classes, but I could not find a way to split myself into several people. The classes were as varied as the individuals who attended. After having a hard time narrowing the choices down, I was very pleased with the classes I did take, and of the new knowledge I gained from the experience. After a little breakfast and a Welcome speech that was very, um, welcoming, we had our keynote speaker, Janet Kinney, speak about how the Five Laws of Library Service have changed from when first written, but are still the same basic values . We had a short break, and it was off to my first class.

Mollie Pherson, Regional Librarian

I am happy to announce that both Crossroads College in Rochester and Pillsbury Baptist Bible College in Owatonna have gone live with SELCO!!   The Go-Live Day for both locations took place yesterday--June 17, 2008.  This has been such an incredible grant project and we are just thrilled to have both academic libraries online with us.  Also, I need to give a shout out to the SELCO staff members who have been working so hard on this project for the past year.  We did it!!  Here are some numbers from this project:

• The Academic Grant Catalogers have worked with over 60,000 bibs during the past year
• 77,800 new items were added to the Horizon system between the two academic libraries--that puts the SELCO catalog over 2.1 million items in total!!
• We added 53,000 new bibs into the Horizon database, increasing our unique bib total to 632,500--or a 10% increase in unique bibs

To keep track of the catalogers' process over the past year, we created two book carts.  Every 5,000 bibs added equaled a new stack of books on the carts.  Here are our full carts, and we couldn't be more proud to show them off:

Pillsbury Baptist Bible College Library Director Nancy McGuire threw an open house yesterday morning to celebrate going live with SELCO, which SELCO staff attended, and SELCO staff also visited Crossroads College Library Director Jim Godsey yesterday afternoon to make sure everything was up and running. 

 Congrats, Nancy and Jim!  To see go-live pictures, check out our Flickr account.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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...