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SELCO Librarian
Mollie Pherson, Regional Librarian
This link was sent to me by a co-worker and when I clicked on it, I was amazed! The link directed me to a story about a new series called The 39 Clues, which is a planned 10-volume set. Each volume will have a different writer and is designed for kids ages 8-12. The series also features contests, game cards, and a web site that has blogs, videos, games, backgroud info--creating a multi-media learning experience for the reader. Read about it! It's SO cool!!
Mollie Pherson, Regional Librarian
Just a reminder, folks -- September is Library Card Sign-up Month! For cool info about Library Card Sign-up month, check out the ALA website!
Ann B. Hutton, Executive Director
By posting actual ballot totals for the recent public library election to the ILS Ops Committee, SELCO is venturing into new territory. Previously, when holding elections for positions on such committees as SELS Advisory or ILS Operations, only the results have been shared. This is not so much because any of this information is secret but more because of years of organizational practice mixed with a smattering of Minnesota nice. There has been a request for a reporting of the numbers each nominee received beyond the general information shared in the August 21 news item. Here is that information.
| ibrary Director | | Public Library | | Vote Count |
| Sharon Grossardt | St. Charles | 13 | ||
| LaVonne Beach | LaCrescent | 12 | ||
| James Hill | Zumbrota | 12 | ||
| Pat Johnson | Stewartville | 9 | ||
| Bonnie Adams | Kasson | 4 |
There were two openings for medium public library representative, the seat vacated by Jeanne Johnson, former Zumbrota Public Library Director, in September 2007 and the additional representative approved by the Board in July. The public library directors were asked to vote for their choice of two candidates. As has been the practice with multiple nominees, the top two vote getters would be the representatives and the individual with the third highest votes would be the alternate.
As you can see, there was a tie between LaVonne Beach and James Hill. They came to an agreement between themselves, rather than have a runoff election, that LaVonne would be the representative and James would serve as alternate. James graciously stated he would be willing serve as the “Junior Senator from Zumbrota” since he is new to SELCO and the ILS.
The small library representative election totals were:
| Library Director | | Public Library | | Vote Count |
| Monica Erickson | Chatfield | 17 | ||
| Michele McCaughtry | Wabasha | 8 |
Each of these individuals will serve staggered terms with responsibilities for “advising SELCO staff and the Technology Policy Committee appointed by the SELCO/SELS Board of Directors on issues related to the configuration, operation, maintenance, and continuing development of the SELCO Integrated Library System (ILS) and other technology services.” Check the roster for complete ILS Operations Committee information including names, representation, terms, and email address.
To a question about how the election was handled, I requested and received the nominations, created and distributed the ballot, and received the votes. SELCO staff members Molly Pherson, Regional Librarian, and Donovan Lambright, Automation Librarian, assisted with the vote count. Board members on the Technology Policy Committee, Don Regelman and Fran Johnson, reviewed the results.
My thanks to each nominee for their willingness to serve.
Donovan Lambright, Automation Librarian
From the Shifted Librarian's blog: Win Games for your Library!
All you have to do is write the best story about using games for education by 08-31-2008 and your library could be the happy winner of $100 worth of board games. Cool!
Donovan Lambright, Automation Librarian
Last night's Smart Money Connections webcast went very well with no technical problems that I'm aware of. We took steps to stabilize the camera more to prevent any jostling of the stream and used mIRC to moderate the chatroom. As it turned out, we had no problems with the chatroom. If we had, however, mIRC gave us the tools to deal with it.
if you couldn't make the show, you can catch it (along with last week's show) at the Ustream show page in the Video Clips section.
Michael Scott, Assistant Director
On July 28, 2008, I had the privilege of visiting the Zumbrota Public Library. I met with James Hill, the director of Zumbrota Public Library, who gave me a tour of the library. It is a wonderful library that offers so much to the community. The children's area is just inside the front entrance, across from the information desk. It is a very inviting area and the day that I was there it was decorated to celebrate the library's summer reading program, "Catch the Reading Bug." The computers in that area were all in use which I know is no surprise to any of our libraries. The library also has a comfortable reading room towards the back of the library. Library patrons will find comfy chairs, a reading table, and plenty of natural light for reading the latest mystery novel or browsing the newspaper. The teen area is expanding and I especially like the use of "graffiti" script to highlight the books in the teen area. James tells me that he wants to continue to expand this area and add more comfortable seating and other things to draw in more teens.
Something new that the library is doing is highlighting different parts of their collection by using a mobile book display. The day I was there the highlight was on cooking. They had just finished having a display of travel books which proved very popular. James noted that there were lots of "I didn't know you had these!" moments when items were added to this display.
One of the other areas that is always a favorite of mine at the Zumbrota Public Library is their music collection. From my previous time working at SELCO, I had remembered that Zumbrota had a large collection of music CDs covering many musical genres. Of course I took advantage of being at Zumbrota and checked out a couple of new CDs. As they have such a large collection of CDs as well as an ever-expanding collection of DVDs (movies and TV Series) the library has a very nice disc cleaning machine that has enabled them to keep their discs in good shape and in many cases helped them keep down the cost of replacements. Which we all know can be frustrating when Disc 5 of 6-disc set stops working and we end up replacing the entire set instead of just one disc. If you'd like more information about their machine, please feel free to contact James at the library.
I also want to acknowledge Flora Burfeind whom I also met on my visit. She was keeping the library's busy information desk running that day but had time for a quick hello for me as well as an opportunity to share a little bit about the library.
For additional photos from my visit, please visit the SELCO Flickr site by clicking here.
Thank you James and Flora for such a great visit to the Zumbrota Public Library!
Donovan Lambright, Automation Librarian
As previously reported, we had our first Smart Money Connections program and webcast on Wednesday. There was one rough spot where we had to stop the stream and restart it. Otherwise, I'd say it was very successful. We learned a lot and I think that next week's webcast will be even better.
For those who couldn't watch it live, it is available on the Smart Money Connections Ustream page in the Video Clips section.
Mollie Pherson, Regional Librarian
So, lots of fun things have been taking place in the library world as of recent! I thought a blog post highlighting some of the cool things was most appropriate.
For starters, have you seen the new WebJunction Minnesota page? If not, check it out! The new page has a fresh look and many new features. To use WebJunction Minnesota, you log in (or create a free account if it's your first time) and are able to connect with other library staff in Minnesota and throughout the U.S. Users are also able to sign up for classes and post content useful to staff in all types of libraries. It's really easy to use. In fact, just today, I posted information to the site and signed up for a class on the basics of Adobe. Can't wait to start my class!
During my lunch break, I was paging through the May/June 2008 issue of Public Libraries and found a really cool article called The Busy Fun Time Library Staffer in Priorityland, featured in the Internet Spotlight section of the magazine. Now I admit I'm a real Facebook addict, so when I read about the new Facebook application, Parking Wars, I was super excited!! Basically, you add the application to your Facebook profile and you then challenge your friends to see who doesn't get ticketed. Parking Wars works like this -- you park illegally on your friend's streets and then wait. If you get a ticket, the person ticketing you gets the money. The longer you stay parked without getting a ticket the more money and rank you get. The author of the article claims it only takes minutes to play and it runs on twelve-hour cycles. I'm definitely going to check it out, and if you are a Facebook fan like I am, make the Parking Wars suggestion to your friends and start playing.
I can't believe it's the middle of August, and the first day of school is coming nearer and nearer. A cool thing one of our online schools is doing is offering International Trunks for Education for checkout. The Plainview-Elgin-Millville School's student organization, "Readers of the Lost Art," put together some International Traveling Trunks that are free to borrow beginning this Fall 2008 school year. The trunks are full of great authentic treasures from around the World, broken down by continent, that educators can use to supplement their curriculum, and borrow free of charge for two weeks. These trunks were featured in the Rochester Post-Bulletin on Monday, August 11, 2008. If you'd like to read the article, please click here. Way to go, P-E-M!!
Now that the Olympics are on, I haven't been doing a lot of "free reading" so I'm glad Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer debuted on Saturday, August 2. What a great read! If you haven't read the Twilight saga, I highly recommend it. Others, like me, were celebrating on the 2nd. The Owatonna Public Library held a Breaking Dawn Party, where Edward, Bella, and Jacob fans came to the library at 10 p.m. on Friday, August 1. Once the crowd gathered, there was lots of lit talk, and when it was almost midnight, the group walked to the Little Professor bookstore to purchase a copy of the new book. Owatonna Public Library staff said it was a great party and the kids really enjoyed it. Over 50 kids, teens, college students, and adults showed up to celebrate.
Owatonna patrons with their copies of Breaking Dawn Owatonna Public Library staff with their "Vampire" and "Werewolf" tees
Lastly, the College Libraries Section of ACRL invites others to submit a presentation proposal for a program tentatively scheduled for Sunday, July 12, 2009, at the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago. The title of the program is Our Town, Common Ground: Academic Libraries' Collaboration with Public Libraries. Four presentations of 15 minutes each will be selected through a blind review process. The programs should provide real-world examples of academic and public libraries cooperating with one another. Experiences and reflections may be presented by individual librarians or co-presenters who represent academic and/or public libraries. Examples of cooperation endeavors include but are not limited to shared systems, buildings, or programming; cooperative digitization projects; services for distance learners; and consortial relationships. The collaborations may be short-term endeavors or permanent partnerships. If you are interested in presenting, please send a proposal of 500 words or less to Ruth Connell at ruth.connell@valpo.edu by October 1, 2008. Notification of acceptance will be made by November 1, 2008.
Donovan Lambright, Automation Librarian
Last week, the website News provided a few links and information on the Smart Money Connections project. Today, I'd like to expand a bit on the live webcast portion of the program.
Immediately after each live television program concludes, we will fire up our webcam for another 30 minutes of conversation on the evening's topic. This webcast will differ from the program in two ways:
1) As the name implies, it will be available solely over the web
2) Anyone on the internet can participate in the conversation
Those who visit the Smart Money Connections video page will find a window with the live video stream and a chatroom. No login is required, visitors can simply start chatting. The webpage will assign each visitor a generic username and his/her comments will immediately appear. The chatroom moderator, yours truly, will pick questions from the room and pass them on to the program hosts and guests. This is SELCO's first venture into the realm of live webcasting and I'm both excited and nervous. We did a dry run this morning to prepare for the first program this Wednesday. Once we got everything positioned it worked perfectly. We're as ready as we're going to get.
While this post explains what we're going to do, there is no subsitute for seeing it with your own eyes. There are two ways of viewing the webcast and chat:
1) The Smart Money Connections video page
2) Our program page at www.ustream.tv, the free webcasting service we are using
The content will be the same regardless of which page you use. If you go to the ustream page now, however, you can view the recording of our testing this morning. It's pretty rough and casual; at various times in the recording we are silly, perplexed, serious, and finally triumphant. The video locks up a few times when we got a little too busy moving around and messing with the lights (there's only so much a webcam can handle). Once we get through the first program this week, we'll probably take this "rough draft" down. But in the meantime, it's up as a sneak preview of what to expect on Wednesday the 13th.
See you on the web!
Michael Scott, Assistant Director
On July 22, 2008, I had the privilege of visiting the Pine Island Van Horn Public Libraryin Pine Island, Minnesota. As can be seen from the photo above, it was a lovely day for a visit. I was greeted by Jeanne Acker, the director of the library, who gave me a tour of the main floor of the library. The library provides great services to its patrons, including several public access computers for patrons to surf the Web or find information and a large collection of books, audiobooks, and videos (both VHS & DVD.) The library also has a large collection of microfilm of the local newspaper which was being used the day that I visited. As I've stated a number times when I've been out visiting our member libraries, this library was busy! Several patrons were in and out to either to check out books or use the public access computers.
The lower level of the library is the children's area. All the children's books and a few computer workstations are located in this area. I met Jan Sween, the children's librarian at Pine Island and had a great conversation about the services the library provides to children. The day I was visiting the library was the day of one of the programs (a magician) for the summer reading program. In the past, these programs had been held at the library but due to the large draw these programs have, the American Legion made its space available (located only a block away.) There were several children using the children's area the day I visited, which you can see on the SELCO Flickr site.
I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to the Pine Island Van Horn Public Library and thank Jeanne and Jan for being such gracious hosts!
I have been working with Susan Hart, Director of the Rushford Public Library, to develop a new website for the library. Website development is something I’ve always wanted to take a shot at, but without prior experience in web design and publishing, I contacted SELCO to ask what assistance they may be able to provide.
Tom Coffee, SELCO’s Software Development Specialist, recommended the SELCO-supported web authoring program called Kompozer. The Kompozer software is free and offers a host of useful features. There are four views to work within: normal, html tags, source code, and preview. As a rookie, this was very helpful as I was able to experiment in making modifications to the pages and immediately see the impact it had by clicking the preview tab. Kompozer also displays a line of html tags associated with the element you are working on at the bottom of the screen. Right click on it and a dialogue box of options opens where you can make any number of changes to the style of the element. For someone who is still learning html code, this is a great help.
In addition to offering support on the web authoring program, SELCO also provides some initial training on use of the software, works with you to get you started on your site, and offers assistance for any follow-up questions you may have as you proceed. Tom, along with Aurora Jacobsen, SELCO’s Information Services Librarian, set up a training session that included many tips and tricks on using Kompozer and editing key strings of html code. I was also provided a list of links on editing CSS (cascading style sheets), html code, Kompozer tutorials, and web design.
From there, Susan and I had fun assembling the content for the site and deciding upon a layout. We found a really neat way to display photos, using turn-the-page style photo books created in Photoshop Elements, and slideshows of PowerPoint presentations uploaded to an external site. We chose a template with a CSS and made modifications to it, a much easier approach than creating html code from scratch. When it came time to go live with the site, Tom provided a detailed set of instructions on how to log into the server and publish each page.
Our website project is a perfect example of a successful collaborative effort. It has been a very enjoyable experience to work with Susan to create the new website. Her vision for the library and what the site could be guided the entire project and made it completely addicting to work on. SELCO’s support was instrumental to the process, as I relied heavily on their expertise and was grateful for the assistance they provided in support of the project.
If you’d like to check out new Rushford Public Library site, click here or go to rushford.lib.mn.us.
Donovan Lambright, Automation Librarian
With the August meeting agenda for the ILS Operations / Technology Policy joint committee in development, it seems like a good time to recap the major decisions made at the last meeting:
1) Demonstrations of next-generation catalogs continued with Josh Ferraro of LibLime showing off MasterKey. in August, we will see AquaBrowser and a recommendation on how to proceed should come in September.
2) We decided to postpone a decision on the EnvisionWare e-commerce solution for lack of solid information. Mick and Donovan will work with EnvisionWare to bring a final proposal to the August meeting.
3) Several seats on the ILS Operations committee are open or soon to open up:
- Nominations will be made immediately for all open public library seats. These terms will be for 2 years and 5 months.
- Nominations for two media center seats will be made after school starts this fall.
- Recommendation made that an additional medium public library seat be added. This must go to the Board for action.
Full details meeting discussions will be available on 08-22-2008 when the minutes are posted to the web. Those at the meeting are encouraged to add comments to this post.
