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.

November 26, 2008 -- Meeting materials for the December 3, 2008 SELS Advisory Committee meeting have been posted to the Committee's Meeting Materials page.  The meeting will be held from 4:00 - 6:00 PM in the Avila Room at SELCO.  For those attending the meeting, SELCO is collecting items for the Channel One Food Bank and Food Shelf so please feel free to bring items on December 3.  Here are their most requested food items:

November 26, 2008 -- Meeting materials for the December 2, 2008 SELCO Advisory Committee meeting have been posted to the Committee's Meeting Materials page.  The meeting will be held from 9:30 - 11:30 AM in the Avila Room at SELCO.  For those attending the meeting, SELCO is collecting items for the Channel One Food Bank and Food Shelf so please feel free to bring items on December 2.  Here are their most requested food items:

• Meats, Fish and Protein – canned tuna, ham or chicken, beef stew, chili, peanut butter, canned/dried beans
•  Fruits and Vegetables – 100% fruit juice, canned fruits and vegetables, instant potatoes, fruit preserves
• Complete Meals – pasta & sauce, boxed meals, hearty soups
• Grains – cereal, rice
• Hygiene products – shampoo, deodorant, soap, diapers, toilet paper, feminine hygiene, toothpaste
• Cooking Basics – flour, sugar, and cooking oil
• No glass containers, baby food, perishable items or home canned foods please!
  

In observance of Thanksgiving, the SELCO office will be closed on Thursday, November 27 and Friday, November 28. There will be no Automation Support on Thanksgiving Day. On-call Automation Support will be available on Friday from 8:00 – 6:00.

There will be NO delivery service on either Thursday or Friday. Delivery will resume on Monday, December 1.

November 24, 2008 -- The Minnesota Library Association honored Ann Hutton’s 25 years of MLA membership with a token of appreciation at the annual awards banquet.  She and four others were acknowledged for their years of participation.

Ann Hutton, SELCO Executive Director, is shown here with Wendy Wendt, Director of the Marshall-Lyons County Public Library and current MLA President

November 10, 2008 -- The annual Hot Reads for Cold Nights Kick-off will be held on Tuesday, December 2 from 1 p.m.-3 p.m. at SELCO.  This year's kick-off will feature the SELCO Technology Petting Zoo.  SELCO staff members will demonstrate how to use new technology and attendees will get to try out the new gadgets themselves.  Programming ideas for each gadget will also be presented.  To access the program flyer, please click here.  If you'd like to attend the Hot Reads Kick-off, please sign up on the SELCO training page or call 1-800-992-5061.  Hope to see you there!

November 10, 2008 -- In observance of Veteran's Day, the SELCO office will be closed on Tuesday, November 11th. Automation Support will be available that day from 8-5 via the Help Desk number. If you have an automation problem, please dial (1-866)529-4469 or (507)529-4469 to contact our on-call staff.

There will be no delivery on Tuesday.

November 6, 2008 -- SELCO continues its search for a new Web Development Specialist.  The successful candidate must have a desire to support quality library service in southeastern Minnesota.  The primary job objectives for this position include:

November 05, 2008 -- SirsiDynix support staff will perform an upgrade of SELCO's Horizon ILS on Monday, December 08.  We expect the system to be down between four and eight hours, starting in the morning.  This is a major upgrade that will bring Horizon, iPac, and WebReporter up to the most current versions available.  The major focus of this upgrade are behind-the-scenes changes and bug fixes but there are some changes in functionality that will affect how the Online Libraries operate.  SELCO staff is preparing documentation on these changes and we will post them as soon as they are available.

Online Libraries who wish to use PC Reliance for offline backup circulation on this day should contact the Help Desk for assistance as needed.

November 3, 2008 -- Although it took a bit longer than anticipated, the reindexing of the iPAC completed early in the evening.  All iPAC searches will now be returning complete results.

Thank you for your patience.

November 03, 2008 -- We discovered a corrupted index on the iPAC over the weekend.  This corrupted index was causing some searches to not return correct results.  We started a rebuild of the iPAC indexes on Sunday night and it is still running this morning (11/03/2008).

Until this rebuild completes sometime this afternoon, searches on the iPAC will only return a portion of the correct results.  This reindexing will not affect searches in the Horizon staff client in any way--this problem only affects the web-based iPac catalog.

November 03, 2008 -- The SELCO/SELS Board of Directors has approved a recommendation from the ILS Operations & Technology Policy joint committee to purchase and install AquaBrowser as a replacement for the SELCO web-based catalog.  AquaBrowser provides a range of functions not available in the current catalog software including faceted browsing, superior relevancy ranking of search results, and automatic correction of search term misspellings.  Contract discussions are underway with AquaBrowser with implementation slated to begin in January 2009.  The new catalog is scheduled to go live by the end of June 2009.

The ILS Operations & Technology Policy joint committee will consider project plans at their next meeting on November 13, 2008.  Among other topics, the joint committee will consider how to best gather input from the Online Libraries while maintaining an efficient design process.

The evaluation process that led to the adoption of AquaBrowser has been documented in two blog posts to SELCO Librarian:

• The Future of the SELCO Online Catalog
• The Future of the SELCO Online Catalog, Part Two

In observance of Veteran's Day, the SELCO office will be closed on Tuesday, November 11th. Automation Support will be available that day from 8-5 via the Help Desk number. If you have an automation problem, please dial (1-866)529-4469 or (507)529-4469 to contact our on-call staff.

There will be no delivery on Tuesday.

October 22, 2008-- Spots are still available in October 28th marketing workshop. Each participant will be given a chance to work directly with a consultant on a marketing project for their library. Presenters Judy Hoffman and Denise Zielinski will being the day with brainstorming from their previous experience with Buzz Marketing. Projects that developed were wide ranging, including new building promotion, promotion of specific services or collections and training staff on word of mouth, day-to-day marketing. Registration can be found at the SELCO training site.

October 21, 2008 - Video of the ILS Operations & Technology Policy Joint Committee meeting held on October 16, 2008 has been posted to the committee meeting materials page:

• Meeting Video - Part One of Three (FLASH)
• Meeting Video - Part Two of Three (FLASH)
• Meeting Video - Part Three of Three (FLASH)

October 17, 2008 -- Ground was broken on October 9, 2008 for the new Lonsdale Public Library.  The library will be in leased space in the new Villages of Lonsdale retirement and assisted community development being built in Lonsdale.  A large crowd of Lonsdale city officials, officials from the builders and Three Links Care Center who will own and manage the development, community members, and library staff from Northfield Public Library and SELCO who have been assisting Lonsdale with the design of the library space were on hand to celebrate the occasion.  The development is schedule to open in Fall 2009.  Check out additional photos from the groundbreaking here.  Congratulations to Lonsdale!

October 15, 2008 -- A few minutes ago (at about 01:20), we experienced a Citrix problem which caused some users to lose their sessions.  This has been resolved.  If you were kicked out of a Citrix session, please attempt to reconnect.  If you experience further difficulty, please contact the SELCO Help Desk.

October 10, 2008 -- Day End processing has completed.  All notices and statistics are now available.

October 10, 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.