New York Public Library Prints Classics on Demand

Here is an interesting article on NYPL's newest service. If you are interested in buying the printer, you can read about it here. It only costs $100,000.

Texas State Library and Archives Commission Flickr Account

TSLAC has a flickr account. For those who do not know, flickr is a photo sharing site. Not much on the TSLAC account yet, but check back for additional photoes.

Putting a Value on Your Library at Budget Time

At a time when many city and county librarians are defending budget proposals for the coming fiscal year, a rare opportunity is sitting on our doorstep yet about to be missed!

Next week, Joanne Roukens, Executive Director of the Highlands
Regional Library Cooperative (HRLC) in Denville, NJ, will present an NTRLS workshop entitled Valuing Libraries: Demonstrating the Contributions Libraries Make to Their Communities. Having seen the handouts and PowerPoint content, I'm concerned about how many library administrators, Board Members and Friends could probably use the information during this time of budgets yet have NOT signed up.

The all-day workshop will be offered Wednesday, August 1 in Decatur and Friday, August 3 at NTRLS Headquarters, 6320 Southwest Blvd. in Fort Worth.

Participants will:
• Learn to define what is valuable to customers and stakeholders
• Be able to identify and quantify their library’s value
• Learn tools and skills necessary to demonstrate library impact in writing and presenting.

All NTRLS workshops are available to interested parties at no cost. Please feel free to invite your Friends group, board members and volunteers.

To register online, go to http://www.ntrls.org/ and click on the Continuing Education button on the right.

More About LibraryThing for Libraries at Bedford Public Library

In response to all of the questions that were generated by the previous posting about LibraryThing for Libraries, Barbara Johnson has sent the following information:

The process was really easy. I read about LibraryThing for Libraries and thought it would be a great catalog enhancement so I contacted the company (www.librarything.com). They had me send them a tab delimited file of ISBNs, authors and titles from which they set up a demo. Once the demo was tested, they had me incorporate a few simple html snippets into my OPAC. LibraryThing used some CSS to make the style fit seamlessly with our OPAC design. Bedford uses Innovative Interfaces so the process for doing this may vary depending on your ILS. That was pretty much it. There was some tweaking and when there were problems LibraryThing came up with a solution. The people were very easy to work with and the whole process took only about a month. I encourage other libraries to consider using it. LibraryThing LibraryThing for Libraries Thing-ology Blog See Example - Cozy Mysteries

International Edible Book Festival.

An edible book is something shaped like a book, or that refers to a title or type of book, and you can eat it! There are many great ideas for refreshements for library events. To see examples of edible cookies, go to the festival page.



Orginally reported in Folusa's News Update, July 2007 edition.

Plinkit

Hi folks,

Just wanted to inform you, if some of you haven't heard yet, that the State library is running a project called plinkit. It is open source software for you to use to manage and create a wbesite. There are several ways to use the software for your needs, but primarly, the State Library will allow you to create a website and have them host it for you. If you are interested in having a website using plinkit, please feel free to contact me at the system office. My email is abeatty@ntrls.org and the phone number here is 800-856-3050. Everyone is able to use it, but theres only one of me to get to all of you so this will be addressed as a first come first serve priority response.

LibraryThing at Bedford Public Library

from Barbara Glassford Johnson, Technical Services Manager/Systems Administrator at Bedford Public Library:

Bedford Public Library recently implemented LibraryThing for Libraries in its catalog. We've posted info about it on our web site.

I think other libraries might be interested in it. The process of working with the folks at LibraryThing was super easy, and it has provided some great new functionality in our catalog.

http://www.bedfordlibrary.org/ 817.952.2335
______________________
Bedford Public Library adds LibraryThing for Libraries

Bedford Public Library became the second library in the nation to add
LibraryThing for Libraries to its online catalog. The new Amazon-like
feel to the online catalog is sure to appeal to patrons of all ages.
See us mentioned in LibraryThing's Thing-ology blog.
LibraryThing for Libraries will enhance our online catalog by allowing
users to view other editions, similar books and to search for items
using tags.
Other editions and translations: Links to audiobook editions and
Spanish-language versions of a title. See the title Foreign
Correspondent.
Similar books: Lists of similar books based on data from LibraryThing
and its members. See the title The Yiddish Policemen's Union.
Tags and Tag Browser: Tags are keywords and labels used by regular
people to categorize books as opposed to Library of Congress subject
headings which use a controlled vocabulary of predefined and
authorized terms. The tags come from LibraryThing's 17 million
member-added tags.
A simple "tag cloud" highlights some of the more popular terms people
use to describe a book. The larger a word appears in the "tag cloud"
the more people have used that term to describe the title thus it is
more relevant to the search. Tags with very low relevance appear very
small and may be meaningful only to the person who assigned it. Take a
look at this example: Cozy mysteries.
Incorporating LibraryThing for Libraries into our catalog will open up
valuable new ways for patrons to find books of interest to them. We
hope you enjoy this new catalog functionality.

TSLAC Rule Revisions

I received the following email from Deborah Littrell, Director, Library Development division at TSLAC. It goes over the proposed rule changes to Membership requirements. If you would like to comment on these rule changes, please go here.

---------------------------------------------------------------
Coordinators:
I forgot to discuss this at the meeting on Thursday. We posted some minor rule revisions after the commission meeting in June. See the June 29 issue of the Texas Register http://texinfo.library.unt.edu/texasregister/html/2007/jun-29/index.html

The comment period extends until July 29. Please note that comments should be sent in writing to Chris Jowaisas. Most of this is clean-up of wording and deleting outdated material.

There is one item to note - rule 1.81 we propose adding this for population groups 25,000 and over: employ a library director for at least 40 hours per week in library duties

This mirrors the requirement for libraries serving under 25,000.

Note also the addition to 1.84 to handle the issue of librarians who had been grandfathered into a grade one certificate.

Please share with your members and let me know if you have any questions. Thanks

Photo Synth

I found this new technology that I think will revolutionize the way we handle photos, books and magazines at libraries and also the web as we know it today. Think of this as Super Microfiche. Please click the link for the demo below:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129

enjoy!


P.S. heres a link to the online demo of the product, you will need to install the active x when prompted:

http://labs.live.com/photosynth/view.html?collection=sanmarco/index1.sxs

NTRLS Certified Library Computer Technologist Class

Hi folks,

This is my first blog post, and I just wanted to say that the first NTRLS Certified Library Computer Technologist class was a success. We had a full class and I look forward to seeing all of you at the next one. Also I would like to share that we will be doing 2 sessions of the classes. The second session of part 1 is being held in Wichita Falls at George Moffett Library at MWSU for the western libraries in our system.

See ya'll there

System Coordinator and Consultant Meetings

I spent Thursday and Friday in Austin at the System Coordinator and System Consultant meetings. Here are some highlights:

Coordinator's Meeting:

- Deborah Littrell advised us to remind System members that the amount of local funding support needed for System membership went up in FY2007 and will continue to increment until 2015. If you do not meet this membership criteria, your library will be placed on probation. Your library will then have three years to make up the difference before losing System membership.

- Dr. Lwey Hing Jeng, director of TWU SLIS, spoke briefly on their new MLS program for small libraries. You can find more information here.

- Debra Gibson reminded all the coordinators about the NETLS Media Program. This program is a collection of public performing videos which can be checked out and shown at your library. NTRLS is paying the fee to allow all NTRLS member libraries to participate.

-External Funding Request Prior Approval forms were introduced. These forms will need to be filled out by Systems before pursuing any activities to raise external funds. NTRLS has already filled out one for adding fee-based services to ntrls.org.

-Wendy Clark went over the first draft of awards granted through the Loan Star Libraries program. The final grant awards will be announced in August. If you want to your listed award on the draft document, please let me know.

-Long Range Plans for 2010 and 2011 are due to TSLAC by February 1, 2008. NTRLS will be working closely with NTRLS staff, NTRLS Board of Directors and member libraries on constructing the plan. At the same time, NTRLS will also putting together a fresh five year plan for 2009 to 2013. TSLAC went over the firs preliminary draft of the long range plan guidelines.

Consultant's Meeting
At this meeting, each System shared what they had planned for 2008. TSLAC then shared their planned activities for 2008. Lots of neat workshops on the horizon all over the state. For more information, check out the CE portal. We also discussed the Plinkit program, which is a web hosting service that TSLAC is launching where libraries can create websites at no cost. If you are interested in participating in Plinkit, please contact Adam Beatty at the System office. It was also revealed that in 2008 there will be a Teen Reading Club along with the usual Summer Reading Club. Great Stuff.

Copies of Library Construction Survey

Because I received - just yesterday - a request for the same information that the COSLA survey is collecting, I'd really appreciate your taking the time to cut and paste that completed survey into an email message or word document and sending it to me at dweisman@ntrls.org. I'll compile the results and make them available to the libraries in our area.

Thanks!

National Construction Survey

TSLAC's Library Systems Grants Administrator Chris Jowaisas has asked systems to distribute the following information to all member libraries. Before you read the message, you may need to know the following:

COSLA is an independent organization of the Chief Officers of state and territorial agencies designated as the State Library administrative Agency and responsible for statewide library development.

The link individual libraries should use to complete the survey is http://www.njstatelib.org/LDB/cosla/cosla1.php .

Use the name of your city or county as the "library jurisdiction name."

If you need to look up the State and House districts in which your library is located, go to http://gis1.tlc.state.tx.us/ for answers to " State Senate District Number" and "State Assembly (House) District Number." You can also use that site to look up the U.S. House district in which your library is located, or go to http://www.house.gov/ and complete the zip code look-up box in the upper left-hand corner.

Unless your library has multiple buildings, completing the survey should go quickly; most - if not all - of the 20 (total) questions can be answered in less time than it takes to read the question. Libraries with branches or multiple buildings will need to submit a response for each building.

The deadline for responses from all libraries is August 31, 2007.

Even TSLAC is having to complete the survey.

You may contact Chris Jowaisas at christopher.jowaisas@tsl.state.tx.us or 512/936-2236.

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2007 12:19 PM

M E M O R A N D U M
TO: COSLA Members
From: Norma Blake, New Jersey State Librarian
Subject: National Construction Survey
Date: June 21, 2007

This year, the COSLA Legislative Committee chaired by Ken Wiggins, Connecticut State Librarian, decided that a national library construction survey was needed in order for State Library agencies to compile data on their states' library construction needs. Once compiled, this data would be used by State Library agencies to advocate for federal public library construction funding.

I am pleased to send you two surveys developed by the New Jersey State Library which will enable COSLA to collect this data. The New Jersey State Library IT Department has posted the surveys online.

As discussed at the COSLA meeting in Washington, D.C., please send a letter or email to the libraries in your state, provide them with the following link, http://www.njstatelib.org/LDB/cosla/cosla1.php, and ask them to complete this survey online by August 31st, 2007.

Using the data from these surveys, the New Jersey State Library IT Department will be able to compile a complete report for our use at the fall COSLA meeting.

We appreciate your help with gathering this information so that COSLA can move forward in advocating for federal construction funding.

Norma E. Blake, State Librarian
New Jersey State Library
185 W. State Street
PO Box 520
Trenton, NJ 08625-0520
nblake@njstatelib.org
609-292-6201
fax: 609-292-2746
http://www.blogger.com/www.njstatelib.org

UPDATE Regarding Professional Education for Small Community Librarians (PESCL) Program

We just received this information from Library Management Consultant Dawn Vogler at TSLAC and wanted to be sure to pass it on right away.

TSLAC met with the folks from TWU and TLA last night about this grant. Questions have been coming in that I wasn't able to answer specifically. So, here are a few answers:

Applicants do need a Bachelor's degree to apply!

Preference will be given to those that have completed the SLM program. However, you won't necessarily be penalized if you have one course missing if you have intention of completing it in the future. There is some flexibility here. I did let Dr. Martin and Dr. Jeng know that we had a weather issue last December in Amarillo and though we had a make-up date, there are still some out there missing a few hours. They indicated that this would not be a problem.

Those interested in applying need to take a standardized test. There are some options here, so it's not just the GRE:
GRE, GMAT, LSAT, MCAT or Miller's Analogy Test (MAT) scores are accepted.
I hadn't heard of the MAT, so here is more information in the link below. Some may find this test of analytical skills more palatable than the GRE where more math is involved: http://harcourtassessment.com/haiweb/Cultures/en-US/Harcourt/Community/PostSecondary/Products/MAT/mathome.htm

There is NO minimum score required for graduate admission to TWU. They cannot advertise this fact, but said I could pass the word on. I know many of you feared taking the GRE, but this will not be a large factor in admissions.

They prefer 5 or more years of library experience - it does not have to be at the Director level and they will take some volunteer positions into account.
If you started an MLS program at another university, you will not be discounted from this program if you meet the qualifications. You don't necessarily have to reveal that you started a program if you only have a semester in. However, those that are further into another program, can only transfer up to 6 graduate hours to TWU.

Applicants will be notified in December 2007 of acceptance into the cohort. Application deadline is October 15, 2007.

They are expecting a high level of dedication to this program for the entire 2 years, plus participation at TLA through 2010. Though some attrition is expected due to family emergencies and life changes, they are looking for people who are going to stay the course with this program. So, you might want to emphasize how you are going to juggle such a program with your work duties in your letter of intent. Will your city be kind enough to give you work time to complete the program? If so, what a bonus, tell them so in the application! If you've participated in TLA, also let them know.

You need broadband access to complete the online program.

Applicants will first be accepted into the program like any other applicant to TWU's SLIS program. Once you pass that hurdle, you will then be passed on to Dr. Martin and Dr. Jeng (and possibly an advisory board they are assembling now), for further consideration. Phone interviews may be conducted.

Drs. Martin and Jeng are aiming for an in-person orientation over the MLK holiday weekend for those accepted.

Should you have more specific questions, see the website and the contacts here: http://www.twu.edu/cope/slis/pelsc.htm
I'm very excited about this opportunity and wish you all the best of luck! If you aren't one of the first 30, there may be another opportunity like this in the future.

Thanks, Dawn
Dawn Vogler
Library Management Consultant
Texas State Library & Archives Commission PO Box 12927 Austin, TX 78711-2927
(512) 936-4449 phone
(512) 463-8800 fax

ATRT Website Scorecard

In the latest issue of the Texas Library Journal, an article written by Diane Neal, Texas Woman's University, and Cary Herzig, The Colony Public Library, highlights a website scorecard. This scorecard is meant as a way for libraries to gauge the effectiveness of their websites. I served as chair of the Automation and Technology Round Table sub-committee that developed the scorecard so I volunteered to host the scorecard on the NTRLS server. You can find the scorecard here. Thanks to all the committee members who put so much hard work into the project.

seniorspaces.blogspot.com

This message comes from Allan Kleiman, whom some of you may remember as having been the presenter for a TSLAC Serving Older Populations workshop a few years ago.

"Because we have had so many requests about the project, below you can find links to news stories and photos about "senior spaces."If you have any additional questions, please e-mail me at: seniorspaces@oldbridgelibrary.org.

We will continue to add to the blog at: seniorspaces.blogspot.com over the summer.

Here are the links:
Library Wooing Boomers
http://www.thnt.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070702/NEWS010223/707020402/1005/NEWS01

Library Opens Cozy Section for Seniors http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070702/NEWS03/707020329/1007

Opening Day Photos Taken by Nancy Dowd, NJ State Library http://www.flickr.com/photos/thewordblog/sets/72157600337533109/

Senior Spaces Designed for Older Library-Goers http://suburban.gmnews.com/news/2007/0621/Front_Page/043.html

Senior Spaces Under Construction Photos Taken by Tim Niland
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=senior+spaces&m=tags

OBPL's Craft Club "Adopts" Senior Spaces
http://www.flickr.com/photos/obpl/537172810/

Let us know what you think about the project. Our next phase will also include the development of programming activities in conjunction with our newly formed Senior Spaces Advisory Board."

Allan M. Kleiman
Past Chair, ALA RUSA RSS Library Service to an Aging Population Committee
Chair, RUSA/OLOS White House Conference on Aging Task Force Member,
OLOS Subcommittee on Library Service to Older Adults
http://www.libraryolderadults.blogspot.com/
Assistant Library Director
Old Bridge Public Library
1 Old Bridge Plaza
Old Bridge, NJ 08857-2498
732-721-5600, ext. 5042
kleiman@aol.com
http://www.seniorspaces.blogspot.com/
http://www.oldbridgelibrary.org/

Advertise Your Book Sale!

Be sure your library is listed on Book Sale Finder! A one stop site to publicize your booksale as well as see what other libraries are doing.