Friday Notes

October 3, 2006

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Check out the NEILSA main page at: http://neilsa.org

THE LSA:

Send us an digital photo of your library to post on the NELISA web site, we would like to promote every one of our libraries. It's one way to use flickr.

County Library Association Presidents/Chairs PLEASE send Ken a list of your meetings for 2007 and any special activities in which you will be participating, such as county fair, Supervisors Round Robin, Legislative Days et. al.

Whats New blog Let us know what you have been up to. New programs, old programs that worked well, announcements, changes in personell, all the kinds of things that many of you share at county association meetings when you do your Round Robin sessions (some do some don't). The link: http://neilsa.org/weblogs/announcement.php. Send announcements to Eunice for inclusion/posting at: riesberg@neilsa.org

Model Trustee By-Laws are at: http://neilsa.org/consulting/boardbylaws.html

CE:

Kid Safety on the Internet - November 20 9:00 - 12 noon Waterloo Public Library A & B - Fee: Free Registration now open on the statewide CE catalog.

You wouldn't let kids ride their bike/drive a car on the roads & highways without training, why let them do so on the Internet super highway?

Parents of Literacy Partners - Overview
March 19 & 26, 2007 -- Locations & Fee TBD
Parents are critical to children's readiness for reading, learning, and school. Public librarians have a key role in helping parents learn how to help their children prepare. Mary Cameron will take participants through an overview of a parent-training model that librarians can use with teachers to train parents on early literacy strategies. A more detailed training will be scheduled for those making a commitmentto participate in the project at a later date.

Grow Your Own @ your library grants
PLA is now accepting applications for its popular ?Grow Your Own @ your library? institutional scholarship. This year, PLA will award nine public libraries with grants of $8,000 each to be distributed to staff members who are working to obtain a master?s degree in library and information science. One library from each of the nine Public Library Data Service (PLDS) population categories will be selected....

Great CE delivered right to your desktop! Registration for YALSA's fall session of e-courses opened Aug. 21st. The session will run from Oct. 2-30. The courses are meant to be the equivalent of a full day workshop. The cost is $135 for YALSA members, $175 for ALA members, and $195 for non members. To register go to www.ala.org/yalsa. Three courses will be offered, full discriptions in New Friday Notes 08/25/2006:

PLA announces new start dates for e-learning courses
E-Learning @ PLA,? the online education program of the Public Library Association, will offer five new start dates for two of its popular courses. New Planning for Results and Creating Policies for Results will each be offered five times between September 2006 and April 2007....

OPAL: Online Programming for All Libraries--And All Library Users

NEW: Streaming Audio Preview of OPAL online events coming in July (playback time: 6 minutes) NEW: Streaming Video Introduction to OPAL (Windows Media Video file; playback time 2 minutes, 39 seconds)

FROM: http://www.opal-online.org/

We are planning a DEMCO Book Repair Workshop for sometime this fall, Ken will still do a workshop at county association meetings if requested and scheduled anead of time.

STUFF:

Technology Made Simple, an improvement guide for small and medium-sized libraries by Kimberly Boland and Robert Cullen, offers clear answers to overcoming technical challenges. Published by ALA Editions (Sept. 2006).

Check out the new reference librarian on the web - Ms Dewey

Opening arguments presented in COPA challenge
The American Civil Liberties Union presented opening arguments October 23 in its legal challenge to the Child Online Protection Act. The law, which was passed in 1998 but never enforced due to injunctions and lower court decisions, requires commercial websites to obtain proof of age before providing material considered harmful to minors. The ACLU counters that filtering programs are a more effective means of protecting children....

Blogging the COPA trial
Rufus Griscom, founder and CEO of the popular erotica website Nerve, is spending two weeks blogging the ACLU vs. Gonzales trial, aka the Child Online Protection Act case. Nerve, Salon.com, and other plaintiffs backed by the American Civil Liberties Union are suing over the 1998 act that could restrict constiutionally protected material from being published online?exposing website owners to fines or even jail time. The Justice Department argues that it is easier to stop online pornography at the source than to keep children from viewing it. Warning: This blog contains ?Gratuitous COPA-violating free nudity.?... Rufus Griscom, Nerve blog, Oct. 24

A site worth 70 million words
A major portion of the photographic collections of the Los Angeles Public Library are now accessible online and sometimes downloadable for free. The website?s popularity has transformed Curator of Photographs Carolyn Kozo Cole and her staff into tastemakers, responsible for anticipating what kinds of images the public wants and for offering their own selections for what makes Los Angeles L.A. They carefully choose images to add to the database, which today includes about 70,000 photographs and is growing by 250?300 images a week....
Los Angeles Times, Oct. 22

Volunteer finds mystery box at Worthington Library
The Worthington (Ohio) Library is trying to unravel a mystery involving a box found in a pile of donated books. Volunteer Irene Candy was sorting donated books when she discovered a box containing 19th-century papers and an artifact that might be even older....
WCMH-TV, Columbus, Ohio, Oct.

Technically Speaking: Giving homegrown software its due
Andrew Pace writes: ?Something rather exciting happened this fall in the world of the integrated library system. On September 5, 252 public libraries in Georgia?s Public Information Network for Electronic Services (PINES) went live with Evergreen, a homegrown and open-source ILS. Impressive.?...
American Libraries, Nov., pp. 50?51

The internet at risk
The future of the Internet is up for grabs. Last year, the FCC effectively eliminated net neutrality rules, which ensured that every content creator on the internet?from big-time media concerns to backroom bloggers?had equal opportunity to make their voice heard. Now, large and powerful corporations are lobbying Washington to turn the Web into what critics call a ?toll road.? Watch this excellent PBS program, hosted by Bill Moyers, online...
Moyers on America, Oct. 18

Computing, 2016: What won't be possible?
Steve Lohr considers the future of computing and reviews the discussions at the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board symposium held in Washington in October....

New York Times, Oct. 31Increasingly, libraries are the place to learn English
The Milford (Mass.) Town Library is one of many libraries around Boston?s western suburbs and the country that have taken on a new mission?teaching immigrants English. The growth in ESL offerings at libraries in response to a growing demand over the past 15 to 20 years?and a concurrent decline in traditional adult literacy programs?is a nationwide trend....
Boston Globe, Oct. 19

British Library allows free access to English Short Title Catalogue
The English Short Title Catalogue, the product of a partnership between the University of California at Riverside, the British Library, and the American Antiquarian Society, was made available for searching online beginning October 30. The ESTC provides bibliographic records for all surviving letter press material in the British Isles and North America before 1801, held by the British Library and more than 2,000 other institutions....
University of California at Riverside, Oct. 30

"The Librarian" now a comic book series
Atlantis Studios has released the first in a series of comics featuring adventurer-librarian Flynn Carson. Originally appearing in the popular made-for-cable film The Librarian: Quest for the Spear, Carson is back and this time his mission is to prevent the powerful Key of Solomon from falling into the hands of a ruthless warlord. He needs to locate the legendary mines of King Solomon before disaster strikes. An eight-page preview is available....
Atlantis Studios

Interval library
University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee music student Kim Huston produced this video (2:33) featuring classical music and compact shelving. ?It was sort of a ?What happens after hours? type of thing ... kinda.?...
YouTube
Registration is now available for Teen Tech Week, March 4?10, a YALSA celebration aimed at getting teens to use libraries for the different technologies offered there.

Internet threatens traditional publishing model
Publishers could be the internet piracy boom's next victims after the music industry, but the Web might also be their salvation, the head of the International Publishers Association says. Ana Maria Cabanellas, speaking at the world?s biggest book fair in Frankfurt, Germany, said the industry felt it was under attack from the internet search engine Google and its drive to post the world's books online....
Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald, Oct. 19

WebJunction receives Gates Foundation grant
WebJunction, an online community for library staff to share ideas, solve problems, and do online coursework, has been awarded a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant to enhance website usability and help it keep pace with a growing audience and range of content. The $2-million grant will fund critical development for one year, which will include a redesign to improve organization and navigation, and the development of improved search functions....
OCLC, Oct. 20

DUE DATES:

NEILSA closed dates: 11/10, 11/23 & 24, 12/25 & 26, 1/1/2007

• October 27 -- Arlington 09:30 Fayette County Meeting KD
• October 30 - Annual Survey due at SLI
• Nov. 2 at 7:00 p.m. at the Spillville Public Library - Winneshiek County Meeting - KD
• Nov. 3 - ILA Planning Meeting KD
• November 16 2007 9:30 Fayette County Meeting West Union KD
• November 13 - 19 - Children's Book Week
• November 20 - Kid Safety on the Internet
• November 23 & 24 NEILSA Closed for Thanksgiving
• December 25 & 26 NEILSA Closed for Christmas

The State Library's 2006 calendar http://www.silo.lib.ia.us

Traffic Counter available on loan from the NEILSA
Experts agree that accurately counting patron traffic with a people counter is the way you can make sound strategic decisions. With help from a Sensource counter, your library can easily evaluate staffing needs, hours and more. With hard data you can be confident that your decisions are based on facts not guesswork.

If you are interested in using the counter, contact Ken at NEILSA to reserve a time slot. If you would like to learn more about how you can use the readings from the counter to better manage the library and to explain to Boards/City Councils your staffing/use decisions we can arrange that at the same time.

LIBRARY SERVICE AREA BOARD Meeting
The public is encouraged and welcome to attend.

NEXT NEILSA Board meeting: Nov. 13, 2006 2:00 p.m., Clermont Public Library