Thursday, December 07, 2006

New Friday Notes: notes for next week The life so short, the craft so long to learn ANNOUNCEMENTS: The Independence Public Library is in the midst of fundraising for their new library building.  Recently they were awarded with a $550,000 grant from the CAT (Community Attraction and Tourism) Board, which is part of Vision Iowa.  The fundraising total has just passed $2.5 million of the $3 million goal.  The library will start to go through the formal process that leads to bidding and plans on breaking ground in the spring.  The planned completion for the new Independence Public Library, which will give them six times the space they have now, is spring of '08!! Check out the NEILSA main page at: http://neilsa.org THE LSA: We need to know now that your're getting individual e-mail addresses more often with PLOW, which one or ones you want subscribed to mail lists. Mary our new e-rate clerk quit Thursday at 9:38. Today in EYE-OPENER: {Thanks to Bonnue in NW LSA} 1)  Sad Loss for Spencer Library 2)  A Plea to PLOW Participants 3)  The “Mature Web” Reaches 100 Million Sites 1)  Sad Loss for Spencer Library: Dewey the Library Cat, the beloved pet at Spencer P.L., died last week at age 19.  Dewey was famous the world over, the subject of countless local, national, and international news stories and magazine articles through the years. He had pen pals in Japan England, Canada, South Africa, Belgium, and France.  He was prominently featured on Spencer Library’s website and the staff found that if you Google his name, you’ll come up with about 200 hits.  Most everyone knows the story of how Spencer P.L. staff found a near-frozen kitten in the book drop one fateful January morning in 1988.  His full name, Dewey Readmore Books, was chosen as the result of a community wide cat-naming contest; that contest generated 387 entries.  Dewey quickly settled into his new life as a library mascot.  His celebrity status helped raise thousands of dollars for the library’s Friends Group.  And his obituary made the front page of Friday’s Sioux City Journal, along with national newswires.  Dewey proved an amazing PR force for Spencer Library—and he’s sorely missed.     2)  A Plea to PLOW Participants: With the first round of required PLOW (Putting Libraries on the Web) classes finished, participants have been busy setting up email accounts for all staff members.  A plea from me to you: please let us know here at NWILS office about your new email addresses. [Same goes for NEILSA] We definitely need all you directors’ new email handles.  And since one advantage of the PLOW Project is more targeted communications to individuals on staff, we’d also like to learn the new email addresses for your children’s services people and your interlibrary loan people.  Messages are beginning to bounce here, so thanks for letting NWILS office know your new email as your accounts take hold!    3)  The “Mature Web” Reaches 100 Million Sites:  Yes indeed, the PLOW Project allows multiple email accounts for each library.  But the greatest benefit will be new and improved library websites hosted by SILO.  In light of Iowa’s PLOW Project, with 300+ libraries participating statewide—and 60+ of those being Northwest public libraries—here’s a neat article that round-aboutly points to PLOW’s significance.  From the November 13th issue of OCLC Abstracts, according to Netcraft’s latest web survey, there are now 101,435,253 websites worldwide.  The article explains “…not all of these sites are live: some are ‘parked’ domains while others are abandoned weblogs that haven’t been updated in ages. Nevertheless, there are still over 100 million websites that people pay to keep running.  Surpassing the 100M mark is a big milestone and represents immense growth since the Web’s founding 15 years ago.  A chart shows the World Wide Web has experienced growth in 3 stages: 1991—1997: Explosive growth at a rate of 850% each year 1998—2001: Rapid growth at a rate of 150% each year 2002—2006: Maturing growth at a rate of 25% each year All good stuff to use locally in touting your library’s participation in PLOW, along with this final quote:“…the web is no longer a marvel of innovation, it’s an everyday tool, and you [website developers] differentiate yourself by providing better content and better solutions to users’ problems…” CE: The next LIBRARY 101 is set for December 12th at West Union - Registration required or site is canceled, other sites by request. UW-Madison SLIS, Continuing Education Services announces their Winter/Spring 2007 Online Courses. Complete course information and registration instructions may be found on their website, http://www.slis.wisc.edu/continueed Questions? Contact Anna Palmer (ahpalmer@wisc.edu) or 608-263-4452 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 of 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/ STUFF: Kids not so tech-savvy after all A new survey dispels the myth that the next generation of kids are tech- savvy to be competent in navigating the academic world, reports Campus Technology. Microsoft is releasing Live Search Books, its competitor to Google Book Search, in beta on Wednesday. The book search engine performs keyword searches for books that have been scanned as part of Microsoft's book scanning project, in the same way that Windows Live Search searches the Internet, said Danielle Tiedt, the general manager of Live Search Selection for Microsoft. REPEAT: County Library Association Presidents/Chairs PLEASE send Ken a list of your meetings for 2007 and any spcial activities in which you will be participating, such as county fair, Supervisors Round Robin, Legislative Days et. al. Reminder: as libraries move to new email addresses with the PLOW project, they need to let NEILSA know of the change VAN Service: AEA 267 last delivery date will be Thursday & Friday, December 21 & 22, 2006.  They will resume delivery on Thursday & Friday, January 4 & 5, 2007. AEA 1 last delivery date will be Monday & Tuesday, December 18 & 19, 2006.  They will resume deliver on Thursday & Friday, January 4 & 5, 2007   Dear Friends of North-eastern Iowa Libraries, Greetings from the Friends of the Decorah Public Library. We have for some time thought that we all should be sharing more ideas of what good things we are doing and examples we might take from each other that could strengthen our various endeavours. While there are many activities that we have done over the past several years one production we would be willing to share that we are excited about and has proven helpful to our work is a power point program that we have developed to present both the work of our Library and our Friends group to the community at various groups and clubs. If you would be interested to see our presentation as a possible model which you might develop for your Library and community feel free to contact Lois Roberts, 506 Mound Street Decorah, IA 52101 or Lorraine Borowski, Decorah Public Library 202 Winnebago Street, Decorah IA 52101. Jim Dale Decorah Friends of the Library Chair Send us an e-photo of your library [flicker it] to post on the NELISA web site, we would like to promote every one of our libraries. Whats New blog - this is for your use and comments. 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 LINKS: Learning Activity Written Summary: http://www.statelibraryofiowa.org/ld/continuing-ed/learnactform/?searchterm=Learning%20Activity LSA web site: http://www.ilsa.lib.ia.us/siteindex.htm NEILSA continuing education  http://www.neilsa.org/classes/current.html NEILSA e-rate Consortia  Blog ttp://www.neilsa.org/cblog/index.cfm NEILSA monthly calendar - http://www.neilsa.org/ncalendar/ncalendarmonth.cfm NEILSA web site: http://neilsa.org NEILSA yearly calendar - http://www.neilsa.org/ncalendar/ncalendar_results.cfm NEILSA Friday Notes archives at: http://www.neilsa.org/fridays/friday.html NWILSA Blog: http://nwilsblog.blogspot.com State Calendar - http://www.silo.lib.ia.us/news/calendars/2005calendar.pdf State Library CE web site at: http://www.silo.lib.ia.us/for-ia-libraries/continuing-ed/index.html USAC (e-rate): http://www.sl.universalservice.org/ DUE DATES: County Library Association Presidents/Chairs PLEASE send Ken a list of your meetings for 2007 and any spcial activities in which you will be participating, such as county fair, Supervisors Round Robin, Legislative Days et. al. NEILSA closed dates: 12/25 & 26, 1/1/2007 December 25 & 26 NEILSA Closed for Christmas January 27th Fayette CLA Legislative Day is Saturday, from 9:00-10:30 April 3 at Shell Rock, Benny Gambiani Library Butler County Library Association Meeting April 19th Fayette Spring Meeting is at 9:30 at the Arlington Public Library September 19th Fayette Fall Meeting is at the Clermont Public Library at 6:00 p.m Oct. 2 at Allison Public LibraryButler County Library Association Meeting The State Library's 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. The fine print stuff blog - Friday Notes 2 AT - http://radio.weblogs.com/0108327/ EDITORS NOTES: "x" & "xx" are catalogers shorthand for: x = See & xx = See also Edited by: Ken Davenport - NEILSA Consultant davenport@neilsa.org COPYLEFT NOTICE 2002: THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION IS FREE. It may be copied, distributed and/or modified under the conditions set down in the Design Science License published by Michael A at http://dsl.org/copyleft/dsl.txt COPYRIGHT Please note: material found on the web should be assumed to be under copyright and is presented here for purposes of education and research only. NOTE: If credited [via ???] or [from so & so] it is their material and not covered by my "Copyleft" notice. Ken LIBRARY SERVICE AREA BOARD Meeting The public is encouraged and welcome to attend. Next meeting Jan. 13, 2007 2:00 p.m., ICN (sites tba) 4:50:42 PM