[wavelinks] New Issue of TBLC's Wavelinks
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Thu Apr 28 11:13:02 EDT 2005
TBLC Newsletter
Newsletter of the Tampa Bay Library Consortium Spring
Issue
Great things are happening at TBLC this spring. Excellent new staff
have joined us - Jennifer Sullivan as Virtual Reference Coordinator and
Tracey Reed as Resource Sharing Coordinator. The Ask a Librarian program is
reaching out to K-12 schools and students. The Cultural Heritage /
Digitization project is moving from planning and preparation to
implementation. We are adding a new Group Purchase, downloadable audio
books, to help member libraries provide this exciting new product to their
users. And somewhere along the way staff were able to upgrade the training
lab and give it a bright new look.
Inside this issue:
TBLC Hires New Staff
Ask a Librarian Adds K-12 Focus
Downloadable Audio Books Available Through Group Purchase
TBLC Moves Forward on Digitization
TBLC Training Lab gets New Look
Something’s Always Buzzing
Mark your Calendar
Upcoming Workshops
TBLC Hires New Staff
Tampa Bay Library Consortium (TBLC) has hired two new staff members –
Tracey Reed as Resource Sharing Coordinator and Jennifer Sullivan as Virtual
Reference Coordinator.
Tracey will coordinate the overall operation and promotion of
iBorrow/Alleycat, TBLC’s user initiated Interlibrary Loan System that allows
users to simultaneously search participating library catalogs and request
books. Tracey will also present training on TBLC technology based services
and help the organization and its members learn about and adopt new
technologies.
Before joining TBLC, Tracey worked as a Trainer, Webmaster, and
Systems Analyst at Clearwater Public Library. At Clearwater, she trained
patrons, coordinated the staff- training program and assisted in planning
for technology in Clearwater’s new 90,000 square feet main library.
As the Virtual Reference Coordinator, Jennifer will primarily be
training, scheduling, and providing day-to-day support for participants in
the statewide reference chat service, Ask a Librarian. Jennifer will also
coordinate with our partners, The College Center for Library Automation
(CCLA) to chart the future success of Ask a Librarian.
Before coming to TBLC, Jennifer was an Adult Services Librarian at the
Manatee County Public Library and was heavily involved in the Ask a
Librarian project. As a local site coordinator, Jennifer managed Manatee
County’s local participation in the service. Jennifer also has been a
leading member of the project’s Quality Assurance Workgroup and a member of
the Ask a Librarian Advisory Committee.
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Ask a Librarian Adds K-12 Focus
Ask a Librarian continues to grow and now reaches over 1000 users a
month, through 85 Florida Libraries. Ask a Librarian has now begun to work
with school systems throughout Florida. Palm Beach County was the first
school system to sign up and will be going live in May. Janeen Pelser, the
Site Coordinator for the School District of Palm Beach County, is very
excited to be able to provide students in her district with the opportunity
to chat with a librarian and receive expert help with online resources and
research. She comments, "The kids are already using chat at home; this
brings the librarian into their space where we can communicate with them and
show them the resources available."
In the coming months, Jennifer Sullivan will be working with CCLA and
the marketing team for the Florida Electronic Library to continue efforts to
market Ask a Librarian to various school districts and libraries throughout
Florida. Ask a Librarian can help students with research, evaluating online
resources and finding facts. Ask a Librarian is also a great tool to
increase students' information literacy and technology skills.
For more information on Ask a Librarian, visit its information site
at: http://info.askalibrarian.org/ or check out the article “Ask a Librarian
Gives Florida Libraries Something to Chat about”
(http://info.askalibrarian.org/pdf/wppl.pdf) in the March/April 2005 issue
of Public Libraries.
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TBLC Moves Forward on Digitization
TBLC is excited to begin a Cultural Heritage/Digitization project with
eight member libraries in 2005. The participating libraries are: Bay Pines
VA Hospital, Heritage Village of Pinellas County, John and Mable Ringling
Museum of Art, Lake Wales Public Library, Largo Library, Mote Marine
Laboratory, Stetson University College of Law, and the University of Tampa.
A shared database located at the TBLC offices will house digitized images
and descriptive metadata records. Initially the database will include mainly
historical photographs and documents, but as the project continues other
types of digitized resources will be included.
Project implementation is proceeding. Staff from several participating
libraries have been trained in creating metadata records and scanning
materials from their collections. Richard Bernardy and Walter Rowe of USF
Tampa’s Digitization Services Department are assisting in the project
implementation and providing training for library staff. Bernardy designed
the database software being used for the project.
Scanners and PCs have been purchased to loan to libraries for use in
the project. Setup of the database will be complete in May, and libraries
will begin adding resources to the database. The searchable database will be
web-accessible.
We hope to continue the project in the 2005-06 year and add content
from additional libraries. If you are interested in participating in the
TBLC Cultural Heritage/Digitization project, please contact Ellen Cannon at
813-622-8252 or cannone at tblc.org
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TBLC Training Lab Gets New Look
The March 30 class, Weblog Boot Camp taught by Shirl Kennedy was the
first to use the newly renovated training lab at TBLC. With brightened walls
and new PCs and furniture, the new look gives the training room both a
professional and airy feel.
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Downloadable Audio Books Available Through Group Purchase
TBLC has an exciting new group purchase opportunity - downloadable
audio books. Working with OverDrive to offer access to our members, users
will be able to download audio books from their home PCs. OverDrive carries
a growing collection of popular unabridged audio titles in a variety of
genres.
Patrons can listen via PC/notebook, burn to CD, or transfer audio
files to over 500 devices, including many popular MP3 players. OverDrive
supports both dial-up and broadband users and includes accessibility
features for blind and visually impaired. OverDrive provides free software
for audio book management, listening, transferring, and burning to CD.
OverDrive Audio Books was recently featured in The New York Times and
on NBC Nightly News, and is now being offered by dozens of public libraries
across the nation. OverDrive offers thousands of popular audio books titles
in digital format that can be downloaded by patrons from their homes,
schools, or offices.
Over 30 leading audio book publishers are now offering their titles as
part of OverDrive's Digital Library Reserve service. They include
best-selling unabridged fiction, children's titles, and non-fiction from
Brilliance Audio, Blackstone Audiobooks, Books in Motion, Penton Overseas,
McGraw-Hill Audio, and dozens more.
For more on OverDrive and to see a list of other participating
libraries, visit: http://www.dlrinc.com. To be a participating library, the
cost is $4400. This cost includes:
· Integration of titles to your online catalog
· Chance to be part of selection team
· Opening collection valued at $12,500
To be part of this group opportunity, complete the purchase order and
library profile form at:
http://www.tblc.org/technology/eresource.shtml#group by April 29, 2005 or
contact Diana Sachs, sachsd at tblc.org.
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Something’s Always Buzzing
You’ve heard it whispered in the stacks; pages in the staff room
murmur the word. The morning news teases the story until you leave for
work – and you miss it. Your kids come home and rattle off about the latest
something, but you don’t quite catch it.
Well, strain no more – welcome to Something’s Always Buzzing. The
place to learn a little about the technological buzz and how it can work for
you & your library.
In this issue: Blogs and the Blogging Bloggers who Blog Them.
FLA was buzzing with them. The wireless connection at Computers in
Libraries and ACRL allowed for “real time blogging”. So, what exactly is a
blog?
A blog, or web log (or weblog), is essentially a web page that gets
updated frequently. Often, there’s a place for people to leave comments
about what has been added. So why the big deal? Well, because they are easy
to update, much of the current news and hot information is available there
first. They have a personal spin as well, which allows people to identify
with, or rail against, the blogger (AKA the writer of the blog).
So what does this mean to libraries? Two things come to mind:
1) It’s a quick way to get the word out to your users of interesting
programs, news and other events/items of interest and allow them to respond
to you and each other.
2) It’s a way to stay current with what’s happening around the library
world on a more personal level than the journals. Often, blogs work as a
complement to email groups.
Starting a blog is as easy or as difficult as you want to make it.
Sites such as LiveJournal (www.livejournal.com) and Blogger
(www.blogger.com) allow you to create free blogs and update them via the
web. For those who wish to have more control than these free services will
give, programs such as Moveable Type (www.sixapart.com/movabletype) and
WordPress (www.wordpress.org) are used on your own servers to create blogs.
As with everything, there are pros and cons to each type and each vendor.
Libraries are starting to use blogs and the best example I’ve found
recently is from Lansing (IL) Public Library (www.lansing.lib.il.us) where
they have blogs for Adult, Teen, Youth and New On This Website news.
Librarians have been blogging for awhile – one of the first (if not the
first) is LISnews.com (www.lisnews.com). When I last counted, there were
over 100 more U.S. library-related or librarian blogs out there. Find one
(or more) you’re interested in at Library Weblogs
(www.libdex.com/weblogs.html#us).
Send comments or questions about Something’s Always Buzzing to Tracey
Reed at reedt at tblc.org.
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Mark Your Calendar
Several big events are on the horizon this year. TBLC’s annual meeting
date will be on November 3 at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota. More
information will be available soon.
The annual VIP (Very Important Paraprofessional) Conference is on
Friday, May 13th at St Petersburg College St. Pete/Gibbs Campus. The event
will have hands-on computer sessions, panel discussions and presentations on
over 30 topics. For more information please visit the web site at:
http://www.spjc.edu/webcentral/btw/VIP.htm.
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Upcoming Workshops
Several exciting workshops have been added to the TBLC training
calendar. TBLC bring the LITA Institute XML in Libraries
(http://www.tblc.org/ws_info.php?ws=114) to members on May 25th at TBLC.
This institute will cover the structure and utility of Extensible Markup
Language (XML) with an emphasis on the relevance of XML to libraries. We
will discuss the role XML plays in diverse applications such as web design,
content management, descriptive metadata; how to use XML to achieve the
separation of content and presentation on a web site; and how to use
stylesheets to tie together XML-based components for building web-based
applications.
Further, invited back by popular demand Jack Wolf PhD, CPT will
present a program on Lifelong Learning and Leadership. Jack has presented at
various TBLC locations always receiving rave reviews for content,
interactive presentation style and creative ideas for our professional and
personal lives. This program was created for managers and leaders who are
ready to jumpstart their employees into higher levels of communication and
performance. To register for the May 10th and/or June 14th program,
http://www.tblc.org/ws_info.php?ws=161.
For a full list of TBLC workshops visit the TBLC Workshop page at
http://www.tblc.org/training/training.shtml
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