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March 25, 2009

The Night of Library Stars

It’s always a great night when you bring together so many library stars for a celebration. It also helps when it is a snow and ice-free March evening. The NSLS Membership Awards Banquet (#17) was attended by 320 most special guests – award nominees, winners, and many others just coming to network and socialize.

Two award winners were revealed, Hollywood style, at the banquet. The Video Award went to Vernon Hills High School Library, and was accepted by library media specialist Monica Tolva. The Staff Member of the Year Award went to Cathy Maassen, information specialist, Youth Services, Skokie Public Library. She was nominated (followed by many endorsements) by her daughter, Erin Maassen, public relations manager at Cook Memorial Public Library. How sweet is that?

Front and center, along with Monica and Cathy, were our other award winners: Randee Hudson (Lifetime Achievement); Kathy Beltchenko (Advocate of the Year); Skokie Public Library (Library of the Year); Zion-Benton Township High School Library (Innovation Award); Gail Borden Public Library District (Marketing Award).

Kudos again to ALL the nominees, and their colleagues that took the time to shine the light on their good works.

posted by Judy H. at 10:53 am | Comments (1)

March 23, 2009

Major Changes Afoot for Digital Past

Now, working on our 11th year, it was time to give Digital Past a new image. To this end we are moving it to a newer server, redesigning the site, upgrading from CONTENTdm version 4.1 to 5, and adding a slew of new custom programming. All this is scheduled to be in place and unveiled on Wednesday, April 8th. Staff have been working for months to coordinate and create an overhaul of this magnitude.

After all, we’re not only moving about 140,000 items  belonging to 40+ institutions from one server to another, but the jump to version 5 of the software is a huge leap as well. OCLC completely rewrote the ingest software, Project Client, formerly known as Acquisition Station, from the ground up to incorporate full UNICODE compliance and new PDF handling. They’ve also replaced the search engine with the WorldCat search engine and added faceted searching. This work alone requires a lot of planning and coordinating with our participants.

Also, for many years, the front page of Digital Past hasn’t changed and it’s showing its age. Staff worked to determine what would be on the new page and have been working with an outside designer to develop the completely new look. Be ready for a shocker, but if you’d like a sneak peek, check out the bottom of this message. We’d love to hear your initial impressions, please leave comments! So far, we’ve gotten lots of positive comments!

 

 

 

 

 

As for all the new programming, well, I don’t want to give away ALL the surprises, but the new Digital Past will feature tagging, commenting and other interactive features akin to social networking. We’re hoping to get feedback from the public at large and other institutions – perhaps help us identify unknown people in photos, add their own stories to what we know, etc. After all, they might know a lot more than we do in some cases!

This post is already getting very long, so one last thing – Digital Past is now on Twitter – if you’d like to follow.

posted by kay at 10:01 am | Comments (0)

March 10, 2009

Ohio Libraries examine NSLS ROI

NSLS was recently contacted by the State Library of Ohio with a request for a newsletter article about our ROI calculator. No surprise that they are grappling with the same financial and advocacy issues. Our article is in the March newsletter, along with other fresh ideas from libraries inside and outside Ohio. Take a look for some fresh ideas, and another reminder that we are in this together.

posted by Judy H. at 12:40 pm | Comments (0)

March 6, 2009

Start With Heart

Ten years ago, when I first started working at NSLS all employees had to go through Covey training and learn about how to be effective at our job. One of the key tenets of this training is to “start with heart.” This means determine what truly matters and pursue it. For NSLS our members have always been our heart and what matters.

I am pleased to be part of a team that is working on a new video project called “One Great Thing.” This project really is about you, our members and the heart of your library. Our team wants to come to your library and film that one bright shiny thing or service that makes up a piece of your library’s heart.

We have filmed 5 libraries so far and soon will have the footage available on “Library Beat” and You Tube for you to see. What is the “One Great Thing” that makes up the heart of your library? We would love to come film it and share it with the world.

posted by Admin at 6:09 pm | Comments (0)