Governor Paterson has signed legislation (S.3903 Oppenheimer/A.6154 Paulin) that will allow libraries and library systems to engage in cooperative bidding. The legislation, which goes into effect immediately, will allow systems to jointly go out to bid on products or services, rather than as individual entities.  See http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?default_fld=&bn=S03903&Summary=Y&Text=Y for the full text of the legislation.

For the first time in Nylink’s 37 year history, we are moving to a phone menu system. When you call Nylink, you will be prompted to enter the last name of the person to whom you wish to speak. Or you can use our direct extensions, which are listed below, along with their title or areas of specialization. Not sure who can help? No problem. Please contact Ellen Barnum, xt 3040.

What’s new at Project Muse? Plenty. In addition to SUSHI support (see the statistics page for more details), Project Muse has added 14 new titles for 2010, with many more planned for next year.
Read more »

Four New York libraries have been chosen to participate in the Value, Outcomes, and Return on Investment study (“Lib-Value”), conducted under sponsorship of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and headed by Principal Investigator Carol Tenopir and New York state coordinator Bruce Kingma. Lib-Value is the third phase of two previous studies which considered the return on investment (ROI) of academic library electronic collections in terms of grants income (Luther 2008; Tenopir et al. 2010). Lib-Value extends this line of research by looking not only at ROI, but also more broadly at the library’s value, particularly as evident in three functional areas: research, teaching and learning, and professional and social outcomes.

• Baruch College (CUNY)
• Brooklyn College (CUNY)
• SUNY University at Buffalo
• SUNY Buffalo State College

These four libraries were chosen to collaborate with and expand the Lib-Value  team. Their participation is being coordinated through Nylink, in partnership with NYSHEI, and Bruce Kingma of Syracuse University.

OCLC has released CONTENTdm 5.4, the latest version of the popular CONTENTdm Digital Collection Management Software that includes the new CONTENTdm Flex Loader along with other enhancements.

Designed to complement the CONTENTdm Project Client, Flex Loader is a new Windows desktop application. It enables users to efficiently batch import large quantities of XML data in the METS/ALTO newspaper format, or the METS/ALTO monograph and eBook format, to their CONTENTdm collections. XML file formats supported by Flex Loader include the NDNP (National Digital Newspaper Program) and CCS (Content Conversion Specialists) docWorks newspaper and monograph. Compound object-level metadata and page-level metadata mapping is supported, along with support for newspaper article segmentation.

Other highlights of CONTENTdm 5.4 include new options for editing metadata for compound objects. All pages of a compound object can now be viewed and edited in a spreadsheet, giving users improved efficiency when editing compound objects.

Additionally, the Upload Manager has been improved to allow users more control of the upload process. As the upload queue is being processed, progress indicators show detailed progress of each item and the entire queue. Users also have the option to cancel the upload—either a single item or all items—and return items to the project workspace. Status of the upload persists across sessions of the Project Client, letting users continue to work while uploads progress in the background.

For those CONTENTdm users with very large digital collections, CONTENTdm 5.4 includes a new version of the FIND search engine, used by CONTENTdm (and WorldCat.org) for indexing and searching. The new version supports long-term scalability for sites with rapidly growing full-text collections by supporting automatic index partitioning along with tools for configuration and monitoring. This integrated feature will support scalability for growing collections now and in the future.

The 5.4 release, including the new Flex Loader, is available to current CONTENTdm licensees at no additional charge.

Donna Dixon (Director of the Member Programs Team) will be transferring from Nylink to SUNY Press (http://www.sunypress.edu) where she will be Co-Director along with James Peltz, who is currently an executive acquisitions editor at the Press.
This new role will be a great opportunity for Donna to broaden her experience to include the university press arena. At the same time, she will bring a wealth of knowledge regarding publishers and information providers in her dealings with such organizations while at Nylink. Her work at SUNY Press will include contract and financial management duties as well as other tasks as required.
We will miss Donna’s experience and positive approach to challenging issues. While she will be moving into this new role immediately, she will be “just across the hall” now that SUNY Press is relocated to Corporate Woods. We wish her the very best and expect to stay in touch on a regular basis.

Join us for a webinar that will give you skills and techniques to deal with your ever growing pile of things to read, do, store and tweet.

Dealing with Information Overload

Webinar

September 22, 2010: 2:00 p.m.-3:30 p.m.
Information overload is a very real consequence of having the means to create information become so ubiquitous and inexpensive.  As information professionals, we are in a prime position for helping our communities deal with the inevitable tsunami of information crashing into their lives every day.  Find out how to deal with information overload through ten principles, including organizational techniques, how to filter your input, time and stress management, managing overload in different media: email, RSS, interruptive technologies, the telephone, print media, multimedia, and social networks. Come away with a plan for tackling your own mound (physical or virtual) of overload!

Bio
Sarah Houghton-Jan is the Digital Futures Manager for the San José Public Library in the heart of the Silicon Valley. She is also the author of the blog LibrarianInBlack.net.  Sarah was named a 2009 Library Journal Mover & Shaker as a Trendspotter.  She trains and consults for libraries all over the world about issues of library and technology.  Her book, Technology Training in Libraries, was published in 2010.

In case you did not see the LexisNexis announcement last week, we wanted to alert you that the cut-over to the new Academic interface has been postponed to August 7. Below is a reprint of the message from LexisNexis concerning this.

From the LN Academic list [ACADEMIC-LIST@LISTS.LNACADEMIC.COM], July 15, 2010:

Dear Colleagues,

The migration date that I announced below has been pushed back to August 7. This is not being done because of any problems with our move to the new interface for LexisNexis Academic. We have to coordinate our release with other change releases that are being completed across LexisNexis, and the people responsible for scheduling moved the next release back a week.

Those of you who have already made the switch to the “hottopics” version of the product URL do not need to take any other action.

Everyone else, please review the Migration Guide to be sure you are ready for August 7.
http://wiki.lexisnexis.com/academic/index.php?title=Migration_Guide

As always, please feel to contact me on- or off-list if you have any questions or concerns.

Best regards,
Alistair

Alistair Morrison, MA, MLS
Director of Product Planning
LexisNexis Academic & Library Solutions
7500 Old Georgetown Road, Suite 1300
Bethesda MD 20814

Telephone: 301-951-4529
Toll Free: 800-638-8380
Mobile: 301-300-9573
Email: alistair.morrison@lexisnexis.com
Website: http://academic.lexisnexis.com

Subscriber Wiki: http://wiki.lexisnexis.com/academic
Web Subscription Support: academicsupport@lexisnexis.com
Join Our ListServ: http://www.lexisnexis.com/academic/listserv

—–Original Message—–
From: Morrison, Alistair (LNG-BET)
Sent: Monday, May 17, 2010 8:14 AM
To: LN Academic list
Subject: LexisNexis Academic Migration Scheduled for July 30, 2010

Dear Colleagues,

The last step in the migration to the upgraded LexisNexis Academic user interface has been scheduled for July 30, 2010. We had originally planned on a June migration, but had to work around the LexisNexis software release schedule.

For details on the migration, please see our wiki article at http://wiki.lexisnexis.com/academic/index.php?title=Migration_Guide

Top things you should know:
1. If you have already switched to using the URL for the new interface, you do not have to do anything else, and you will not see any change on
July 30. The URL for the new interface is
http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/lnacademic

2. On July 30, URLs that currently point to the old interface will be redirected to the new interface.

3. Deep links to articles or sources that you may have in your catalog or e-journals system will continue to work, even if they are based on the old URL.

4. LexisNexis is working with providers of popular federated search, article linker, and e-resources systems to update their links following the July 30 migration. See the wiki page, near the bottom for a list of these vendors.
http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/lnacademic

5. There will be a service outage of less than 2 hours during the migration on July 30. We will try to schedule the outage for late night/early morning to minimize the inconvenience to researchers.

Please let me know on- or off-list if you have any questions or concerns.

Best regards,
Alistair

Alistair Morrison, MA, MLS

Please save the date for the fourth annual Library Assistants’ Day on November 9, 2010.

The day runs from 8:30-4:30 at the Holiday Inn, Carrier Circle in Syracuse.

Co-sponsored by CLRC,  Nylink,  RRLC,  SCRLC and WNYLRC.

Join colleagues for a day of investigation, discussion and fun!  Take this opportunity to connect with your peers and enjoy a variety of topic session.

Preliminary schedule includes:

• Designing Brochures for Your Library
• Managing Change
• The Role of a Library Assistant
• Copy Cataloging Made Easy
• Planning a Library Event
• Lunchtime Gadget Demo

Lunch and refreshments are included in the registration fee.

To register early go to: www.clrc.org/wrf

CLRC,  Nylink,  RRLC, S CRLC, and WNYLRC members:  $55  and non-members $65

We hope to see you there!