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!

The Americas Regional Council (ARC) is the voice of OCLC members in the Americas and it continues to find ways to engage with all members of Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean and the United States. ARC member leaders have set up a social networking site where members can post discussions, create and join groups, meet the ARC candidates, and chat about subjects important to you, as members of the cooperative and the library profession. If you are an OCLC member in the Americas, this is YOUR forum. Join now and contribute to the conversation.
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It has been estimated that up to 70% of organizational change initiatives fail. Yet, change is a constant in the modern world.  How can you effectively manage and implement change at your library in order to continue to meet the needs of your patrons and constituencies?  Join Nylink for the following workshop to gain the skills needed to be a change leader.
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Nylink’s July-December Training Calendar is now available.

Here is a sampling of classes:

Upcoming Webinars:

June 3:    Local Holdings Record Updating by Batch

June 16: Introduction to the eXtensible Catalog (XC)

June 17: Dealing With Web-Delivered Resources: Web Sites & Databases

July 19:  WorldCat Resource Sharing Auto Deflection & the Policies Directories

MARC Basics Webinar Series:

July 20: MARC Basics: Sound Recordings

August 25: MARC Basics: Books

September 30: MARC Basics: Serials

November 10: MARC Basics: Visual Media

Metadata Cookbook Webinar Series Returns!

June 9: Metadata Cookbook Series: Dublin Core

July 14: Metadata Cookbook Series: EAD

August 12: Metadata Cookbook Series: VRA Core

October 13: Metadata Cookbook Series: ONIX

Online Digitization Classes:

Self-paced: How to Build Digital Collections Using CONTENTdm

Instructor Facilitated:

June 7: Digitization Basics

July 19: Digital Project Management

Special Events:

October 20: Get Started: Preservation Building Blocks for Smaller Institutions

November 16 & 17: SCCTP-Advanced Serials

Thank you for your continued support of Nylink training.

Deidre Dowling

Education Coordinator

Nylink

Karen Calhoun, OCLC VP for WorldCat and Metadata Services posted the following WorldCat Cataloging Partners status update on OCLC-Cat on Feb. 1 2010:

This is to provide an update on the resolution of the recent problems with the WorldCat Cataloging Partners service. Nearly all of the reprocessing of incorrect label files and records that resumed on December 18, 2009 has been completed. We continue working to resolve remaining known issues, including Cataloging Report production. We are committed to resolving all of the issues.
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Update: As of Feb. 3rd CISTI has reinstated OCLC IFM payment option

CISTI (Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information) has announced that starting January 25, 2010, they will no longer bill through IFM (Interlibrary Loan Fee Management). Nylink member libraries who have registered with CISTI through Nylink will continue to be billed for CISTI materials on their monthly Nylink invoice. Documents ordered from CISTI and billed through Nylink will receive a 5% discount off the standard CISTI price.

If you would like to take advantage of the Nylink discount and centralized billing, and are not already registered with CISTI through Nylink, please complete the registration form on the Nylink web site:

http://nylink.org/sharing/forms/cisti_reg.cfm

You can read more about Nylink’s CISTI offer at http://nylink.org/sharing/cisti.cfm

For questions about CISTI billing, please contact Peg Palmiere at palmierep@nylink.org or 1-800-342-3353.

Yesterday the NEA released the 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. This is the NEA’s largest national study of adults’ participation in the arts.

From the Museum Association of New York:  “The new study finds a notable decline in theater, museum and concert attendance and other “benchmark” cultural activities between 2002 and 2008 for adults 18 and older, and a sharper fall from 25 years ago. The drop was for virtually all art forms and for virtually all age groups and levels of education.  Between 2002 and 2008, percentages fell for movie-going from 60 to 53.3, for jazz from 10.8 to 7.8, for museums/galleries from 26.5 to 22.7.  Other categories with lower attendance include ballet, opera, musical and nonmusical theater, and art/crafts fairs and festivals.  Visits to parks/monuments/historical buildings fell from 31.6 percent in 2002 to 24.9 percent last year.

The survey was conducted in partnership with the United States Census Bureau and has been conducted five times since 1982.  The conversation will focus on how these findings should inform the arts community’s work going forward, as well as how the survey should be expanded and refined in the future.”
Related to this, in recent weeks I have read and heard that many museums have found that their visitation actually increased in 2009.  However, many museums and cultural heritage organizations continue to struggle with basic funding.  MANY encourages museums and other cultural heritage organization to contact local media outlets to highlight their recent experiences during current economic crisis.   The Albany Institute of History and Art, located in Albany, NY, recently did just that and a story about their current situation was covered by local TV station WNYT, News Channel 13.

OCLC has announced the first meeting of the OCLC Americas Regional Council, to be held at ALA Midwinter in Boston, MA. More details TBA.

One of the current trends in resource sharing has been the growth of purchase on demand. In the age of Netflix and Amazon, user expectations for delivery of information have changed, and these changes have led to a re-evaluation of the traditional resource sharing model. The Rethinking Resource Sharing Initiative is a good example of the work that is being done in this area. One of the key beliefs behind Rethinking Resource Sharing is that that there are often multiple options available to get information resources. While traditional ILL is still a viable option, there may be occasions where it is, cheaper and faster to purchase the item.

For purchase on demand to work efficiently as a substitute for ILL, the order process needs to be simplified. The library staff at SUNY Geneseo has developed a toolkit that is designed to streamline the purchase on demand process, and optimize the acquisitions and interlibrary loan workflow.

http://toolkit.idsproject.org/doku.php?id=borrowing:purchasingworkflow

In addition, the Geneseo folks have created the GIST (Getting it System) Toolkit. According to the IDS Project website:

“The Getting It System Toolkit (GIST) is a customizable set of ILLiad tools and workflows that will enhance interlibrary loan and just-in-time acquisitions services; purchase request processing; and cooperative collection development efforts. GIST was developed at the State University of New York College at Geneseo with an eye toward converging ILL and Acquisitions workflows and user interfaces, while leveraging the strengths of various workflows and systems. Beware: GIST was designed to transform the business of borrowing, buying, and accessing.”

Check out the GIST Toolkit at:

http://toolkit.idsproject.org/doku.php?id=wiki:gist

The SUNY Office of Library and Information Services have also recognized the importance of purchase on demand. In June 2008, the SUNY Borrowing Task Force and SUNY OLIS sponsored a day long conference on purchase of demand. This event was held in conjunction with the SUNYLA Annual Conference and focused on the relationship between acquisitions and interlibrary loan. The agenda included speakers from both acquisitions and ILL, and provided an opportunity for ILL and acquisitions staff to discuss how they could work together to implement purchase on demand programs. I attended this pre-conference and was struck by the fact that this was the only event (in my memory) where both ILL and acquisitions staff met together to discuss common interests and opportunities for collaboration. Since purchase on demand requires increased cooperation and communication between the acquisitions staff and the interlibrary loan staff, this conference provided an opportunity to bring both groups together.

There is also evidence of support for purchase on demand in Western New York. The Western New York Library Resources Council, one of nine regional library councils in New York State, is funding a purchase on demand pilot. WNYLRC is providing $20,000 in funding to be shared among all participating libraries to purchase materials. This pilot began on October 1, 2009. Under this pilot, materials are purchased through Amazon, and are paid for by WNYLRC. Materials may be shipped directly to the requesting library or directly to the patron depending on each library’s preference. More information on this pilot is available at:

http://www.wnylrc.org/documentView.asp?docid=464

The Smithsonian Libraries, Archives and Museums have just announced the creation of their Collections Search Center.   This system allows the public to search over 2.3 million records.

Check out the press release below:

Smithsonian Libraries, Archives and Museums have worked together and created the Collections Search Center (http://collections.si.edu), a one-stop-searching center for the public for SI collections.  This fast growing Collections Search Center is hosted by OCIO and currently contains 2.3 million records with 280,000 online media such as images, sound files, videos, and online collections.

Collections are contributed by:

Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

National Air and Space Museum

National Museum of American Indians

National Museum of Natural History

National Portrait Gallery

National Postal Museum

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Archives at the National Museum of the American Indian

Archives Center at National Museum of American History

Archives of American Art

Archives of American Gardens

Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives,

Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives

Human Studies Film Archives

National Air and Space Museum Archives Division

National Anthropological Archives

Smithsonian American Art Museum Photo Archives

Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies

Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage

Smithsonian Institution Archives

Smithsonian Institution Libraries

Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory – Chandra X-ray Observatory

We encourage you to look at and explore the search center and see the power of pulling our resources together.  The following includes just a few examples:

American Artist portraits

American Indian beadworks

African American pilots

Butterflies

This search center also supports the ability to read manuscripts page-by-page with zooming capability.  Please try these examples:

Notebook by Albert Samuel

Sitting Bull pictographic autobiography, 1882

We thank all the partners for making this effort possible.

Ching-hsien Wang,

Library and Archives Systems Support Branch,

Office of Chief Information Officer