Over the last few months the LMS project team and staff in a range of libraries have been working towards the beginning of the 2014 rollout. Our office has seen evidence of this progress with staff from the various March and April "go live" libraries here over the last few weeks for their training.
All of this "backroom" work is now beginning to reach its end point, with the public go live events for libraries about to commence. Burnside goes live today, with many other libraries to follow in coming weeks & months.
Burnside is having a public celebration tomorrow & a few of us from PLS will be there to celebrate with them. I'll post a few pictures and comments that we'll glean from our visit. The Burnside Enterprise site can be found here, with its distinctive purple & green - advertising a range of the libraries services - from databases to its online newsletter and PC bookings system embedded in the Enterprise screen - and much else besides. It is worth clicking the buttons just to see what is embedded as part of the Enterprise screen & how these various screens work.
I was also interested to see that this site has been labelled as a "catalogue" - which of course it is in part. This is a term we, as library staff don't often use any more, but I am sure it is the term that many customers continue to associate with much of what Enterprise does.
And regarding what comes next; the planned rollout schedule for the rest of the project can be seen here.
Thursday, 13 February 2014
Friday, 7 February 2014
New City Library opens
On 17 October I wrote a post about what would be in the "soon to be opened" new City of Adelaide Library. And the day has now arrived. Last night a large crowd of invited guests - many being library managers - gathered in Rundle Mall, keen to be let into the new library.
The event was great with the notion of what new public library looks like given a good workout by a few of the speakers. This new library certainly takes community engagement, active participation and public programming to a new level.
You can see an interesting time lapse video on You Tube posted by the Council here.
Now that the library is open to the public I'll go & take a few pics and post them here in coming days.
The event was great with the notion of what new public library looks like given a good workout by a few of the speakers. This new library certainly takes community engagement, active participation and public programming to a new level.
You can see an interesting time lapse video on You Tube posted by the Council here.
Now that the library is open to the public I'll go & take a few pics and post them here in coming days.
Monday, 3 February 2014
Burra SCL Farewells Mary Wollacott
Each new year continues to see staff changes across the network, particularly in our joint use libraries where these changes coincide with school years. To all who are retiring, transferring, moving on - I hope that your involvement in the public library network has been professionally fulfilling & I am sure that your colleagues wish you well in your future endeavours.
One person who retired over the break was Mary Woollacott, Community Library Assistant at Burra School Community Library for 33 years. The local Burra & Districts online "newspaper" had a lovely farewell tribute to Mary - See the article here.
One person who retired over the break was Mary Woollacott, Community Library Assistant at Burra School Community Library for 33 years. The local Burra & Districts online "newspaper" had a lovely farewell tribute to Mary - See the article here.
Tuesday, 7 January 2014
One Card roll out schedule for 2014
The PLS team continues to work on a number of fronts, with the One Card project perhaps being the consistently most obvious one over the last few years. From the 1st "go live" in May 2012 and in a relatively short time period of 20 months the project team has kept steadily adding libraries to the consortium.
Last year the team developed its project plan for 2014 and has already commenced working with the libraries which will go live in the first half of this year.
The schedule for the rest of the conversions is listed below - by month. This schedule is subject to some variation, but it represents our intentions at this stage.
The addition of Burnside in February will complete the roll out in metropolitan Adelaide. As we fill in various parts of the map it will change some of the conversations with customers, who are asking when various libraries will be on board. It will also change some customer behaviour. For instance I know that some Victor Harbor customers are driving to Goolwa to borrow items from across the state, but when Victor joins in May this may change.
The total roll out is expected to be completed in just under two & a half years - which is a remarkable achievement by everyone across the network, the PLS project team and our SirsiDynix partners in this endeavour.
Planned 2014 roll out schedule
February
Burnside
Murray Bridge
March
Two Wells
Port Lincoln
Whyalla
April
Cowell
Tumby Bay
May
Victor Harbor
Kangaroo Island
Renmark
Mannum
June
Swan Reach
Cambrai
Eudunda
July
Burra
Snowtown
Balaklava
August
Meningie
Coomandook
Tailem Bend
September
Tintinara
Lucindale
Yankalilla
Last year the team developed its project plan for 2014 and has already commenced working with the libraries which will go live in the first half of this year.
The schedule for the rest of the conversions is listed below - by month. This schedule is subject to some variation, but it represents our intentions at this stage.
The addition of Burnside in February will complete the roll out in metropolitan Adelaide. As we fill in various parts of the map it will change some of the conversations with customers, who are asking when various libraries will be on board. It will also change some customer behaviour. For instance I know that some Victor Harbor customers are driving to Goolwa to borrow items from across the state, but when Victor joins in May this may change.
The total roll out is expected to be completed in just under two & a half years - which is a remarkable achievement by everyone across the network, the PLS project team and our SirsiDynix partners in this endeavour.
Planned 2014 roll out schedule
February
Burnside
Murray Bridge
March
Two Wells
Port Lincoln
Whyalla
April
Cowell
Tumby Bay
May
Victor Harbor
Kangaroo Island
Renmark
Mannum
June
Swan Reach
Cambrai
Eudunda
July
Burra
Snowtown
Balaklava
August
Meningie
Coomandook
Tailem Bend
September
Tintinara
Lucindale
Yankalilla
Monday, 6 January 2014
Interesting summer reading
Happy New Year to you. I hope that 2014 delivers all that you're working towards making a reality. For some libraries this will be joining the One Card consortium & for all consortium members we will see the completion of the roll out & the consortium moving into a new phase. But more about this in future posts.
There is always such a wide range of professional reading which comes across my desk & much of it doesn't get the attention it deserves. But over the slightly quieter Christmas break there are opportunities to revisit the saved weblinks or pick up professional journals which have been sitting in the corner of the office.
For those of you interested in the library profession I thought I'd pass on a few links which may be of interest. And of course if you have read anything which you'd like to share then by all means post a comment with a link to articles of interest.
I should also note that one piece of professional stimulation has been provided by subscribing to Seth Godin's blog. Small, usually interesting & sometimes challenging comments appear as an email almost daily. Godin comes from the world of marketing, and sometimes the comments are not relevant, but those that are relevant are great. Take a look - you too may be inspired by much of his work.
Articles which you may be interested in include this one with a fairly lengthy and dry title: Cost of and benefits resulting from public library e-government service provision: findings and future directions from an exploratory study.
Here is the abstract of the article. As the public trusts the library to provide access and support to use computers and the Internet, much of the burden of e–government service provision has shifted from government agencies to public libraries. This unfunded mandate contributes to libraries’ financial burdens in a time of radical public library funding cuts. Public libraries need to be able to identify the precise costs of this service provision, as well as its benefits, in order to justify additional financial or other resources to support these services, especially high–speed broadband connections to facilitate access to and use of e–government services. This paper presents the findings of an exploratory study designed to identify the range of costs Indiana public libraries incur in their provision of e–government services, as well as the benefits of that service provision. The multi–method research design employed in this study offers one possible approach by which other states might develop a comprehensive perspective, including costs, of their public libraries’ e–government service provision.
While it is a study from one US state, I believe that there are some interesting parallels for us here. One thing I like about the study is how it briefly documents its multi-method approach to the research - perhaps this is something that can inform future research work that we do.
Having done a study tour through Scandinavia and seen their excellence public libraries I've continued to be interested in how they achieve what they do. So this short article called Working together is the key to success about the Vaasa library in Western Finland took my eye. This article is from an interesting journal called Scandanavian Library Quarterly which I try to look at a few times a year.
Of course the IFLA conference was in Singapore this year & this made it more affordable for Australians to attend. Heather Brown of the State Library and Teresa Brook of PLS presented papers at the conference, Heather's being about integrated digital and physical preservation while Teresa presented on Wilbur: a multi-lingual picture book for new arrivals and migrant families.
IFLA released their trend report which is well worth seeing. The trend report brings together a variety of strands and different papers, all of which are worth looking at. They can bee seen from the trend report link I have posted just above. There is also a "digest" report on public libraries from IFLA which has links to various interesting papers.
Interestingly ALIA decided to write a "scenarios" paper to stimulate discussion and as the basis for consultation. The paper entitled Library and information services - the future of the profession; themes and scenarios 2025 can be found here. I attended the Adelaide workshop as well as the final Sydney summit which were part of ALIA's consultation mechanism & am now interested to see what ALIA will do with the information they've gathered.
I figure that this is enough for one post. I will revert to some One Card news & other information in coming weeks.
regards
There is always such a wide range of professional reading which comes across my desk & much of it doesn't get the attention it deserves. But over the slightly quieter Christmas break there are opportunities to revisit the saved weblinks or pick up professional journals which have been sitting in the corner of the office.
For those of you interested in the library profession I thought I'd pass on a few links which may be of interest. And of course if you have read anything which you'd like to share then by all means post a comment with a link to articles of interest.
I should also note that one piece of professional stimulation has been provided by subscribing to Seth Godin's blog. Small, usually interesting & sometimes challenging comments appear as an email almost daily. Godin comes from the world of marketing, and sometimes the comments are not relevant, but those that are relevant are great. Take a look - you too may be inspired by much of his work.
Articles which you may be interested in include this one with a fairly lengthy and dry title: Cost of and benefits resulting from public library e-government service provision: findings and future directions from an exploratory study.
Here is the abstract of the article. As the public trusts the library to provide access and support to use computers and the Internet, much of the burden of e–government service provision has shifted from government agencies to public libraries. This unfunded mandate contributes to libraries’ financial burdens in a time of radical public library funding cuts. Public libraries need to be able to identify the precise costs of this service provision, as well as its benefits, in order to justify additional financial or other resources to support these services, especially high–speed broadband connections to facilitate access to and use of e–government services. This paper presents the findings of an exploratory study designed to identify the range of costs Indiana public libraries incur in their provision of e–government services, as well as the benefits of that service provision. The multi–method research design employed in this study offers one possible approach by which other states might develop a comprehensive perspective, including costs, of their public libraries’ e–government service provision.
While it is a study from one US state, I believe that there are some interesting parallels for us here. One thing I like about the study is how it briefly documents its multi-method approach to the research - perhaps this is something that can inform future research work that we do.
Having done a study tour through Scandinavia and seen their excellence public libraries I've continued to be interested in how they achieve what they do. So this short article called Working together is the key to success about the Vaasa library in Western Finland took my eye. This article is from an interesting journal called Scandanavian Library Quarterly which I try to look at a few times a year.
Of course the IFLA conference was in Singapore this year & this made it more affordable for Australians to attend. Heather Brown of the State Library and Teresa Brook of PLS presented papers at the conference, Heather's being about integrated digital and physical preservation while Teresa presented on Wilbur: a multi-lingual picture book for new arrivals and migrant families.
IFLA released their trend report which is well worth seeing. The trend report brings together a variety of strands and different papers, all of which are worth looking at. They can bee seen from the trend report link I have posted just above. There is also a "digest" report on public libraries from IFLA which has links to various interesting papers.
Interestingly ALIA decided to write a "scenarios" paper to stimulate discussion and as the basis for consultation. The paper entitled Library and information services - the future of the profession; themes and scenarios 2025 can be found here. I attended the Adelaide workshop as well as the final Sydney summit which were part of ALIA's consultation mechanism & am now interested to see what ALIA will do with the information they've gathered.
I figure that this is enough for one post. I will revert to some One Card news & other information in coming weeks.
regards
Monday, 16 December 2013
New LGA You Tube clips about libraries
On 11 October I posted about some You Tube clips which the LGA had made about local public libraries. Since then two more videos, made by the LGA have been published on You Tube.
One is about the relatively new Murray Bridge Library & the other is about how the One Card system is working at the Wattle Range libraries. Wattle Range has also embedded the clip into their council website here. Both are great vignettes about features of two of our country libraries & I recommend that you take a look at them.
One is about the relatively new Murray Bridge Library & the other is about how the One Card system is working at the Wattle Range libraries. Wattle Range has also embedded the clip into their council website here. Both are great vignettes about features of two of our country libraries & I recommend that you take a look at them.
Thursday, 5 December 2013
New appointment at the State Library
I'd like to congratulate Shane Cathcart who has been appointed to the position of Associate Director, State Library Services. Shane comes to the position from his current role as Manager of Community Services at the City of West Torrens. Shane's leadership at West Torrens along with his library experience in four States and a previous period at the State Library see him well placed to take on this key State Library role.
Some of you may know Shane from the time when he was the Manager of the West Torrens Library as well as a member of the Public Libraries SA Executive.
Shane arrives at a time when the State Library has just completed and published its 2014 - 2017 Strategic Plan. This plan sets a clear framework for much of the work that Shane will be leading.
Having been acting in this role since April I am well aware of the work that is ahead for Shane. However I believe that there is considerable goodwill within the library which will enable meaningful progress in a number of areas.
I have loved much of my time in the State Library & enjoyed working with staff on the Strategic Plan, setting up a process to develop a new information architecture, contributing to the new space which will open once the City of Adelaide vacates their current site on the ground floor and working on so many other fronts.
I am looking forward to returning to my role as Associate Director Public Library Services, as there is so much more to be done within the public library network. (I will be acting State Library Director for all of January & be delighted to find my way back to my PLS desk on 1 February.)
Having Shane as a nearby colleague provides the public library network with a great opportunity to build closer links with the State Library. In most other States around Australia the links between the public libraries and State Library are closer than they are here in SA. So any opportunity to improve relations and outcomes locally will be most welcome.
Welcome on board Shane - looking forward to you arriving on 6 January.
Some of you may know Shane from the time when he was the Manager of the West Torrens Library as well as a member of the Public Libraries SA Executive.
Shane arrives at a time when the State Library has just completed and published its 2014 - 2017 Strategic Plan. This plan sets a clear framework for much of the work that Shane will be leading.
Having been acting in this role since April I am well aware of the work that is ahead for Shane. However I believe that there is considerable goodwill within the library which will enable meaningful progress in a number of areas.
I have loved much of my time in the State Library & enjoyed working with staff on the Strategic Plan, setting up a process to develop a new information architecture, contributing to the new space which will open once the City of Adelaide vacates their current site on the ground floor and working on so many other fronts.
I am looking forward to returning to my role as Associate Director Public Library Services, as there is so much more to be done within the public library network. (I will be acting State Library Director for all of January & be delighted to find my way back to my PLS desk on 1 February.)
Having Shane as a nearby colleague provides the public library network with a great opportunity to build closer links with the State Library. In most other States around Australia the links between the public libraries and State Library are closer than they are here in SA. So any opportunity to improve relations and outcomes locally will be most welcome.
Welcome on board Shane - looking forward to you arriving on 6 January.
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