It’s only July (feels like March) but library conference season is about to kick off with the arrival of fall. We’ve always had a hard time finding a comprehensive conference calendar, so we put Library Show Keeper together. We hope you find it helpful as you plan your conference attendance schedule.
Did we miss an important conference or event? Send us an email or post a comment with the event information and a link if you have it, and we’ll add it post haste. Thanks!
A boatload of paid and free apps are available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Here is a “best of” list compiled by a librarian for librarians:
from the Seattle Post Microsoft blog:
What percentage of e-mail messages are unwanted or harassing?
According to a Microsoft Security Report published Wednesday: Almost all of them.
More than 97 percent of e-mail messages are spam, contain malicious attachments or are sent as part of a phishing attack, the report said.
In the second half of 2008, spam was dominated by product advertisements. Nearly half, or 48.6 percent, of the spam was for pharmaceutical products.
The report also found that attackers increasingly target common file formats to exploit systems, such as files created by Microsoft Office or Adobe PDFs.
“The most frequently-exploited vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office software were also some of the oldest,” the report said. “91.3 percent of attacks examined exploited a single vulnerability for which a security fix had been available for more than 2 years.”
It was a great tool. Our company relies on it for communicating with our subscribers, and staying smart about it is a challenge.
Amy Ryan is the new director of the Boston Public Library, and like all libraries, BPL is being affected in dramatic ways by the economic downturn. She recently provided WBUR in Boston with an insightful look at the library and her thinking regarding weathering these touch times, when every dollar counts:
The average American aged 15 – 24 spent only 7 minutes a day reading for pleasure. Older Americans, on average, spend about 20 minutes per day, with Seniors reading as much as 50 minutes each day.
Claiming that we’re too busy to read is a small piece of these frightening numbers. How can we sustain the habit of life-long reading?
Read the 2007 (PDF download) NEA Report here.
The TixKeeper patron confirmation page is an important part of the reservation process, and libraries need to craft the language on that page so that patrons are never in doubt as to its intended use.
Rarely, it happens that patrons mistakenly take that confirmation page to the museum, expecting to retrieve the pass at that point. Museums don’t like that much.
Of course, to avoid any confusion, TixKeeper provides librarians with the option to change that confirmation page text, to say, this: “Please print this page and bring it to the library with your library card when you come to pick up the pass.”
Not a huge issue, but one we thought worth commenting on. Always glad to hear your thoughts!
Well, this is a first, penned by the poet laureate of the Morton Grove Public Library. Thanks, Kevin!
‘Twas the Night Before EK
———————————–
‘Twas a new event system for MGPL,
The colors are chosen,
and keywords as well.
The templates are hung
under the pop-up with care
in hopes that you’ll use them;
that’s why they’re there!
There’ll be programs galore
for adults, teens and YS.
What attendance will be
is anyone’s guess.
And so I proclaim
as I turn it over to you,
Happy eventing to all
and registration, too!
From Ars Technica:
Public libraries haven’t been just about books for some time now, but they are finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with the costs of infrastructure, faster Internet access, and new computers. To help struggling libraries get on their 21st century feet, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced a grant program of $6.9 million that will go toward launching a pilot broadband initiative in a handful of US states.
The seven states included in the Gates Foundation’s pilot grant program include Arkansas, California, Kansas, Massachusetts, New York, Texas, and Virginia, and the money has been awarded to two separate organizations. $6.1 million goes to Connected Nation, a non-profit broadband Internet advocacy group that will help these states to gather and activate various public library leaders and officials who can support broadband Internet in each state’s libraries.
The rest of the funds, a hair over $850,000, will go to the American Library Association’s Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP), which will help state library agencies implement sustainable broadband strategies. The organization will also perform and distribute a series of case studies that demonstrate how other public libraries can successfully manage broadband services for their patrons.
Read the entire article here
Just a quick note to let you know that there’s a new release of several of the Plymouth Rocket applications.
It contains a handful of changes under the hood which should not change your user experience and also a couple of things that might interest you.
EventKeeper: – The maintenance of the search index has changed. Several users have enough events so that the reindexing process was taking a painful amount o time. We added a new button which you can use to reindex only those event added or modified in the last 24 hours. Much quicker. We also changed the way the Reindex All function works to make that quicker as well.
TixKeeper: – Our museum pass management system is spreading to a lot of libraries outside New England and we’ve been happy to respond to requests to provid a Patron Authentication interface to several new ILS providers. The list now includes: SirsiDynix, Innovative, Polaris, and The Library Corporation.
EKRegistration: – Our patron authentication feature now can be used with EKRegistration as well. Let us know if that is of interest to you.
EKRooms: – It is now much easier to manage equipment that is not associated with a particular room. Check with us if you have always wondered how to do this.
Best regards, Ric
Ric Bailey rbailey@plymouthrocket.com
