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    November 30th, 2009LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    Aurora, CO, November 30, 2009 — BCR is partnering with Mosio, Inc., to bring its Text a Librarian service to BCR member libraries. Using mobile phone technology, patrons can text questions to reference services from their mobile phones and librarians can type answers on a web-based interface.

    Text a Librarian’s feature-rich mobile messaging system is a comprehensive, web-based interface (called a “Microboard”) that is easy to implement and use. Accessible by more than 260 million U.S mobile phones, librarians can log on and service patrons on any computer or mobile device with Internet access.

    “BCR is pleased to be able to offer this new technology to our member libraries,” said Brenda Bailey-Hainer, BCR President and CEO. “With its ease of use and competitive pricing, Text a Librarian will allow libraries to provide the services patrons want at a cost that is affordable.”

    “We are really excited to see so many libraries embracing text messaging as the new way to communicate easily and efficiently with their patrons. Our partnership with BCR only makes it easier for libraries to implement Text a Librarian,” said Gabe Macias, VP of Sales and Marketing at Mosio.

    About Mosio
    Mosio is a mobile technologies company providing messaging and mobile web solutions for businesses and organizations. We help our clients connect with customers on-the-go, using their mobile presence as a competitive advantage to increase sales and brand loyalty, both on and offline.

    About BCR
    BCR brings libraries together for greater success by expanding their knowledge, reach and power. They offer a broad range of solutions and their hands-on, personal attention to each member enables them to deliver effective and timely solutions that help libraries keep pace with new developments in technology and services. BCR is the nation’s oldest and most established multistate library cooperative. Since 1935, the BCR team has helped libraries learn new skills, reach patrons, increase productivity and save money. BCR (Bibliographical Center for Research) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit headquartered in Aurora, Colorado. For more information, visit www.BCR.org or email info@BCR.org.

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    November 30th, 2009LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
    November 30, 2009

    Media contact: Larry Godwin
    Phone: 1-800-843-8482, ext. 2847
    Email: godwin@amigos.org

    Amigos to Observe Employee Learning Week December 7-11

    Dallas, TX – To increase awareness in the strategic value of learning in organizations, Amigos Library Services, in cooperation with the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) will observe Employee Learning Week December 7-11, 2009. The observance is an opportunity for organizations like Amigos to showcase the important link between developing employees’ skills and achieving organizational results.

    Amigos will commemorate the week with reduced pricing for its online courses. Amigos members who register for online classes December 7-11 will receive a 25 percent discount off Amigos’ regular rates. The discount can be applied to Amigos’ courses scheduled from January through June 2010.

    The Employee Learning Week discount is an opportunity for Amigos members to invest in staff development and stretch training budget dollars. Amigos training courses cover an array of topics important to libraries: from OCLC to the Internet, preservation to imaging, and reference and technical services to management and technology. For more information about the online courses offered by Amigos, go to http://www.amigos.org/?q=node/466.

    ASTD research shows that organizations continue to invest in growing the knowledge and skills of their workforce. “Increasingly, business leaders realize that the most important asset in our knowledge economy is talent, and a skilled workforce is the key to realizing results,” said Tony Bingham, ASTD President and CEO. “We encourage all organizations to demonstrate their commitment to learning by recognizing Employee Learning Week.” Laura Kimberly, Manager of Continuing Education Services at Amigos adds, “Libraries are places that do widely support and recognize learning for staff as well as patrons. This is one week in our hectic work schedules to recommit to the ideal of lifelong learning.”

    To learn more about the Amigos observance of Employee Learning Week, contact Chris Brown, Amigos Registrar, at 1-800-843-8482, ext. 2829, or Brown@amigos.org. For more information about ASTD Employee Learning Week 2009, visit www.employeelearningweek.org, or email to elw@astd.org.

    About ASTD
    ASTD (American Society for Training & Development) is the world’s largest association dedicated to the training and development field. ASTD’s members come from more than 100 countries and connect locally in 130 U.S. chapters and with 30 international partners. Members work in thousands of organizations of all sizes, in government, as independent consultants, and as suppliers. For more information, visit www.astd.org

    About Amigos Library Services
    For more than 30 years, Amigos Library Services, www.amigos.org, has helped its members obtain affordable services and share library resources and knowledge. With over 700 members, Amigos is the largest consortium of libraries and cultural heritage institutions in the southwestern United States. Through membership in Amigos, libraries collectively gain access to the latest innovations and services in the library community; pursue opportunities for continuing professional education; leverage their buying power; and preserve the region’s rich cultural heritage. This collaboration strengthens each member’s ability to serve and lead its community in the creative and effective use of information resources. ###

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    November 30th, 2009LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    COLUMBUS, OH - November 30, 2009 - LibLime, the leader in open-source solutions for libraries, has announced that European University Cyprus (EUC) in Nicosia, Cyprus, has selected LibLime Enterprise Koha for their integrated library system.

    The Library's system will be installed, operated and maintained at one of LibLime's carrier-class data centers and distributed via Software as a Service on LibLime's cloud computing platform.

    LibLime Enterprise Koha is built on over two years of completed customer-sponsored development, including several highly-anticipated academic and consortia features. This Software as a Service offering on LibLime's new cloud computing platform will also feature regular monthly releases as additional customer-sponsored development is completed.

    LibLime will provide the library with installation, systems administration, ongoing maintenance, software development and staff training.

    "We were looking at some other vendors which the other universities use in Cyprus but they were very expensive and the programs were too complicated," said Theodoros Tzitzimbourounis, Head Librarian at the University.

    Tzitzimbourounis added: "At the end of the day it is all about pricing and what you get for that price. LibLime offered value for our money: a great product that does the job and a lot more, with a friendly interface and ease of use."

    "When a library comes to us with the vision and potential to do great things, it is always gratifying to be able to help them realize those aspirations," said Marc Roberson, VP Library Partners at LibLime.

    "The EUC is just such an institution--one that provides high quality services to its students and faculty while keeping an eye on the technology horizon, ensuring that their quality-driven mission never lags behind," Roberson continued. "We are proud to be partners with the EUC and look forward to offering the same services to even more institutions like the EUC."

    About European University Cyprus

    European University Cyprus developed out of Cyprus College, which was founded in 1961. The purpose was to provide a well-rounded education of high caliber so that students would acquire the necessary academic and practical knowledge in their fields of study.

    In September of 2007, the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Cyprus rendered a decision for the establishment and operation of European University Cyprus. The University consists of four Schools, namely, the School of Arts and Education Sciences, the School of Business Administration, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the School of Sciences. All undergraduate and postgraduate programs offered by European University Cyprus are recognised nationally and internationally.

    The Library is fully computerized and has two primary objectives. The first objective is to maintain an adequate, quality collection comprised of curricular and co-curricular materials and to meet the educational needs of students, as well as the professional needs of the faculty and other personnel. The second objective is to provide and maintain services of high quality that will encourage the appropriate use of the Library by faculty and students.

    About LibLime Enterprise Koha

    LibLime Enterprise Koha couples the award-winning Koha Community baseline with the latest enterprise enhancements sponsored by LibLime customers. Backed by LibLime support and documentation, LibLime Enterprise Koha represents the most advanced and comprehensive open-source ILS solution available to libraries.

    For more information, visit http://liblime.com.

    To try out LibLime Enterprise Koha for yourself, visit LibLime's demos:

    http://liblime.com/demos

    About LibLime

    LibLime is the global leader in open-source solutions for libraries, with a mission to make open source accessible to libraries. Rather than sell software licenses for static, hard-to-customize software products, LibLime educates libraries about the benefits of open source, enabling them to make choices about how best to provide their communities and staff with better technology services. LibLime then facilitates implementation of open source in libraries by providing outstanding development, customization, support and training solutions--solutions tailored to each library's needs. For more information, see http://liblime.com.

    Press Contact:

    Tina Burger
    Vice President Marketing, LibLime
    (888) Koha ILS (564-2457) ext. 705
    tnb@liblime.com

    LibLime and the LibLime logo, Koha and LibLime Enterprise Koha are either registered trademarks or trademarks of LibLime. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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    November 24th, 2009LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    The new issue of the Code4Lib Journal is now available. Issue 8's contents are as follows:

    Openness [Editorial Introduction]
    by Andrew Darby
    http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/2282

    On openness and the Code4Lib Journal.

    ~

    Infomaki: An Open Source, Lightweight Usability Testing Tool by Michael Lascarides
    http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/2099

    Infomaki is an open source "lightweight" usability testing tool developed by the New York Public Library to evaluate new designs for the NYPL.org web site and uncover insights about our patrons. Designed from the ground up to be as respectful of the respondents time as possible, it presents respondents with a single question at a time from a pool of active questions. In just over seven months of use, it has fielded over 100,000 responses from over 10,000 respondents.

    ~

    library/mobile: Tips on Designing and Developing Mobile Web Sites by Kim Griggs, Laurie M. Bridge and, Hannah Gascho Rempel
    http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/2055

    Mobile applications can support learning by making library resources more ubiquitous, by bringing new users to the library through increased accessibility to the resources libraries offer, and by creating a new way to enhance connections between patrons and libraries. This increased use of mobile phones provides an untapped resource for delivering library resources to patrons. The mobile Web is the next step for libraries in providing universal access to resources and information. This article will share Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries' experience creating a mobile Web presence and will provide key design and development strategies for building mobile Web sites.

    ~

    Automated Metadata Formatting for Cornell's Print-on-Demand Books By Dianne Dietrich
    http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/2138

    Cornell University Library has made Print-On Demand (POD) books available for many of its digitized out-of-copyright books. The printer must be supplied with metadata from the MARC bibliographic record in order to produce book covers. Although the names of authors are present in MARC records, they are given in an inverted order suitable for alphabetical filing rather than the natural order that is desirable for book covers. This article discusses a process for parsing and manipulating the MARC author strings to identify their various component parts and to create natural order strings. In particular, the article focuses on processing non-name information in author strings, such as titles that were commonly used in older works, e.g., baron or earl, and suffixes appended to names, e.g., "of Bolsena." Relevant patterns are identified and a Python script is used to manipulate the author name strings.

    ~

    Ead McTaggart: Using VBA to Automate EAD Container List Tagging by Randall Miles
    http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/2025

    Faced with the prospect of converting 200-page container lists to Encoded Archival Description (EAD), the author programmed a Microsoft Access database using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to automatically insert the necessary EAD tags and their attributes. Some work is still required to ensure that the container list is properly formatted before importing into the database. Once formatted, the database, named Ead McTaggart, will convert a 7,000 line Microsoft Excel container list, where each line represents a series, sub-series, or folder title, into a properly tagged EAD container list in about five minutes. As written, Ead McTaggart will handle up to six component levels, but can be modified to handle more. Although many institutions use Archivists' Toolkit or Archon for this functionality, many libraries and archives who have not implemented those tools will find that EAD McTaggert minimizes the work of converting existing container lists to EAD finding aids with a low time investment for implementation.

    ~

    Automatic Preparation of ETD Material from the Internet Archive for the DSpace Repository Platform by Tim Ribaric
    http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/2152

    A big challenge associated with getting an institutional repository off the ground is getting content into it. This article will look at how to use digitization services at the Internet Archive alongside software utilities that the author developed to automate the harvesting of scanned dissertations and associated Dublin Core XML files to create an ETD Portal using the DSpace platform. The end result is a metadata-rich, full-text collection of theses that can be constructed for little out of pocket cost.

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    November 23rd, 2009LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    Get kids excited about reading with the national Great Scavenger Hunt ContestTM reading program (http://www.kaycassidy.com/hunt/). Adopted by more than 250 school and public libraries, The Hunt provides a monthly trivia contest for readers ages 8 – 19, based on over 300 young adult and middle grade novels. Readers select a book and answer ten trivia questions accompanied by a special note from the author. For school and public librarians in the U.S. and Canada, The Hunt provides free, year-round programming to engage kids and teens in reading week after week.

    Founded by young adult author Kay Cassidy, The Hunt was created to assist librarians as they face severe budget cuts. “As an author and proud owner of a well-worn library card,” says Cassidy, “I wanted to give back to all the librarians whose book recommendations have fed my imagination over the years and helped me grow as a writer.”

    As a founding member of Living Your Five, an online community dedicated to changing the world one person and one passion at a time, Cassidy is active in promoting the concept of “paying it forward” and invented The Great Scavenger Hunt ContestTM as a part of that effort. Debbie Henricks, from the Evergreen Community Library in Metamora, OH, expresses thanks that “in these tough economic times when we are all trying to cut back, it is great to know that there is someone out there that encourages teens to use their public libraries.”

    “I LOVE the Great Scavenger Hunt ContestTM! It is a great way to introduce books to teens and it is free. Who doesn’t love trivia?” adds Jennifer Nash of the Wallingford Public Library in Wallingford, CT.

    THE GREAT SCAVENGER HUNT CONTEST TM OFFERS SOMETHING FOR EVERY READER
    With more than 300 tween and teen titles—including fantasies, mysteries, romantic comedies, and historical and literary novels—The Hunt satisfies every reader’s interests. Titles include New York Times bestsellers, finalists of the Newbery Medal, Printz Award, National Book Award and Edgar Award, and offer readers a selection of great writing in print for their age group.

    READERS AND LIBRARIANS WIN!
    To participate, readers (a.k.a. hunters ) select and read a book, print out and complete the author-created book trivia challenge, and return it to their participating librarian. Eight out of 10 correct answers enters them in the monthly drawing to win a $50 gift card to the bookstore of their choice.

    When a reader wins, their library wins too: a tote bag filled with a choice of Hunt books for its collection.

    Librarians love The Hunt and make it a part of:
    • summer reading programs
    • Teen Read Week promotions and festivities
    • school book talks
    • book clubs
    • advance reader programs
    • showing how books inspire creativity in readers
    • suggested reading lists and bookmarks
    • daily school announcements

    “These books are flying off the display I created,” adds Sarah DiLorenzo of the McAlester Public Library in McAlester, OK.

    HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS EASY-TO-ADMINISTER PROGRAM
    Interested librarians may register online at The Great Scavenger Hunt ContestTM website (http://www.kaycassidy.com/hunt/library-reg/). Participating librarians receive access to online answer keys and the online contest entry form to make managing the program a snap. “One thing I love is that it's so easy to administer and promote,” says Sondra Eklund from the Herndon Fortnightly Library in Herndon, VA. “I've made a display of the books on the list, with a sign about the winner we had from our library. Kay has done all the work of making the trivia quizzes and doing the monthly drawing. Submitting the names of kids who do the quizzes only takes a few minutes. I love that it rewards kids who are readers and even gives them ideas of the next book to read."

    Bonnie Mickler, of the Dubois Middle School in Dubois, IN, likes the immediate gratification that the program provides readers and says “the students just print off the trivia challenges to answer and return to me. Using the 'answer key' link I am able to give them immediate feedback as to whether their hunt was successful or not. Great program!"

    The web site also offers easy downloadable promotional materials and tips from other librarians for making The Hunt a success. Additional details may be found at www.kaycassidy.com/hunt.

    ABOUT THE FOUNDER
    “If it weren’t for great librarians, I wouldn’t be a YA author. A lovely teen librarian introduced me to my first YA books and magically picked titles that made me fall in love with the genre. The best librarians are the ones who bring not only a love of books to their work, but a sense of humor and enthusiasm for what they do. They are the unsung heroes of the book world.”
    -- Kay Cassidy, YA author and creator of The Great Scavenger Hunt ContestTM

    Kay Cassidy is the author of teen fiction she wishes was based on her real life. The Cinderella Society (April 13, 2010 due from Egmont; winner of the national Golden Heart Award for Best Young Adult Romance from Romance Writers of America) takes readers behind the veil of a secret girl power society dedicated to defeating the mean girls of the world. In her life B.W. (Before Writing), Kay was an award-winning professional trainer and now enjoys giving energizing motivational talks to young people around the country. More information about her signature workshops and Skype visits can be found on her website, www.kaycassidy.com.

    Kay is a former college cheerleader and sorority alum, an M.B.A. and a member of Mensa. She thinks it’s comical when people are surprised to discover those things aren’t mutually exclusive. When not writing, Kay enjoys movies, watching Glee, and reading. Lots and lots of reading.

    For additional information and/or to interview founder Kay Cassidy, please contact:
    Deborah Sloan
    sloan@deborahsloanandcompany.com
    978.684.5005
    www.twitter.com/dsloanandco
    www.deborahsloanandcompany.com

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