Bloomfield, Conn. — The Hamilton Public Library’s Central Library is the fifth location
to install mk Sorting Systems products. An 11-bin sorting system with conveyors leading into the lower level of the library increases circulation and improves service by freeing staff from basic repetitive tasks. They now focus on more valuable services and provide more assistance to patrons with general inquiries.

“The sorters from mk at our four HPL locations have helped us increase circulation by 2 million items, freeing staff to provide more direct service,” recounts Paul Takala, Hamilton Public Library’s Director of Digital Technology. “We know that adding the sorting system to our Central Library will further increase our circulation. mk was chosen based on technical qualification, cost competitiveness, and a well-engineered custom design — giving our library great quality and value,” explains Takala.

“As Hamilton planned its Central Library renovation, we were approached to design a sorting system
that maximizes limited first floor area,” recalls Markus Flory, President of mk Sorting Systems.
“We proposed a system with a customized mk decline conveyor leading from the first floor lobby return stations to the library basement. This not only utilizes basement space in light of small first floor footprint, for high workflow efficiency, it also attractively integrates into the library’s design aesthetic,” continues Flory. This design element is achieved by enclosing the main floor equipment in transparent glass, giving customers a view of books as they transfer and sort.

Central Library will open in December with a grand re-opening in conjunction with the Hamilton Farmers’ Market scheduled for early February.

About Hamilton Public Library
The Hamilton Public Library (HPL) serves the 500,000 plus residents of the City of Hamilton with the Central Library, 23 branch locations and two Bookmobiles. With over 3 million in-person visits and 2.8 million on-line visits, Hamiltonians borrowed a record-breaking 6 million books, CDs and DVDs in 2009. For more information, visit www.hpl.ca, contact askHPL@hpl.ca or call 905.546.3200.

About mk Sorting Systems
mk Sorting Systems, a subsidiary of the mk Technology Group, develops and installs user-friendly self service, sorting, book dispensing and RFID solutions for libraries. mk offers individual, customized automation solutions designed to meet each library’s specific needs.

For sales and marketing information, contact Kristin Vogel, Sales and Business Development Consultant at 1-860-760-0438 or by e-mail at kristin.vogel@mk-sorting-systems.com. Visit mk Sorting Systems on the web at www.mk-sorting-systems.com.

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The Big Read is accepting applications from nonprofit organizations seeking funding to conduct month-long, community-wide reads between September 2011 and June 2012. The Big Read is a national program designed to revitalize the role of literature in American culture. Organizations selected to participate in The Big Read will receive a grant ranging from $2,500 to $20,000, access to online training resources, educational and promotional materials, inclusion of your organization and activities on The Big Read Web site, and the prestige of participating in a highly visible national program. Approximately 75 organizations from across the country will be selected by a panel of experts.

To review the Guidelines & Application Instructions visit The Big Read Web site.

Questions? Call Arts Midwest at 612.238.8010 or email TheBigRead@artsmidwest.org The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in cooperation with Arts Midwest.

December 17th, 2010
CONTACT:
Nathan Curulla
(888) 900-8944
sales@bywatersolutions.com

The Los Gatos Public Library of Los Gatos CA. Goes Live on Koha with ByWater Solutions

ByWater Solutions, an open source community supporter and official Koha support company, announced today that the Los Gatos Public Library of Los Gatos, CA. is now live on their official Koha integrated library system.

The Los Gatos Public Library and the Open Source-Open Libraries Consortium have partnered with ByWater Solutions for their Koha implementation.

The Los Gatos Public Library's Koha installation was successfully implemented in late November, and the library has partnered with ByWater Solutions for ongoing support and hosting services.

Henry Bankhead, Library Manager for Adult Services, commented on Los Gatos' decision to switch to Koha and ByWater Solutions:

"We wanted a solution that would work for us, not against us, and we wanted something priced at a reasonable cost." He continues; "ByWater is similar to our organization in that they are agile and flexible. They were very helpful to us when we were building our own test system."

Brendan Gallagher, CEO of ByWater stated: "It has been a real pleasure to partner with Henry and the staff of Los Gatos. We are thrilled that the installation went smoothly, and look forward to a long and productive relationship. We are delighted to work closely with California libraries who have the desire to take advantage of a better product with higher levels of service at a lower cost."

The Los Gatos Public Library's customized online catalog can be found at http://catalog.losgatosca.gov.

About Los Gatos Public Library:
Los Gatos Public Library, located in Los Gatos, CA., serves a population of over 30,000 residents and houses a collection of more than 100,000 volumes. The library sponsors many community activities aimed at connecting people to the world of information. Programming is offered as a library resource that provides information, education, recreation and enrichment to all. For more information please visit: http://www.losgatosca.gov

About Open Source-Open Libraries: Open Source – Open Libraries is a consortia of libraries, library systems, and other organizations committed to pursuing Open Source Software alternatives for libraries. The primary focus of the project is on Open Source Library Systems as potential replacements for commercial, proprietary integrated library systems (ILS). The goal is to empower libraries and library consortia by encouraging participation and collaboration in software products generally, and encouraging them to consider an Open Source Library System such as Koha or Evergreen. Just as libraries provide opportunities for people to empower themselves, Open Source Software provides an opportunity for libraries to empower themselves by asserting more control over the software tools used to run their libraries. The project is funded by member contributions combined with support from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act, administered in California by the State Librarian. For more information please visit: http://opensource.califa.org/

About Koha: Koha is the first open-source Integrated Library System (ILS). In use worldwide, its development is steered by a growing community of libraries collaborating to achieve their technology goals. Koha's impressive feature set continues to evolve and expand to meet the needs of its user base. It includes modules for circulation, cataloging, acquisitions, serials, reserves, patron management, branch relationships, and more.

Koha’s OPAC, circulation, management and self-checkout interfaces are all based on standards-compliant World Wide Web technologies--XHTML, CSS and Javascript--making Koha a truly platform-independent solution. Koha is distributed under the open-source General Public License (GPL). For more information about Koha, please visit: http://www.koha-community.org

About ByWater Solutions:
With over 10 years of experience, ByWater Solutions offers customized hosting, data migration, configuration, installation, training, support options and development of enterprise class open-source library systems. Offering a 24/7 technical helpline, ByWater Solutions’ clients have the support system they need to make their software work for them. ByWater Solutions pledges to share 100% of all developed code to the Koha community for the strengthening and advancement of the Koha ILS. For more information about ByWater Solutions, please visit: http://www.bywatersolutions.com

~ Agreement with Evanced Solutions Brings Event Calendaring into Catalog Searches Already Enhanced with Reading Recommendations from NoveList Select™ ~

IPSWICH, Mass. — December 14, 2010 — New display options for NoveList Select™ customers and a new partnership with Evanced Solutions will bring more information into the library catalog. Libraries using NoveList resources to add readers’ advisory content into catalog records can now add content such as book jackets alongside NoveList reading recommendations as well as choose from an assortment of layout options for this content. EBSCO Publishing and NoveList have also partnered with Evanced Solutions so that libraries using Evanced Solutions Events will be able to tie library events to book searches.

New NoveList Select Display Options
The new NoveList Select display options allow the library much more flexibility in how the NoveList content is displayed in their catalog. Libraries can now choose to display book jacket thumbnails for applicable content plus make decisions about how the information will appear on the page (horizontally or vertically). Libraries will also be able to choose to display some or all of the content using Click and Hide links so that patrons can expand content when interested and opt to include one or more rows of content—displaying all of the titles in a series or just the first few titles.

NoveList Select brings the full range of NoveList expertise into the library catalog, including title, series, and author information, reading recommendations, and annotations from related NextReads™ newsletters. Retrieving content from the entire NoveList family of products enables NoveList Select to enrich the detailed book view within the library’s automation system with NoveList’s industry-leading readers’ advisory information. Results can be filtered to include only titles held locally and Evanced Solutions Events customers can display events that relate to the book a user has searched for in the catalog.

NoveList Select also offers new series display options. NoveList Select will display the following elements: Series Name, Alternate Series Name, Volume Numbers, Collection Identification and Series Notes in a series title record.

NoveList Select and Evanced Solutions
Evanced Solutions offers software and dedicated service for libraries of all types and budgets. Online tools include event calendaring with online registration, meeting room booking, summer reading management, and library materials vending—all designed to attract and engage the communities that libraries serve.

NoveList Select includes a Related Events at Your Library section which shows related events provided by Evanced Solutions. The Evanced Solutions Events Event Maintenance page allows events to be loaded with related subject terms. When users search the library catalog and select a particular book, the subject terms associated with the book are compared to the subject terms entered in the list of events and the event is displayed along with the catalog item selected.

About EBSCO Publishing
EBSCO Publishing is the world’s premier database aggregator, offering a suite of nearly 300 full-text and secondary research databases. Through a library of tens of thousands of full-text journals, magazines, books, monographs, reports and various other publication types from renowned publishers, EBSCO serves the content needs of all researchers (Academic, Medical, K-12, Public Library, Corporate, Government, etc.). The company’s product lines include proprietary databases such as Academic Search™, Business Source®, CINAHL®, DynaMed™, Literary Reference Center™, MasterFILE™, NoveList®, SocINDEX™ and SPORTDiscus™ as well as dozens of leading licensed databases such as ATLA Religion Database™, EconLit, INSPEC®, MEDLINE®, MLA International Bibliography, NISC™, The Philosopher’s Index™, PsycARTICLES® and PsycINFO®. Databases are powered by EBSCOhost®, the most-used for-fee electronic resource in libraries around the world. EBSCO is the provider of EBSCO Discovery Service™ a core collection of locally-indexed metadata creating a unified index of an institution’s resources within a single, customizable search point providing everything the researcher needs in one place—fast, simple access to the library’s full text content, deeper indexing and more full-text searching of more journals and magazines than any other discovery service (www.ebscohost.com/discovery). For more information, visit the EBSCO Publishing Web site at: www.ebscohost.com, or contact: information@ebscohost.com. EBSCO Publishing is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., one of the largest privately held companies in the United States.

About Evanced Solutions
Headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, Evanced Solutions offers software and dedicated service for libraries of all types and budgets. Online tools include event calendaring with online registration, meeting room booking, summer reading management, and library materials vending all designed to better attract and engage the communities libraries serve. For a free webinar and for more information on Evanced Solutions and their products, visit www.evancedsolutions.com or call (888) 519-5770.
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For more information, please contact:
Kathleen McEvoy
Public Relations Manager
(800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
kmcevoy@ebscohost.com

For Immediate Release: December 7, 2010.

Contact:
Gayle Gossen, Chair
SLA Business & Finance Division
Tel: 416-214-2441
gayle.gossen@gmail.com

The Business & Finance Division of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) proudly announces a new award, the Impact Award sponsored by Wolper Subscription Services.

In its inaugural year of 2011, the B&F Impact Award recognizes a Division member who creates value by aligning with the goals of their organization through the innovative and effective use of information to impact the accomplishment of those goals. The conference award winner receives a $2,000 stipend to help cover expenses at the SLA Annual Conference. The B&F Impact Award acknowledges an individual or an information center for a specific contribution made within the previous year. Awarded annually to a member of the Business and Finance Division, the achievement recognizes, but is not limited to, such actions as providing a new service that aligns with organizational goals, developing new processes for working more closely with senior management, or training and educational activities that facilitate the achievement of organizational goals.

“We are honored to partner with the Business & Finance Division of SLA to acknowledge information professionals who have aligned their role with the goals of the organization they serve to demonstrate the tangible value of information” said Susan Wolper, President and CEO of Wolper Subscription Services, Inc. “It is increasingly important that information professionals speak the language of their organization when demonstrating ways in which their initiatives create measurable impact and achieve mission-critical objectives.”

The winner will be presented with a check during the SLA B&F Awards ceremony on Monday, June 13, 2011 during the SLA Annual Conference in Philidelphia, PA, U.S.A.

About Wolper Subscription Services
Wolper is a one-stop information management resource and the only 100% woman-owned business in the field. For 35 years, the company has been providing service and savings to corporate, government, medical, public and academic customers. Wolper’s “high tech, high touch”® approach delivers the perfect combination of next-generation technology and time-proven, personalized service. Besides serials, Wolper also handles books, site licenses, ERM and other information solutions, both traditional and innovative. Wolper holds multiple diversity supplier certifications – from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC), and the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC). Wolper is Ariba certified, has multiple U.S. Federal agency supplier approvals, and is a member of the Association of Subscription Agents and Intermediaries, Special Libraries Association and American Library Association, among others. Learn more at www.wolper.com or contact Wolper at 610-559-9550 or info@wolper.com.