7/19/2011
CONTACT:
Nathan Curulla
(888) 900-8944
sales@bywatersolutions.com

Centenary College Goes Live on Koha with ByWater Solutions

ByWater Solutions, an open source community supporter and official Koha support company, announced today that Centenary College of Hackettstown, NJ. is now live on their installation of the Koha integrated library system.

The Taylor Memorial Library's Koha installation went live in late May, and ByWater Solutions will be providing ongoing support and hosting services for them.

Nancy Madacsi, Director of the Taylor Memorial Library at Centenary College, commented on their move to Koha with ByWater Solutions:

"We are pleased with our recent migration to ByWater Solutions and Koha. ByWater offered us the right combination of system size and cost to suit the needs of our library, the migration was relatively smooth, and we find it easy to customize and use the new ILS, especially for circulation and cataloging. "

The Tailor Memorial Library provides academic and general research assistance in a variety of ways, including training and guidance in information literacy, reference and research strategy. The staff of Taylor Memorial Library is trained in research techniques and is available to assist the Centenary College community in using reference resources.

The library houses more than one hundred thousand items, including books, print periodicals, DVDs, videotapes, audio cassette tapes, microfilm and microfiche.

The Taylor Memorial Library's customized online catalog can be viewed at:
http://www.centenarycollege.edu/cms/index.php?id=library

About Centenary College:
Centenary College is a community of learners distinguished by a diverse student body, a dedicated faculty and staff, and stimulating educational opportunities. As the primary educational and cultural resource for northwest New Jersey, Centenary offers a range of undergraduate, graduate and professional programs as well as non-degree courses for professional and personal development. Centenary College is committed to enlarging its presence in the immediate and expanded geographic region through its quality undergraduate and graduate programs and by becoming a model for student-centered, personalized, individually-focused education; an innovator in the integration of a quality liberal arts education with career preparation; a standard-bearer in internationalizing its campus and its programs; a pioneer in developing and implementing unparalleled service, such as community service initiatives; an acknowledged leader with its contemporary academic programs and its technology innovations. For more information please visit: www.centenarycollege.edu

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

DUBLIN, Ohio, USA, July 18, 2011—A ground-breaking membership report from OCLC Research suggests that by transforming virtual reference (VR) service encounters into relationship-building opportunities, librarians can better leverage the positive feelings people have for libraries. This is critically important in a crowded online space where the biggest players often don’t have the unique experience and specific strengths offered by librarians.

The report—Seeking Synchronicity: Revelations and Recommendations for Virtual Reference—demonstrates that today’s students, scholars and citizens are not just looking to libraries for answers to specific questions—they want partners and guides in a lifelong information-seeking journey.

Seeking Synchronicity: Revelations and Recommendations for Virtual Reference, from OCLC Research, in partnership with Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and additionally funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), distills more than five years of VR research into a readable summary featuring memorable quotes that vividly illustrate very specific and actionable suggestions. Taken from a multiphase research project that included focus group interviews, online surveys, transcript analysis and phone interviews, with VR librarians, users and non-users, these findings are meant to help practitioners develop and sustain VR services and systems. The report asserts that the “R” in “VR” needs to emphasize virtual “Relationships” as well as “Reference.” Among the topics addressed are:

• How convenience is the “hook” that draws users into VR services
• The exaggerated death of ready reference
• The importance of query clarification in VR
• Ways to boost accuracy and build better interpersonal relationships in VR
• What can be learned from VR transcripts
• Generational differences in how people perceive reference interactions and determine success
• The need for more and better marketing of a suite of services – a “multi-asking” approach

The report’s two primary authors, Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Ph.D., OCLC Senior Research Scientist, and Marie L. Radford, Ph.D., Associate Professor, School of Communication & Information, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, said that the goal of their work together, which began in 2005, has been to deliver research-based recommendations that improve the VR services provided by information professionals.

“The purpose of this new publication,” Connaway said, “is to showcase several years’ and several hundred pages’ worth of work with a few very specific, practical suggestions for sustaining and developing VR services and systems. This short report is designed to be a quick read that is informative in boiling down results from our multi-year research project involving two teams of researchers, at OCLC and Rutgers University.”

“It is organized into topical chapters that are illustrated with graphs and quotations that bring our findings to life,” added Radford. “We also provide an introduction that serves as an executive summary so that readers can quickly understand and apply our research findings and recommendations to immediately improve VR experiences for all users.”

View and download the report at http://www.oclc.org/reports/synchronicity. More information on the “Seeking Synchronicity” project is available at http://www.oclc.org/research/activities/synchronicity/, and other OCLC membership reports can be found at www.oclc.org/reports/.

About OCLC
Founded in 1967, OCLC is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing library costs. More than 72,000 libraries in 170 countries have used OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend, preserve and manage library materials. Researchers, students, faculty, scholars, professional librarians and other information seekers use OCLC services to obtain bibliographic, abstract and full-text information when and where they need it. OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the world’s largest online database for discovery of library resources. Search WorldCat on the Web at www.worldcat.org. For more information, visit www.oclc.org.

Contact: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Ruth Dukelow, MCLS Associate Director
800-530-9019 x121
dukelow@mcls.org

NCIP DEVELOPMENT UNDERWAY FOR MICHIGAN EVERGREEN & MELCAT
MCLS Retains LTC to Develop Open-Source NCIP Component for Evergreen

Lansing, MI – July 18, 2011. MCLS announced today that they have entered into a contract with Library Technology Consultants (LTC) to develop an Evergreen NCIP responder to work with MeLCat, Michigan’s popular statewide multitype resource-sharing system. The proposed programming will streamline resource sharing for MeLCat Evergreen libraries by automating time-consuming tasks that are currently performed manually.

“LTC values this opportunity to promote the NCIP standard,” said Kyle Banerjee of LTC. “Widespread adoption of NCIP has the potential to significantly improve resource sharing from both patron and library perspectives. Adding NCIP support to Evergreen will make this protocol more useful to the library community and should encourage resource sharing systems vendors to provide better support for NCIP in their products.”

“Many MeLCat libraries have been asking for NCIP functionality for a long time,” said Debbi Schaubman of MCLS. “MCLS is very excited that we’ll be working with LTC to provide that functionality for the libraries on the Michigan Evergreen shared system.”

“MeLCat has always been about leveling the playing field for Michigan libraries,” Schaubman continued. “NCIP functionality is one part of that goal – processing of MeLCat materials should be equally easy, regardless of which ILS a library uses. And now, for our Evergreen libraries, that will be a reality.”

All code developed for this project will be released as open source for use with other Evergreen installations and other projects.

MeLCat is based on Innovative Interfaces’ INN-Reach software, which provides seamless interaction with Innovative Interface’s Millennium ILS software. Libraries with other ILS software, however, must connect through an intermediary Direct Consortial Borrowing (DCB) server in order to process MeLCat materials.

About MCLS
MCLS, the Midwest Collaborative for Library Services, is a library membership organization serving Michigan and Indiana libraries. We offer our member libraries the tools they need to provide excellent library service to their communities: training and special programs; resource sharing and statewide initiatives; Michigan Evergreen, our shared open-source integrated library system; and cost-savings on databases, ejournals, ebooks, software, and other products and services.

About LTC
LTC, Library Technology Consultants, specializes in custom automation solutions and technology consulting for libraries. LTC is committed to affordable innovation through shared solutions that benefit both individual customers and the broader library community. For more information about LTC, see http://libtech-consult.com/

About MeLCat
MeLCat is Michigan’s statewide multitype resource-sharing system and is part of the statewide Michigan eLibrary (MeL) project. Training, support, and implementation of MeLCat are provided by MCLS, under contract with the Library of Michigan. The MeL project is made possible by grant funds from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services administered by the State of Michigan through the Library of Michigan.

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