August 2007
Volume 28 No. 2

• Social Software in the Library: MySpace, Wikis, IM, Blogs and Flickr
• Services Without Sites: When Fingertips-to-Fingertips Augments Face-to-Face
• Collection Development/Collection Management, Link+, E-Books and the Proliferation of Formats

Wednesday, September 26, 2007- 8:45am - 5:00pm San Francisco Public Library

Sign up online. $40 registration fee. Register early. Registrations wilIcontinue until September 21, 2007, or until the auditorium is filled, whichever comes first.

Archives with Trevor Bowes from OCLC - August 28 - 29, 2007
Trevor Bond, archivist at Washington State University Library and OCLC trainer, has developed two new courses on managing and building in digital or analog formats, which will take place at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in San Jose.

Tuesday, August 28: 1:00 - 4:30pm - Managing Archival Collections: An Introduction Registration deadline: August 23, 2007.

Wednesday, August 29: 9:30am - 4:30pm - Streaming Audio and SMIL for Oral Histories Registration deadline: August 24, 2007.

Wikipedia - Past, Present, and Future - September 6
The San Francisco Bay Region Chapter of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) will present Phoebe Ayers, engineering reference librarian at UC Davis and a long-time Wikipedian. Phoebe will discuss Wikipedia authorship, trustworthiness, search engine ranking and Wikipedia's importance to information professionals and researchers. She was one of the organizers of Wikimania, the third annual international Wikimedia projects conference held August 3-5, 2007 in Taipei, Taiwan.

Thursday, September 6: 5:30 - 8:30pm - UC Berkeley Faculty Club Program 7:30 - 8:30pm Registration Directions The registration deadline is August 29.

Certified Public Library Administrator Local Courses
The Public Libraries Association has debuted a new certification, Certified Public Library Administrator (CPLA), with preparatory courses for those desiring the certification as well as those who would like to increase their professional knowledge. The basic content of the workshops is of equal interest to librarians pursuing certification and librarians desiring to enhance their professional skills in more informal way. The workshops have been designed to be practical rather than theoretical and include interactive exercises and group work. 

During the 2007-2008 fiscal year, the following courses will be given locally:

September 19-20, 2007: Current Issues, with George Needham and James McPeak (San Mateo County Library, Millbrae Branch)

February 19-20, 2008: Budget and Finance, with Sandra Nelson (Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, San Jose)

April 29-30, 2008: Fundraising, with June Garcia (Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, San Jose)

Information, full schedule, instructor profiles, CPLA description and registration

Our researcher again searched ThomasNet using the broader term, “plastic container manufacturers,” which yielded 38 companies. Taking the question a step further, our researcher screened the Dun & Bradstreet Million Dollar Database (D&BMDD) using "plastic aquarium/supplies" and "plastic containers." D&BMDD turned up 43 plastic aquarium manufacturers and 505 for generic plastic containers. Her answer was in a memo which included her ThomasNet links and her search strategy and was accompanied by the data from the D&BMDD search in an Excel spreadsheet.

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Livermore Public Library expanded its IM reference service in February of this year, to include all of the library open hours. The Library uses a Meebo aggregator to communicate with AIM, Yahoo, and MSN messengers. The Meebo widget was installed on the library home page, so patrons can just click and type in their questions.

Diablo Magazine decided to make a test run of the service in January and made true of the adage “On the Internet, Nobody Knows you're a Dog”; Renee Romanov did not know that the service was being tested by a sophisticated user. She aced the test, receiving high praise for her answers to questions on “pole” dancing from a “Polish-American”, dog commands in French for a Bichon Frise (Renee pointed out that that breed is from Spain, so she should try them in Spanish), and places in the Tri-Valley to search for UFO’s. “The librarian replied in timely, straightforward, and earnest fashion.” (Library LOLs by Lauren Boyle, January 2007).

Libraries that are considering implementing IM service would be wise to heed our cautionary advice: When you least expect it (WYLEI), your responses might be evaluated and reported. Livermore Public Library is pleased to have received recognition and accolades for the IM service.

Alameda County Library's "Write to Read" wins 2006 Presidential Award
Alameda County Library's Write to Read literacy program at the county's juvenile hall in San Leandro was one of the winners of the Coming Up Taller awards, an initiative of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. Laura Bush presented the award on January 22, 2007 at the White House, per an article in the Oakland Tribune and a feature in a recent newsletter of the Alameda County Library Foundation.

Peninsula Library System Pilots OCLC's WorldCat Local
The Peninsula Library System (PLS) is the first public library to pilot OCLC's WorldCat Local, which is described in an OCLC press release dated April 11, 2007. PLS librarians are attending training as Search goes to press. The pilot is scheduled to run August 20 - October 15, after which a decision will be made to adopt WorldCat Local or not. For a sneak preview, go to plsinfo.worldcat.org.

Update on Salinas Public Library
Elizabeth Martinez, the former executive director of the American Library Association, has been appointed to be the director of the Salinas Public Library. She starts on September 5.

In November 2004, with the city budget operating at a deficit, Salinas voters defeated local tax increase measures. The entire city library was slated to be closed. State library leaders and local citizens, including a revived Friends organization, rallied to raise funds to keep the libraries open for a few hours a week with minimal staff. From there, local groups successfully campaigned for a sales tax measure which was approved by the voters in November 2005. The library now has 38 full-time positions and just increased its open hours to 117 last month. Congratulations to Salinas Public Library's staff and supporters!

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