Tune in to Reading Presentations

We will be taking our Tune In To Reading grant on the Road in the month of October. On the 4th we present to the County Commissioners, on the 9th we present to the Cumberland Rotary, on the 12th we present to the Maryland Public Library Directors, and finally on the 18th we present at the Maryland Association of School Librarians conference. Thanks for all your efforts on making videos and podcasts. It is really beginning to pay off. Robert is working with Tracy at WMPL to set up a space where all our instructional videos can be stored and linked to from our web page.

So don't stop thinking of new "how to videos" that would help you or the public make better use of our services.

Valueline online coming our way

There is a good chance that WMPL will be able to provide online access to the Valueline Investment survey soon. This subscription will include the 1700 standard stocks in the survey, another 1800 small to mid-cap stocks, and the Valueline Mutual Fund Survey. It will only be available from library computers but we can offer the service at all our branches. More to follow.

Collection Development Policy Wiki

The Collections Team gave us a great start on revising and updating our Collection Development Policy. They ran out of time.

Anyway I have taken their work and added to it and modified it. But now is the time for you to review it and make any comments or suggestions that you think would improve it.

I want to get the policy to the Board at the October 10 meeting, so please make your comments by October 3.

I made a wiki out of the policy so you could change it right on the screen and then everyone could see your improvements. (Just click the “edit’ button to open the window to edit the document.)

To read the policy go to

http://acls-collection.pbwiki.com/

To read and edit the policy go to

http://acls-collection.pbwiki.com/?full_access=YY5qsq1SKF&l=S

Thank you.

Newspapers revert to free access

According to Techcrunch, News Corp head Rupert Murdoch has said that he was “leaning toward” making the online Wall Street Journal free, but had not yet made a formal decision.

This comes on the heels of the New York Times dropped their pay per view system, called Times-Select.

23 things -report

Jennifer did a great job last night boasting that Allegany County had the highest percentage of completion in the 23 things initiative. She was presenting your work to the library board. The Board members were very impressed with your learning journal blogs and wanted to congratulate you all on how much you learned and your transferring that to better serve the public.
Can't wait for the 5th!

New report confirms: computers make us busier

A new report, Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study sponsored by ALA and the Gates Foundation looked at the impact of technology on public libraries. They begin, Libraries have always been about the business of connecting communities of people with the information they want and need in order to learn, explore, create and build success. Computers and the Internet have been a growing part of fulfilling this mission over the past dozen years."

They report 3 themes:

• Technology is bringing more – not less – public library use
• Library infrastructure (space, bandwidth and staffing) is being pushed to capacity
• Libraries need more technology planning and dedicated technology support

Exceptional Libraries

If you ever wonder what high esteem libraries have held in the recent and long past past, take a look at the photos of these beautiful libraries. The details, craftsmanship, and use of space professes the value of libraries, information and the inspirational role we play in peoples lives. link
pat yourself on the back for continuing this grand tradition!

CD Search tool

see Janice's Thistlefeather blog for a link to Janice's Google search tool to find CDs by accession number.