The following is a list of recent additions to our web. Whenever we publish a paper, write a specification, submit a status report, or add anything else to our web, we'll put a notice here. The most recent changes are listed first, and each item is linked to the page with the updated content.

April 26, 2006
Alleycat Contact List with members name, email and phone number.

October 23, 2003
A Decision Makers meeting will held at TBLC at 1pm on October 23, 2003.
October 23 Meeting agenda

September 2003
Citrus County Public Library implements OCLC as 'library of last resort'.

Hillsborough County Public Library Cooperative announces they will re-establish their Alleycat connection for Hillsborough patrons starting October 1, 2003.

Lee County Public Library System and St. Johns County Public Library begin profiling their systems to be included in the Alleycat project by January 2004.

August 2003
Sanibel Public Library adds the Extended Circulation feature to their AAL system. Reciprocal Borrowing beta testing is conducted

July 2003
Starting Monday July 28, 2003, The Hillsborough Public Library Cooperative catalog will be off line due to migration to new catalog software. Until further notice Hillsborough County library patrons will be unable to request materials using Alleycat.

We are working with the vendor to restore Alleycat for these patrons and to bring the catalog back up for all Alleycat users to search and make requests from. Please excuse this inconvenience. Hillsborough patrons may contact their local branch after August 18 to request materials on Interlibrary Loan.

Clearwater is trained on Alleycat and Alleycat is now available for Clearwater patrons.

March 2003
RPA statistics are now available via the web. The website URL is http://rpa.tblc.org/wizard/ewserver.exe?dct=earpa1. There is a User's Guide at www.tblc.org/aal/procedures/procedures.shtml

February 21, 2003
AAL Users Meeting held in Sarasota .View the minutes and the PowerPoint presentation.

February 20, 2003
Pamela Burch of Sarasota County Library System has received their PRO (Performance Recognized as Outstanding) award. Pamela Burch is the Interlibrary Loan Supervisor for the Sarasota County Library System. Pamela helped to implement a cutting edge link between regional and national online interlibrary loan databases. The Tampa Bay Library Consortium (TBLC) established a regional agreement for sharing library materials. The project, called "Alleycat", has revolutionized interlibrary loan for library users in west central Florida by placing the ability to request materials directly into the hands of the user, through the Internet, thus lowering the cost of borrowing. Pamela recently shared her experience at a national conference in Orlando, thus helping other libraries throughout the world make this same transition. Our library users can now look for resources beyond their county library system with access to the online catalogs of over 37 libraries holding more than 6.7 million items; if the item is not located in the region, additional millions of international resources are available for possible direct borrowing on the Internet. The value of the regional resources alone exceeds $120 million; the value of the national and international resources is hundreds of times that much.

February 6, 2003
Decision Makers Meeting was held at TBLC. The minutes and the PowerPoint presentation are available at www.tblc.org/aal/meetings/2_6_03.shtml

Draft designs for the Anywhere - Anytime Library umbrella website are available at http://tblc.org/designs/new.html

January 8, 2003
The Florida Division of Library and Information Services has selected TBLC's project, "Anywhere-Anytime Library Expansion, submitted under the 2001-2002 Library and Technology Act grant program as an Exemplary Project." As such it has been highlighted in the Divisions 2002 Annual Report submitted to the Institute of Museum and Library Services (ILMS).

It was one of two programs chosen for the fiscal year. The other honoree is Hillsborough Public Library Cooperative for Electronic Library: Community Training and Outreach Program.

According to the letter from Barratt Wilkins, State Librarian, "The projects chosen highlight excellence in program planning, implementation and evaluation, with special emphasis on outcome measurement."

TBLC is delighted to be enabling libraries in west central and southwest Florida to provide patron centered interlibrary loan services to their registered borrowers. In 2001-2002 the number of filled interlibrary loan requests was 34,380. 95% of users indicated that requesting an item was either very easy or somewhat easy. 97% of users indicated that they would use the service again and 62% of users indicated that they had used the service six or more times.

November 25, 2002
University of Tampa joins Alleycat. UT is the fifth private academic to join the Alleycat libraries. They are an Endeavor Voyager automation system site.

October 14, 2002
SWFLN Libraries join Alleycat. The following five SWFLN libraries went live on Alleycat: Collier County Public Library System (DRA)
Ft. Myers Beach Public Library (TLC)
International College - Ft. Myers and Naples branches (TLC)
Hendry County Library System (TLC)
Sanibel Public Library (III)

August 5, 2002
SunLine Libraries begin using OCLC 'Library of Last Resort' in Alleycat.

August 1,
2002 The 2nd Annual Alleycat Users Meeting will be held at the Burton Memorial Library in Plant City, FL. August 9, 2001 from 1pm to 4pm.

AGENDA

1:05-1:20	2nd Annual Alleycat Awards
1:20-1:30	Alleycat is two
1:30-1:45	OCLC as Library of Last Resort Update
1:45-1:50	RPA update and workshop announcement
1:50-2:00	Year 4 grant - what we will be doing
2:00-2:20	Marketing update
2:20-2:35	Break
2:35-2:45	Catalog Groups - what they are and how we can use them
2:45-2:50	Announcements Software upgrade ALA poster session Hernando status
2:50-3:15	Tips & Tricks Searching Request Searching Request Inquiry Who owns the request? Handling unfilled requests Making damage claims Knowing when an item is lost and claiming it Request cycle Help, I placed a request but I don't see it Work Flow Puzzle
3:15-4:00	Questions and Comments

June 11, 2002
Alleycat is expanding with additional six libraries. TBLC and SWFLN have reached an agreement to have six libraries from the SWFLN Consortium join Alleycat. The six libraries are:
   Sanibel
   Collier County
   Hendry County
   Ft. Myers Beach
   International College
   Charlotte/Glades County

These libraries will come into Alleycat in mediated mode. The target date for inclusion into Alleycat is Oct 1, 2002.

June 10, 2002
The Hillsborough County Public Library Cooperative started using the OCLC 'Library of Last Resort' feature in Alleycat.

May 7, 2002
OCLC goes live at Sarasota County Libraries. Alleycat will forward requests to OCLC in two situations:

• One or more Alleycat libraries owned the title, all responded that the item was Not Available. The request was Unfilled.
• The patron requested something owned by an extended catalog library that was not owned by any Alleycat library. Other Alleycat libraries will make OCLC "Library of last resort" in the near future.

April 10, 2002
The Alleycat project site gets a new look with a site redesign.

February 22, 2002
Citrus County joins Alleycat. Citrus County Public Library went live on Alleycat today. Citrus County has 5 outlets with 50,544 registered patrons and 144,042 volumes.

February 1, 2002
TBLC hosted an Alleycat Decision Makers Meeting. The agenda and minutes are available under the "Meetings" link or you can click here.

December 2001
Polk County Library Cooperative joins Alleycat. PCLC is a Horizon site with 13 libraries with 14 outlets. They have 78,353 registered patrons and 667,305 volumes. Polk County will be running in mediated mode until RPA is available. RPA will provide patron authentication so Polk County residents will be able to submit their own requests.

December 27, 2001
Both patron surveys have been added and the statistics have been reformatted to display in pdf format. The Once Upon an Alleycat skit is available for downloading under the URSA Tutorial link.

November 20, 2001
If you use the tutorial and have database connection problems, read the file in the URSA folder Database Connection Problems under the URSA Tutorial link.  There is an executable file supplied that will update your computer's Universal Data Access.

October 2001 statistics are now available.

October 3, 2001
The July 12 Users Meeting minutes and PowerPoint presentations are now available.

September 28, 2001
The URSA CBT has been updated.  A tutorial for the mediated mode of URSA has been added to the tutorial download page.  In addition, the unmediated mode tutorial has been updated.  Both modes contain a  with a new section called "What If".  This section teaches staff what an error message means and what to do about it. If you have previous files of the tutorial you will need to download the following files and replace your old files with the downloads: 

• URSA Tutorial
• CBT Manual Unmediated
• CBT Manual Mediated

August 29, 2001
Alleycat Decision Makers Meeting at 9:30 a.m. at TBLC. Click the link for the agenda.

August 14, 2001
Alleycat Help section added.  Contains online help for common errors that may occur when using Alleycat.

August 8, 2001
Minutes from the July Users meeting are now available. 
Pasco County  Library System to be activated August 27.
Statistics for July posted.

July 16, 2001
Posting of the PowerPoint presentations, handouts and minutes of the July 12th Users Meeting.

June 28, 2001
The CBT Manual has been changed (Common Errors section has been deleted) and a Common Error help file added to the downloads. The Common Errors section was part of the CBT Manual, and since this file continues to grow, I have decided to move it out of the CBT Manual and make it a separate download.  The Common Errors download has been updated with two new errors.

June 27, 2001
Next Alleycat Users' meeting is July 12th 1:30 pm at TBLC. Agenda will be posted July 6th. The results of the patron and staff surveys conducted in March are now available. Click on the links to the left to view the results.

June 21, 2001
A URSA Tutorial available for downloading. At the URSA meeting DURING ALA Lauren Stokes provided copies of a URSA CBT Tutorial that she created.  If you did not get a copy it is available for you to download. 

June 1, 2001
Total of first year statistics :

For additional statistics go to the Statistics section

April 13, 2001
Snap Shot Charts of monthly statistics have been added under the Statistics link.
Mid-year report for grant year two is available under Overview/Reports

April 12, 2001 Article in "Computers in Libraries" April 2001 issue about Alleycat. Written by our own Lauren Stokes and Karen Wilber.

April 1, 2001
Alleycat ends March with a total of 10,120 requests having been made by library patrons. March was our busiest month yet.  Check out the statistics.

March 27, 2001

Top Cat

On January 17, 2001, The Florida Department of State, Division of Library and Information Services selected the Anywhere-Anytime Library project as one of their Exemplary Projects submitted under the 2000 Library and Technology Act grant program. The project will be featured in various Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) publications.

February 26, 2001
Software upgrade notes

February 19, 2001
SPIN Libraries added to Alleycat.

February 2, 2001
Decision makers meeting minutes

January 19, 2000
SPIN staff training will begin February 6.On-line target date is February 13.