TBLC Annual Meeting & 25th Anniversary - November 9

This year's Annual Meeting features Joan Frye Williams, whose talk is entitled "Press # for More Options - or The Future of Libraries and Library Cooperation."

Joan is one of today's most respected commentators on libraries - and one of the most entertaining. Joan is a wonderful observer of libraries and how the public uses them. She practices "the cultural anthropology of libraries," especially technology. Her presentations help us see the obvious and provide practical steps to get our services in sync with library users. Her presentation will focus on the future, outline trends that are affecting libraries, discuss innovations in library service, and offer new perspectives on library cooperation and collaboration. Be prepared to learn, laugh, and go home knowing how to make good services better!

The meeting will also feature a report of last year's accomplishments, plans for the future, and election of directors and officers. Parking will be free and convenient.

Campus Activity Center at the USF/St. Petersburg Campus, 9 to 1:30

New Strategic Plan

The TBLC Planning Committee, ably led by Chair Marlyn Pethe, has completed its work, the Board has adopted the plan, and it is available on the web. Thanks to Marlyn and the Committee members for their many hours of hard and thoughtful work.

The planning process was aided by experts Joan Frye Williams and Pat McClintock. Ms. Williams, known for the formative role she played in developing California's regional networks, informed the planners about state of the art library cooperation and networking. Technology consultant Pat McClintock informed the group about the current state of library automation, technology, and electronic information. In addition to working with the Planning Committee, Pat also spent a day discussing the future of shared automation and technology based services in the TBLC region with a group of about 50.

The plan charts the way for TBLC to move into digitization and updates its approach to collaboration, continuing education and training, and technology based services. The plan also establishes and clarifies TBLC roles in Trend Spotting, Diversity, and Advocacy.

The plan, along with supporting documents, can be found on the web at www.tblc.org/about/stratplan.shml .

Cultural Heritage & Digitization

Soon TBLC will be hard at work with libraries on cultural heritage and digitization projects that provide access to their collections and those of local museums, historical societies and other cultural organizations.

This summer the State Library announced that TBLC's Bay Area Resource Sharing grant proposal was funded. The proposal was developed with input from the Museums and Libraries Group, and the University of South Florida Libraries provided great support and assistance.

Last spring TBLC surveyed members and identified the projects included in the grant application described below. Depending on each partner's needs, projects will digitize materials, create metadata records, and store and make the records and images searchable on the web.

• University of Tampa - 107 photographs of Tampa, the Tampa Bay Hotel, and the campus from the early days of its existence
• Pinellas County Heritage Village / Largo Library - 55 city documents and maps, 145 photographs of Largo and Pinellas County
• John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art - 100 exhibition guides and guides to Ringling Museum
• Bay Pines VA Medical Center - 100 photographs and 100 newspaper articles about building of hospital
• Mote Marine Laboratory - 15 marine scientific technical reports published by the Laboratory
• Lake Wales Public Library - 100 photographs and 100 pamphlets and postcards documenting history of Lake Wales
• Lakeland Public Library - 2,000 digitized images depicting the history of Lakeland
• St. Petersburg College - 100 documents and 100 photographs relating to the history of Gibbs Junior College and St. Petersburg College
• Stetson University College of Law - 200 photos of the early days of the college at the Gulfport location

TBLC will assist the institutions by providing:

• Equipment
• Digital Library Software developed by University of South Florida Libraries
• Standards and guidelines
• Training
• Design and creation of the Cultural Heritage web presence

TBLC will purchase and house a server that will run Digital Library Software developed by USF for their digital collections. It provides templates for entering descriptive metadata records in Dublin Core and other metadata schemes. It is customizable and will provide a search interface for users. TBLC will make records available for metadata harvesting by the Florida Electronic Library (FEL) and will follow standards provided by the FEL's Digital Collections Working Group.

Other Components of the Project Include:

• Digitization Workshop - A workshop will be held to provide instruction in imaging, creation of metadata records, and project management.
• Small Projects for Members - TBLC will also digitize materials and create metadata records for ten images for other libraries who are interested in digitization but are not ready to begin large scale projects.
• Cultural Heritage Website - The TBLC Webmaster will create a design for the Cultural Heritage web presence that will include the Digitization Database, digitization and project content, and metadata and scanning standards.
• Metadata and XML - As libraries and cultural heritage institutions begin to digitize, they need to become aware of changing standards and data protocols. XML (Extensible Markup Language) is an important tool for encoding data and has many potential library uses. TBLC will hold an "XML for Libraries Workshop" in 2005.

If you have questions about the project, please contact Ellen Cannon (cannone@tblc.org / 622.8252)

Migration Season At TBLC

Waterfowl and butterflies migrate in the fall and this year so does TBLC. On December 9th the SunLine system will migrate from Dynix - the name its automation vendor shares with a version of its product, to Horizon. The 11 SunLine members have been working hard for over a year in preparation. The TBLC automation team - Ben Ostrowsky, Matt Smith, Ellen Cannon, and coordinator Beth Watson, are helping members with profiling and by translating the myriad of technical descriptions and options into simple common language.

iBorrow - New Name for Alleycat

Early in 2005 we will migrate to a new, and vastly improved version of the URSA software that supports Alleycat, and at that time Alleycat's name will change to iBorrow. TBLC's extended circulation product now has 44 participating libraries with 107 outlets and in 2004 there were over 38,000 filled requests. Additional libraries are in the queue to join the product in 2005. The Alleycat name served the program and TBLC well and the new name will serve well as the program continues to expand beyond the TBLC region. Training in the use of the new URSA product and new promotional materials will be provided to help libraries communicate about the iBorrow change to their staff and users.

Ask a Librarian Program Continues to Grow

Users are beginning to rely on Ask a Librarian for remote reference assistance. On a recent user survey one user commented, "This is a great thing. I was completely lost before Clayton at Ask a Librarian showed me how to look things up. He showed me instead of just finding the information for me. This was a great learning experience." Another added, "just thank God for Ask a Librarian, because I would be lost on a lot of things, by not knowing which way to go with different things like I was lost today. But thanks to the Librarian I know where I'm going with my assignment. Thanks." These are two of many quotes from patrons who found the service ‘great' ‘wonderful' and ‘helpful.'

With 79 libraries throughout Florida, Ask a Librarian has doubled in size during its second year and expanded from the initial 30 hours of service to 76 hours.

Ask a Librarian has expanded service hours for users. The service is now open 10-10 Sunday - Friday and 10-5 on Saturday. By opening these additional hours on Sunday night, Ask a Librarian hopes to further give support to students who use the service for research assistance.

The continuing rise in usage also supports the ongoing reliance on Ask a Librarian by remote users, with over 9000 sessions since its debut on July 28, 2003. Numbers are expected to grow to over 12,000 sessions in the upcoming grant year as the service further develops its marketing and becomes a more established service of the Florida Electronic Library.

Diana Sachs Takes New TBLC Position

TBLC is proud to announce Diana Sachs' appointment as Member Services Coordinator. Currently Virtual Library Coordinator and lead member of TBLC's Ask a Librarian team, Diana will be changing roles soon and efforts are underway to recruit her virtual reference replacement.

The TBLC Board recently created the Member Services position that will focus on communications, special interest groups, group purchases, and assessment.

Diana is very well known in the TBLC community through her work with Ask a Librarian, where she coordinated scheduling and trained over 1,500 reference librarians to staff the desk. Diana played a key role in getting Ask a Librarian up and running and coordinating the service at Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Public Library before coming to TBLC 2 years ago.

We are looking forward to the improvements Diana will bring to TBLC's member services and to continuing our very successful participation in Ask a Librarian and partnership with CCLA.

People

• Dr. Derrie Perez has been appointed Dean of the USF Library System. Dr. Perez is a TBLC Past President and current President of the Florida Library Association.
• Roger Miller has retired as director of Clearwater Christian College's Easter Library.
• Michael Clater has been appointed Director of Clearwater Christian College's Easter Library.
• Jackie Jackson has retired from the University of South Florida Poynter Library where she served as Head of Circulation and Bibliographic Instruction.
• Mary Alice Dobson retired from the Gulf Beaches Public Library in Madeira Beach where she served as Reference Librarian and Assistant Director.
• Maggie Cinnella has been promoted to Reference Librarian and Assistant Director of the Gulf Beaches Public Library. Maggie had formerly served as Youth Services Librarian.
• Shannon Bennett-Manross has been appointed Information Services Librarian at the M. M. Bennett Library on the St. Petersburg/Gibbs Campus.
• Stephen A. Kershner has joined the Pasco County Public Library System as Assistant Director.

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