Volume 11 -- January 1997 -- No. 1
EDITOR'S CORNER
by Jackie Jackson
This edition of the newsletter is going to be short and to the point as I have been sabotaged by one of the many forms of flu presently circulating (no pun intended). Never has chicken soup tasted so good, for so long, in such quantities! At this beginning of another New Year I would like to repeat again a previous request for membership input in the form of your announcements, items of interest, notices of meetings, or anything else you might like to share with your colleagues. This newsletter is for the membership and we would like to broaden the content. I hope you have had a chance to look at the SIS homepage which has been put together by Shirl Kennedy. She has done a really nice job and she also is looking for your input in the form of favorite web sites.
FEBRUARY MEETING
by Joyce Burkhart
At the suggestion of many members, the next SIS meeting will be a dinner get-together with a program following. It will be held at 6:30 pm on Monday, February 3rd, at the Valencia Gardens Restaurant, 811 West Kennedy Boulevard, Tampa. (It is near the University of Tampa and has a large parking lot.) The program will be a discussion on The Perils of Downsizing, with Coping Strategies for Same. Harriet Thompkins will speak from her own experience, with others who have survived similar situations adding their words of wisdom.
The cost of the dinner is $13.95, which
includes salad, coffee or tea, tax, and gratuity, in a private room. To whet
your appetite and give you one more decision in your life to ponder between now
and the meeting, there are three choices of entree:
If you would like any more information, or would like to share your own downsizing story, including close calls, tips for prevention, etc. call Joyce Burkhart at 341-4732 or email her at burkhartj@email.spjc.cc.fl.us. We're expecting an evening that will be both enjoyable and edifying - hope to see you there!
MINUTES FROM DECEMBER MEETING
by Tina Neville
Approximately thirty people attended the December meeting at the Nelson Poynter Memorial Library on the St. Petersburg Campus of the University of South Florida. Vice President Joyce Burkhart presided over the meeting as President Lana Bullian was unable to attend. The business meeting began with Treasurer Betsy King reporting that there was $502.99 in the SIS account and that we have sixty paid members for this membership year so far. She anticipates that the total membership will approach one hundred before the end of the year. If you haven't already done so, don't forget to send in your 1996/97 SIS membership dues. Joyce provided an update on the goals for 1996/97: SIS now has a permanent mailing address, thanks to the Tampa Bay Library Consortium:
Suncoast Information SpecialistsTBLC staff will forward mail and refer callers to the appropriate SIS contacts. Thanks also to the generosity of TBLC, the SIS web page is now a reality. We are fortunate to have the expertise of SIS member Shirl Kennedy to help us in the creation of our web page. Check out the SIS site at: http://snoopy.tblc.lib.fl.us/sis/ Shirl has asked that SIS members send her information about their favorite web sites. Please include the URL and a twenty-five word summary of why you like the site. Shirl's e-mail address is: skennedy@pobox.com
A permanent address and the creation of the SIS web site should help to broaden our visibility and increase membership in our organization. Joyce Burkhart encouraged any SIS member with ideas for the web site or for expanding our membership to send their thoughts to an SIS officer.
Additional announcements included a notice that our own Betsy King had been mentioned in a Tampa Tribune article in early December. The Florida and Caribbean Chapter of SLA is sponsoring a workshop on telecommunications and the Internet in St. Petersburg in April. Check out the TBLC newsletter for details. After a quick break for pizza and sodas the conversation, as it so often does, turned to the Internet. Participants were asked to comment on how they use the Internet in their daily work assignments. Joyce Burkhart began the discussion by describing the Internet introductory class that she teaches at St. Petersburg Junior College. These popular one hour sessions are offered every Friday at SPJC and are concentrated on how to use the Internet for research. Topics covered include how to locate a site with a known address, a comparison of several search engines and a discussion on how to browse large subjects. The sessions have already been presented to two hundred people with future plans to advertise the sessions in the newspaper. Betsy King commented that she regularly uses the government sites. She downloads actual proposals and finds these sites very useful for locating marketing information. Several other sites which were recommended are: the National Library of Medicine, the Internet Public Library and the Virtual Hospital, which contains a lot of useful consumer information on health related topics. It was also suggested that printing off materials from large sites can be made more efficient if you change to a smaller font.
For those who find listservs overwhelming, it was suggested that Usenet sites can be very useful. In response to a question about staff policies for Internet use on the job, a member from one library indicated that their library required a minimum level of competency on the Intenet. These competencies are included in their performance appraisals.
Mention was made about the TV "black boxes" that have recently become available. The target market for these devices seems to be households that already have computer access and are looking for a way to provide additional access to the Internet. In order to keep this all in perspective it was recommended that everyone read the (print!) volumes entitled: Minutes of the Lead Pencil Society and Technopoly. The December meeting concluded with a tour of the new Poynter Library. This 81,000 square foot building opened in August of 1996. It currently contains approximately 150,000 volumes, periodicals, media items and many public terminals for access to LUIS, the CDROM network and the Internet. The new facility also contains an electronic instruction lab, a special collections area, expanded media offices and a distance learning studio which can be used to broadcast or receive classes. This beautiful building stresses light and open spaces and has waterfront views from all three floors -- as USF President Betty Castor stated at the library dedication, "...there is not a book or a bookshelf without a view".