Adam Cardinal Maida Alumni Library joins DALNET

The Detroit Area Library Network (DALNET) is pleased to announce the addition of the Adam Cardinal Maida Alumni Library to the DALNET consortium. The first seminary and high school library in the consortium, the Adam Cardinal Maida Alumni Library is home to a collection containing a number of topics entirely in Polish and holds a rare book collection that focuses on Poland and Polonia.

“The library’s unique Polish language collection materials will add value to the shared resources of DALNET,” said DALNET Director Steven Bowers.

Located in Orchard Lake, the Adam Cardinal Maida Alumni Library serves the students of SS Cyril and Methodius Seminary, St. Mary’s Preparatory and the Orchard Lake extension of Madonna University. The library has more than 90,000 volumes and 150 subscriptions to academic journals.

Addition of their records to the DALNET shared online catalog is scheduled for January 2009.

RDA Draft Available for Comment

The full draft of RDA (Resource Description and Access) is now available for comment. Please see the following Web page for details on accessing the draft and making comments: http://www.collectionscanada.ca/jsc/rdafulldraft.html

AANM Program Honored by First Lady

The SURA Arts Academy, a program at the Arab American National Museum, was awarded the 2008 “Coming Up Taller” award by Laura Bush at the White House on Friday November 14th.

For the full story, see the Detroit News and the press release from the AANM.

MLA 2008 Conference Report

The 2008 Annual Michigan Library Association Conference was held in Kalamazoo this year on October 22-24.

Shaping your community’s yesterdays for today and tomorrow: building your library’s local history collection – This presentation highlighted many useful tips about establishing or promoting a library’s local history collection.  Kris Rzepczynski, Michigan/Genealogy Coordinator at the Library of Michigan, presented the viewpoint from a large library with an established collection.  Sara Wedell, Adult Services Librarian at the Delta Township District Library, presented the viewpoint of a library just starting out with their local history collection in a new building. Things to consider when creating a local history collection are the scope, what neighboring libraries are doing so as not to duplicate services, whether to circulate materials, and access vs. preservation.  Establishing contacts, such as libraries, historical/genealogical societies, newspapers or churches, within your community is also important.  Resources available to local history librarians include the MeL Genealogy Gateway (which includes HeritageQuest), Michigan County Histories and, soon, SeekingMichigan.org, an online collection of historical collections.

Tech Tools for Reference: a Public and Academic Library Perspective – This was a very informative presentation about all kinds of useful online tools.  Holly Hibner, head of Adult Services at Salem-South Lyon District Library presented some tools from the public library perspective and Christine Tobias, Reference and Technology librarian at Michigan State University showed the audience tools that could be useful in an academic library setting.  A link to their presentation is available here.

Get the Point Across with a Wink – Glenn Fischer from the Genesee District Library presented about a software tool called WINK which is a free way to record computer screen activity, annotate the recording with text or voice, and export the recording in a number of formats.  At DALNET, we have already begun experimenting with this tool for training purposes.

Catalog Records of Tomorrow: Cataloging Rules and Standards in 2009 – This presentation discussed RDA: Resource Description & Access and the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control report.  The portion of the presentation by Lisa Robinson, Head of Cataloging and Metadata Services at Michigan State University, is available here.  Amy L. Ranger’s presentation can be found here.

Michigan Evergreen Project: Michigan’s first open source group catalog – Representatives from the Michigan Library Consortium and the Grand Rapids Public Library discussed the Michigan Evergreen project, an open-source shared system available to Michigan libraries that was launched in 2008.  Currently, the system includes Circulation, and Cataloging, and OPAC, with Acquisitions and Serials slated for 2009.  Libraries that have already migrated included Branch District Library, Grand Rapids Public Library, and Niles District Library.  For more information, see the Michigan Evergreen blog and wiki.

VUFind: an Open Source ILS Independent OPAC – Presentations about VUFind were made by representatives of both Western Michigan University and Eastern Michigan University.  WMU’s presentation can be found here, while the presentation by Jackie Wrosch, Systems Librarian at EMU, can be found here.  VUFind does not replace your ILS, but it can be an improvement on the OPAC supplied by your vendor.  Jackie discussed the improvements that were possible with VUFind, such as the ability to customize, better keyword searching, and integration of outside content, and also the areas that did not quite reach expectations, such as holds/requests, online renewals, and tagging.  Plans for the future include improving the functions they need, comparing VUFind with their vendor OPAC and developing in-house support.

[Report by Kristy Wells]

Arts and Culture as an Economic Development Strategy

On Monday, November 10, the Michigan Municipal League in partnership with the Department of History, Arts, and Libraries (HAL) held one of their training seminars at The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan. The presentation was titled “Arts and Culture as an Economic Development Strategy.” The overall theme asserted that arts and culture are key components needed to attract and retain people and businesses in Michigan communities which will help aid Michigan’s economic resurgence.

The keynote speaker was Robert McNulty, the founder and president of Partners for Livable Communities. He is a recognized expert in urban planning and community development by bringing together public and private partnerships to help revitalize cities.

McNulty used Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Chattanooga, Tennessee as examples of what happens to a community when money is invested in cultural activities. Both cities were turned around positively through the investment of capital, leadership, innovation, and hard work. He noted that culture and the arts are assets to help achieve the goals of a livable community, and libraries can assist because of their unique ability to change according to community needs.

McNulty stressed the need to use arts and culture to welcome people into the community and added that multiculturalism needs to be celebrated in arts and cultural programs. All programming should be inviting and not excluding. Most importantly, for all of these ideas to work leaders need a “non-politicized” agenda.

One of the afternoon sessions was highlighted by Maud Lyon, Executive Director of the Cultural Alliance of Southeastern Michigan. This organization has a membership roster of 75 organizations throughout a seven county region. The Cultural Alliance of Southeastern Michigan helps to ensure that arts and cultural institutions are included in community decisions and help serve community needs; the Alliance helps draw people into communities as residents rather than as tourists.

In total there were six speakers, and all were excellent. The importance of arts and culture will be vital in building and retaining strong communities in Southeastern Michigan. Many of the speakers asserted that libraries could be a great resource to help attract arts and culture into communities. It was also noted that libraries are beloved yet underfunded. Partnerships will be of great importance to ensure Michigan’s economic recovery.

This free seminar will be repeated on Friday, December 12, 2008 in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

ALA Second Life Symposium

SLymposium
Saturday, November 8, 2008  

Sponsored by the American Library Association Virtual Communities & Libraries Member Initiative Group

Schedule (All times are U.S. Pacific Time, also known as Second Life Time):
8:00 A.M. – Welcome and Keynote
Tom Peters, author, ALA TechSource Library Technology Report on Librarianship in Virtual Worlds

8:30 A.M. – Public and Rural Libraries in Second Life
Sonja Morgan, Mark & Emily Turner Memorial Library

9:00 A.M. – Library Associations in Second Life
Tina Coleman, ALA

9:30 A.M. – Academic Libraries in Second Life
Carrie Pennell, Harvard University
FT Takacs, University of South Carolina

10:00 – 11:00 A.M. – Break

11:00 A.M. – Special Libraries in Second Life
Carol Perryman, Coordinator of Health Infoisland

11:30 A.M. – Schools, Teens and Tweens in virtual worlds
Kelly Czarnecki, Public Library Of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County

12:00 P. M. – Graduate library students in Second Life 
Sue Bergren 

Location
ALA Island in Second Life.  There are several ways to get to ALA Island.  The SLURL is http://slurl.com/secondlife/ALA%20Island/128/102/29/.  Or you could search: under the Edit dropdown menu in the SL interface, then click on the Places tab, then search for “American Library Association” then select the teleport option. 

Is your virtual user being well served?

“Is Your Virtual User Being Well Served?” is an Excellence in Customer Service workshop presented by the Mideastern Michigan Library Cooperative designed to assist libraries in serving the virtual user .  The presenter will be Judith Field, Senior Lecturer at Wayne State University, Library and Information Science Program.   It will be on Thursday, November 13, 2008 from 9:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m at the Flint Public Library, Room 205, 1026 E. Kearsley Street, Flint, Michigan.   The cost is $15.00 for MMLC Members and $25.00 for Non-MMLC Members.  .3 CEU’s are available.  Reservations now being accepted at Mideastern Michigan Library Cooperative.  To register, phone (810) 232-7119; fax (810) 232-6639 or email bancroft@gfn.org.

Jacob Lawrence Traveling Display

 

 

 

 

[The following article is from Outlook: A newsletter from the Wayne State University Library System, Fall 2008]

The Wayne State University Library System received grant funding from the Detroit Area Library Network (DALNET) for an outreach project involving the creation of an informational display.  The display includes digitized images of artwork by notable African American artist Jacob Lawrence, as well as descriptive text that explains and puts into historical context, his important series The Legend of John Brown, a suite of 22 silkscreen prints.  The prints currently reside on the 2nd floor of the David Adamany Undergraduate Library.

The traveling display will be a free-standing modular display system that will include descriptive text and graphics, along with an accompanying informational brochure, title list and bibliography.  Over a three-year period, the display will travel to libraries throughout the state of Michigan and to other non-profit organizations and institutions.

“This display will allow us to bring culturally significant art to libraries that are not equipped to display original works of art,” said Diane Sybeldon, Wayne State librarian and coordinator of the grant. 

For more information, or to reserve the display for your institution, visit http://www.lib.wayne.edu/geninfo/news/jacoblawrence/.

AL Direct

AL Direct, the weekly e-newsletter of American Libraries magazine, is now open access for anyone who wants to sign up for it, not just ALA members. The sign-up form is at http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/aldirect/aldirect.cfm.

Visit ALA’s Public Information Office site to find out more news, including the launch of the new AL Inside Scoop blog and the current issue of American Libraries available online without login.