February 2010
Table Of Contents
Three NNYLN Spring Conferences Scheduled
Out & About In 2010
Training On Demand
NNYLN Assists Paul Smith’s College With Scanning
A Better Way To Search The Historical Newspapers
NNYLN Furthers Steps To Go Green
Lincoln Letter At SLU Digitally Restored
People In The News
February is the best time to anticipate spring. The holidays are far behind us, and mud season is yet to arrive, so we can look forward to warmer days, more sunshine, and three upcoming NNYLN spring conferences.
Spring Library Assistants Conference; On Wednesday, April 14, 2010, the Network will conduct its annual Spring Library Assistants Conference at the Saranac Lake Free Library. The conference will feature sessions on Dealing With Difficult Patrons, Creating Library Displays and Exhibits, and Time Management.
NNYLN Archival Conference: The Network’s first-ever regional Archival Conference will be held on Friday, April 9, 2010 at the Cheel Center, Clarkson University, Potsdam. This event provides an opportunity for archivists, historical documents repositories, museums, special collections librarians, municipal historians, historical organizations, and others to come together to focus on topics of common interest. This all-day event will feature Christine Ward, Director of the New York State Archives, as keynote speaker.
The NNYLN’s Spring 2009 Library Assistants Conference: Library Smorgasbord, was held April 16 at Clarkson University’s Adirondack Lodge, Potsdam.
The NNYLN’s 2009 Annual Conference was held May 21 at Clarkson University.NNYLN Annual Meeting and Spring Conference: The Network’s Annual Meeting has been scheduled for May 20, 2010 at the Crowne Plaza Resort in Lake Placid. The format of the annual meeting has been changed in order to align the content of the day more closely with participants’ professional development needs. There will be four separate continuing education presentations scheduled (two in the morning and two in the afternoon), as well as a keynote speaker.
Upcoming Dates Thursday, Feb. 11 - The Winter Webinar: "Crowdsourcing and Libraries" will begin at 1:00 p.m. on your computer. There is no fee to participate, but registration is necessary to log in.
Monday, Feb. 15 - The NNYLN office will be closed in observance of Presidents’ Day.
Thursday, Feb. 25 - The Winter Webinar: "Information Use and Reuse in the Library: The Creative Commons Solution" will begin at 1:00 p.m. on your computer. There is no fee to participate, but registration is necessary to log in.
Would You Like to Borrow a Kindle?
The Northern New York Library Network owns a Kindle - Amazon’s E-Book reader. It is available for loan to member libraries for an opportunity to try it out, see how it works, and check out its features. Member libraries may use the Kindle for two weeks, and may download one item from Amazon. The NNYLN item is the KindleDX, the larger screen version of the reader.
For those unfamiliar with Kindle, read about it at amazon.com.
To borrow the NNYLN Kindle, contact Bridget Doyle at 315-265-1119.
At NNYLN, we know it is difficult to travel for workshops and training, and that classes offered do not always exactly fit libraries’ needs.To help address these concerns, NNYLN provides its member libraries with an opportunity to provide individually designed, on-site, training on demand for library staff.
Examples of this program might include a one-day staff program on assessment, planning, or program implementation; or perhaps training on the usage of a particular piece of software or new procedure.
Here’s how it works:
Member libraries in need of specialized staff training may apply to the Network for a CE Assist stipend to help pay for on-site trainers. If approved, a participating library then plans its own event and chooses a trainer/instructor to assure they are getting exactly what they need.
Libraries can select the best possible date, time, instructor, and training methods to assure that training objectives are achieved. As stated in the program guidelines, the NNYLN will pay half the cost of a trainer, up to $1000. This would be paid by reimbursement after the training has taken place. Program guidelines are available online.
For more information about CE Assist, or to apply for funding, call Regional Services Coordinator Bridget Doyle at 1-877-833-1674, or email her.
The NNY Library Network is in the process of scanning The Brownell Collection for the Joan Weill Library at Paul Smith’s College. There are a total of eight boxes in the collection. To date, four boxes, or 2,310 images have been scanned. The Brownell Collection includes survey field notes; lists of goods shipped; correspondence with William Constable, James LeRay, and others; and land agreements involving Vincent LeRay de Chaumont, Henry Delametter, Jonas Smith, and others.
Many of the items will be placed on the North Country Digital History history.nnyln.net website.
Any institution interested in having the Network assist them with the scanning and item description input for their digitations project is asked to contact Pam Ouimet at 315-265-1119 or email her.
One handy tip is to replace a character or characters with a question mark (?) in the search. For example if someone is searching for the surname HOEY, use H??Y. The ? is replaced by any single character. In this example, searching for H??Y will find words including as Holy, Hazy, Hmey, and Hoey.
With almost two million pages from 45 different newspapers on the Northern New York Historical Newspapers website, it can be daunting to locate an ancestor or even a story about a fire from a specific year. There are tricks that might make these searches more successful. When using the question mark in place of a letter there will be more results, so be prepared to look at several hits provided.
Why is this search method helpful? - What users are searching for is a text file for each page consisting of words the optical character recognition (OCR) program understands. Simply put, each page is “read” by a computer program that creates the text file being searched. When searching, keep in mind what a computer might "see" when reading the newspaper.
And most recently, the computer lab and large meeting room have been closed off and the heat turned down when not in use. Also, motion detector lights have been installed in the bathrooms.
The NNYLN office has been a long-time proponent of being green. When the "new" building was opened on Route 11 in 2001, the Network immediately began recycling bottles and cans, and paper trash. As time went on, the paper towel dispensers were taken out of the bathrooms and installed with hand dryers. But it’s been in the past year that more and more efforts have been made to go green.
Plastics from water bottles, cleaning agents, etc. started being separated and recycled. NNYLN personnel became more cognizant of shutting off their lights when out of their office for a period of time. During this past summer, windows were installed in the computer lab to allow for more fresh air and less reliance on air conditioning.