Professional Development Grants Approved

The NNY Library Network’s Professional Development grant program continues to be a very successful way for member libraries’ staffs to gain access to training opportunities not available here in Northern New York.

The following are summaries of 4 of the sessions Celia Livingston of Jefferson Community College attended while at "Computers in Libraries 2002."

"Cyberguides and Search Lessons Learned" was lead by Bonnie Burwell and Margo Williams.

Most searches begin at sites such as Yahoo or Google. There are various ways to begin a search such as starting at an organization or trade group site. An exemplary web directory such as Yahoo is used to reference against other directories as a last step in a search. Another type of finding tool is the subject gateway, which provides access to a large number of sites organized around a subject.

"Google Busters" was lead by Gary Price.

A web log is an easy way to publish on the web, and can be a resource for librarians. "The Virtual Acquisition Shelf and News Desk" is published daily by Gary Price. How and where you search, as well as the web content that is being searched, is important. The open web format is not the only source for web searches such as Google, AltaVista, and Lycos. Open web and the "invisible" web, which Gary and Chris Sherman write about in this book, are not the end all for web searches. Google’s catalogs utilize optical character recognition technology. The way this is achieved is by scanning the entire catalog, then using optical character recognition to allow keyword searches on the actual words.

Research indexes are another tool. They can be downloaded for free for non-commercial use. They permit IT faculty at universities to put up one copy of a published paper on instructional websites.

"Search Engine Update" was lead by Greg Noles.

Greg is the host for Search Engine Showdown, which reviews, compares, and analyzes rapidly changing web search tools.

Web search engines have undergone transformations, partially because economic struggle has beset the search engine industry in the past year. Numerous search engines have been bought out. For instance, Overture is the new name for Go To, which has become a search engine where hits are ranked higher based on fees paid. The Excite database is gone and Snap has become MBCI. Inktomi has integrated into Mede-search, which turned into Dog Pile.

One of the main web search engines left is Alta Vista, which sells software to companies such Amazon.com. Cambridge Scientific uses the Alta Vista software for their internal search system.

"Can the Marriage of OPAC and E-Books be Saved?" was lead by James Rettig.

Who was the intended market for e-books? Consumers or libraries? Libraries were hesitant to loan out e-books.

In an article written by Lucia Snowhill of the UC Santa Barbara, numerous criteria for e-book success in academic libraries were identified. There is need for non-proprietary software and hardware and for inner operability of files. The e-book needs to be developed for other uses rather than the replication of a stand-alone book. Libraries will need to be able to lend e-books to individuals and themselves through the inter-library loan system.

Snowhill says libraries need to be able to archive these books indefinitely as they already do with printed books. She also believes the e-books should cost no more than the printed version and the ongoing access fee for archiving should be minimal.

In the Feb. 27th issue of the 2002 Forward, Editor Eugene Schwartz reported that I- picture books offer 1000+ children’s books to school and public libraries.And unlike Net Library, I-picture books allows multiple-simultaneous users.