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Library Automation Management, Inc.
Newsletter
Volume 1, Issue 2 June, 1998
OPENING IN THE YEAR 2000
LIBRARY LINKS TO EVERYBODY
OUR NEW WEB & EMAIL ADDRESS AT LIBRARYAUTOMATION.COM
NEAT TIP: GET MARC RECORDS FROM AROUND THE WORLD
NON-ROMAN CHARACTERS IN CATALOG RECORDS
LIBRARY AUTOMATION Q&A COLUMN MAKES DEBUT
OPENING IN THE YEAR 2000 Here's a dream for a Library Technology Consultant: Participating in the design and implementation of a brand-new library to open in the year 2000, with the mandate to press the envelope of library/computer technology. We're doing that right now at a leading private school on Long Island, New York. This exciting project involves researching, studying and imagining what kind of networks, computers, library management software and Internet resources are going to work best in the new millennium.
LIBRARY LINKS TO EVERYBODY At another private school, this one on Manhattan's West Side, we've made another dream become real. Everybody always talks about a real Electronic Resource Center--one click to search your library's Catalog, a click to search an Encyclopedia, Magazines, Newspapers, the Internet and the whole World Wide Web. Certainly, we've done this to some degree elsewhere. At this school, one of the first where all the students have their own laptops, the challenge was to make a "Window of Library Links" available throughout the school, and without having to reconfigure 600 desktop and laptop computers. By working out a series of batch files and log-in scripts (especially for all the different library CD-ROMs), we made this dream a reality and got the following e-mail from this school's librarian:
HOORAY! I have tested your instructions and they work perfectly. All the programs worked.... I am thinking about a parade through the school with noisemakers and balloons, giving out flyers with the instructions for Library Links and also the address of our web page. Don't you think that's appropriate?
You bet we do! It took more than 100 lines of original code and weeks of testing to get it just right. But it shows that library resources can be made available through multiple network servers, to all kinds of workstations, and to everyone in a school.
OUR NEW WEB & EMAIL ADDRESS AT LIBRARYAUTOMATION.COM Put it in your address book, bookmark it, note it as a favorite place:
libraryautomation.com
Note that libraryautomation is one word, no space. Whether you use upper or lower case is not important. Thanks to our new Proxy at NameSecure, this new address is easy to remember. But our old addresses still work too.
NEAT TIP: GET MARC RECORDS FROM THE WORLD Check out some interesting new software: BookWhere at http://www.web-clarity.com/products/faq_bookwhere.html
45 day free trial and about $300 if you buy it. It's the Z39.5 standard and we'll have lots more to say about it.
NON-ROMAN CHARACTERS IN CATALOG RECORDS We're working with a number of libraries on the problem of using Roman and non-Roman characters in MARC records. The specific problem is importing, exporting and displaying Hebrew and English characters in MARC, at the same time and at a reasonable price. (Of course, the problem could also occur with Chinese, Arabic, Russian or Greek.) We've collected a good bit of information about this, including from the Library of Congress's work in this area. Call us if you'd like to share thoughts on this subject.
LIBRARY AUTOMATION Q&A COLUMN MAKES DEBUT While the Newsletter you're reading goes to our friends and long-time contacts, for the wider world of libraries our new Q&A column is now being published in:
The Hudson Valley Library Association Newsletter (Greater NYC Area Independent Schools)
Bookmark (The Newsletter of the Educational Media Association of New Jersey)
LISMA Ink (The Newsletter of the Long Island School Media Association)
We send this Newsletter as an occasional e-mail with library automation tips, tricks and items about what's new. If you don't want to be on our Recipient List, please let us know. If you have the e-mail addresses of library people who you think would like to receive it, let us know that too.
Library Automation Management is a Member of the American Library Association and a Member of the Independent Computer Consultants Association and subscribes to the ICCA’s Code of Ethics and Standards and Practices.
Our E-Mail address is webmail@libraryautomation.com
Our Web Site is www.libraryautomation.com
Library Automation Management, Inc. 101 Clark Street, 27C, Brooklyn Heights, NY 11201, (718) 834-1414