December 2007 Archives

Just what some of you have been asking for, acquisitions training!  ALCTS is promoting a recently designed course called Funadamentals of Acquisitions.  It is a distance-education, Web-based course that is perfect for librarians and paraprofessionals new to acquisitions.

The course covers the basics of acquiring monographs and serials: goals and methods; financial management of materials budgets; and relationships among acquisitions librarians, library booksellers, subscription agents, and publishers.

The first two sessions are open for registration: Feb. 4 to 29 and Mar. 31 to Apr. 25.   If you are interested, don't delay because we are told the sessions fill up fast.  

To register, and to get more information about the course, go to the ALCTS Web site at:

http://www.ala.org/ala/alcts/alctsconted/alctsceevents/webcourses/alctsfundamentals.cfm

Itasca Community College, with its campus of brick buildings set in a grove of pine trees, was the final stop on our tour of Iron Range libraries. There we meet with Sean Bean, the librarian, and Katie Petermeier, the library technician, to talk about their activities and plans and update them on several OCLC services including WorldCat.org and Collection Analysis.

Steve gave us a tour of the library. It seems warm and comfortable, but student usage has increased dramatically and it’s getting crowded. Right now it has 20,000+ titles and 24 public computers. Steve is hoping to expand the space. He’d like to do some weeding, increase the liberal arts collection, and make the library a community center.

Our next stop was at the Arrowhead Library System headquarters just a few miles down Route 169 in Mt. Iron.

Meeting with us were Shelley Rogers, the Technical Services Librarian, Mark Koukol, the Application Support Librarian, Sharon Kangas, the Mail-a-Book coordinator, and Rebecca Patton, the Public Library Consultant.

Arrowhead serves 29 libraries from Baudette to Grand Marais in the seven counties of Northeast Minnesota – making it the largest such operation in the country. It offers a range of services including a regional online catalog, online newspaper and magazine databases, video/audio formats, and even a print shop. Most of its libraries subscribe to CatExpress through its Compass Group. For area residents that don’t have a library, Arrowhead provides a bookmobile service and books by mail.

We toured their building which was constructed within the last few years. It’s spacious with plenty of windows. The staff offices are roomy, and there’s a big, well-furnished conference room. The Bookmobile and Mail-a-Book operations have their own sizeable spaces.

Next Post: Itasca Community College

On the last day of our tour of Iron Range libraries Sara and I first visited Mesabi Range Community College in Virginia, MN.

There we meet with Laurie Tekautz (director) and Kim Johnson (cataloger). They gave us a tour and told us about their work. Kim described how she does cataloging, label printing, and database management not only for Mesabi but also five other northeast community colleges. We also discussed free services available to them with their OCLC cataloging subscription, showed them the OCLC Usage Statistics Web site, and demonstrated WorldCat.org and WorldCat Registry (the new online directory of library information).

Our meeting was in the college’s art gallery where the exhibit was in keeping with the Halloween season.

Next Post: Arrowhead Library System