Libraries of all types are having trouble getting e-books from the largest publishers. There is a way you can help. Visit the website ebooksforlibraries.com and watch the short video. And the most important step – fill out the petition on their website today! The signatures will be sent to major publishers when we have 10,000 reader names. We’re [...]

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Join us for the upcoming educational event:   How eReaders & Tablets are Impacting Library Services This is a catered brown bag luncheon where Tram Nguyen, Lee Scott, and Tom Taylor of the South Central Kansas Library System (SCKLS) will provide an introduction to the most popular electronic readers, address library applications for such eReaders and [...]

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Being a traveling librarian who works on the vendor’s side of the business has produced some interesting comments from my fellow librarians and clients. The first myth is about the travel. I would say “I was at ” and the response would be “Oh you were there?! Did you go see .” My response each [...]

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Remodeling a library?  Need some excitement in your life?  The Combined Arms Research Library on Fort Leavenworth is a consolidated facility that has two main missions.  It is the academic library for the Army’s Command and General Staff College.  It is also the public library for the military families living on the Fort and in [...]

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Greetings to all. This is my first venture in blogging and trying something new (to me). I do not recall making this a New Year’s resolution. It is more or less now that I have had a couple of years under my belt working for EBSCO, I feel a little more confident in taking on [...]

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“Stories” are kind of a hot topic in library marketing these days.  Many public libraries, including the New Jersey State Library (with library marketing extraordinaire, Nancy Dowd) and Wisconsin’s 53-library South Central Library System, have successfully implemented stories into their library advocacy plans.  I think we can, too. Stories, in this context, are like testimonials, [...]

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What “Phenomenal Results” Look Like  This presentation by Mary Ellen Bates at SLA 2011 Annual Conference was sponsored by the Solo Division, Legal & Management Division, and the KM Division  Client loyalty is established when expectations are managed upfront and deliverables consistently meet and exceed those expectations. If you missed Mary Ellen Bates’ presentation, she has [...]

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If you’re like me, one of the things that drew you to librarianship (and to the Internet) was the constant access to information. The constant impetus and opportunity to learn. Often, I don’t even care what I learn – hence the wild variety of books on my personal shelves, from earthworm farms to mythology, cookbooks, [...]

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SLA Annual Conference Presentation by Mary Ellen Bates Link to presentation slides:  http://www.batesinfo.com/extras/assets/omg.pdf Actually, the Millennials are already here.  Mary Ellen Bates led this session about working with what she calls “digital natives”.  Here is a collection of snippets from her presentation.  She describes their expectations of life experiences as “augmented reality” where there are [...]

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          (c) The Photo Group 2011- All Rights Reserved  Thomas Friedman is the author of The World Is Flat and the foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times. According to a very reliable source, Thomas Friedman turns down 93% of speaking invitations. He’s been called “the country’s best newspaper columnist” [...]

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Remember when you read 1984 in high school?  You were outraged that freedom of information could be so curtailed.  You knew in your heart that you would stand against Big Brother if it ever came to that, and you swore that you would doggedly protect intellectual freedom so that it never would.  You became a [...]

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The City of Brotherly Love welcomed SLA members with open arms. There were about a half a dozen members from our chapter that attended who will be sharing about some of the exceptional sessions on this blog in the coming weeks. Keynote Speaker James Kane spoke on Loyalty           (c) The [...]

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I am going remind everyone of the upcoming webinar, RDA @ Your Library, and encourage membership to take advantage of this learning opportunity.  TheHeart of America Chapter of the SLA is sponsoring the webinar, "RDA @ Your Library" on February 4th, 2011 from 9 am to 4 pm http://rda.amigos.org/node/1. The webinar will take place at [...]

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It is the beginning of a new year and SLA Heart of America is having its first planning meeting with the board this afternoon. The holidays are finally past us and we can get back to SLA HOA business.  I am excited to get to know the new leadership and hear what they are planning for [...]

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The Philadelphia Chapter is offering a program on November 4th which I will definitely be attending via webcast.  I think this is a great opportunity for some education on the new GPO Access system if you work with government documents.  I have put the description below and a link for more information: Description: GPO Access [...]

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Congratulation to Chris Hohman on her recent article in InContext magazine!She is the Education Director for the Greater Kansas City Chapter of ARMA and is also a member of SLA HOA.  The article, Have you been wondering whether technology will make records managers obsolete?, discusses the role of records managers in a world where enterprise [...]

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I just got an email from Kate Rogge who thought there might be some interest in the KCAA Fall Symposium.  I have attached the information below: Kansas City Area Archivists' 2010 Fall Symposium — Grant Funding for Archives, Museums, and Special Collection Libraries October 14, 2010 from 1:00pm to 5:00pm Nazarene Archives, 17001 Prairie Star [...]

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For those of you that missed the Saturday event on Cracking the Library Job Market, I have attached the powerpoint that Eric Petersen,Librarian at the H&R Block Business & Career Center, presented to the group.  A big thank you to Eric for the great presentation. He really hit some important parts of the process of job [...]

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In case you didn't see it, the Kansas City Public Library Midtown Branch made the Library Journal for its "eye-popping statistics". The article does hit on both the positives and negatives around the significant growth in DVD rentals: The Kansas City, Kansas Public Library(KCKPL), at least at its downtown Main Branch has racked up some eye-popping [...]

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I received my invitation to the SLA Annual Meeting today (thank you to Mary Odom), so everyone should be receiving their invitations as well.  Put this on your calendar because this will be a great meeting and Marydee Ojala is expected to be a wonderful guest speaker for the event. If you don't receive an [...]

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