CARL North IT Interest Group Workshop

Susan and I made it out to the CARL North IT Interest Group's workshop on mashup technology and the art of remixing library and information resources at Santa Clara University last Friday. The workshop offered various levels of complexity on all things mashup related.

I'd have to say that my favorite presentation was from Harrison Dekker on the use of Google's Charts and spreadsheet gadgets for numeric data. As a user of Google docs, I was surprised to find that there are widgets to create nifty looking charts and moveable data. If you've seen Hans Rosling's presentation on Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen, then you'll have an idea of what this looks like.

Other topics included Yahoo Pipes for aggregating feeds and web content; web applications used for visually searching the web; and an informative talk on social operating systems. Anyone interested in seeing any of the presentations can go to http://carlnit.blogspot.com.

Changes Made to Website; Share Your Success Stories

Our redesigned website is nearly 2 months old and we continue striving to make improvements so our members can more easily find the information they need.

Some recent changes/additions include:

Under Products & Services

• Consolidated our offerings into two categories: digital products and physical products
  
  
• Added Future Vendors page so members can check out who we are talking with before libraries purchase on their own
  

Under Information & Resources

• Added an eBook FAQ for general and technical questions.

We like to spotlight our member libraries' best practices along with featuring our new products. Please contact Califa if you would like to share either a best practice from your library and/or a success story involving a Califa purchase. We are maintaining an easily accessible archive of the libraries we spotlight.

California Libraries Install the First Automated Book Lending Machines in the Nation

The Summer 2008 issue of the California State Library’s quarterly newsletter, CSL Connection, includes an article on the libraries and partners involved in a unique project, known respectively as Library-a-Go-Go in Contra Costa County and GoLibrary in Yuba County.

The automated book lending service is now installed and in use by the public. Contra Costa County launched their service at the Pittsburg/Bay Point BART station on May 29. On Saturday, August 23, Yuba County will be providing personal demos of GoLibrary and urging the public to get library cards during an all day kick off for library card sign up month.

Califa negotiated the contract with the Swedish vendor, Distec, on behalf of California member libraries. Check out Califa's GoLibrary page if you would like to find out more about this project.

3M/Checkpoint Participation Survey

With the merger of 3M and Checkpoint, Califa is being offered a discount program on security gates and self-charge systems from both vendors. We will be sponsoring a webinar on August 6th to detail the differences among the available equipment (contact Califa@califa.org if you would like to attend).

We are also surveying members to determine interest in purchasing 3M or Checkpoint equipment through us. With an aggregated order (10 units or more), we will be able to offer every library a discount. The larger the order the larger the discount. To determine the level of discount, we are asking members to provide information of their security system/self check-out needs in 2008-09.

The survey is available here and will close at noon on Friday, August 1st. Thank you very much for you participation in this survey.