Over the past year as the Director of SWAN Services, I have heard concerns expressed in Council and the membership about the viability of the service. What would it take for SWAN to be an independent organization? How much would it cost? How could we plan for this possibility as we create the SWAN annual budget? As Council and I worked together through 2009, we set as a goal to explore these ideas more concretely in 2010.
At the January 6, 2010 SWAN Council meeting we discussed a process to create a future plan of service, or “business plan” for SWAN. Alice Calabrese gave SWAN Council an overview of the current funding situation with Library Systems in Illinois and a commitment to contribute MLS time and effort to the process. Based on the success of the Governance Study Group in 2007, we created a methodology based on that model in order to create the plan.
I am happy to announce that SWAN Council, SWAN membership, and MLS has embarked on an effort to create a plan that allows SWAN to run independently at the time of SWAN membership’s choosing. The process involves the creation of a committee comprised of SWAN member library directors and/or assistant directors under a charge created by SWAN Council. This charge is linked to this SWAN blog post, which I excerpt below:
The charge to the committee is to study infrastructure, organizational, service, and location options and create multiple scenarios that include costs and implementation timelines. The committee will develop and present a recommendation for the membership.
The SWAN Business Plan Committee (“BizCom”) will comprise of six self-nominated members (two from each Governance Group) that will be elected by the membership directors. We are pleased to announce the members of the SWAN Business Plan Committee (BizCom). At the time of the nomination deadline, we received exactly six self-nominations, two from each Governance Group. Because an election would be uncontested, we are simply announcing the results. Congratulations to: (more after the jump)
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| Posted by Aaron Skog on February 9th, 2010.
Today the Thornton Public Library became fully automated after two years of hard work. SWAN staff were there to oversee the big day. Thornton’s mayor Jack Swan showed up to wish everyone well and shook hands with me. Mayor Swan meet Director of SWAN!
| Posted by Aaron Skog on February 1st, 2010.
The system-wide patron purge is underway! 62 SWAN libraries which responded to the survey sent on 7/17/09 will be processed in the order they responded, with the remaining 16 that did not respond having to wait until the very end (sorry). The patron purge began the week of August 17, 2009 and as of this date 11 libraries have been completed.
The purge criteria that will be used is an expiration date (3 years back) of 7/1/06 or last activity date (7 years back) of 7/1/02.
I find the “currency of registration records” from the Central Iowa Library Service Area (CILSA) document to be quite good for laying out reasons for such a purge:
One of the key measures of public library performance is the percentage of community members who are active users of the library. This measure is an indicator of how well the library serves all residents of the community. Regular purging of inactive borrowers ensures that the measure will provide accurate information for library advocacy, strategic planning, and service evaluation. Although it may be tempting to inflate the number by conducting infrequent purges of the borrower records, having an accurate estimate is crucial for effective planning.
Please see the SWAN Member’s only webpage for further details on the 2009 system-wide patron purge:
http://www.mls.lib.il.us/swandoc/patronpurge2009.asp
| Posted by Aaron Skog on August 29th, 2009.
Spine and Pocket Label
Spine Label
Spine Labels is a R2007 feature for printing spine and/or pocket labels from MilCat. This feature allows libraries to print spine labels directly from MilCat.
Mary Lou Coffman, Special Projects Assistant for SWAN, reports that spine labels are moving along and this is where we are:
- We have produced a spine and pocket, and spine only label, using a Zebra GX420 thermal printer. We are creating a group of core templates for libraries to use. Any editing of templates must be done through a text editor, or the recommended test editor iReport version 1.3.3 ONLY.
- We are continuing to work on refining and producing more core templates with the vision of libraries using these core templates without editing. We are developing classes on template etiquette and use, and hope to provide some basic training with a text editor.
- Our work with the Panasonic dot matrix printers was proving to be frustrating and is temporarily on hold. We have plans to revisit this later.
| Posted by Nancy Ciesiel on August 4th, 2009.
Meet the Machines! That was just one of the topics covered on July 20, when SWAN staff and Oak Park Library staff met at MLS to discuss the migration. Tony Siciliano acted as MC for the meeting. Also reviewed were SWAN OPACs, Millennium modules, reports, training, and project management.
This was the first of many meetings to be held with the Oak Park migration team, headed by Director Dee Brennan, as they prepare to become the 81st library to join SWAN. This project will take up to a year to complete. The SWAN Blog will track the Oak Park Public Library migration process over this time period until we hit our “Go Live” date. For more insight into SWAN’s migration process read Behind the Curtain: How a Library Joins SWAN (http://www.mls.lib.il.us/ennounce/2009/03_13/joinswan.asp).
Next Steps: The location code team is meeting in September and the equipment for the VPN is awaiting installation at OPPL. Stay tuned…
Yes, people were allowed to get up and mingle at this meeting!
| Posted by Nancy Ciesiel on July 31st, 2009.
I demonstrated how SWAN Encore can “bubble up” items for SWAN library sites at our Quarterly meeting on June 4th. On June 11th, the work to get items to rise to the top of a search or “bubbling up” was completed for all SWAN libraries and Sandy notified libraries via SWAN Com. This SWAN blog post will show how each of the SWAN OPAC servers WebPAC and Encore handle the display of your library items.
First off, it is best to think about Encore as a totally different approach to the SWAN catalog. By this I don’t necessarily mean that it displays in a different layout, but that Encore searches are always going to be very broad and then require refinement using the facets of “location,” “format,” or “publish date” after the initial search.
Secondly, the term “scoping” is used quite a bit in SWAN/Innovative nomenclature, so we need to make sure that “scoping” is understood and how it is different from “bubbling up” in either OPAC.
- Location: this your library defined within the Millennium ILS as a code. Libraries can have multiple location codes.
- Site: the physical building where your library’s computer network resides. This is further defined by your network’s IP address. You can have different computers on your network identified to the SWAN servers based on their unique IP adddress.
- Bubbling up: your library items will appear at the top of the list. This is beneficial if your library name is “Westchester” and ends up at the bottom of the item list.
- Scoping: your library search by default is restricted to your location within the OPAC. WebPAC can do this automatically by detecting your site. Encore cannot scope to your location automatically based on your site; searches in Encore will need to narrowed your library location after the initial search using the “Location” facet.
The example screen captures below show a search “librarian comic” scoped and bubbling up at the Northlake Public Library.
- SWAN servers are configured to detect the network traffic coming from Northlake PL building site.
- As of June 11, 2009 all SWAN libraries now have items bubbling up in both WebPAC and Encore. This wasn’t the case for all the SWAN members.
- For SWAN WebPAC at Northlake, searches are automatically restricted/scoped to only the Northlake location code as that is the preferred method of Northlake. Please note that not all SWAN libraries have “scoping” turned on for their site.
- For SWAN Encore, searches will show all bibliographic records that fulfill the search. Those bibs that have Northlake items attached will have Northlake “bubbled up” to the top of the list. If a patron wished to narrow the search to only return bibs that have Northlake’s items attached, the Encore facet “location” would need to be clicked/selected after the initial search.
As I noted, Encore will not automatically scope to your location, it can only bubble up items automatically. There is no unique URL needed for individual SWAN libraries using Encore to have bubbling up. You can simply use the swanencore.mls.lib.il.us for your public computer configuration.
| Posted by Aaron Skog on June 17th, 2009.
The Emerging Technology Committee has been studying the need for a third OPAC designed for mobile devices. A strong argument against having a product like AirPAC was that the technology for such devices like an iPhone do a pretty good job displaying the current SWAN OPAC in both forms: WebPAC and Encore. The browser technology has reached a sufficient level that there isn’t as strong a need for an OPAC configured exclusively for mobile devices. What ETC is going to focus on for SWAN members is how to get the two OPAC to best display within mobile devices and make some recommendations for you to pass onto patrons.
The screen captures below show the SWAN Encore and WebPAC catalogs on the iPhone. Special thanks to Brooke on the ETC for supplying these screen captures. Click on the first image to scroll through the images and view my comments. To exit an enlarged image, simply click on it again.
| Posted by Aaron Skog on June 15th, 2009.
As my first IUG unfolded, I realized that the community within the User Group is extremely talented. I will venture to say this is probably due to a high amount of academic libraries using Innovative. I love my public libraries, but lets face it, we don’t have a large number of system admins writing Perl scripts!
The three of us split up to cover a number of interesting sessions ranging from electronic resource products, load tables, loan rules, floating collections. The information on load tables alone made my head burst: its amazing that the woman presenting it had such mastery over a complex subject.
Now the important stuff to all you librarians that go to conferences: THE BAG. Inside was a gift of a stainless steel water bottle. The bag itself is organic cotton. I’m always amused that a notebook is handed out along with a pen since I always arrive at my destination with (1) something to write with, and (2) a notepad. But I saw plenty of people using those branded “IUG 2009 Anaheim” today so it just goes to show you that we’re a profession that loves free stuff.
| Posted by Aaron Skog on May 17th, 2009.
Tony, Heidi, Sandy and I left on Saturday for Anaheim for the 2009 Innovative Users Group Conference. I brought along my snazzy camera that I received as a birthday gift from my wife. I thought it would be nice to share a few photos while I’m on my lunch break.
| Posted by Aaron Skog on May 17th, 2009.
Envelope Moistener
At the Governance Group A meeting last month, Carol from Worth Public Library shared her library’s solution for sealing the new notice paper: apply liberally on the paper edges some Quality Park Products “Envelope Moistener with Adhesive” product #46065.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Some discussion at the March SWAN Quarterly about the new notice paper prompted some critique of the paper. Lets cover some of the features of the new notice paper:
- 8.5 x 11 inch paper: now a standard size
- Perforated for “Z” fold: easy to fold
- Laser printed: looks more professional than previous impact/dot matrix printed notices
- Fits into a standard window envelope easily
- Special adhesive (yellow color): seals when run through a machine, but not by hand
- Designed for patron confidentiality
SWAN Notice Paper
When we began printing on the new paper in January 2009, we caused a bit of confusion for some of our libraries, particularly about the adhesive. As I mentioned, the yellow adhesive is not activated by moisture (so don’t lick it!) but by pressure. Someone at March Quarterly described their custodian hitting the edges of a folded envelope with a hammer (not recommended), so I think that illustrates the amount of pressure you’d need to exert to seal the paper. I think it would be great to hear from other folks in SWAN how they are handling the changes and make some suggestions on how to seal the notice. Some libraries use a glue stick to close the edges and others have moved to using adhesive sticker dots that fold over the edges of the folded notice. If anyone would care to leave a comment to this post describing their solution, I’d suggest giving a specific product name and part number so the rest of the SWAN libraries could easily look it up with their preferred office supplier.
As a reminder, you can have notices sent from MLS directly if you choose to and we seal it for you on a machine. We charge you for postage plus a small fee. Contact the SWAN Computer Room 630-734-5153 for more information on this service.
Another benefit to the notice format change is how it speeds up the amount of SWAN staff time spent handling notices. Here are some statistics about SWAN notices that will help with the discussion:
- For the last 12 months, SWAN staff ran on average 10,042 notices per week for all SWAN libraries.
- For the first 8 months, SWAN staff ran on average 10,745 notices per week for all SWAN libraries.
- For the last 4 months, SWAN staff ran on average 8,592 notices per week for all SWAN libraries.
- This translates to 522,162 of notices per year.
- The new format has reduced the number printed weekly by 2,153.
As you can see, SWAN staff handle a lot of notices in bulk. The new notice format has helped reduce the number but SWAN staff are still handling thousands of notices. The folder-sealer machine’s purpose is to speed up the process which in turn saves us time and allows us to get the notices to our libraries with less effort. The graph below shows the printed notices by type from May 2008 - April 2009 (click on image to enlarge). The lines also show the weekly totals have declined some since late January 2009 due to the new format. It will be interesting to see if this continues for the remaining 8 months.
| Posted by Aaron Skog on May 11th, 2009.
