Below is a brief update of things that happened at the DLC and Systems Meeting that took place in State College on Oct. 25-26.
The Optimization Task Force presented an overview and introduction to a piece of the work of the project that has been done so far. The basic concept and process was reviewed. Case studies of some other state re-structuring projects were presented by task force members, including detail about changes that had been made in Illinois, Massachusetts, and Tennessee. The core concepts and goals were discussed and the group of district administrators, system administrators, and district consultants had table discussions about things that they liked about other state models and things that were important for inclusion in any new model for PA. Please look on webjunction for summaries of the work so far.
At the consultant’s session:
Lewis Maurer did a brief presentation about Spark, the open source project for a statewide ILS and library catalog in PA. He distributed information and answered questions. He emphasized the benefits of a statewide shared bibliographic database and explained how the cooperative system works with a User Group, Advisory Council, Committees, and membership. It is community supported. They are currently offering “early adopter” pricing based on circulation, renewal pricing guaranteed for 5 years, and waived migration fees, training fees, and development fees for the first year. (What a deal!) Learn more about it at palibrary.org or ask me for a copy of the handouts or other perspectives from the presentation and discussion.
Consultants had a brief discussion about IDS and an upcoming survey. Ask if you have questions about IDS.
A New annual reports software will be used for Plans for the Use of State Aid
At the DLC Consultant’s Session, OCL advisor Eileen Kocher explained and demoed the new LibPas software (a work in progress) that will be used to enter annual report data and Plans for the Use of State Aid, rather than Bibliostat’s Collect that we have used in past years.
Training will be small short videos, but I don’t anticipate much need for watching training, as the interface seems very user-friendly. It will, however, be important to read the definitions of the questions very closely this year.
We will be completing Plans for the Use of State Aid using the new software in November. The budget side will be a little bit different than in the past, but it is easy to understand. Another change is that there will be options for “pre-waivers” if you know you won’t be meeting a standard in the coming year.
There will not be paper signature sheets for the plans this year.
The group of administrators and consultants listened to a presentation about “Building Digital Communities” and the Edge Benchmarks. You’ve seen the links in the Compendium about these projects. If you are interested, let me know and I can share more handouts and info from those discussions. The buzzword used was “Digital Inclusion”. Libraries are commonly community anchor organizations. IMLS has a role in the National Broadband Plan. Libraries should register their location as a digital education provider at connect2compete.org.
Kathy Silks did an update on PA Forward and highlighted a number of great statewide partnerships that have been established on behalf of libraries. Check out the database of ideas to do more projects and demonstrate how your library is incorporating Basic, Information, Civic & Social, Health, and Financial Literacy.
SB1225 was briefly discussed, but not much detail was shared. OCL staff said it would be signed by the Gov at 2:30 on Friday, Nov. 1 at an event with invited people. It goes into effect in about 6 months. Currently, OCL is working with district consultants to compile and search for answers to FAQs.
Attached, find notes from the Youth specialist focus part of the meeting that was written by Linda M that you can download.
Youth DLC Meeting Oct 2012
YouthDLC handoutsOct2012
These notes were also sent directly to the CALDYouth mailing list.
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