Early on it was recognized by Colorado libraries that despite the plethora of easily-obtainable information via the Internet, people were having trouble finding the “right information” and credible information. To address this problem, you joined forces to create AskColorado. Many librarians in the state, however, are not aware that not only was AskColorado one of the first statewide, multi-library-type, virtual reference services to open in the U.S., it remains one of only fifteen or so states that continue with such a service today.

“While states such as Massachusetts and California have discontinued their services, ours continues today to offer high-level service, along with other states such as Ohio, Maryland, and New Jersey,” said Kris Johnson, AskColorado Coordinator. “Our per-capita usage rivals that of those larger states.”

“We offer the human touch to an oftentimes impersonal Internet, and help put people in touch with information that they would otherwise be unable to locate themselves,” added Johnson. “And judging by our numbers, people need us!”

Recent comments from customers highlight the need and usefulness of AskColorado:

• Love that I can access a librarian 24/7 as I often am in urgent need for help when the regular library is closed and I can’t find what I need on the library website. Great friendly and quick service. Very impressed.
• I was so happy to find this service! I was lost navigating a variety of sites and the librarian helped me find the one I needed for my paper.
• The human touch was there. Doesn’t get any better than that!

Over the years, residents from every county in Colorado have logged in, with nearly 25% of those questions coming from rural areas. Questions range the gamut, from homework help for kids, to how to start a small business for adults. Recent research questions include:

• I am trying to find research studies on effective classroom routines or how such routines help with classroom management.
• What is the amount of water the entire state of Colorado uses in one day?
• I am researching the effectiveness of LinkedIn as a job search tool. I have lots of short articles but no substantial research. Help!
• I am sending invitations to our state senators and representatives. How do I address them on the envelope?

AskColorado has also received its share of whimsical questions:

• Can you help me find an article that has a list of the top 500 fictional villains…the evilest!?
• What is the circumference of a moose?

Interesting questions received on the service are posted at the AskColorado Twitter account  nearly daily. AskColorado also participates in popular social networking sites, including Facebook and Delicious.

The AskColorado service works on a model similar to public radio: it is grant-funded and paid for by member libraries. Federal monies through the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) are supplied via the Colorado State Library, a unit of the Colorado Department of Education. In addition, member libraries contribute financially and through staff support.

Libraries throughout Colorado of every type — public, academic, school and specialized libraries — contribute money to pay for the software and 24/7 service. Local libraries also provide the staff time to work online with Colorado students and residents. If your library would like to join, or you would like additional information, please contact Kris Johnson.

Website: http://www.askcolorado.org
Twitter: http://twitter.com/AskColorado
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AskColorado
Operations Manager, Kris Johnson, johnson_k@cde.state.co.us, 303-866-6922

NETWORK’S LARGEST EDUCATIONAL INITIATIVE CONNECTED TO THE TV SERIES AMERICA THE STORY OF US.

HISTORY™ announced the winners of a special contest for libraries connected with its landmark 12-part television series, AMERICA THE STORY OF US. The series, which premiered on April 25, 2010 and concluded on Memorial Day, was accompanied by the largest education outreach effort in the network’s history. The Library Outreach Contest encouraged libraries to create themed exhibits, media projects, and public programming about the role their community played in the broader national story.
Open to all libraries nationwide, the contest awarded a total of $35,000 in prizes to 13 libraries. The Grand Prize winner in the contest was awarded $15,000 along with two First Prize winners who were awarded $5,000 each and ten Second Prizes winners who were awarded $1,000 each.

The Erie Community Library part of High Plains Library District was awarded a first place prize in the amount of $5,000 for a project entitled Erie: From Working Coal Town to Suburban Boom Town. The portable slide show which was created by Carol Taylor, a Librarian for HPLD, showcases the town’s coal mining past. “Researching the town’s history and creating the project was fascinating. I learned so much and am grateful to have the opportunity to share what I learned with the world,” said Taylor.

Other winners included the Lower Macungie Library in Macungie, Pennsylvania (Grand Prize) for an exhibit entitled Six Days in April, Forty Years Ago: The Story of Apollo 13 and the Saratoga Springs Public Library in Saratoga Springs, New York (First Place) for their exhibit Honoring Saratoga Veterans. Second place winners include Haines Borough Public Library in Haines, Alaska for their project on the history of the local Tlingit tribe, the Illinois State Library for an exhibit entitled Writing Women Back into History and the Marian Wright Edelman Public Library in Marlboro County, South Carolina for an exhibit entitled Then and Now.

The Library Outreach Contest was a combined effort between HISTORY, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities to engage libraries to join a national exploration of the American past. “AMERICA THE STORY OF US provided a perfect catalyst for communities all over America to join in the conversation about the history of our country,” said Dr. Libby O’Connell, Chief Historian and SVP, Corporate Outreach for HISTORY. “Local libraries brought their grassroots focus to highlight the wonderful stories in their collections and in their backyards.”

“These winners are a testament to the power of libraries to connect communities to the American story,” said Marsha L. Semmel, Acting Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. “The rich diversity of the projects is impressive. And we are particularly delighted to see so many small libraries answer this call in a big way. Congratulations to all.”

The library contest criteria included the relevance of the exhibit to American history, the effectiveness of the exhibit or media project overall, and outreach about the projects to local communities.

article obtained from http://www.mylibrary.us/about_my_library/news_detail.asp?news_id=295

CJ O'Hara, Keith Dedman, Mark Noble

After 3 guys worked on it part time for 3 months, the Western Slope Libraries Catalog is now live. We started with open source VuFind, developed at Villanova U and first implemented in Colorado by CSU.

This month the team is fine-tuning relevance ranking, correcting links to electronic books, evaluating new catalog enrichment options, and developing an admin console to support a variety of  configuration options for our multi-type consortium.

This summer Marmot will work with members to brand, configure, and launch library-specific flavors of the catalog. Academics and schools should all be ready in time for fall term; publics will launch throughout the summer.

We’re certainly taking advantage of the openness of open source to do cool things for library users that no sane vendor would want to do in a commercial product. Give us a call at 970-242-3331 to hear more about it.

Like its public library counterparts, Horizon Middle School is now able to offer its students improved access to the online catalog and library account information, library databases and homework resources, and much more!

The Horizon Plinkit site is also the first to utilize RSS feeds from Delicious (a social bookmarking site) to manage the homework websites area. Websites were hand selected and organized based upon Colorado’s K-12 Academic Standards to provide students access to brief annotated lists of quality websites. The dynamic incorporation of Delicious RSS feeds will allow us to update or make changes to the resource lists as needed in one place rather than manually updating this and future Plinkit sites. Our goal is to use Delicious to manage recommended web resource lists on all Colorado Plinkit sites.

Plinkit is an award-winning website creation and hosting service originally developed by the Multnomah County Library with an LSTA Grant using open source software called Plone. The Colorado State Library is one of nine states/organizations participating in the Plinkit collaborative. Colorado currently hosts 29 library sites.

Please contact Christine Kreger (kreger_c@cde.state.co.us or 303-866069546) at the Colorado State Library for more information on Plinkit services available to your library or visit http://colibraries.org.

Over 20 public libraries in Colorado are using Plinkit to provide 24/7 online access to their library catalog, as well as to other online resources, a calendar of events, information about their services and much more. Plinkit is also being used by special and school libraries.

Learn more about what Plinkit can do for your library, sign up, or contact us for more information.

Welcome to 2010, the year when Colorado added THREE new Movers and Shakers to the inductee ranks. This annual honor is sponsored by Library Journal. Congratulations go to CLiC’s own Judy Van Acker (who also blogs here regularly on Colorado Libraries, in her “free” time…), Matt Hamilton at Boulder Public Library, and Steve Lawson at Colorado College.

“They are nominated by their colleagues, friends, bosses, or just plain admirers; these innovators are shaping the future of libraries. They hail from all corners of the library world and several nations. With this year’s group of 50, they now number some 450,” says Library Journal.

For a full geographic look at how all the Movers & Shakers over the years are distributed, see this LJ web page.

Colorado has good fortune to be considered the stompin’ grounds for the likes of fantastic people like Judy, Matt and Steve!

In this and future posts I’ll tell the story of how we selected VuFind from a list that included AquaBrowser, Encore, Drupal SOPAC, and WorldCat Local. I’ll write about testing and launching open source software originally developed at Villanova University. We might blaze a few interesting trails, taking software currently running in university libraries, and adapting it to our multi-type consortium on the Western Slope.

“We’re getting open source!”

VuFind was a very much a dark horse until a few stars aligned. When I joined Marmot last October, it was not clear we could implement let alone enhance an open source solution. When I visited Colorado State University to learn about the first implementation of VuFind with Millennium, I was encouraged that CSU could help Marmot get started. After we hired a new web developer, and identified a contract developer to expand our capacity for a few months, we had everything we needed to take VuFind seriously.

Lucene at the heart of VuFind is no stranger to supporting public and school libraries as well as academics. Lucene powers Encore by Innovative Interfaces, LS2 PAC by The Library Corporation, and many other web apps. The remarkable thing about VuFind for Marmot was how well it met overlapping and conflicting needs of 19 separate Marmot institutions in spite of its academic roots.

Mary Katherine told me how much fun she and CJ were having looking at the code where MARC tags and subfields get handled for indexing and faceting. “I can’t remember the last time I actually enjoyed reading MARC documentation and chasing down fixed field codes.”

Some of the fun comes from feeling in control, from the optimism of being able to solve unique local problems without waiting for a vendor to weigh our priorities with those of a thousand other ILS customers. Mary Katherine can see what’s happening inside the system instead of being shut out of a vendor’s black box. CJ can make changes without filing a bug report. Marmot library users will love the results.