Streams

From Jim Trojanowski, NWLS Director - The end of one year and the beginning of another is always odd for me. The time from Thanksgiving to New Years is often quiet for Northern Waters as library patrons and staff briefly shift their focus to the holidays. From the quiet, however, we leap into our busiest time of year. Annual reports will occupy much of our time in January, but we’ll also begin to work on the new projects we’ve been planning for several months. As we begin these projects, it seems appropriate to discuss a few of them.

Website Project: Northern Waters will receive a grant to help pay costs related to the development of websites for its member libraries. Using content management software, we’ll develop a handful of themes from which libraries can choose as a new website. Once the sites are ready, Northern Waters staff will train library staff to keep their websites up-to-date. About 20 libraries are expected to participate in the project.

Services to At-Risk Teens: Grants funds will also allow Northern Waters to assist member libraries in serving at-risk teens. Each of the 15 participating libraries will work with a local community agency or group to develop services for a target audience chosen by the library.

Using Technology: In 2009 Northern Waters will use technology to conduct some of its meetings and workshops. We’ll begin by conducting our January Board of Trustees meeting over OPAL and continue by hosting the first Merlin and Directors Meeting via OPAL in February. Once we’ve done that we’ll use our experience to determine the use of OPAL in the future. We are also exploring other ways to conduct meetings online.
We also plan to begin using wikis and blogs as a way to keep our member libraries up-to-date and gather opinions and ideas in 2009.

Updating Technology: Three years ago Northern Waters implemented a new replacement schedule for computer technology. This year two servers will be replaced. Not only will the new servers be more capable of handling the increasing demands our libraries have for server capacity, they will also feature updated operating systems.

We’ll also update other software, beginning upgrades to the newest version of anti-virus and Pharos software in January. Pharos is the Internet sign-in software used by approximately 15 libraries.

Updating Plans: With our current Strategic Plan half-way through its expected life, it is time to review the plan and modify it as necessary. We’ll be seeking input from member library staff as part of the process. Our board is expected to approve the modifications at its May meeting.

Encouraging Libraries to Plan: Planning is important for any successful organization, but knowing how to get started is difficult for many of us. In April Northern Waters will be hosting workshops to help trustees and library directors learn how to develop effective strategic plans.

These are, of course, only a few of the things coming in 2009. Over the next few months, we’ll share more about each of these projects and many of the other exciting projects planned in the coming year.

This article, written by Patty Curthoys, does a good job of explaining the bandwidth challenges faced by public libraries and public library systems. Patty was recently hired as the Technology Consultant for the Wisconsin Valley Library Service. The article is republished here with her permission.

From Patty Curthoys, WVLS Technology Consultant - Well, I’ve been in my job for just over a month now, and most of my time has been dominated by dealing with bandwidth issues. It seems to be one of the biggest challenges that we as a system face. Our libraries are becoming community centers where people gather to use our computers for things like job hunting, e-mail, taking tests, looking up information, watching TV shows they may have missed, downloading music, and playing online games. The first half of this list includes items that are relatively low in bandwidth usage. Sending text and small graphics over the “pipe” has a much smaller impact on our Internet connections, than do the bandwidth hogs of streaming video, music, and games. You see, the second half of this list, and the ever growing percentage of the usage that we see on our Internet connections, takes up a lot of the pipe we all have connecting us to the Internet and one another. Things like web pages and e-mail are sent in small pieces over the Internet and the bandwidth they use is released quickly, things like video and audio are “streamed” or playing continuously over our connections. Basically they hold onto the bandwidth they are using for the duration of the video or audio that is playing. This bandwidth is “tied up” and not available to anyone else until the streaming is complete.

Last week I saw this first hand in one of our libraries. I began repairing one of the circulation computers before the library opened. As soon as the library opened, five teenage boys came in and began playing online games with each other at the library’s public access terminals. I saw the speed of my downloading the needed software slow to a crawl and I could see the bandwidth usage spike on the graphs we use to monitor the wide area network. At times the Internet connection even dropped as we maxed out the capacity of the library’s Internet connection. So what is the answer? Do we stop our patrons from doing certain things? Do we keep purchasing more bandwidth? Can our budgets handle that?

There are some not so obvious things to think about that impact how bandwidth is used and managed. WVLS uses WISCNET as our service provider. WISCNET connects up to a “cloud” via AT&T where many connections come together, not just our own, to merge traffic on the Internet. Neither we nor WISCNET have any control over the traffic in this cloud. Just as we get congested, I’m sure this coming together point does as well. In short, Internet slowdowns and outages aren’t always within our realm to correct in this interconnected environment. A second not so obvious issue is the speed of our computers. Our public access computers have to process streaming video, audio and games, and if they are old and slow, they will process the stream more slowly, thus tying up the bandwidth for longer periods of time. It might be helpful to designate newer, faster computers as gaming machines or for video and audio. This designation may be happening already by default, as the slower machines will show video in a choppy or distorted view. Patrons may select the newer computers themselves when they can.

Bandwidth management is a complicated issue. So many factors play into how our connections perform to their most efficient usage. It will be an ongoing service to manage, so I hope the WVLS libraries continue to provide constructive feedback, so that we can effectively manage this together.

From Jim Trojanowski, NWLS Director - Kristine Lendved recently became the new Director of the Forest Lodge Library, a joint library of the towns of Cable and Namakagon. Kristine has worked at the library for approximately one-and-a-half years as a part time library assistant.

Kristine has been an active community member in Cable since she moved there in 1998. She is the lead organizer of the Moose Lips Poetry Jam, a poetry writing contest held during the annual Namakagon Arts Festival in Seeley. She is also part of a small theatre production company that writes and produces original works on an irregular schedule.

In addition to her interest in theatre and writing, Kristine makes and sells hats from recycled and remnant fabrics. Her works are featured on her website at http://www.lendved.com/. To relax, Kristine enjoys reading, watches films, and walking Lulu, her Golden Retriever. Lulu takes her name from Lulu LaMartine, a well-known Louise Erdrich character.

Kristine is pleased to be a member of the library system and she looks forward to meeting her fellow library directors. Likewise, we look forward to working with Kristine.

From Salon.com - On Dec. 3, now known as "Black Wednesday," many major American publishers were dramatically downsized. The bad news affects authors, editors, bookstores and literature itself. Victims include Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Simon & Schuster, Random House, Thomas Nelson, and Macmillan. In 2001 Houghton Mifflin was bought by Vivendi Universal and then by private equity firms a year later. In 2006 it was bought by an Irish firm and within a year it merged with Harcourt. The publisher's parent company is now saddled with billions in debt.

To make matters worse, the shift from local to national distribution caused by the rise of superstores taking over small local bookstores, resulted in publishing decisions made by two or three groups of people. There are fewer small buyers, with decreasing leverage. Also, holiday season sales dropped enough to compound the crisis.

And finally, experts suggest that publishers missed opportunities to cope with digital books, Internet innovations and economic pressures. Tom Engelhardt, a consulting editor at Metropolitan books and the author of the prophetic novel "The Last Days of Publishing" recently wrote an essay about the publishing crisis at his Web site, TomDispatch.com, and says he predicted the crash for years.

A number of smaller, more independent publishers could thrive during this recession. They've avoided factors that have produced an industry slowdown that will affect all writers for years to come: high advances, long author lists and spiraling costs.

Libraries are struggling with rising costs and dwindling financial resources. Currently there are a total of 6,479 items overdue at public libraries in the NWLS region. You can help public libraries by making a New Year's resolution to return library items promptly.

KidsClick! is an annotated searchable directory of websites created for kids by librarians searchable by subject, reading level and degree of picture content. Visit KidsClick! at http://www.kidsclick.org

“Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics and factories. Literacy is a platform for democratization, and a vehicle for the promotion of cultural and national identity. Especially for girls and women, it is an agent of family health and nutrition. For everyone, everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general, a basic human right.... Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential.”

- Kofi Annan, Ghanaian diplomat, seventh secretary-general of the United Nations, 2001 Nobel Peace Prize

Contact NWLS for subscription services or to submit an article for publication: email Marsha at newsletter@nwls.lib.wi.us or call 715-682-2365.

NWLS: 3200 E. Lake Shore Dr. • Ashland, WI 54806 • Phone: (715) 682-2365 • Web: http://nwls.wislib.org • Serving libraries in Ashland, Bayfield, Burnett, Douglas, Iron, Sawyer, Vilas and Washburn Counties.

	Northern Waters Library Service

	In This Issue: January 2009 NWLS Plans Variety of Projects for 2009 • Understanding Bandwidth • New Director Begins at Forest Lodge Library • Publishing Industry in Dire Straits • New Year's Resolution • Websites • Reflection C A L E N D A R January 15 ADA Refresher Course, LCO, 10:00 January 16 ADA Refresher Course, Sayner, 10:00 February 3 Library Legislative Day, Best Western Inn on the Park, Madison, 7:45 – 2:30 February 19 Library Consortium Meeting, 10:00-Noon, NWLS February 19 Library Directors Meeting, 1:00-3:00, NWLS UW-Madison SLIS Continuing Education: Public Library Administration, January 7 - March 31 Basic Reference, February 9 - May 2 Fundamentals of Cataloging, February 9 - May 2 Adult Book Discussions in the Library, February 16 - March 13 Connecting Teens with the Best in New Teen Lit, February 12 - April 5 Children, Technology, and the Library Instructor; March 9 - April 3 Graphic Novels in the Library, March 11 - April 8 Library 2.0: 101, March 2-March 29 Page up C U R R E N T E V E N T S NWLS Plans Variety of Projects for 2009 From Jim Trojanowski, NWLS Director - The end of one year and the beginning of another is always odd for me. The time from Thanksgiving to New Years is often quiet for Northern Waters as library patrons and staff briefly shift their focus to the holidays. From the quiet, however, we leap into our busiest time of year. Annual reports will occupy much of our time in January, but we’ll also begin to work on the new projects we’ve been planning for several months. As we begin these projects, it seems appropriate to discuss a few of them. Website Project: Northern Waters will receive a grant to help pay costs related to the development of websites for its member libraries. Using content management software, we’ll develop a handful of themes from which libraries can choose as a new website. Once the sites are ready, Northern Waters staff will train library staff to keep their websites up-to-date. About 20 libraries are expected to participate in the project. Services to At-Risk Teens: Grants funds will also allow Northern Waters to assist member libraries in serving at-risk teens. Each of the 15 participating libraries will work with a local community agency or group to develop services for a target audience chosen by the library. Using Technology: In 2009 Northern Waters will use technology to conduct some of its meetings and workshops. We’ll begin by conducting our January Board of Trustees meeting over OPAL and continue by hosting the first Merlin and Directors Meeting via OPAL in February. Once we’ve done that we’ll use our experience to determine the use of OPAL in the future. We are also exploring other ways to conduct meetings online. We also plan to begin using wikis and blogs as a way to keep our member libraries up-to-date and gather opinions and ideas in 2009. Updating Technology: Three years ago Northern Waters implemented a new replacement schedule for computer technology. This year two servers will be replaced. Not only will the new servers be more capable of handling the increasing demands our libraries have for server capacity, they will also feature updated operating systems. We’ll also update other software, beginning upgrades to the newest version of anti-virus and Pharos software in January. Pharos is the Internet sign-in software used by approximately 15 libraries. Updating Plans: With our current Strategic Plan half-way through its expected life, it is time to review the plan and modify it as necessary. We’ll be seeking input from member library staff as part of the process. Our board is expected to approve the modifications at its May meeting. Encouraging Libraries to Plan: Planning is important for any successful organization, but knowing how to get started is difficult for many of us. In April Northern Waters will be hosting workshops to help trustees and library directors learn how to develop effective strategic plans. These are, of course, only a few of the things coming in 2009. Over the next few months, we’ll share more about each of these projects and many of the other exciting projects planned in the coming year. Page up Understanding Bandwidth This article, written by Patty Curthoys, does a good job of explaining the bandwidth challenges faced by public libraries and public library systems. Patty was recently hired as the Technology Consultant for the Wisconsin Valley Library Service. The article is republished here with her permission. From Patty Curthoys, WVLS Technology Consultant - Well, I’ve been in my job for just over a month now, and most of my time has been dominated by dealing with bandwidth issues. It seems to be one of the biggest challenges that we as a system face. Our libraries are becoming community centers where people gather to use our computers for things like job hunting, e-mail, taking tests, looking up information, watching TV shows they may have missed, downloading music, and playing online games. The first half of this list includes items that are relatively low in bandwidth usage. Sending text and small graphics over the “pipe” has a much smaller impact on our Internet connections, than do the bandwidth hogs of streaming video, music, and games. You see, the second half of this list, and the ever growing percentage of the usage that we see on our Internet connections, takes up a lot of the pipe we all have connecting us to the Internet and one another. Things like web pages and e-mail are sent in small pieces over the Internet and the bandwidth they use is released quickly, things like video and audio are “streamed” or playing continuously over our connections. Basically they hold onto the bandwidth they are using for the duration of the video or audio that is playing. This bandwidth is “tied up” and not available to anyone else until the streaming is complete. Last week I saw this first hand in one of our libraries. I began repairing one of the circulation computers before the library opened. As soon as the library opened, five teenage boys came in and began playing online games with each other at the library’s public access terminals. I saw the speed of my downloading the needed software slow to a crawl and I could see the bandwidth usage spike on the graphs we use to monitor the wide area network. At times the Internet connection even dropped as we maxed out the capacity of the library’s Internet connection. So what is the answer? Do we stop our patrons from doing certain things? Do we keep purchasing more bandwidth? Can our budgets handle that? There are some not so obvious things to think about that impact how bandwidth is used and managed. WVLS uses WISCNET as our service provider. WISCNET connects up to a “cloud” via AT&T where many connections come together, not just our own, to merge traffic on the Internet. Neither we nor WISCNET have any control over the traffic in this cloud. Just as we get congested, I’m sure this coming together point does as well. In short, Internet slowdowns and outages aren’t always within our realm to correct in this interconnected environment. A second not so obvious issue is the speed of our computers. Our public access computers have to process streaming video, audio and games, and if they are old and slow, they will process the stream more slowly, thus tying up the bandwidth for longer periods of time. It might be helpful to designate newer, faster computers as gaming machines or for video and audio. This designation may be happening already by default, as the slower machines will show video in a choppy or distorted view. Patrons may select the newer computers themselves when they can. Bandwidth management is a complicated issue. So many factors play into how our connections perform to their most efficient usage. It will be an ongoing service to manage, so I hope the WVLS libraries continue to provide constructive feedback, so that we can effectively manage this together. Page up New Director Begins at Forest Lodge Library From Jim Trojanowski, NWLS Director - Kristine Lendved recently became the new Director of the Forest Lodge Library, a joint library of the towns of Cable and Namakagon. Kristine has worked at the library for approximately one-and-a-half years as a part time library assistant. Kristine has been an active community member in Cable since she moved there in 1998. She is the lead organizer of the Moose Lips Poetry Jam, a poetry writing contest held during the annual Namakagon Arts Festival in Seeley. She is also part of a small theatre production company that writes and produces original works on an irregular schedule. In addition to her interest in theatre and writing, Kristine makes and sells hats from recycled and remnant fabrics. Her works are featured on her website at http://www.lendved.com/. To relax, Kristine enjoys reading, watches films, and walking Lulu, her Golden Retriever. Lulu takes her name from Lulu LaMartine, a well-known Louise Erdrich character. Kristine is pleased to be a member of the library system and she looks forward to meeting her fellow library directors. Likewise, we look forward to working with Kristine. Page up Publishing Industry in Dire Straits From Salon.com - On Dec. 3, now known as "Black Wednesday," many major American publishers were dramatically downsized. The bad news affects authors, editors, bookstores and literature itself. Victims include Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Simon & Schuster, Random House, Thomas Nelson, and Macmillan. In 2001 Houghton Mifflin was bought by Vivendi Universal and then by private equity firms a year later. In 2006 it was bought by an Irish firm and within a year it merged with Harcourt. The publisher's parent company is now saddled with billions in debt. To make matters worse, the shift from local to national distribution caused by the rise of superstores taking over small local bookstores, resulted in publishing decisions made by two or three groups of people. There are fewer small buyers, with decreasing leverage. Also, holiday season sales dropped enough to compound the crisis. And finally, experts suggest that publishers missed opportunities to cope with digital books, Internet innovations and economic pressures. Tom Engelhardt, a consulting editor at Metropolitan books and the author of the prophetic novel "The Last Days of Publishing" recently wrote an essay about the publishing crisis at his Web site, TomDispatch.com, and says he predicted the crash for years. A number of smaller, more independent publishers could thrive during this recession. They've avoided factors that have produced an industry slowdown that will affect all writers for years to come: high advances, long author lists and spiraling costs. Page up New Year's Resolution Libraries are struggling with rising costs and dwindling financial resources. Currently there are a total of 6,479 items overdue at public libraries in the NWLS region. You can help public libraries by making a New Year's resolution to return library items promptly. Page up W E B S I T E S KidsClick! KidsClick! is an annotated searchable directory of websites created for kids by librarians searchable by subject, reading level and degree of picture content. Visit KidsClick! at http://www.kidsclick.org Page up R E F L E C T I O N “Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics and factories. Literacy is a platform for democratization, and a vehicle for the promotion of cultural and national identity. Especially for girls and women, it is an agent of family health and nutrition. For everyone, everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general, a basic human right.... Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential.” - Kofi Annan, Ghanaian diplomat, seventh secretary-general of the United Nations, 2001 Nobel Peace Prize Contact NWLS for subscription services or to submit an article for publication: email Marsha at newsletter@nwls.lib.wi.us or call 715-682-2365. NWLS: 3200 E. Lake Shore Dr. • Ashland, WI 54806 • Phone: (715) 682-2365 • Web: http://nwls.wislib.org • Serving libraries in Ashland, Bayfield, Burnett, Douglas, Iron, Sawyer, Vilas and Washburn Counties.