System Spotlight
By Staff
Kansas Library Association’s Legislative Day
On Wednesday, January 31st librarians and library lovers from across the state gathered at the state capitol and the State Library of Kansas for the Kansas Library Association’s Legislative Day. Nearly 30 advocates were on-site, engaging with legislators and attending committee meetings and chamber proceedings. Senator Cindy Holscher and Representative Mark Schreiber addressed remarks to the attendees. THANK YOU to everyone who attended!
Rolla Library’s First Story Hour of the Year Off to a Lovely Start
Future Dates & Training Opportunities
February 13, 2024 – 2 pm – 3 pm CST – Twosday Takeaway: Benfits of Children’s Pictureless Books/Registration Link
Feburary 13, 2024 – 9 am – 3 pm CST – SWKLS In-Office Clinic/Registration Link
February 22, 2024 – 4 pm – 5 pm CST – Switching it Up! Creating a Video Game Collection for Your Library Webinar/Registration Link
February 23, 2024 – 10 am – 3 pm CST – Summer Reading Workshop Featuring Will Stuck/Registration Link
February 28, 2024 – 1 pm – 2 pm CST – Best Picture Books Published in 2023 for Ages 1-6 Webinar/Registration Link
Feburary 29, 2024 – NON-Public Library ILL Survey is DUE
Consulting
By Sara Wilson
February’s Twosday Takeaway
Picture This: Benefits of Pictureless Children’s Books
Join SWKLS Consultant/Program Coordinator Sara Wilson as she shares with you the many benefits of providing pictureless books and services to the blind and vision impaired in your community. SWKLS Director Richard Brookman will also be sharing Talking Books resources for the blind and vision impaired that are available to your library. This presentation is in affiliation with the SWKLS DEI Taskforce. Register Here!
Read Your Way to CE Credits
We love to remind our patrons and communities how vital reading is – let’s also remind ourselves! You can earn continuing education credits for the time you spend reading books from our Professional Collection and brushing up on your skills and knowledge. We have some great options in our collection – all the way from strategic planning to podcasting with youth – there’s sure to be something to spark your interest and help you grow in librarianship. Scroll on down to the Cataloging, Collection Development, and ILL section to see what’s new!
Kansas Talking Books Display-In-A-Box Kit
The State Library of Kansas is offering a display-in-a-box kit to those librarians who wish to celebrate Kansas Talking Books Week: Your Perfect Fit, March 4-8. The kit includes a digital player and cartridge, brochures, applications, signs, and other information. It’s got everything you need to set up an attention-getting display! All you have to do to take advantage of this opportunity is to fill out this order form. The kits will start shipping out on February 12th. For more information, please contact KTB@ks.gov or 1-800-362-0699
Environmentally Friendly Fidget Toy Craft
February is Library Lovers’ Month and we love our libraries, our librarians, and all the hard work that you put in every day. Thank you for all the wonderful things that you do to enrich and inspire our SW Kansas communities.
Cataloging, Collection Development, and ILL
By Sara Wilson
Collection Development Inspiration
Adult Fiction
Children’s & YA Fiction
Employment
New Resources for You
The following titles have been added to our Professional Collection this past week and are available for checkout! Just a reminder – SWKLS Collections are available and open to ALL library personnel to check out. If you see a book below that you would like to check out, please just have your ILL personnel request it on SHAREit, call our office, or shoot me an email. We’ll send it to you on the courier! To see if anyone has it currently checked out, just click the image of the book and it will take you to the record in our catalog.
For Catalogers Using Cat Express: WorldShare Record Manager Training
As you are aware, Cat Express will be discontinued April 30th. You should have received an email from OCLC with your personalized URL and login information for WorldShare Record Manager.
I will be conducting some training sessions on this – I hope to have them ready to go this month and I’ll reach out to you when that happens. In the meantime, OCLC has a very detailed training video on copy cataloging in WorldShare Record Manager as well as an accompanying Learner Guide that features some exercises to get you more familiar with the platform.
I strongly encourage everyone who catalogs in your library to view this training video and complete the exercise/quiz at the end.
A couple of notes about the video: you are set up with the Simplified Cataloging role and we will be adding local data. However, we don’t print from OCLC, so that part is not anything to be concerned with.
Once you watch the video, let me know so you can get CE credit! You will also get credit for any time that you spend reading the Learner Guide and doing the quiz, so be sure to report those to me as well.
Link to the Learner Guide w/Exercise at the End
Please write down any questions that you have so we can go over them at a future training event. Thank you!
For ILLers:
SHAREit Update
SHAREit was updated on Tuesday, February 6th. SHAREit Product Manger Deborah Hensler shared with us what was addressed in the update. Please see the document linked below.
New Shipping Labels
Caroline Handwork of NEKLS has informed us that some libraries have joined the courier or changed their shipping arrangements. Therefore, you will need to update your lender lists to reflect those changes. Please see the copied text from her email below for details:
Garden City Community College/KS356 has joined Kansas Library Express! They will receive 3 day/week direct service.
*Also, North Central Kansas Library System/KS355 now has their own shipping label. They will receive indirect service via Manhattan Public Library. Manhattan Public Library/KS201 also has new shipping labels.
Here is a link to the most current list of shipping labels, https://kslibexpress.mykansaslibrary.org/shipping-labels/.
1) Please throw out the shipping labels that read “Manhattan Public Library/ NC KS Lib Sys” and print off the new labels that read “Manhattan Public Library/KS201”.
2) Please print out the new shipping labels for the “North Central Kansas Library System/KS355”
3) Please print out shipping labels for “Garden City Community College/KS356”.
Please be sure to update your courier lender lists in Shareit!
Select the lender list for your regional system here, https://kslibexpress.mykansaslibrary.org/about/participant-list/ .
Below is a little visual help on how to update your preferred lender list in ShareIt.
When Participant Record is open, you should see this:
Replace everything in the circled box with your new Preferred Lender List and click Submit.
Happy resource sharing!
For All VERSO Users: VERSO Update
Auto-Graphics updated VERSO on Tuesday, February 6th. VERSO Product Manager Rae Schneider shared with us what was addressed in the update:
RESOLVED
| AG-2886 | The circulation by user type report has been updated to resolve the issues regarding the library selector. The library selector has been correctly mapped to the transaction location to display the number of items circulated at the selected library. | ||
| AG-2899 | The circulation by material type report has been updated to resolve the issues regarding the library selector. The library selector has been correctly mapped to the transaction location to display the number of items circulated at the selected library. | ||
| AG-2923 | The circulation by collection type report has been updated to resolve the issues regarding the library selector. The library selector has been correctly mapped to the transaction location to display the number of items circulated at the selected library. | ||
| AG-2930 | In UX Admin > Settings > Design > Logo and Title under the “Branding Information” dropdown menu, libraries can select “Use Library Name,” “Use Image,” “Use Custom Text,” or “Use Image and Text” for the branding information displayed in the upper left corner of the header. Only the first two options, “Use Library Name” and “Use Image,” were working as expected if the library had not previously used custom text and/or images in UX Admin. This has been fixed so that all options are working as expected. | ||
| AG-2961 | On full records with MARC 856 tags (Electronic Location and Access), the “Online Content” box was displaying when the “856 – Electronic Location” field was not configured to display in the Details section on the full record. With this release, the “Online Content” box will only display if the “856 – Electronic Location” field is configured to display. The display of the “856 – Electronic Location” field on the Details screen of the full record is configured in Pac Admin > Full Record Display Profiles. |
IMPROVED
AG-2836 Improvements to “Title Exact” and “Title Begins With” searches
Improvements were made to search functionality when using the “Title Exact” or “Title Begins With” search index. Search results have been optimized when searching for short titles with common words such as ‘the great’ or ‘water.’
Technology
by Christopher Dressler
SWKLS In-office Tech Clinic and Business Workday
February 13th and April 9th
Our staff will also provide mini-training sessions and technology demonstrations on various topics throughout the day. Our office capacity is limited to 6 individuals each day. Start and end times will be 9am to 3pm, and attendees may come and leave at their discretion. Lunch breaks will be tentatively 11:30am and 12:30pm on your own or bring lunch with you.
Thank you.