Building info

 At last night's Building Committee meeting, the decision was made to keep the drive-up window in the northeast corner as originally conceived.  The front door will stay in the northwest corner (under the word "Library").  We expect to heat and cool the facility with about 70 geothermal wells and the equipment to make that necessary will be housed in a small basement, which frees up enough space on the first floor to fit in Doug's office someplace on that level, instead of the architect's proposed 'hiding in a corner office on the top floor.'  The staircases are visible in the center and the double elevator is just to the right of the stairs.  Circ. Desk will be on the left half-way back through the building beyond the stairs. Browsing and New Books all along the front first floor.  Adult book collection plus ref. staff on second floor, along with access to the rooftop one-story section shown on the left.  Children will have most of the third floor and Teen also on third floor, right front quarter of the building.

More architectural design details will be filled in to the draft image during upcoming months.

Windows emulation on Macs

If you're planning on running Windows (or Linux!) on the Intel Macs in your library using Parallels' emulation software, order copies by July 15 -- the price will go up from $50 to $80 after that. RH

Google announced today @ ALA the takeover of LCI.....

OK, so Google isn't Really taking over LCI.
Yet.
But, their impressively large booth (larger than Microsoft's) had lots of interest for librarians. Many book-and-information-related features have been quietly added in recent months. I suppose most of us (or someone on our staffs) should go to
Google.com/librariancenter
and at a minimum, go to the "Tools" section to download the posters that list advanced searching tips. At that same location, we can also sign up for their special newsletter for librarians as well as view past issues of their newsletters.
They've also released Google Earth 4 (Beta) which now works on Windows, Macintosh, or Linux. Libraries, as educational institutions, are eligible to sign up for the "Pro" version, normally $400, which they can download for free.
Last ALA posting -- See you all back in CT!

Doug McDonough

ALA 6/26/2006

Well over 100 people attended this morning's session to honor our John Does, heaping lots of deserved praise on them as well as awards.

Overdrive wants us to know that they've just signed contracts with three additional large audio publishers and will within days have substantially more bestsellers and popular authors available.

Aquabrower, advertised in all of our professional journals, is much better in person than the print ads could ever show and it is believed by the vendor that it would work the way 'we' would expect it to work in our consortial environment (including those of us who have main libraries with branches). Unfortunately, a rough 'ballpark' cost estimate would make it about the same as Director's Station.

Douglas McDonough

Mini Report from NOLA convention center

All the parts of New Orleans that most of us have seen before look the same as ever. The French Quarter is, arguably, even bawdier than before. Virtually all of the good restaurants have reopened and the T-shirt shops are full of vicious Anti-FEMA T-shirts (can anyone think of another word that begins with the letter "F" and goes well with FEMA...). So far Bev and I haven't seen any new earth-shattering technology at the conference but there are still two more days to go, so who knows. Attendance at ALA is good but not spectacular, but as far as New Orleans is concerned, that is good enough to declare it a success and, it is hoped, prove to subsequent large conventions that they can successfully visit NOLA. By the way, ALL of the RFID vendors are begging for the chance to go to Windsor to talk with us.

Doug McDonough p.s. Mary Chapin Carpenter said at her concert that we are to tease all of our cohorts who were worried about attending due to mold that New Orleans is as great as ever.

Welcome to the LCI Technology Blog. Its purpose is for the membership to share thoughts on latest trends and to determine what ones the member want to pursue. Here are some other blogs that I read frequently: www.theshiftedlibrarian.com, www.techsource.ala.org/blog,
www.tametheweb.com, and http://forums.nelinet.net/blogs. Here's one I don't follow but probably should: http://stephenslighthouse.sirsi.com. Look forward to hearing some of yours. Post early, post often!