Great news everyone! I will be staying on at IHLS in a limited capacity until the end of the year. What does that mean, exactly? Starting on Monday, September 18, I’ll be available a few days a week to answer all of your eResource questions. I will be out off the office for a short three-week hiatus (August 26 - September 17). During that time, here’s how things will work:
I have to start off this edition of the newsletter with a bit of happy/sad news. My little family is relocating to Greensboro, NC at the start of September, which is very exciting! However, that means my last day at IHLS will be Friday, August 25 and that is very sad. My husband, Nick was offered a full-time teaching position at a community college there and after much discussion, we’ve decided it’s time for a new adventure.
Welcome to the first IHLS eResources Newsletter! This newsletter will feature important information regarding consortial eResources such as the Cloud Library, RBdigital (formerly Zinio), and MyMediaMall. You’ll also see vendor offers, upcoming webinars, training resources, and tech tips.
Invoices for all consortial eResources are in the process of being sent out, so you should receive them by the end of the month. Reminder: Annual agreements for all IHLS group purchases run from July 1 to June 30.
Are you going to the ALA Annual Conference this week? Consider adding the Cloud Library IdeaExchange session to your schedule! It will be tons of fun and I’ll be briefly speaking about our group and how we use the Cloud Library. This is also a chance for you to get to talk to some terrific Cloud Library team members. Join us on Saturday, June 24 at the Hyatt Regency McCormick from 10:30 am to 12:00 pm.
Gale Cengage Learning is once again offering discounted database package options to libraries in IHLS. Libraries that would like to renew or change their current subscription should click on the link below to fill out the form. Libraries interested in purchasing Gale databases for the first time can start a trial and order via the following link as well. The deadline to order or renew a Gale database package is Monday, June 26, 2017.
Are you working on the IPLAR for your library? Below, you’ll find the Cloud Library holdings as of March 31 and April 30. To find circulation stats for your library, you’ll want to examine circulation reports in Polaris. More detailed information regarding which reports you should run can be found here.
Cloud Library participants may be seeing a few intermittent issues since the Polaris upgrade. Patrons may be unable to log in to the Cloud Library or will see an “invalid authentication” error occasionally. When the PAC goes down, the Cloud Library is unable to authenticate and can get confused. Our fabulous IT team and Polaris are working on the issue. When it occurs, you may want to have patrons wait 15 – 20 minutes, and then try again. Usually, the issue is resolved even quicker than that!
Don’t forget, the FY2018 Cloud Library Renewal Survey will close on Friday, April 14. At this point, I’ve received repsonses from 164 libraries! Only 38 more to go. You can access the survey here: https://goo.gl/k29C3j. Annual agreements will be sent out next month and invoices will go out in July.
Thanks to everyone who has already filled out the FY2018 Cloud Library Renewal Survey! At this point I’ve already received 120 responses. If you haven’t filled out the survey yet, you can access it via the following link until Friday, April 14, 2017: https://goo.gl/k29C3j If you’re coming to IHLS Member Day on April 18, you might want to come to the Cloud Library User Group. Our Bibliotheca rep, Brett Ward will be attending and he’ll talk about what’s new and what we can anticipate in 2018.
As you all know, Polaris will be going through in upgrade in April. We’ve all been waiting patiently for the the 3M icon in the SHARE catalog to switch to the Cloud Library icon and the upgrade will make that happen! You should start informing patrons that they can already search for Cloud Library ebooks in the catalog by using the keyword “cloudlibrary”. Using “3M” will no longer work to find Cloud Library content. For example, a search for “cloudlibrary disney” will result in a list of all of the Cloud Library eBooks we have about Disney.
