The year 2011 was the PALNI (Private Academic Library Network of Indiana) consortium's "rookie season" for the implementation of Primo, the 2010 Discovery Layer 500 race winner. In this article, the authors report on their transition to the cloud within Ex Libris Ltd.'s Primo TotalCare environment: their preparation, the steps involved…

Alcatel-Lucent has had an internal library website called InfoView since 1993. They always had pages for the various diverse resources they maintained for Alcatel-Lucent employees, such as books, serials, artifacts, market reports, and discounts. Each page had two search boxes: one for a "site" search on all pages and one searching the…

The fact that people now live in a world of abundant portable electronic devices is important to any organization that maintains a web presence, including libraries. No longer tied to a desktop, the patrons' netbooks, tablets, ebook readers, and, of course, cellphones all become potential tools for remote access to library content. About a year…

The rumored death of librarianship caused by the advent of technology has not, and will not, come to pass. In this article, the author describes how technology has exponentially increased the librarian's ability to provide library service at the Calcasieu Parish Public Library, where she serves as head of Collection & Computing Services. The…

What do Google Maps and a library's Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) have in common? Google Maps provides users with all the information they need for a trip in one place; users can get directions and find out what attractions, hotels, and restaurants are close by. Librarians must find the ultimate OPAC that will provide, in one place, all the…

Jasper County Public Library in Indiana had started using EngagedPatrons.org (EP) in 2007. EP is a low-cost technology solution providing online events calendars, RSS feeds, database support, and other web services to connect libraries to their users. It was created in 2006 by Glenn Peterson, who also designs the feature-rich websites for…

India is a huge country with a population of more than 1 billion. In India, by tradition, education and learning are highly valued. In fact, India has one of the largest higher education systems in the world, with regard to the number of institutions. Education is a necessity. It is the most effective instrument with which to imbue people with the…

In the last few years, technology-savvy librarians have begun turning their attention to a host of new tools to connect with their users and colleagues. The umbrella term for these new technologies--Web 2.0--began gaining traction in 2004. Many librarians were quick to embrace the new wave of technology. Early adopting libraries used blogs to…

With the advent of mobile phones--and smartphones in particular--people are slowly moving away from the notion that mobile phones are just for making calls and texting. This coupled with the fact that the uptake of mobile phones hit the 5 billion mark in 2010 has spurred many libraries to offer services that can be used by their patrons on these…

At the end of 2007, SirsiDynix introduced the first version of Symphony, its new flagship Integrated Library System (ILS). This article begins with a look at the evolution of Symphony, user reactions to Symphony, and Symphony's design and functionality. The authors, along with a team of librarians from various functional areas, have completed…

With the release of Google's App Inventor for Android, though still officially in beta, the company sought to make app development "simple but powerful" so that teachers could create study tips and quizzes, anyone could create geographic information systems (GIS) to help people find their way to some destination, and people could communicate over…

This article presents the story of how Pepperdine University migrated its library management functions to the cloud using what is now known as OCLC's WorldShare Management Services (WMS). The story of implementing this new service is told from two vantage points: (1) that of the library; and (2) that of the service provider. The authors were the…

Librarians expend considerable resources to develop services and implement new products catering their users' changing needs. Such efforts begs for the involvement of library users in the development and/or beta process. The authors, both academic librarians, realized that much of their online services were underused, so they devised a plan to…

In this article, the author recounts her experience in 2005 as a library director at the Mount Laurel Library in New Jersey. She thought her people at the library were in fairly good shape in terms of the professional staff's understanding of the confidentiality rules governing their customer information. However, she was wrong. This was driven…

There are many reasons to improve web links, starting with their design. The author tends to think about "design" on the web in terms of two things: (1) graphic/industrial design; and (2) human usability. A nice, clean URI (uniform resource identifier) that does not change, is readable to humans, is amenable to common web behaviors such as…