L7

ILN Newsletter

September 1998 LOUISIANA LIBRARY NETWORK NEWSLETTER vol. 6 no. 3

http://www.lsu.edu/lln

Editor: Marcy Stevens

LLN Updateby Ralph Boe ’

The Louisiana Library Network received an additional $538,000 above last year’sallocation from the State. After adding the LLN membership fees to the state allocation,the LLN budget for 1998-99 approaches $3 million. With the budget increase additionalresources will be made available to the members of LLN. Academic Universe, ABI/Inform, and access to The Advocate and Times-Picayune via UMI should be availablesome time in September.

Unfortunately we had to sever our relationship with Dialog@CARL because they couldnot, and would not, provide the backfiles for The Advocate. SilverPlatter did not renewtheir distribution agreement with Ameritech Library Services this year and their actionshave seriously jeopardized the timely implementation of future releases of theSilverPlatter’s ERL search engine into InfoShare. I am talking with both vendors inhopes of implementing a solution that will provide us with a stable environment.

Southern University Baton Rouge and Baton Rouge Community College were added toLOUIS this summer. We are now working with Grambling State University, Universityof Southwestern Louisiana, Louisiana College, Our Lady of the Lake College,LUMCON, and South Louisiana Community College to add their holdings to LOUIS.

The members of the LLN Database Committee and the LLN Technology Committeedeserve a great big “pat-on-the-back” for all the work they have accomplished duringthis last year. I am convinced that the Louisiana Library Network has been successfulbecause member institutions are willing to allow their professional staff to participate inthe necessary analysis and selection of products. I hope each library staff memberfeels free to submit their ideas and knowledge of electronic resources and products tothe members of these committees, who are listed on the back of this newsletter. Yourinput is vital to the future of LLN!

New Area Code

On August 17, 1998 the area code for several parishes, including allBaton Rouge phone numbers, changed from 504 to 225. Callers willhave an extended grace period before the new area code is manda-tory. FromAug. 17,1998 throughApril 5,1999, both area codes willwork. After April 5,1999, the 504 area code will no longer work;therefore, callers must dial only 225 as the area code.

Southern University added to LOUISby Dawn V&tress Kight, Head, Systems & Technology,Southern University

Academic year 1997198 proved to be a great year for improvinginformation technology at Southern University Baton Rouge(SUBR). The implementation of Southern Uncover DocumentDelivery System, Electronic Reserve Library (ERL), Archivesand African American Collection Digitization Project and, ofcourse, the migration to LOUIS, greatly enhanced electroniclibrary services. When the Library was told that the statewould be allocating the necessary funding for SUBR to joinLOUIS, excitement filled the air. The Dean of Libraries immedi-ately set up a meeting with Ralph Boe, Director of LOUIS andhis staff , along with the Library’s Systems and Technologystaff , to discuss the implementat ion s trategy.

The John B. Cade Library was using an older version ofAmeritech’s NOTIS software for i ts online catalog and circula-tion systems and supporting the system was becomingincreasingly difficult. Joining LOUIS was the perfect solution.The LOUIS staff is responsible for maintaining and upgradingthe system and providing initial training, among other things.The Library is responsible for setting up and maintainingequipment to access LOUIS, inputting data (circulationpolicies, securi ty profi les . . . . ) into the system and providingstaff and end user training. Since we were already usingNOTIS, LOUIS was able to contract with Ameritech LibraryServices to convert our bibliographic data to be usable for thelatest release of NOTIS. Does this sound l ike a good plan?Well, i t was and it worked! After carefully devising an imple-

mentation schedule, which both parties did their best to adheret o , SUBR appeared on the LOUIS menu before the scheduledproduction date. The LOUIS staff members were very knowledge-able and helpful in providing a smooth transition. One of thegreatest challenges was training the Library staff to adjust to thenew system. Not that the system is so difficult to use; sometimesit takes a little time getting used to using a menu to circulate abook instead of pressing a function key as we had been doing forthe past five years. However, since using the system, the stafffeels very comfortable with it and are just like old pros again.

T h e students and faculty find it very useful to be able to accesst h e other university catalogs as well as their own and the data-bases available via LOUIS from the same computer interface.Emma Bradford Perry, Dean of Libraries, and the campus adminis-trators are excited because of the cost effectiveness in sharingresources. I am especially happy because I no longer have toworry about all of the upgrades and maintenance that have to bedone with the NOTIS software. The State of Louisiana and theworld should be delighted because now they have electronicaccess to the r ich collect ions available at SUBR.

Hats off to the LOUIS staff, SUBR Information Systems Division,SUBR Library Systems and Technology Office and TechnicalServices staff for a job well done!

Calendar of EventsOctoberIO/l-3 ICOLC Meeting1018-9 NUGMNovember1115-6 LaNUGM (at Nicholls)1 l/12-13 LALINC Meeting1 l/l 8-20 Amigos Conference11126-27 LOUIS Office Closed (Thanksgiving)December12/24-l/1 LOUIS Office Closed (Christmas)Januaryl/18 LOUIS Office Closed (MLK Jr.)l/22-28 ALA Midwinter , Phi ladelphiaFebruary2l16 LOUIS Office Closed (Mardi Gras)March3116-19 LLA in Baton Rouge

WebSPIRS Updateby John Gidlloly

As of July 10, all,LLN libraries can access the LLN InfoShare/ERLdatabases using WebSPIRS, a web “gateway” to an LLN data-base server. Previously, WebSPIRS was available only to LOUISlibraries from a server at Middleton Library on the LSU Campus.You can find a l ist of si tes who are authorized to accessWebSPIRS from the LLN webpage (http://www.lsu.edu/lln). Ifyou are accessing your si tes’ URL from a valid IP address thenWebSPIRS wil l pass you direct ly to the database server. If youare accessing your si tes’ URL through an Internet ServiceProvider (ISP) then you will be prompted to logon to theWebSPIRS gateway with a logon ID and password. These can beobtained for each site from Lisa Stigall. You can still access thesedatabases through WinSPIRS and through the LOUIS menu.

2 LLN Newsletter

The SilverPlatter and ALS Partnership Endsby Shaolong Huang

The relationship between SilverPlatter and Ameritech Library Services (ALS) ended recently. For the last four years, SilverPlatter, adatabase provider, partnered with ALS in marketing databases to the customers of ALS library automation systems. The InfoSharesoftware of ALS and the ERL search engine of SilverPlatter were bundled together so that customers got the combined functionality ofthe InfoShare 239.50 interface and the ERL database search capability. The ERL search engine gave users database search power andstreamlined the database maintenance operations, while InfoShare’s 239.50 function allowed users to access ERL databases from ALSLMS search client software running under CICS on the IBM mainframe.

The partnership has served LOUIS users well during the last few years. Databases from SilverPlatter are loaded on and made availablethrough the bundled InfoShare and ERL software which are installed on an IBM RS /6000 machine. Using the same search interfaceas their library OPACs, LOUIS users are able to access database information stored on the IBM RS /6000 machine via the 239.50protocol. The use of a single search interface for both OPAC data and database data greatly simplifies the search process. The hook toholdings feature is also a benefit for LOUIS library users.

SilverPlatter’s ERL 4.0 is scheduled for general release at the end of September and the LOUIS staff is working with ALS andSilverPlatter representatives to get ERL 4.0 incorporated into InfoShare. ERL 4.0 fixes many of the problems which we have beenexperiencing since the implementation of ERL 2.1 in February 1998. Since future releases of the ERL search engine will not beincorporated with InfoShare, LOUIS is investigating options for future database access.

System Administrators Meetingby Sara Zimmerman

The summer System Administrators’ Meeting was held July 30-3 1 at the LOUIS Office in Baton Rouge. We had almost perfectattendance. Of the 25 member institutions, 22 sent their System Administrators. After welcoming our new sites, which includeSouthern University Baton Rouge, Baton Rouge Community College, Grambling State University, Our Lady of the Lake College,University of Southwestern Louisiana, South Louisiana Community College, and Louisiana College, each system administrator gavean update related to their campus. The Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON) located in Cocodrie attended andused the meeting as an opportunity to investigate joining LOUIS. We had two special guest presentations, Jane Patterson, Directorof LaNet and Stacy Betts of Ameritech Library Services. The agenda continued with updates from LOUIS staff on projects andtimely topics such as Learning Space, RSS, recons, Electronic Reserve, LMS, QuickReports, authority work, CLARR, LMS 6.5, localand remote databases, adding new institutions, FTP’ing, snapping datasets, IP printing, purging files, batch jobs, and SAS. Anupdate was also given from the Technology Committee Chair. Several topics from the meeting stand out and deserve mentioning.

. The LOUIS consortium will wait to install NOTIS LMS Release 7.0 rather than install Release 6.5. Release 6.5 is currentlyavailable and Release 7.0 will be available in December. The members of the consortium agreed that current Release 6.4.1.1 is stableand it is not worth the time or effort to load NOTIS LMS 6.5. Approximately 60 fixes have been incorporated into Release 6.5. Thesefixes and new features for Release 6.5 will be included in Release 7.0. Planned instal la t ion of Release 7.0 into product ion is theApril /May t ime frame.

. campuses need to persuade their administrations to let “dumb terminals” die because the information industry is focusingon IP access only (fortunately, many campuses are indeed adding labs with IP workstations)

. the demo on CLARR which allows a GUI interface to the staff side of LMS

. system administrators need in-depth t raining at LaNUGM on TSO

. the bib and item purge jobs need to be scheduled and run to clean up the databases

We also rei terated the need to have the System Administrators be our point of contact at each campus and for the System Adminis-trator to have and use email. The meeting ended, as usual , by sett ing the date for the next meeting, which will be February 1 l- 12 ,1999. System Administrators, please make a note and plan to attend. The meeting needs you and we want to strive for perfectattendance!

LLN Newsletter 3

Host on Demandby Mike Colyal; Systems Analyst, Computing Services

Host-on-Demand (HOD) is a Java applet that gives any Javaenabled web browser the ability to connect to an IBM mainframe.The reason why HOD is needed is because IBM tends to dothings differently than anyone else. Just being able to logon toan IBM mainframe can be an adventure. Without getting into thedebate whether one platform is better than another, let me pointout one of the challenges. IBM uses a protocol known as 3270Data Stream for terminal communications. 3270 sends blocks ofdata at a time but the normal telnet client sends one character at atime. This is why you use TELNET to connect to most hostssuch as UNIX systems but you must use a 3270 Telnet (TN3270)to connect to an IBM mainframe telnet server. Current versions ofWindows 95/98/NT and OS/2 come with TELNET clients built inbut do not have a TN3270 client. Even if you have a goodTN3270 client on your machine, it can be quite a challenge tofind/install a TN3270 client on other machines at your institutionor even at home. This is where HOD really shines. The onlysoftware requirement for Host-on-Demand is a Java enabled webbrowser, which most Internet users already have.

There are some drawbacks to the version of Host-on-Demandinstalled at LSU. One drawback is that each invocation of HoDfrom the OS/390 web server causes the HOD client to be down-loaded across the network. Depending on the speed of yourconnection, this can get real annoying. With this version of HOD,you cannot print screens; and you have no way of remapping thekeyboard to your liking. There are currently three versions ofHOD. Version 1 is the one that comes with OS/390 and is installedat LSU. Version 2, a cost feature which LSU has not yet licensed,adds some additional capabilities. Version 3 of HoD is still in betaand will provide remote IP printing support. Whether LSU will tryto purchase one of the newer versions is not clear at this time.

Having said all this, if you need a TN3270 client in a pinch, thecurrent HOD can be a life saver.

Ready to try it? To connect to the LOUIS system using HOD,point your web browser to http://louis.lsu.edu/hod/he3270enhtm. LOUIS System Administrators with TSO useridscan logon to TSO or TPX by connecting to http://lsumvs.sncc.lsu.edu/hod/he327Oen.htm. When the HOD clienthas been downloaded to your browser, you will be presented witha five item input screen. The first three are user preference itemswhich you can change as you wish. The fourth item is thehostname. By definition, if a web server serves out a Java applet,that Java applet should only connect back to the server fromwhich it came. This is why the hostname field cannot be changedwhen using the above URLs. A Java applet can be loaded from aweb server or can be installed directly in your web browser. Thebrowser implementation is up to the vendor from which you getyour web browser. There is a HOD in Netscape Communicator Pro.Since this built-in applet is not loaded from a web server, you maytype any hostname that you wish. This Netscape HOD also hasthe advantage that you don’t have to download it across thenetwork every time you want to start a connection. The fifth itemon the input screen is that of a port number. The default of 23should always be used. When you are ready, press the “Connectto Host” button to start the TN3270 session to the mainframe.One final hint, the enter key is really the ENTER key and not theright CTRL keys as many other emulators use.

So what works best? My recommendation would be to use aseparate TN3270 client if you have one. If not then try a browserimplementation such as Netscape Communicator Pro. Please notethat Communicator Pro does have an educational cost of $15.80 acopy. If neither of these are available, by all means, use the HODJava applet served out by the LSU mainframe. In any case, giveHost-on-Demand a try. It might come in handy one day.

Full-Text Newspapersby Ralph Boe

As many of you know we were dissatisfied with the service wereceived from Dialog@CARL. LLN was scheduled to get athirty-day free trial during November, 1997 and we contractedfor 13 months (December I,1997 through December 3 1,1998)of access to the News Collection, The Advocate, and Times-Picayune. We did receive access to the News Collection on Dec.3, 1997 but the Times-Picayune was not loaded until Feb. 20,1998 and The Advocate was not loaded until June 19th, 1998.The Times-Picayune’s back files were loaded but not TheAdvocate ‘s. Dialog loaded the April 1998 files of 27ze Advocateand planned to continue to add new data as they received it, butthey would not load any of the back files. This was unaccept-able!

We spoke with Jay Ford, our sales rep, and Amy Miller, VicePresident of Computing and Database Services, and expressedour frustration with their product and services. As a result of that

meeting Dialog offered us two options to resolve our conflict:

1 . Continue the contract as-is through the end of Dec., 1998 at areduced price (without The Advocate back files.)

2. Discontinue the service immediately and pay nothing for theservice which we received since December, 1997.

The staff had several conversations with members of the aca-demic and the public database committees and the two Icommittees were unanimous in their decisions to discontinue theDialog service immediately. The service was discontinued on I

July 15, 1998.

The two database committees have met and are exploring optionswith UMI and Academic Universe to provide full-text access toThe Advocate and Times-Picayune, with back files.

4 LLN Newsletter

Beta Testing of RSS Comes to a Close...for Nowby Carolyn Coca

In the June 1998 LLN Newsletter, we announced that four LOUIS libraries had agreed to work with the LOUIS staff to beta test the newAmeritech Library Services (ALS) patron-initiated interlibrary loan product called Resource Sharing System (RSS). After a trainingsession in March, our beta test period began in April with two libraries, Northeast Louisiana University and Louisiana State University,doing the initial testing and two other libraries, Louisiana Tech and Southeastern Louisiana University, ready to join in at an appropriatelater date.

We were interested in RSS because it includes several features which ILL personnel found appealing, such as the patron-friendlyinterface which allows a patron to initiate and later track a request via the Web, the ability for ILL staff to do “global” searches acrossall LOUIS catalogs at once to search for a title, and the essentially simple workflow procedures. Also, RSS eliminates extensive papertrails, and allows the ILL staff to set up lending sequences which streamline ILL workflow.

However, after our initial assessment was reviewed, the decision was made to halt all beta testing of RSS for the time being. By the endof June, it had already been determined that the RSS Product, in its current state, needs several enhancements before it will be accept-able for use by our consortium.

One of our major criticisms of the RSS product is that it is not stable for a statewide Wide Area Network environment because it usesthe Microsoft Access database management system. As we currently understand it, with Microsoft Access, if a part of our statewideor campus network goes down, and if this causes the connection between the RSS client and server to be broken, there is a vulnerabil-ity in the system which allows RSS data to become corrupted. This is obviously unacceptable! Because of the feedback they receivedfrom us on this problem, personnel at ALS are already working on upgrading to Microsoft Sequel Server database management system,which they believe will bz: more stable and better able to support a wide area network.

In addition, our testing period revealed other shortcomings: lack of a closed request archiving function, difficulty in implementing newreleases, lack of ability to batch process requests and streamline dam entry, poor error messaging, lack of adequate backup proceduresand lack of consistent navigation features. Beta testers made several suggestions in other areas as well. Once some or all of theseproblems and enhancements have been addressed, we will assess our options for retesting the product at that time.

All of these problems and suggestions were thoroughly documented in written evaluations we requested from ILL personnel at our twobeta test sites. The LSU reports were written by Robbie Ruiz, Wil Weston, Jackie Jones, and Karen Guerin. The Northeast report waswritten by Melinda Matthews. The LOUIS staff wishes to acknowledge and thank these beta testers for the time they expended testingthe product, documenting their questions and comments, and writing the reports. We also appreciate the work of the system adminis-trators and other personnel at the four beta test sites for their work in installing releases and dealing with hardware issues: AimeeFifarek and Floris St. Amant at LSU, Lynda Huggins at Northeast, Jean Caswell at Southeastern, and Mike DiCarlo at Tech. The Betatest was time consuming and occasionally frustrating, but all participants worked diligently to help us determine both the advantagesand the shortcomings of the RSS product.

John Guillory and I (Carolyn Coca) also wrote evaluations from our perspectives as “technical support person” and “system adminis-trator,” respectively. All reports were forwarded to Ralph Boe’ and Sara Zimmerman, who wrote a cover letter to summarize the group’sfindings. The entire packet was then bound and sent to several levels of personnel at ALS as our official documentation of our RSSBeta testing period. Copies of this report were also provided to each LOUIS system administrator at the Summer ‘98 SystemAdministrator’s meeting.

The LOUIS staff is still on the lookout for other ILL products which might prove to be acceptable; however, from my preliminaryviewing of such products as “Wings” by Pigasus and “ILLiad” by Virginia Tech, it seems that several of the products which arecurrently available are also in only the first stages of development. Still, we’ll be keeping our eyes open and I invite any of you whomay hear of other ILL systems worthy of investigation to send information about them to Carolyn Coca at coco@lsu.edu.

LLN Statistics on the Web

LLN statistics are available on the LOUIS web page at http://www.lsu.edu/lhr/. The statistics include OPACsearches, locally mounted database searches, the number of batch jobs that are run each month, title counts byaverage publication date, and remote database searches to GaleNet and IA6 Sear&Bank. The statistics arebroken down by fiscal year for each LOUIS library. I

LLN Newsletter 5

ALA ‘98 Wrapupby Carolyn coca

ALA ‘98 was held in Washington DC this year, and four LLN staff members attended: Ralph, Sara, Zehra, and Carolyn. Each of usspent a great deal of time meeting with the several vendors who we deal with on a regular basis.

Sara and Carolyn attended all of the presentations made by vendors of library automation systems which Mike DiCarlo arranged forthe LLN Technology Committee. The products we viewed were: ALS Horizon, Endeavor Voyager, VTLS Virtua, ExLibris Aelph, andDRA TAOS. In addition to these vendors, Carolyn also met with representatives or went to update sessions by SilverPlatter, IAC,CARL/Dialog and Ameritech Library Services (ALS). Sara also met with ALS, IAC, and SilverPlatter. Zehra met with Baker andTaylor,DRA, Marcive, Follett, Retrolink, and OCLC. Ralph met with representatives from the U.S. Institute of Museums and Library Services,the National Science Foundation, Ameritech Library Services, CARL/Dialog, SilverPlatter, GaleNet and IAC.

Since we work with several products from Ameritech Library Services, we met with several ALS representatives to hear updates onNOTIS LMS, InfoShare, RSS, and WebPAC. Ralph, Sara, and Carolyn joined the LLN Technology Committee to meet with ALSPresident Lana Porter to discuss the future of ALS. She assured us that LMS will be developed at least until the year 2000, withmaintenance for at least 5 years afterwards. Ralph attended a NOTIS focus group meeting, along with several library directors fromNOTIS sites, at which the possible remarketing of NOTIS for consortia was discussed. At that same meeting, priorities for ALS werelisted as follows: first priority is WebPAC enhancements, second priority is patron empowerment, and third is patron authentication.

At individual NOTIS interest group meetings, we heard about the upcoming new release, of the NOTIS Library Management System,LMS 7.0. Also we heard more about the unfortunate demise of the relationship between ALS and SilverPlatter. lnformation was givenregarding the upcoming NOTIS Users Group Meeting, which will be held in Rosemont, IL on Oct. 8 & 9,1998. ALS representativeLinda Zaleski introduced their new theme “Archeopteryx,” which they described as “a dinosaur with wings.” The idea behind thistheme is to give new life to the mainframe product by having it act as a server, and work with additional software such as graphicalfront ends (such as WebPAC) and middleware. They plan to “open NOTIS up to work with new clients.”

At the sparsely attended ALS RSS Users Group Meeting, Carolyn worked with ALS personnel and other RSS customers to helpprioritize a list of enhancements for that product. Customers also shared their RSS experiences and asked questions. We heard thatthe new release of WebPAC, release 3.1 which will include broadcast searching, should be available by the end of the year.

More information about the NUGM meeting and a copy of Linda Zaleski’s slides are available from the NOTIS Customer Web site at:http://www.amlibs.com/support/nsc/index.htm. Contact your system administrator or any LOUIS staff member for the new logon idand password to access this site.

At the SilverPlatter Update, we heard about the upcoming release of ERL (version 4.0), as well as the companion release of WebSPIRS.The new release includes an e-mail option, customizable screens, display buttons in frames for user friendly navigation, hotlinks toother resources and weblinks to full content, a search history button, and links to local holdings. SilverPlatter also discussed their newproduct SilverLinker, which could link primary data from local databases to secondary sources such as full text articles, e-journals, anddocument delivery systems.

At the IAC update, a very new staff working for a very new president Allen Paschal was introduced including four new vice-presi-dents and one VP which was the only “seasoned veteran” in the group. Several enhancements to Sear&Bank were announced,including its new customizable interface, and relevancy ranking. New databases were announced, including Books in Print Reviewsand Peterson S Guides. The Consumer Health Information Sourcebook will be added to the Health Reference Center database, andthey are moving forward on an aggressive rights campaign to attain rights for a new Newspaper Database in which they plan toinclude over 100 full-text newspapers. They also plan a new database with newsletters from around the U.S.

IAC also announced that turnaround from publishers should be quicker because of their newly automated production system,additional feeds from publishers, and a more efficient abstracting system. They are working onYear 2000 compliance. They alsoannounced a new Weekend Emergency Help Service at l-800-227-843 1. Top priority for enhancements include usage statistics (whichwe on the LLN staff have been requesting heavily), holdings, an enhanced IAC Website, a K- 12 product line, and a new product calledTotal Access, which will offer distributed searching across IAC as well as any 239.50 OPACs, HTML, etc. Finally, they announcedanother new product called “Life Center,” which they describe as a Web-based interactive personal knowledge tool, with informationon personal finance, jobs, automobiles, and finance. For more information, visit the IAC Website at: http://library.iacnet.cornl.

6 LLN Newsletter

Technology Committee Updateby Mike DiCarlo, Associate Directol;Prescot t Memorial Library , Louis iana Tech Univers i ty

The Technology Committee completed a review of five libraryautomation vendors at the American Library Association AnnualConference in Washington, D.C. The Committee membersattending the Conference were: Nancy Colyar, Jean Caswell,Michael DiCarlo, Glenn Manino, Karen Leeseberg, and JeffCoghill (Head of Circulation McNeese sitting in for Joe McNeill).Representing the LOUIS office were Carolyn Coca and SaraZimmerman. The Committee scheduled meetings with AmeritechLibrary Services-Horizon, Endeavor-Voyager, ExLibris-Aleph,VTLS-Virtua, and DRA-TAOS. Prior to the conference theCommittee created a series of questions/topics that were ofinterest and submitted a copy to each vendor.

Each presentation’s organization and structure was left up to thevendor except for the desire of the Committee to see and discussoperation of the system from a technical and staff point of view.The vendors selected were those that received the highestnumber of recommendations for follow up from the Committeeafter the ALA Midwinter Conference. Each vendor had 90 minutesof presentation time with questions adding to the time.

A review of the comments shows a similar response by the

Committee members to each of the respective vendors. A sum-mary of the comments would indicate that LLN is in a favorableposition at this time in not having a pressing need to move fromour current library automation platform. The systems reviewed allare very young in their development cycle and some have notentered full production as of ALA Annual. Those systemscurrently in production have not had a consortium of our sizefully loaded and running; though Endeavor with the contractfrom GALILEO and Library of Congress, DRA with Harvard,MNLink, and UCLA are two that will shortly have some real timeexperience from which to judge.

The Committee also was able to schedule a meeting with LanaPorter, President ofAmeritech Library Services. Committeemembers were able to talk about some of our frustrations with theNOTISLMS product, our concerns about the future developmentof the product, and our feelings on the strong points of theproduct. Ms. Porter seemed genuinely interested in the commentsmade and gave several positive responses. The NOTIS/LMSproduct should continue to see enhancements well into the nextcentury.

Baton Rouge Community College Joins LOUISby Anne Shepherd, Library Directol;Baton Rouge Community College

Baton Rouge Community College’s Library doors opened for thefirst day of classes on August 20! The library director is Anne _Shepherd and the assistant director is Melanie Hair. The supportstaff will consist of several clerks, student workers and libraryassistants. About 15,000 items are barcoded but not yet fullyentered in the LOUIS database. Starting the process has beentedious, but we are moving along now and hope to finishattaching the barcodes to the records in the near future. Thebuilding of the database was a little tricky as BRCC is unique init’s use of five different vendors. The records had to be testloaded until the parameters were acceptable for LOUIS.

Baton Rouge Community College applied for membership inLOUIS and was accepted in Fall, 1997, and it has been scramblingto acquire books and materials for the August 1998 opening. Thedecision was made to use five vendors, based on how eachvendor could best meet the needs of a quickly growing collection.Baker & Taylor and Midwest Libraries send tapes; Unique Books,

Yankee Books and Ambassador Books send the information byFTP weekly. The tapes and FTP files come often at this time butas the collection grows and the acquisition of books slows downwe are expecting to receive tapes twice a year, FTPs weekly.

The LOUIS partnership has been just that, a partnership! TheLOUIS staff has been more than helpful with all of our needs.Zehra Zamin has been encouraging all along the way and with thesupport that they have give us, we never have thought for oneminute that we would not be ready with on-line support onAugust 20.

We face a huge job in the coming year with all sorts of consolida-tion of records and the barcodes complete collection have to beattached. With the encouragement we get, it all seems to be noproblem. We are having a great time with all these challenges andeach day brings us new adventures.

LLN Newsletter 7

LOUIS MAILING ADDRESS AND STAFF LIST

YETWORK INFORMATIONSPECIALISTS (LIBl):

kolyn cocaPhone: (225) 388-3722Z-mail: coco@lsu.edu

lohn Guillory?hone: (225) 388-3758knail: johng@lsu.edu

Lisa S t iga l l?hone: (225) 388-3735knail: beene@lsu.edu

ZehraZamin?hone: (225) 388-3747Z-mail: zehra@lsu.edu

PROGRAMMER/ANALYSTS(TECHl):

Shaolong HuangPhone : (225) 388-3767E-mail: huang@lsu.edu

Mary LairdPhone: (225) 388-3753E-mail: bron@lsu.edu

Cathy SicardPhone: (225) 388-375 1E-mail: cathy@lsu.edu

Marcy StevensPhone: (225) 388-3771E-mail: marcy@lsu.edu

sarazimmermanPhone: (225) 388-3705E-mail: sara@lsu.edu

d

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