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April 12, 2006

Providence Library proposes closing (or giving to city) 6 branches; LibraryLookup updated, new instructions for IE users

Journal photo / Kris Craig
Ruby Monegro,11, and Evelyn Aquino, 8, peek out from behind a runway curtain to see a dance exhibition that was part of a Youth Art Month fashion show March 29 at the Olneyville library, a branch that would close under the proposed 2007 library budget.

Providence Library proposes closing 6 branches by Cathleen Crowley in the Providence Journal, today (free reg. req.):

PROVIDENCE -- Providence Public Library officials proposed closing six library branches and laying off workers to bridge a $900,000 shortfall in the fiscal year 2007 budget.

Library officials are also considering severing all branches and handing them over to the city.

The executive committee of the library's board of trustees, met yesterday to review the budget and listen to possible governance changes at the library. The committee did not vote on either issue.

Under the library's proposed 2007 budget, the branches that would close are: Fox Point, Smith Hill, Olneyville, Knight Memorial, Wanskuck and Washington Park, which was already shut down in January because of structural problems.

Four of the library's 10 branches would remain open: Central, Rochambeau, South Providence and Mount Pleasant. South Providence, which was recently renovated, would operate at its current hours and hours would be extended at Central, Rochambeau and Mount Pleasant -- the three most-used libraries....

Aboout transferring the branch libraries to the city,

Mary B. Olenn, chairwoman of the board of trustees, summarized the dilemma like this: "I think it's helpful for us to realize that the responsibilities for delivering basic library services is the responsibility of municipal government and that the private institution that we have is really the value-added; it's the extras."

This is an important story, worth reading the whole thing.

What kind of society would close all the libraries in the poorer neighborhoods? What kind of library board would propose that? What a mess.

Related: LibraryLookup bookmarklet updated, workaround for IE: Jon Udell's wonderful LibraryLookup bookmarklet at InfoWorld takes you from any page with a book's isbn number -- including online bookstores -- to its page in the library catalogue.

You can see which branches own the book and if it's on the shelf -- click the small photo at right for a 75 percent screenshot.

You may reserve the book (for free -- no postage any more) or save it to a reading list to consider later. You invoke all this by clicking a link in your links bar (IE) or personal toolbar (Firefox, Netscape)

I use it constantly. I choose which branch to pick it up at, and a library computer calls when the book arrives.

Quick start: The link is over on the right side of this blog, under Rhode Island Library Lookup. You drag it to your personal toolbar and off you go. In IE you bookmark it to your Favorites-->Links folder and it pops into the Links toolbar. Try Browse to a single book's page at an online bookstore and click the new toolbar link to try it. If it doesn't work, check out your popups situation.

Background, IE breaks the drag, more installation instructions: Recently, I got an email from a reader, Matt Ramos, saying that "The Providence Public Library has a created a new library book catalog" -- and the bookmarklet I'd worked out years ago had broken.

Fortunately, Jon Udell now has a form that writes the new code for your library, and it worked for me.

Then yesterday my colleague Tim Barmann beckoned me over in the newsroom. "it doesn't work in IE," he said, his mouse unable to grab the PPL so he could drag it.

"I'll look into it," I said.

Later....

Hi, Tim,

Another reason not to use IE!

http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/03/20.html

Stephanie Johnson is a librarian who constantly uses her LibraryLookup bookmarklet. When her computer was upgraded recently, she could no longer use or add bookmarklets, and she wrote to ask why. It turns out that in the current version of Windows XP, you can no longer drag bookmarklets to Internet Explorer's link toolbar.

I'd seen this behavior on the computers in my own local libraries, and attributed it to security settings. But no, it's merely a quirk of Windows XP's Service Pack 2. To work around it, you have to add bookmarklets to the link toolbar in a different way. The procedure worked for Stephanie, and it works on the public machines in my local libraries too. I should have sorted this out and documented it long ago, but better late than never. Today's four-minute screencast (Flash 8, earlier Flash versions) has the scoop.

To save the bookmarklet under IE 6.0 on Windows XP SP2, you can right-click on the link, select Add to Favorites, answer Yes to the security question, and save in the Links folder. To have it appear in a toolbar, go to View --> Toolbars --> Unlock toolbars. Drag the Links to the bottom of the toolbars, delete the ones you don't want and PPL will be in there.

The IE on this machine has google toolbar blocking popups. It let PPL work when I held down the control key while I clicked the link while on a page with an isbn at Amazon.

If this works for you, I'll try to condense it.

sheila

Later still....

That did it. I didn't need to unlock the toolbar -- it displayed with my other links.

I did have to allow popups with both IE and with Google.

Nice! Just looked up a book from Amazon.

Thanks,
Tim

And, in case you're wondering, there are books, especially those published originally in paperback, that the library may not own. In that case, you're still on the bookstore page, a click away from a shopping cart.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 4:23 AM | Permalink

Comments

Posted by: tom on April 13, 2006 10:15 AM