Lane Library Staff Site

The library will not open due to the weather on Tuesday, February 9th.

On January 28, the Hamilton City School Board unanimously approved a resolution to put the Lane Libraries levy on the May ballot.  We expect the School Board Treasurer to deliver the resolution to the Board of Elections sometime today.  This is the final step in placing the levy on the ballot. 

To our surprise, the School Board also voted unanimously to give Lane's levy an official endorsement, the first we have received.  We appreciate the support of Dave Belew, Greg Kinch and Kelli Johnson, who were all in attendance on behalf of the Lane Libraries.

Staff should now have access to a "fact sheet" at the public desks, which you can provide to patrons who have questions about the levy.  The PR department will modify this document as needed and continue to provide copies to the branches.  The levy campaign committee will hold their first meeting on Monday, February 1 to begin strategic planning for the weeks ahead.

Please contact Carrie Mancuso or Mary Pat Essman with any questions you have or receive from patrons about the levy.

Lane libraries consider levy in face of budget cuts

Survey completed December 09 through January 10 of other state funded Ohio Libraries

On Monday, January 11, the Lane Libraries Board passed a resolution to move forward with the necessary actions to place an operating levy on the May 2010 ballot for our libraries.  There are a number of steps that must be taken before the levy will be officially placed on the ballot.  Since the Board has approved this measure, the Branch Managers are currently scheduling times in the coming days for staff to meet with Mary Pat Essman and Carrie Mancuso.  These meetings, held at each location, will provide an opportunity for more information to be shared, for staff to ask questions, and to discuss how to communicate about the levy with the public. 

While we work to get this information out to all staff, please refrain from discussing the levy at public desks.  If you have questions prior to your branch meeting or get any questions from the public at this time, please direct them to Carrie Mancuso at extension 603.

The Lane Libraries welcome new Board member, Dr. Kelli Lyon Johnson, who began her seven-year term on Monday, January 11.  Dr. Johnson has lived in Hamilton for the past six and a half years working as an English professor at Miami University Hamilton.  Last August, she became Associate Dean for the Hamilton campus. 

Dr. Johnson embraces a lifelong love of reading and has always believed in the importance of reading and libraries in people's lives.  She feels that she is a good fit for the Lane Libraries Board because she understands what an important role libraries play in communities and she is interested in helping to improve the lives of people in Butler County.  She and her husband Martin, who is also a professor at MUH, have a daughter and enjoy traveling as a family.  Dr. Johnson replaces Board member Susan Vaughn whose term expired in December.

Assistant Branch Manager, Grade 12

The State Library of Ohio launched Job and Career Accelerator,  a new and exciting addition to the LearningExpress Library service, on January 4, 2010.

LearningExpress Job & Career Accelerator™ provides personalized, step-by-step job search assistance for all levels of job seekers from exploring and matching suitable occupations from over 1,000 detailed occupation profiles to finding available jobs in their area from a database of over 5 million up-to-date job postings.  With Job & Career Accelerator, users can easily create professional targeted resumes, master interviewing techniques, improve work related skills and prepare for occupation-related exams. In addition, it helps job seekers plan, tailor, and track multiple job searches at the same time while providing expert advice and tips each step of the way. The end result is the most efficient and effective job search possible.

A welcome kit with details about linking to the Job and Career Accelerator is available under the documents tab.  Libraries have several URLs to choose from if they would like to link directly to the Job and Career Accelerator including one just created for public libraries by OPLIN:
http://oplin.org/auth/?url=http://jca.learnatest.com/lel

We will have this posted on the Lane Databases page this week.

Sometimes the bad guys spoof email from an @lanepl.org email addresses and send phony messages trying to trick you into clicking a link that could do bad things. Here is a recent example received by one staff member (who rightly questioned Systems about it):

Dear user of the lanepl.org mailing service!

We are informing you that because of the security upgrade of the mailing service your mailbox (homebound@lanepl.org) settings were changed. In order to apply the new set of settings click on the following link:

hxxp://lanepl.org/owa/service_directory/settings.php?email=homebound@lanepl.org&from=lanepl.org&fromname=homebound

Best regards, lanepl.org Technical Support.

You will never receive a valid email like this from Systems. In this and many similiar instances, you can mouse-over the link without clicking on it, look in the lower-left corner of your browser, and see it disguises a different destination. For example:

hxxp://lanepl.org.ikuu8e.com

Please contact Systems if you are uncertain of the validity of any emails you receive like this, and do not click links in emails without understanding that they are clearly from Systems staff. We would almost always sign them as from Chip, Bill or Heidi. Even if they are signed, if you have the slightest suspicion they are odd, please contact Systems before proceeding, or simply mark them as SPAM. Thank you.

The bad news is that the server (VEXIRA) that hosted the staff shared drives is out of commission, so your shortcuts to the shared drives won't work.

The good news is that we were able to restore these files from a backup dated Monday, Jan. 4. We have setup a new share on another server. I am mailing managers the instructions for distribution, but if you have an immediate need for these, call or email Systems.