Idaho Commission for Libraries

On April 8th, at the 2006 Southwest Idaho Library Association regional conference, the e-branch in a Box pilot project launched!

We're moving closer to the launch of the e-branch project!

At the end of October and beginning of November the Idaho Commission for Libraries will provide training sessions across the state. Sign up! Each library that attends a session will have an e-branch site to work on - with the intent that they'll leave the workshop with a ready-to-launch site.

Our first e-branch in a box trainings will be happening next week! Attendees will begin the setup of their web sites during the training and leave with either a ready-to-go site, or one that they only need apply a little more of what they've learned to make road-worthy.

Please pardon if these thoughts are a bit rambling, but I've excerpted them from an email exchange with one of our e-branch participants:

Part of the work of ensuring the longevity of a project such as the e-Branch project involves change management.

In managing change, it’s important to know what you value, and what to do when those values conflict. For the e-branch project, we’ve developed the following list of values, ranked in priority order:

1. Security
   

The most often heard request from our participating e-branch libraries is "more themes."

On Sunday April 22nd, 2007 we upgraded our Drupal software to take advantage of Drupal's 5.x branch. The process went smoothly, as we'd done much testing and planning in advance.

We've removed the forums feature from this site due to lack of activity/interest.

I'd had high hopes that we could conduct most of our e-branch support via this venue and thus build up something of a searchable knowledge-base that folks could query before calling us or emailing questions, since we often answer the same questions time and again.

E-branch libraries now have the option of providing online library card applications to their users.

It works like this

e-Branchers,

Yesterday, 8/09/2007, we did a presentation on e-branch for the PNLA conference in Edmonton.

It went very well, and the participating libraries' sites that we showcased impressed the audience. They represented a lot of hard work by the Idaho libraries involved, and they reflected well on our project and the level of professionalism in Idaho libraries.

We've announced it in other places, but it obviously is appropriate to announce it here:

There is a new round of training planned for e-branch in October!

For this fall's e-Branch in a Box training sessions, the print version of the e-Branch in a Box handbook has undergone a significant overhaul. The bulk of the questions about using the system revolved around working with the TinyMCE content editor. With these questions in mind, the new guide addresses how to work with the editor and deemphasizes the initial setup types of tasks.

One of the biggest requests that we have received in recent months is adding calendar functionality to the e-Branch in a Box system. Through much trial and error on our own site using various modules, we have finally found a solution: Google Calendar (GCal).

To comply with the Collaborative Summer Library Program (http://www.cslpreads.org/) guidelines, the 2008 Summer Reading e-Branch in a Box Themes (Metamorphosis @ Your Library and Catch the Reading Bug) have been removed from all the e-Branch participating sites. If you had any pages that tapped into the theme switching capabilities, I have switched them out to your default theme.

We have set a tentative target of June May for the next major upgrade of the Drupal software behind our e-Branch web site hosting project for Idaho libraries.

Two new Skins are now available (part of the GrandCentral theme) to all e-Branch in a Box participating sites:

Each year, the Collaborative Summer Library Program provides us with materials to use in our Summer Reading programs. As a participant in this program, we have access to these items for a predefined time period and that time has passed for 2009.