ILS Developments at Queens and Brooklyn & 2CUL for Two Schools

For tech services librarians, nothing beats getting screwed over by your ILS vendor. Queens Library's recent trouble with SirsiDynix was the subject of a Library Journal article a couple weeks ago. According to QL, they chose to migrate to Dynix's Horizon system based on promises of aggressive product development. Once Dynix merged with Sirsi, however, those promises were rescinded. Queens is now suing their erstwhile vendor, charging breach of contract, breach of guaranty, and fraud. They've since migrated to VTLS' Virtua system.

Further catalog news: Brooklyn Public Library announced improvements to their public interface, touting hold freezes, online fine payments, and a book-rating system amongst their catalog's new features.

Finally, Columbia and Cornell announced their intention to pool resources in their collection development, acquisitions, and processing operations. The project -- dubbed 2CUL -- is buoyed by a $385,000 Mellon grant. From the press release:

The two universities will form a separate service entity to facilitate the collaboration. Ithaka, a not-for-profit organization that assists research libraries and the academic community to leverage advancing information technologies, will provide project management and assist in the planning. Initial work will focus on several global collecting areas, as well as collaborative funding and support of technical infrastructure in various areas.

Yes, 2CUL is pronounced "too cool." No, the powers that be don't realize this is a laughable, supremely uncool name. Best of luck though.

When Public Officials Overreact & Other Newsbreaks

So much for summer's reputation as a slow news season. There's been NYC library coverage aplenty over the last week. Let's break it down.

New York Public Library finally dropped the layoff bomb and it wasn't all that painful. Sixty-five positions have been eliminated, but 120 "restructured" positions have been created thanks to a large (but unknown) number of vacancies yielded by employees who accepted "voluntary separation incentives." Those 65 affected library staffers get first dibs on the 120 new positions.

Assemblyman Dov Hikind called on Brooklyn Public Library to ban all VHS tapes after a Borough Park granny discovered porn spliced into the ending credits of the copy of Austin Powers she'd borrowed for her grandkids. The perpetrator had already been arrested for the crime, and 18 similarly modified tapes were found during BPL's internal investigation.

NYPL's 42nd Street building opened the Edna Barnes Salomon Room as a study space, featuring seating for 128 patrons, Wi-Fi, and loaner laptops (available starting July 28). The Salomon Room was formerly used for exhibitions.

And in a final piece of NYPL news, the recently-launched, totally new-fangled Catalog appears to be running smoothly.

New NYPL ILS Off to Rocky Start, Patrons Testy

Patience, New Yorkers! I know you have no idea how much time, effort, blood, tears went into the creation of NYPL's new catalog, but give your public servants a few days to work out the kinks.

NYPL Debuts Integrated Catalog & Other News

LEO and CATNYP are dead! Long live...The Catalog? Yeah, NYPL's new integrated catalog doesn't have a catchy moniker, and design-wise, function has triumphed over form. The Encore OPAC sports a simple, fresh-outta-the-box interface, below which lurk all the now-familiar options of a next-generation catalog.

As with most things new, there are some blatant imperfections. The Encore interface, for instance, is not the only portal into the catalog; most links bring you to the (old-gen) Millennium interface and less intrepid patrons probably won't make it to the sassier Encore "Quick Search." No doubt this will change in the weeks to come. You can learn all about The Catalog and the blessed demise of the dual library card system here.

METRO introduced their Netvibes portal, a conglomeration of news and info about METRO itself, plus library news feeds, world news, and twitteriness from the adorably named tweetmetro. The Google events calendar embedded on the right-hand side had me all pouty and put upon until I noticed the Shelved @ NYC feed at the bottom of the center column. Thanks, METRO!

Finally, NYPL caught some flack last month when members of the glitterati noticed the library didn't own a single copy of Michael Gross' Rogues Gallery, an exposé of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. According to a library official interviewed in Norm Oder's Library Journal blog, In the Bookroom, there was no conspiracy, just a cataloging delay. Hmmm.

The Art of the Catalog: NYARC Libraries Launch Arcade

After years of planning and three big grants from the Mellon Foundation, the New York Art Resources Consortium has delivered its integrated catalog, Arcade. The catalog consists of over 800,000 holdings from three of the four NYARC members -- the Frick Art Reference Library and the libraries of the Brooklyn Museum and The Museum of Modern Art. Arcade is based on Innovative Interfaces' Millennium system and has back-end cataloging, acquisitions, and circulation modules. From NYARC's press release: "Over the next three years, the partners will create a mechanism for coordinating collection development, construct new services to deliver the collective Arcade collection to users onsite, implement a system for electronic resources management, and carry out a program of engagement with current and potential users to guide strategic planning."