Courtesy Legislative Planning Committee, Washington Library Association State Bills of Interest.

The Washington Library Association(WLA) tracks state legislative activity that will potentially affect Washington Libraries. Their tracker is posted to the WLA web site and we will also post it weekly on this blog.  For information on the legislative process or becoming involved see the WLA site referenced above.

Those bills in the House and Senate policy committees that are technically dead have been crossed out.

Click below to view the tracker.

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Courtesy Legislative Planning Committee, Washington Library Association State Bills of Interest.

The Washington Library Association(WLA) tracks state legislative activity that will potentially affect Washington Libraries. Their tracker is posted to the WLA web site and we will also post it weekly on this blog.  For information on the legislative process or becoming involved see the WLA site referenced above.

Click below to view the tracker.

Read the rest of this entry »

I got off a long conversation with our newspaper digitization vendor and thought I should do something cathartic … like continuing our running discussion of newspaper digitization.

Washington’s National Digital Newspaper Program (outsourcing):

Click to see OCR example from the Pullman Herald at 100% resolution

We last talked about the human resource intensive process of digitizing newspapers with a consumer-grade film scanner and the article-level indexing we do in-house for our Pioneer Newspaper collection.

In 2008 we were awarded an NDNP grant and began researching proposals to outsource the scanning and text conversion of 100,000 newspaper pages. OCR (optical character recognition) and scanning technology had come a long way since we began the Pioneer Newspaper collection so we were excited to see the results from our initial test scans. However, while outsourcing a large scale digitization project has its advantages, it also shares some of the same challenges already discussed, and produces a few unique ones:

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Volume 6, February 4, 2010 for the WSL Updates mailing list

Topics include:

1) MARCH 1 LAUNCH FOR OCLC DOWNLOADABLE AUDIOBOOKS

2) BTOP & BIP – HOW TO CONNECT WEBINAR

3) SINGLE-SEARCH ACCESS THROUGH WORLDCAT LOCAL

4) TECHTRENDS – ALA MIDWINTER 2010

5) FREE WILL JAMES BOOK TITLES

6) FUNDING FOR HEALTH INFORMATION SERVICES

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Courtesy Legislative Planning Committee, Washington Library Association State Bills of Interest.

The Washington Library Association(WLA) tracks state legislative activity that will potentially affect Washington Libraries. Their tracker is posted to the WLA web site and we will also post it weekly on this blog.  For information on the legislative process or becoming involved see the WLA site referenced above.

Click below to view the tracker.

Read the rest of this entry »

Washington State Library News

A big round of spending cuts is coming to the Washington State Library, and agency leaders said it means 31 lost jobs and elimination of work to preserve many of the state’s oldest historic documents. “It’s over a third of our staff, if the governor’s budget goes through, which is what makes this so devastating,” State Librarian Jan Walsh says. (The Olympian, 1.19.10) http://www.theolympian.com/legislature/story/1106455.html

The State Library, which is a division of the Office of Secretary of State, is facing heavy cuts just as needs for its services are the greatest, Secretary of State Sam Reed said.  State Librarian Jan Walsh noted that the State Library has endured significant budget and staff cuts since 1999, while most state agencies have seen their budgets increase during this period.  (Photo) (Tacoma Daily Index, 1.22.10) http://www.tacomadailyindex.com/

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Courtesy Legislative Planning Committee, Washington Library Association State Bills of Interest.

The Washington Library Association(WLA) tracks state legislative activity that will potentially affect Washington Libraries. Their tracker is posted to the WLA web site and we will also post it weekly on this blog.  For information on the legislative process or becoming involved see the WLA site referenced above.

Click below to view the tracker.

Read the rest of this entry »

Volume 6, January 28, 2010 for the WSL Updates mailing list

Topics include:

1) THE FEMINIST BROADSIDE WITH ARTISTS O’LEARY AND SPRING

2) FELLOWSHIP OPPORTUNITY – SERVICES TO OLDER ADULTS

3) VALUE OF LIBRARIES SURVEY

4) SCIENCE & MATH RESOURCES ON THE INTERNET

5) FREE WORLDCAT HOLDINGS WEBINAR FROM OCLC

6) WEBJUNCTION ONLINE CONFERENCE – TECHNOLOGY ESSENTIALS 2010

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Courtesy Legislative Planning Committee, Washington Library Association State Bills of Interest.

The Washington Library Association(WLA) tracks state legislative activity that will potentially affect Washington Libraries. Their tracker is posted to the WLA web site and we will also post it weekly on this blog.  For information on the legislative process or becoming involved see the WLA site referenced above.

Click below to view the tracker.

Read the rest of this entry »

Courtesy Legislative Planning Committee, Washington Library Association State Bills of Interest.

The Washington Library Association(WLA) tracks state legislative activity that will potentially affect Washington Libraries. Their tracker is posted to the WLA web site and we will also post it weekly on this blog.  For information on the legislative process or becoming involved see the WLA site referenced above.

Click below to view the tracker.

Read the rest of this entry »