University City Public Library

UNIVERSITY CITY PUBLIC LIBRARY

6701 Delmar Blvd.

University City, MO 63130

(314) 727-3150

Contact person: Linda Ballard, Director ()

Technology Plan 7/1/2010 - 6/30/2013

Written: April 2010

Table of Contents

1. Mission Statement
2. Vision Statement
3. Technology Inventory - Current and Projected
4. Goals and Objectives
5. Professional Development Strategy
6. Budget
7. Evaluation Process

A. MISSION STATEMENT

Since the establishment by Benjamin Franklin of the first lending library in colonial Philadelphia, public libraries have been at the heart of the cultural life of American communities. As quiet, sheltering spaces dedicated to enriching the present and the future with the legacies of our literary and learned past, they have helped to educate individual citizens and to shape our collective national memory. They have, as well, brought the wider world to patrons in all corners of these United States. As that world seems to grow both wider and closer than ever before, changing at a vertiginous rate, many of our citizens will continue to turn to enlightened public libraries for a vision of learning, literacy and communication. The University City Public Library is dedicated to examining and defining that mission for a notably diverse community whose citizens span a wide range of economic, educational and ethnic backgrounds. This very diversity requires the library to play several roles. While maintaining its historic ties to print culture, it must also, within its means, incorporate innovations in the rapidly evolving field of electronic communication. Its collections in several media are selected and administered by a regularly evaluated professional staff that is encouraged to keep abreast of new developments in library science and information technology. In addition to its responsibility for maintenance and improvement of the library's physical plant, the staff and the director seek to create an environment that will attract patrons of all ages and from all neighborhoods of our city. Balancing its obvious appeal to the educationally and technologically privileged with the more inclusive task of offering educational opportunities to the entire populace of University City, the library intends to serve citizens across the entire spectrum of interests and abilities. It must not, even unwittingly, promote a division between those who know and those who do not. Similarly, it will identify the needs and concerns both of its regular patrons and of those who do not regularly enjoy its services. The library respects and celebrates the many cultural, religious and ethnic threads in the urban tapestry of University City, a municipality widely known for its enthusiastic support of education, self-improvement and community service. We, the trustees and staff of this institution, affirm this proud tradition and seek to perpetuate it. In fulfilling this mission, the University City Public Library fully supports freedom of information.

B. DEMOGRAPHICS

C. PLANNING TEAM

Technology planning is carried out on several different levels. Along with Director Linda Ballard, Marilyn Phillips, Youth Services Librarian, and her staff make recommendations for enhancing service to children and young adults. For adult services, the Reference staff, lead by Assistant Director, Patrick Wall, and Information Technology Librarian, Christa Van Herreweghe, make recommendations to the director and the Board of Trustees. For decisions involving the Municipal Library Consortium of St. Louis County (MLC) libraries and their shared automation system, which is housed at University City Public Library, MLC Systems Administrator Marlene Johannes is the point person. Each of these three groups meets regularly to discuss technology as well as other issues. The library Board of Trustees has been uniformly supportive of the recommendations of all these participants. In addition, each group actively seeks grant support for technological improvements.

D. VISION STATEMENT

To provide updated technology resources for our patrons and staff is necessary to decrease the effect of the "digital divide" and promote equality of access for information resources. Current hardware and software should be in place to achieve this mission.

E. GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

 Goal: Provide groups and individuals of all ages in the community with an organized collection of books and non-print materials, including electronic formats, which will stimulate education, advance knowledge, enhance recreation and serve as a core of reliable reference information.

 Objective: Monitor network usage to determine availability of internet resources accessed by public access computers. (Deadline: 4/30/2010)

Evaluation: Keep service levels within the range of acceptable values.

 Activity: Monitor network usage via MoreNet website. (Deadline: 4/23/2010)

 Objective: Review available formats and lending models to determine if we are making demanded materials available to patrons. (Deadline: 5/31/2010)

Evaluation: Periodic surveys and open access by patrons to suggest new items/formats.

 Activity: Read professional library journals and articles to remain abreast of formats available. (Deadline: 5/26/2010)

 Goal: Update webpage to offer more easily navigable access to our electronic resources, those of the surrounding community, and those found elsewhere on the web.

 Objective: Learn about web usability and design new website with usability factors in mind especially as it affects outlier populations such as seniors and web newbies. (Deadline: 1/13/2011)

Evaluation: Usability study on website design.

 Goal: Keep logical and easily accessible information about each computer in the network and about the network as a whole, updated regularly

 Objective: Maintain tech atlas inventory. (Deadline: 3/21/2011)

Evaluation: All machines updated in tech atlas annually.

 Objective: Develop and maintain additional information about each computer as necessary. (Deadline: 5/19/2010)

Evaluation: Maintain database of information that isn't included in tech atlas inventory.

 Goal: Continue building social networking using popular tools such as FaceBook and Twitter and whatever new mediums become popular in the future.

 Objective: Develop social networking communities by including information on website and information in library. (Deadline: 6/16/2010)

Evaluation: Increase the number of "followers" and "fans" on Twitter and Facebook.

 Objective: Keep appraised of new social networking opportunities. (Deadline: 10/26/2011)

Evaluation: Add library information to new popular social networking resources.

F. PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY

A trained staff is critical to the effective use of electronic and print resources in the public library. Regular staff training on these resources, refresher sessions, and opportunities to pursue continuing education are a core value. Professional librarians’ memberships in ALA and the Missouri Library Association are fully paid by the library and regular conference attendance at ALA, PLA, and the MLA annual conference are also supported. Since our library is located in the urban St. Louis area, numerous opportunities, often a low or no cost, are available to our staff. MLNC conducts many workshops and there is an occasional useful workshop offered by the St. Louis Regional Library network. Some staff members are working towards CPLA certification through distance learning. We have improved our in-house training of new staff and have developed on-going training opportunities for all staff. We will continue improving in-house training by:

• Develop better method of training new staff members on the Dynix Horizon system and hold refresher sessions for current staff.

• Train staff with regularly scheduled classes on Office databases, reference databases, and the Internet so that patrons receive a uniform level of help on these systems.

• Train all staff in the use of new technologies library acquires, so that all staff members are able to use and explain downloadable audiobooks, e-books, LearnATest, etc.

• Explore training possibilities now available on WebJunction.

G. TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT

We have upgraded the network bandwidth capacity to 10Mb, which has enhanced our connection speed and is not being taxed by our current demand. Although new innovations may increase our bandwidth need in the future, the current connection is excellent and will not be strained by the addition of new computers since we face space and electrical limitations to adding additional public computers.

The average age of the equipment used for public access will be less than 2 years old as soon as the machines purchased with the grant money from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation are installed. We generally replace computers when they are not functioning and are more than four years old.

Thanks to the Gates Foundation, library fundraising for the required matches for this grant, and our computer budget, we were able to purchase seventeen new Internet computers for use in the adult area. These machines are being configured and will be in place within a month. We plan to buy new monitors in FY 2010-2011 so that all our public computers will have 19” LCD monitors.

All nine public access computers in the Youth Services Department less than 2 years old and were purchased with money from an LSTA grant.

As we replace these Internet computers and older staff machines, some will be used as the “catalog only” stations. We plan to keep Windows XP on them.

MOREnet provides our network access and our router. The bandwidth increase included a new router.

All major switches throughout the network were replaced three years ago. Since we will not be increasing the number of computers on our network beyond their capacity, we expect five years of hardware lifetime from these CISCO switches. We will replace minor switches and hubs with new switches as needed.

The wireless gateway is working well. We currently have public access points for a, b, and g in place. We added access points to get a better coverage for the upper level of the library in FY 2007-2008.

The University City Public Library currently owns three servers. The new domain controller, also used as our file server, email server, and print server, is three years old and still functioning well. We are expecting another two years of lifetime on it. The wireless server which serves as our web server is about three years old and upgradeable and we are expecting another three years of lifetime on this one too. The gateway server is functioning as our public server. It is less than 2 years old.

Equipment jointly owned and shared by our Consortium is housed in our building and includes three servers and one firewall. We contract with SirsiDynix to maintain this equipment.

All printers and scanners are functioning. We have submitted a grant to replace our workhorse public printer and hope to replace it soon. We will replace the failed printers and scanners as needed. All UPS equipment is working well at this writing. We will replace the battery cartridge as needed. All barcode scanners, receipt printers, label printers will be replaced on an as-needed basis.

Information Technology Librarian Christa Van Herreweghe is responsible for all hardware and software owned by the University City Public Library; the maintenance of the local area network; and the library’s webpage. She also serves part of the time as a reference librarian and as a back up to the MLC Systems Administrator in her absence. Equipment owned and shared by the Consortium libraries is maintained by their System Administrator, Marlene Johannes. Both are stretched to maintain the size networks they handle and further technological additions might mean increasing staff.

Our phone system is five years old and still meets our needs; however, we will actively explore replacement options before the end of this three-year plan.

There are several issues in maintaining and upgrading technology in our building. The cabling system in the library is insufficient and it is difficult to add more due to the construction of the building. All network devices are located in shared, busy places and are not locked. All servers are in the general staff workroom area and have wires running on the floor. We would like to put them in a more secure environment eventually. We are limited to certain areas because of the limited cabling.

The hardware and software inventories are attached at the end of this document.

H. NEEDS ASSESSMENT

Many of the objectives in the 2007 Technology Plan have been met. Wireless access is available throughout the building. The webpage was updated and is in the process of being updated again. We have added several “catalog only” and “15 minute Internet” stations to our local area network. We purchased software for print management on the public access workstations which has decreased wasted paper and unclaimed printouts as well as staff workload and stress. A third digitization grant allowed us to add a collection of historic photographs of the Delmar Loop are of University City, recently named one of the “10 Great Streets in America” by the American Planning Association.

Waiting lists for public access computers are generally quite short, but there are times when more computers would be in use if they were available. Physical barriers such as a lack of adequate cabling and electrical outlets continue to present problems if we want to add more public access workstations. In addition, adding any more computers at this time would overtax our hard-working reference and IT staff members, who are busier than ever helping patrons use these resources. Adding more computers isn’t just a hardware/software decision, but a staffing issue and personnel expense as well.

We have added a self-check machine. This year we made a change in the way we house DVDs. The DVDs are now out on the floor and no longer kept in the workroom area where they had to be retrieved by staff. The use of the self-check machine is more attractive now that more of the AV collection is available for checkout without staff intervention. Popular music CDs, however, are still kept behind the desk. We long ago turned off our Checkpoint security system, feeling that saving the expense of that technology would actually more than pay for any losses due to theft, but the lack of a functioning security system does present some challenges.

We have redeployed a “retired” server as backup server. All of our domain hosted files are backed up regularly onto an independent machine.

Auditorium and meeting room bookings are now done electronically, using free Google Calendar software, which has decreased staff time required to maintain the schedule.

In the future, we need to keep up with technology trends and maintain trained staff in the technology area. Equipment must be replaced on a regular schedule and repairs made as needed. This plan will be distributed to staff for their information and suggestions for the on-going updates and activities described in the plan.

I. BUDGET

The below table is for expenses. The Library Board of Trustees is committed to funding technology and income for these expenses will be derived from our tax revenues. The Board is well aware that computers have a relatively short useful life and that new technologies bring with them new expenses and, sometimes, staffing needs. Budgeting for upgrades and replacements of computer equipment, and adding new electronic resources, has become an essential part of providing good library service to our community. Tax support is adequate to fund needed technology for our library for the next three years, however, we have not increased our tax rate for almost 20 years and additional tax support may be needed in the future. This could be difficult in the current economic climate. Historically, some of our technology expenses have been met with grant monies and we will continue to apply for appropriate grants as they are made available.

J: IMPLEMENTATION PLAN

FY 2010-2011:

• Complete updating webpage.
• Replace adult public access computers.
• Monitor network usage.

FY 2011-2012:

• Reevaluate downloadable audiobook formats, ebooks, and videos.
• Evaluate telephone system for possible replacement.

FY 2012-2013:

• Replace servers owned by University City Public Library.
• Assess financial position for possible tax increase election.

F. TECHNOLOGY INVENTORY - CURRENT AND PROJECTED

G. EVALUATION PROCESS

• The library tracks usage of electronic resources in a variety of ways, including web server logs, computer login data, and provider-supplied data. Evaluation of these items allows us to determine whether usage is increasing, decreasing, or remaining the same.