CFLC Chronicles: A Time of Transition - CFLC’s Bedrock Activities

From Marta Westall, CFLC Director:

CFLC's upcoming 20th anniversary year, fiscal year 2008-2009, will be a “back to basics” year. This comes after a new rule that 50% of the State Cooperative Grant money and 50% of all local funds for Florida's six Multitype Library Cooperatives (MLCs) be spent on bibliographic enhancement activities.

These activities are defined by the State Library as follows:

1. Loading records. Examples include loading a library's bibliographic records for the first time, updating records (adds, deletes, cleanup), creating new records, and/or providing a cataloging utility that adds records to the statewide database such as CatExpress.

2. Training related to resource sharing. Examples of training or workshops include FirstSearch , interlibrary loan, or FLIN (Florida Library Information Network), use of CatExpress, interlibrary loan software, and other training that would simply help develop a library's ability to add and update records on the statewide database.

3. Consultation. Providing guidance, information, and assistance to libraries on the record-loading process; and encouraging libraries to continue to update their holdings.

4. Facilitation. Facilitating services or contracts to assist libraries to load records.

While resource sharing through interlibrary loan has continued successfully throughout the last two decades, investigation into record loading into the OCLC WorldCat database has shown that a number of FLIN and MLC libraries have had difficulty fulfilling their stated intentions to keep their records up-to-date. CFLC will be helping members with these issues in the coming year.

In the meantime, CFLC will still be conducting training sessions at CFLC and at Leesburg and Volusia between now and October 1, 2008. However, because of this anticipated change in emphasis in CFLC services, training offerings will probably reduce in both number and scope after that. As always, CFLC strives to furnish quality training to librarians, staff, and patrons.

A 40% cut in grant funding for 2008/2009 from the State of Florida further complicates matters. We do not know yet the level of federal (LSTA) funding for next year.

As we all face tough budget times, I am reminded of one of the great axioms from Robert Fulghum’s All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten:

“When you go out into the world, hold hands and stick together.”

Together we can make it through these rough times; we have a lot of talent right in our back yard that we can tap to learn from each other.

SUBJECTS: CFLC CHRONICLES