A Perspective on Act 420 • NWLS Board of Trustees Meeting Agenda • Merlin Matters: Popular Holds • Tech Tips: Viewing images and Attachments in Outlook Express • Useful URLs • Reflection

January 20 NWLS Board of Trustees Meeting, 12:00 p.m., NWLS

January 23 Library Legislative Day, Madison.

February 7 Technology Update and Planning Meeting, 10:00 a.m., NWLS

March 13 Greener Pastures Rural Library Sustainability Workshop, Rice Lake Public Library (also April 18 in Mercer). For more information, go to http://www.dpi.wi.gov/pld/rural.html

March 17 NWLS Board of Trustees Meeting, 12:00 p.m., NWLS

April 18 Greener Pastures Rural Library Sustainability Workshop, Mercer, (also March 13 in Rice Lake). For more information, go to http://www.dpi.wi.gov/pld/rural.html

2007 UW-Madison's School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS) Continuing Education Courses:

• January 22-March 18 YA (Young Adult) Services and Literature Online Course.
• January 22-March 31 Core Elements of Children’s Services (Online)
• January 22-April 7 Basic Public Library Management (Online)
• January 22-April 13 Basic Reference (Online)
• February 7-March 21 Creating Public Library Programming for Adults Online Course.
• February 19-March 18 Business Reference (Online)
• February 19-March 18 Topics in Library Management (Online)
• June 25-29 Public Library Administration (on-site), UW-Madison
• August 13-17 Cataloging (on-site), UW-Madison

For more information, contact Anna Palmer at 608.263.4452 or ahpalmer@wisc.edu.

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A Perspective on Act 420
From Jim Trojanowski, NWLS Director

On May 19, 2006, Governor Doyle signed SB 272 into law. This new law, now known as Act 420, makes several changes to Wisconsin public library law. The change likely to have the biggest impact affects county reimbursements to public libraries for use by those not living in a municipality that supports a public library. Previously, counties were required to reimburse only libraries within their borders; under Act 420, counties must now reimburse any library located in a contiguous county as well. These payments will begin in 2008 for circulations made in 2006.

As with most new laws, the impact of Act 420 will not be completely understood until all its provisions take effect. Because the 2006 data necessary to determine how much each county will be required to pay under the new law and how much each library will gain under it is still being collected, we will not fully understand the initial fiscal impact of Act 420 until March 2007. We can, however, estimate that impact by looking at 2005 data; indeed, Northern Waters Library Service (NWLS) has already done this.

NWLS calculations indicate that the fiscal impact of Act 420 is likely to vary greatly among its 29 member libraries and 8 member counties. If the law had been in effect a year earlier, 18 NWLS members would have received less than $1,000 under Act 420, 7 would have received between $1,000 and $10,000, 3 would have received amounts between $10,000 and $20,000, and one would have received nearly $60,000.

Libraries outside the NWLS service area will also receive funding from NWLS member counties. Using 2005 data, 11 libraries in neighboring systems would have received between $1,000 and $10,000 (several more are likely to receive smaller amounts) and 4 would have been eligible for amounts ranging from $19,000 to $51,000.

The impact on member counties will also vary widely. Douglas, Iron, and Sawyer counties would have been responsible for providing between $5,000 and $11,000 of new library funding under Act 420 if the law had been in effect a year earlier. At the other extreme, Bayfield County would have been required to fund $75,000 in reimbursements to libraries in neighboring counties. Ashland, Burnett, Vilas, and Washburn counties would have had to provide between $34,000 to $53,000 of new library funding.

The varying effects of this part of Act 420 on both libraries and counties make it difficult to understand the effects of the law on library services system-wide. Compounding this difficulty is the complex and unique ways in which some NWLS member counties have responded to Act 150, the law that originally required counties to fund non-resident borrowing within their borders.

In coming issues of Streams I’ll explore Act 420: why some librarians favor the law and others oppose it, the potential impact of the law within NWLS, and how Wisconsin’s public library community has begun to respond to concerns expressed by both counties and libraries to the new law.

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NWLS Board of Trustees Meeting: January 20, 2007

The next meeting of the NWLS Board of Trustees will be held at 12:00 p.m. on January 20, 2007 at NWLS Headquarters in Ashland. Agenda items include:

1. Call to order / Roll Call
2. Introduce new Board Members
3. Guest Comments
4. Minutes of the November 11, 2006, Board of Trustees Meeting
5. Election of Officers
6. November and December 2006 NWLS Expenditures
7. December 31, 2006, Financial Statement and Budget Report – Pending Audit
8. Approval to purchase from the Equipment Fund two new computers and parts for the file server
9. Approval of Personnel Handbook Revisions: Vacation Policy, Personal Days Policy, Funeral Leave Policy, Wellness Time Policy, Jury Duty Policy, Layoff Policy, Resignation Policy
10. Director’s Report
11. Other Business

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Popular Holds
From Nikki Bolka, NWLS

The following titles have eight or more Merlin holds:
(Holds/Merlin copies)

44/8 .... The Devil Wears Prada [videorecording(DVD)]
33/26 .. Cross by James Patterson
29/29 .. The Innocent Man: Murder and injustice in a small town by John Grisham
25/14 .. Plum Lovin' by Janet Evanovich
23/8 .... Little Miss Sunshine [videorecording(DVD)]
22/20 .. Dear John by Nicholas Sparks
21/0 .... Step On a Crack by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge
20/4 .... You, Me and Dupree [videorecording(DVD)]
18/9 .... Stalemate by Iris Johansen
17/3 .... The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
17/7 .... An Inconvenient Truth [videorecording(DVD)]
16/3 .... The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
16/11 .. The Da Vinci Code [videorecording(DVD)]
15/2 .... The Ant Bully [videorecording(DVD)]
13/6 .... Shadow Dance by Julie Garwood
13/16 .. The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
12/3 .... The Black Dahlia [videorecording(DVD)]
12/5 .... You, On a Diet: The owner's manual for waist management by Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet C. Oz
11/10 .. Pirates of the Caribbean. Dead man's chest [videorecording(DVD)]
11/22 .. Wild Fire by Nelson DeMille
10/0 .... Red Leaves by Belva Plain
10/1 .... A Scanner Darkly [videorecording(DVD)]
10/1 .... The Illusionist [videorecording(DVD)]
9/1 ...... Gilmore Girls. The complete sixth season [videorecording(DVD)]
9/5 ...... World Trade Center [videorecording(DVD)]
9/5 ...... Barnyard [videorecording(DVD)]
9/7 ...... Talladega nights. The ballad of Ricky Bobby [videorecording(DVD)]

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Viewing Images and Attachments in Outlook Express
From Tony Kriskovich, NWLS

After the installation of Windows XP Service Pack 2 you might notice some changes in your email. For some reason Microsoft decided to block all images and attachments in Outlook Express (OE) with this update. This does make your computer safer from receiving email bound viruses. It does however take some of the functionality out of email. When you receive an email with an attachment, you will get the message “OE removed access to the following unsafe attachments in your mail: filename.ext.” OE doesn’t really know if the attachment is safe or not. It just automatically blocks all of them. To be able to see images and open attachments in OE, do the following:

While in Outlook Express, click on the Tools menu.
-Click Options.
-Click the Security tab.
-Clear the check boxes for the following:
Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus.
Block images and other external content in HTML email.
-Click OK.

So does this make your computer unsafe from viruses? Symantec Antivirus has a program that “watches” what is coming in and out of your email as you read it on your computer. Also, our mail sever has a program called MailScanner that is setup to automatically catch incoming viruses and spam through email.

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POTUS: Presidents of the United States
From Librarians' Internet Index, http://lii.org

POTUS features “background information, election results, cabinet members, notable events, and some points of interest on each of the [U.S.] presidents. Links to biographies, historical documents, audio and video files, and other presidential sites are also included.” Includes indexes to names and subjects, and a brief bibliography. From the Internet Public Library.

Senate Chamber Desks
From Librarians' Internet Index, http://lii.org

The Senate Chamber Desks site features historical details about the U.S. Senate chamber desks. "The Senate purchased 48 desks for its chamber in 1819, adding desks as new states joined the Union. To date, more than 1,600 senators have occupied these historic desks." Features a Senate seating plan, an interactive timeline of the evolution of the desks, and "desk history & mystery" (which includes a section about the so-called "Candy Desk"). From the U.S. Senate.

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“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”

-Winston Churchill

Contact NWLS for subscription services to the Streams news: newsletter@nwls.lib.wi.us

NWLS · 3200 E. Lake Shore Dr. · Ashland, Wisconsin 54806 · Telephone: 715.682.2365

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