Welcome to the Kentucky Virtual Library's blog.

Announcing the winners of the 7th Annual “Create a KYVL Video” contest!!

Posted: May 14th, 2010 | By: betsy

We are pleased to announce this year’s winners.  Awards were distributed during the awards ceremony on May 11th at the STLP State Championship.

Thank you to all the teams and schools who submitted entries.  Every year, the judges say how difficult it is to make selections.  Congrats to everyone who submitted!

The winners are…

Elementary Division

1st place winner
North Warren Elementary School

2nd place winner
Cumberland Trace Elementary School

3rd place winner
Erpenbeck Elementary School

Middle School Division

1st place winner
R.A. Jones Middle School, Team 3 (Alley Poe)

2nd place winner
Drakes Creek Middle School, Team 5 (Kaitilin Wheeler)

3rd place winner
Drakes Creek Middle School, Team 4 (Kellie Douglas and Trevor Martin)

High School Division

1st place winner
Greenwood High School, Team 1 (Meghan Wilson and Lindsey Pillow)

CONGRATULATIONS ALL!  Good luck next year.

Posted in: partnerships | Comments Off

KYVL Resources Survey

Posted: April 29th, 2010 | By: betsy

The KYVL needs your help to evaluate our databases and their accessibility. Could you please complete a short survey by clicking on the appropriate link below?

For Elementary School Students

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22AJB7VYTMR

For Elementary School Librarians and Educators

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22AJDLW2ANS

For Middle School Students

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22AJBZUZBH5

For Middle School Librarians and Educators

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22AJE582LMH

For High School Students

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22AJDF6276F

For High School Librarians and Educators

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22AJPPX8FW8

For Public Libraries

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22AJPPZ8FXF

For Academic Libraries

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22AJR5U9BX5

For Special Libraries

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22AJR869DCB

Your opinions matter very much. We strive to provide resources and interfaces that are both usable by and useful to your patrons. Any info you provide will be taken into account for future collection development and systems decisions.

Please feel free to forward this to other KYVL users.

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KYVL Passwords for 2010-2011

Posted: April 5th, 2010 | By: betsy

As we near the end of KYVL’s fiscal year, it is time to switch out the KYVL passwords. Changing passwords on a regular basis allows us to keep our databases secure from unauthorized users. This password change will occur once per calendar year – the schedule based on the academic school year.

Over the past few days, we have released KYVL passwords for the 2010-2011 school year to our designated password contacts. These new passwords will become active on June 1, 2010 and may be used after that time. The old password will remain active until July 1, 2010, so that you and your patrons will have plenty of time to make the transition. The login IDs will remain the same.

You may give out the KYVL login information to any librarian, staff, student, educator or other patrons of your library. They may be posted throughout the library (on signs, posters, etc.); printed on bookmarks, pamphlets, or other materials; or even sent home to students, their parents or library cardholders via snail mail. Some of our member libraries have found some very creative ways to distribute the at-home login information. All we ask is that you do not post the login information to a website or listserv accessible by the general public.

Please direct any questions to the KYVL staff by using our Ask a Question form.

Have a wonderful day!!

Posted in: Databases | Comments Off

Invitation to a survey on KY Public Broadband

Posted: March 19th, 2010 | By: Enid

I am sharing this invitation on behalf of my colleague [and long-time  friend] Phil Baughn, now CIO for the Commonwealth of Kentucky.  Please help COT and its many partners, including the Ky Dept for Libraries and Archives and so many public libraries, community colleges, the Council on Postsecondary Education, the universities and others as they seek to bring and/or improve access to high-speed Internet all over Kentucky.   Please share the link everywhere you can — coworkers, patrons, family and friends.   Thank you, Enid

********

The Kentucky Commonwealth Office of Technology (COT) invites you to participate in an important survey on Home Broadband Internet Availability. Through Kentucky at Work, the Commonwealth is implementing various programs funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). ARRA will provide a much-needed, one-time infusion of dollars to promote quality of life through investments in education, health care and public safety; and to make strategic investments now to position Kentucky for the future[1].

An important element of the program is to ensure that high-speed Internet (broadband) is available to many communities where such service has been lacking. Investment toward establishing affordable broadband services is important for the long-term well being of both households and businesses in our state.

As a first step towards increasing availability of broadband services across the state, we are requesting your input to identify broadband service availability. A survey to gather your input is available online and typically requires 5 minutes to complete.

Access the Broadband Availability Survey.

We thank you for your participation in this important activity that will have long term benefits for our Commonwealth.

Best regards,

Phil Baughn, Chief Information Officer
Commonwealth of Kentucky

Posted in: partnerships | Comments Off

KySTE Conference this week and KYVL is there!

Posted: March 10th, 2010 | By: Enid

The KySTE Conference is this week at the Galt House in Louisville.   What is KySTE, some of you might ask?

Kentucky Society for Technology in Education and it is the 2010 Annual Conference

We have two sessions at KySTE this year…  And we have great competition and complementary sessions all around us.

Today 10 March, 2pm, in the Laffoon Computer Lab, we have:    KY Learning Depot: Kentucky’s Learning Repository

Jana Hickey and Lisa Johnson of Jefferson County Public Schools Jaeger Education Center are leading the presentation with Betsy and myself. And we are grateful for their involvement and passionate belief that the Learning Depot needs to be available to every Kentucky educator.

Session description:   The KY Learning Depot is a single-point-of-entry repository of high-quality digital content aligned with standards and competencies for educators and learners in Kentucky. Formed by agency, school and postsecondary partnerships, the Depot provides Kentucky educators a centralized place to go to obtain rich, quality learning content to enhance courses, improve teaching, and engage students in learning. Learn first-hand how you can become a member of this new learning community for sharing, using and reusing peer-reviewed, digital content for your classrooms.

AND THEN, tomorrow March 11, 1:30 in the Taylor room, we have:   Introduction to KYVL: for K-12 Educators presented by Betsy and myself [but mostly Betsy because she is totally in her element when "working a room" in training].

Session description:  Whether you are an experienced user or have never seen KYVL before, this session will provide you with the perfect introduction to KYVL’s new website and search tool, as well as our wide array of resources for K12 librarians, students and educators.

If you don’t know about KySTE, then please check it out.  If you are a librarian or library staff person, into technology and seeing tech become ubiquitous as well as an integral part of the teaching and learning process, I think you would find KySTE the place to be.    Check out the KySTE website.

Have a great week!

Your KYVL and Learning Depot Director,
Enid

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ProQuest Training Available in March and April!

Posted: February 17th, 2010 | By: betsy

ProQuest will be offering live, online training sessions to KYVL members throughout March and April. Offerings will include sessions on Alt-Press Watch and ProQuest Career & Technical Education, as well as sessions covering the PQ Interface. All sessions are designed specifically for KYVL membership and are available free of charge.

Visit our Training Page for more information about available sessions and how to sign up!

Posted in: Databases, Training | Comments Off

More Grolier Online Training Sessions!

Posted: February 16th, 2010 | By: betsy

KYVL has added two more Grolier Online training sessions for February! These sessions will cover all features, bells, and whistles of Grolier Online and are designed specifically for KYVL membership and are available free of charge. We have two sessions available at this time:

  • Thursday, February 18, 2010 – 3:15 PM EST
  • Tuesday, February 23, 2010 – 4:15 PM EST

Visit our Training Page for more information about available sessions and how to sign up!

Posted in: Training | Comments Off

10 Years of KYVL – Did you know…?

Posted: February 9th, 2010 | By: Enid

From 1999 to 2009, KYVL has served the Commonwealth through the public universities, community & technical college system, public libraries, public schools, state agencies like Ky Dept for Libraries and Archives, hospitals and other special libraries and many independent and private schools and colleges.

In honor of those 10 years, we are nearly complete with our reVisioning@10 Years Strategic Planning initiative.  We have new goals & objectives as well as a new vision, mission and core values.  The new plan will cover our operational and strategic agenda for the next three years, 2010-2013.

Take a look at KYVL successes these last 10 years!

10 Years of Service:

  • Since its inception in November 1999, KYVL’s database collection has supported over 125 million searches.
  • Our ground courier service has delivered a total of 741,970 containers and 1,153,056 items.
  • KYVL’s Voyager Consortium (integrated library system) serves 19 institutions that collectively house over 7 million individual items.
  • The Kentuckiana Digital Library has digitized historic material representing 18 Kentucky archives, including 1,000 books, over 80,000 digital photographs, 200,000 pages from Kentucky Newspapers, and 100,000 pages from the historic Daily Racing Form.

10 Years of Support:

  • KYVL has provided countless training and continuing education opportunities for P-20 educators and librarians throughout the state.
  • KYVL coordinates courier service for 445 “stops” at 183 libraries. KYVL provides this service at no cost for 171 libraries, thus allowing lab kits, books, videos, and more to be moved between libraries.
  • Over ten years, KYVL has supported the Voyager Consortium with over $4.5 million in software, hardware, data migration, training and hosting costs.

10 Years of Savings:

  • If KYVL members individually purchased the same databases offered by KYVL, they would have paid an additional $150 million in retail costs over the last 10 years.
  • Over the last decade, the KYVL Courier service has saved Kentucky libraries a minimum of $6 million dollars – the combined cost of shipping all those items at normal rates.
  • The Kentuckiana Digital Library has cultivated over 1.5 million dollars in national grant funding.
  • Members of KYVL Voyager Consortium have enjoyed a 75% discount off the retail costs of software implementation, compared to costs associated with individual purchasing.

KYVL & Public Postsecondary

  • For every dollar the public KY university libraries contribute to KYVL, they get back about $10 in resources.
  • Our 8 public KY universities would pay $1.9 million to independently acquire the same 25 licensed databases provided via Kentucky Virtual Library.
  • In FY08-09, public KY universities logged 8.9 million searches—that is less than 2 cents per search.
  • KCTCS would pay $1.6 million retail if each college library independently purchased the research databases.
  • In FY08-09, KCTCS users logged 2 million searches.
  • KCTCS is paying less than 2 cents for each search made in the KYVL resources.

Kentucky Virtual Library is a success through the support of all our partner members, planning and working together, purchasing collaboratively and applying for funding collectively.   Thank you to all the KYVL members!

Posted in: Budget, Statistics, Strategic Planning, partnerships | Comments Off

EBSCO Database Training Starts in February!

Posted: January 19th, 2010 | By: betsy

EBSCO will be offering live, online training sessions to KYVL members throughout February and March. Offerings will include sessions on Searchasaurus, Kids Search, Student Research Center and NoveList, as well as sessions geared towards public and medical librarians. All sessions are designed specifically for KYVL membership and are available free of charge.

Visit our Training Page for more information about available sessions and how to sign up!

Posted in: Databases, Training | Comments Off

Grolier Online Training Now Available to KYVL Members!

Posted: January 15th, 2010 | By: betsy

This month KYVL is sponsoring two training sessions covering all features, bells, and whistles of Grolier Online. These sessions are designed specifically for KYVL membership and are available free of charge.

We have two sessions available at this time:

  • Tuesday, January 26, 2010 – 3:15 PM EST
  • Wednesday, January 27, 2010 – 4:15 PM EST

Visit our Training Page for more information about available sessions and how to sign up!

Posted in: Databases, Training | Comments Off

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