Jon White is in New Zealand on vacation for the next two weeks. (Checkout some of the sights he may be seeing!)   We have his phone forward to another Virtual Library staff member so if you have patrons with database or downloadable book issues still have the patron’s call his number.  Someone should be here to help.

Tonight when we reboot the Encore server the BookBag will become known as eMail List.  I’m hoping this will help the patrons who are confused by how the BookBag was acting in Encore compare to the Classic Catalog.

You can now read the latest four articles from The Librarian’s Brain and Virtual Library Notes blogs right on Voyager.

To get there:

• Click the Virtual Library Tab on Voyager
• Click The Blogsphere

and you are there!  By default The Librarian’s Brain articles appear first but if you click on Virtual Notes link at the top you will see the most recent four articles.  Give it a try today!

WebFeat is being discontinued in December 2010.  In order to plan for the future we would like to know your opinion.  Please take the poll below.

Last week the Virtual Library received this comment from a patron regarding our Coming Soon service WowBrary:

Date/Time: Nov 11/21/2009 07:11 AM   Date of visit: Nov. 21   Library: www.lvccld.org

The Primary Purpost of the Visit: Other : wo[w]brary

How did you find out about our services: Other : wo[w]brary

Were you satisfied: Extremely

Was the staff helpful: Extremely

Comments: I love wo[w]brary. I get up on Saturday & check my mail and get to get on the reserve list for books and movies that I didn’t even know the library was getting. I used to always be around #500 for my favorite authors and movies – now I am always much earlier on the lists – sometimes even the first 10.

I have also started to look at the other categories that I *thought* I didn’t care about. And I am finding books and dvds that I din’t even know about that I think will be interesting.

Thanks again. Wo[w]brary is great.

OverDrive has released the latest update of OverDrive® Media Console™ for Windows®, which enables library users to transfer OverDrive WMA Music to iPod® and iPhone™. Albums from blues label Alligator Records will be the first music downloads that can be transferred to Apple® devices, and they expect more publishers to allow iPod transfer in the future.

As part of the update, they have optimized the music transfer experience for iPod owners. When OverDrive WMA Music is transferred to an Apple device, it will be categorized as ‘Music,’ and we will enable ‘Remember playback position’ and ‘Skip when shuffling’.

Download OverDrive Media Console v.3.2.0.3 with OverDrive WMA Music to iPod transfers.

Right now, OverDrive is refreshing the existing Help pages on our download website, and on overdrive.com, to support OverDrive Media Console v3.2.0.3 for Windows. They will also update the Title Details page for OverDrive WMA Music titles that can be transferred to Apple devices. The ‘iPod’ icon in the ‘Plays on’ section of the screen will be enabled where this support exists.

We are discontinuing Acceda Noticias and the Las Vegas Review Journal in Newsbank.  You can still access the RJ via Proquest’s link  under Las Vegas Review Journal on the Database A-Z list.

Press Display has launched a new app called PressReader for viewing the newspapers on a mobile device.

It lets millions of owners of the two most popular smartphones download their favorite daily read from a selection of more than 1,300 newspapers and magazines available on PressDisplay.com, an online newspaper kiosk. The new PressReader applications are free and available for immediate download from Apple’s iTunes App Store and RIM’s BlackBerry App World.

If a patron (or staff member) has comments about Wowbrary, please have them send them to the CONTACT US link on the web page, or directly to:

ask@lvccld.org

An awful lot of patrons are thrilled with Wowbrary, because they get the upcoming releases WAAAAY earlier than they did before. Folks are getting in the “first recipient” spaces on the new releases, where before they’d end up being #437 on the waiting list.

Here’s what one patron said this past weekend:

I was actually not terribly happy at first by the library switching things up, but wowbrary has grown on me.  It actually is a huge improvement on what the library previously offered for “coming soon” books.

Please cover with your staff all the benefits of Wowbrary, and have your staff suggest the patrons use Wowbrary for a month, then send in a followup comment.

You can also suggest that the patrons subscribe to these two newsletters, which go out every month on the 6th:

Fiction Preview:

http://library.booksite.com/5626/nl/?list=NLPPF

NonFiction Preview:

http://library.booksite.com/5626/nl/?list=NLPPNF

The subscription box is at the top of those pages.

III is planning updating Encore so they are asking what features would you like changed or added to Encore to make it better or easier to use?

Let me know and I will pass your suggestions along to III.