03030 DECEMBER Access

Your Library’s Contribution to the Community D ecember PAublished by the Library of Michiganccessccess December 2002 Issue Volume XX NO. 6 ISSN 1051-0818 MeL Database RFP Update In This Issue: by Jo Budler, Deputy State Librarian Who is on the review teams? Sixteen vendors responded to the There is wide representation on the RFP issued by the Library of Michigan MeL database review teams. The repre- Happy in August 2002 for databases to be sentative breakdown is as follows: included in MeL (formerly known as Birthday, AccessMichigan). On November 4, these Public libraries - 21 MeL! 2 bids were opened at a public meeting. Class 2 - 1 Class 3 - 2 The evaluation process begins Class 4 - 1 State Eighty-nine librarians have volun- Class 5 - 8 teered to review the more than 100 data- Class 6 - 9 Librarians bases included in the bids. There are 17 Excellence subject areas: bibliographic, biography, Schools (K-12) - 23 business, career, education professional, Community Colleges - 6 Award fine arts, genealogy, general academic, Colleges and Universities - 21 general interest, general news, grades 7-12, Special libraries - 17 2002 4 health, grades K-6, law, literature, sciences Library cooperatives - 1 and social sciences. These subject areas were created based on information gath- When will it end? The ered from feedback groups held around the state in the spring of 2002. At these The database reviewers will have until Michigan feedback groups, librarians from all types mid-January to complete their evaluations. of libraries gathered to discuss their infor- At that point, the aggregated evaluation of Film In This Issue mation needs and name specific areas they each database and the pricing will be com- would like to see included in the MeL bined for further evaluation. An Office 8 databases. announcement regarding the database Each subject area has a team of librari- package will be made at the end of March an reviewers assigned to it. Each team 2003. Subscriptions begin October 1, member is charged with evaluating all of 2003. the databases in his or her subject area and completing an evaluation form for each database. This information will be aggregated at the end of the review process. Want To Do Something Good for Libraries? Be Part of an LSTA Peer Review Team! by Jolee Hamlin, LSTA/USF Library Specialist, Library of Michigan Last year, the Library of Michigan began a new Along with a number of other state librarians, review process for LSTA grant proposals. Peer I recently had the opportunity to visit the media review teams were formed, and each team reviewed lab at MIT in Cambridge, Mass. It probably goes approximately 15 proposals in their entirety. The without saying that MIT is a fascinating place, process worked so well and was so well received that but to witness the energy and progress that are we are going to use it again this year! We are look- routine there is truly an amazing experience — ing for peer reviewers to serve on review teams for one I wish every one of you could enjoy. the upcoming FY 2003 grant applications. This is Our tour director at the media lab said the an exciting opportunity to make an impact, to work staff there is currently working on 250 ground- breaking projects. He also gave us the startling closely with colleagues from around the state and to prediction that we can expect to see more technol- see what goes into a good grant application and ogy breakthroughs in the next five years than project. we’ve witnessed in the last 30! Teams will be made up of individuals from var- One of the graduate projects we observed was ious types of libraries, locations and backgrounds, called “intelligent photo retrieval using common- all with the unified goal to read and evaluate LSTA sense semantics” and it involved the newest gener- applications based on their merits. A score sheet ation of artificial intelligence (www.media.mit.edu). published in this year’s grant handbook will guide Through a collaborative process of feeding seman- these efforts. If you are interested in serving, please tically important concepts, i.e. common-sense e-mail Jolee Hamlin at [email protected] or information, to a databank, a computer will be call her at (517) 241-0021. able to make contextual deductions. For example: when it is cloudy, it may rain. The project we saw included the sorting of digital pictures. A student demonstrated that, by using common-sense semantics, he could easily create and sort a digital photo album from a virtu- al “shoebox” of hundreds of pictures. He typed: “In September, I went to a wedding in San Francisco” and the computer found and sorted out the appropriate wedding pictures in his database. By simply using contextual clues from the phrases “wedding” and “San Francisco,” the computer was able to make reasonable judgments about which pictures should or should not be included. Happy Birthday, MeL! I was excited to learn about MIT’s remarkable project, one that will have relevant applications as by Sue Davidsen we offer greater amounts of digitized library information. And if, as predicted by my friend at Anniversaries are an opportunity to reflect on MIT, we do see that incredible number of tech- accomplishments, challenges met and challenges nology breakthroughs over the next five years, looming over the horizon. In any project, we hope hang on to your hats! Library service is going to that there are many accomplishments, that chal- go in directions we can’t even begin to imagine. lenges were met with stunningly elegant solutions and that the problems over the horizon are small Happy holidays, and, if not, that they can be dealt with by the next director! 2 December Access 2002 The Michigan eLibrary celebrates its 10th continued accuracy and timeliness (something a link anniversary this year. It seems like only yesterday checker can’t do!). Merit Network provided the that MeL was a sleek black NeXTStation on my server expertise, since the popularity of MeL meant I desk at the University of Michigan Library. I could no longer happily e-mail and word process remember hearing a scratching sound every time it while serving information to the world! would serve up a file to someone looking for infor- Throughout the history of MeL, one philosophy mation off its hard disk. That computer also served has been paramount – to provide online information as my personal workstation, where requests for infor- resources to the people of the state of Michigan mation and my need for word processing a monthly through their local libraries. In 2000, MeL spread it report or writing and e-mailing the latest issue of wings and left its nest at the University Library, MLink Newsbytes had to share. merging with AccessMichigan to form the Michigan MeL began life as an Internet gopher. A creature eLibrary. Fans of MeL include the Governor of our created by Big Ten rival Minnesota, a gopher would state and about 330,000 visitors per month. Stable go out on the Internet and “go fer” stuff. In 1992, funding from the state is key to its success and the MLink project at the University of Michigan shows a level of commitment that other states have Library opened what was then known as GoMLink. yet to meet. MLink provided the public libraries of the state of MeL has transcended the University of Michigan with reference services. As the librarians Michigan and the Library of Michigan and now working in MLink began to rely on more informa- belongs to the librarians of the state of Michigan, tion from the Internet, we wanted to find a way to who, in turn, give it to their patrons – a gift for the make that information directly accessible to the people of the state of Michigan to usher in the librarians of the state. Internet gopher software was Information Age. the answer to our need. It was easy to set up and GoMLink and the Michigan Electronic Library maintain and easy to use, so easy to use that were created by Sue Davidsen, Dick Hathaway, Debbie GoMLink quickly became a favorite of end users. Gallagher, Metta Lansdale and a host of other librari- We collected URLs of sites across the Internet that ans. Sue Davidsen is frequently credited with being the held useful information, from federal government “Mother of MEL” and currently serves as the Associate files to clips of presidential speeches at Michigan Director for Academic Outreach and Practical State University’s Vincent Voice Library, and, of Engagement Programs at the University of Michigan course, the ubiquitous weather sites. School of Information. GoMLink was arranged like a brick and mortar library. Most of the original arrangement still remains in the Internet by Subject portion of MeL. In 1993, I had a lengthy conversation with a graduate student at Stanford named Jerry Yang. He was interested in how we arranged our gopher into sub- Dear MeL, ject categories. The short answer was “that’s what librarians do – we organize information.” Yahoo! founder Jerry Yang went on to build from I can’t believe how you’ve grown! It GoMLink’s arrangement, and Yahoo! still hires seems like only yesterday I was cleaning librarians to provide their classification. up your hard drive. Miss you, but In 1995, we made the decision to migrate GoMLink from gopher to the World Wide Web, delighted to hear you got a permanent and we began our fruitful relationship with the job with the state. Don’t forget to update Library of Michigan.

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