DALNET Staff to Present at MLA Conference

The Michigan Library Association annual conference will take place October 26-28, 2011 in Kalamazoo.  Kristy Wells, Cathy Wolford, and Steven Bowers will all be presenting at the conference.  Cathy will be presenting a poster session titled "Channel Yourself: Using YouTube Playlists to Create Online Collections."  Poster sessions will be presented on Wednesday, October 26th from 5:15 PM to 6:15 PM.  Kristy and Steve will present a session titled "Creating an Electronic Collection from Free Online Resources" and will discuss the "Distinguished American Women Collection" that was created for Women's History Month in March 2011.  Their program is scheduled for Thursday, October 27th from 1:30 to 2:30 PM. 




DALNET Board Approves RIDES Funding for 2012/13


The DALNET Board of Directors met in late September to finalize the budget for fiscal year 2012/13.  As part of the planning process, the Board approved to continue supplemental RIDES funding for DALNET members for the 2012/13 fiscal year.  RIDES (formerly MeL Delivery) is the state-wide delivery service for Michigan interlibrary loan.  DALNET has provided supplemental funding for two days of delivery service for its member institutions since 2005 to promote access to information, which supports DALNET's mission.  Currently two-thirds of DALNET member institutions choose to subscribe to this service. Although the funding supplement is not part of the annual budget, the Board has continued to fund this service through the consortium's Program Initiative Reserve.




DALNET Acquires DALNET.ORG


The DALNET office is pleased to announce that the consortium acquired the domain name for www.dalnet.org.  The office intends to use the new domain name as an easier shortcut to get to our current address at www.dalnet.lib.mi.us.  The old domain will be kept and used, so any links to specific pages should use the old address.  The new www.dalnet.org will be used for branding and convenience on promotional and marketing materials for the consortium.  The Board had requested that an easy and memorable domain name be purchased and the office was able to purchase www.dalnet.org once it became available.  The domain name transfer will be complete by mid-October.