ASSOCIATES (vol. 10, no. 1, July 2003) - associates.ucr.edu

Congratulations to Sylvia Skene, winner of the 2003 Outstanding Support Staff Award sponsored by Library Mosaics and the Council on Library/Media Technicians (COLT). This annual award is presented for noteworthy service by a library support staff member. Sylvia is an editor, contributor, and reviewer for Associates and is also a contributor and regular columnist of "Only Provoke" for Library Mosaics, the magazine for support staff. Sylvia is a library technician at the Advanced Education Media Acquisitions Centre, Langara College, Vancouver, B.C., Canada. She was featured in the May/June 2003 issue of Library Mosaics. We’re proud of you, Sylvia!

Readers: I need your opinion. Should Associates include advertisements and/or press releases of library-related products for sale? Associates would not endorse the products in any way; nor would Associates accept compensation in any form. On the website, we could have a separate section on the Table of Contents page; you could view it or not. Subscribers who receive Associates via email, though, would receive an advertisement page email, or the advertisement page could be eliminated from the email version. One example of an advertisement would be "EventKeeper" from Plymouth Rocket, Inc. They have designed an online, web based, dynamic data event calendar. You may view their website at http://www.eventkeeper.com/. What do you readers and subscribers want? An advertisement-free publication? A separate listing in the Table of Contents for advertisements on the Associates website? If advertisements are included, do the email subscribers want to see this page or should it be eliminated from the email version? Please send your comments to the Associates Editor at rivwe@citrus.ucr.edu.

About those "test" emails sent to all subscribers… During the four months between Associates issues, over 100 subscribers disconnect their email addresses without unsubscribing for various reasons. The email version of Associates averages 17 separate emails. When you add up these numbers, that’s over 1700 bounces back to my "rivwe" library email address, with a new, generic message line of: list ASSOCIATES: Mail Error Notification. I must open every email and read through all the "return path" and "received from" information to find the bounced address (each Postmaster has a different style). I try to zero in on the Associates Title Page email and ignore the other articles, but I have to page down once or twice to identify it because of all the recipient garbage at the top of the returned email. I can then find and delete the address from the subscriber list. And, I have to do this quickly before my mailbox limit is exceeded. To make life a bit easier for me, I send out a "test" email about one week before Associates is issued in order to identify the bounces. The latest "test" resulted in 100 bounces—so I only had to look through 100 emails to find the address to delete from the subscription list. By the way, I appreciate when people say "hi," or send personal instruction to remove and/or change a subscription in reply to the "test" message. Usually in the time between the "test" and the actual mailing of the issue, though, another 5-10 addresses are disconnected. I dream that one day this part will be fully automated.

This issue has some mystery and intrigue! Check out *Rainbow’s End* by Tinker Massey. Tinker is writing a serialized mystery story set in a library—and readers are encouraged to contribute to the next installment. Douglas Morrison writes about how he tracked down employment growth figures for paraprofessionals vs. librarians. Jim Jackson gives philosophical insights into job titles and future library needs. Carol Covington details the process and emotional hurtles for job enrichment and climbing the ladder at her library. Carol Borzyskowski has 2 months to go before going live with a new ILS system and paints a picture of the chaos surrounding the implementation in her column. Kent "The Internet Guru" Slade provides an interesting look at how information will be accessed and used during the next five years, gleaning data from an OCLC report from March 2003. Will this issue of Associates be filtered because of offensive terminology? Katie Buller Kintner presents some innocent words as "filter bait" in her *Eclectic Rantings* column. Is the time-honored urban activity of cow tipping truth or fiction? (fiction!) Michael Brooks reviews the website "truthorfiction.com" that verifies rumors, hearsay, and unbelievable stories. Jean Uys summarizes a WCSSIG conference in which all library staff met to discuss/debate issues, which were presently causing a rift between staff at different levels. Sylvia Skene has included a video review of a science video series on various cell processes. And, a big thumb’s up to Susan Salt for organizing and arranging all the conference schedules.

Thanks especially to Jim Jackson, Tinker Massey, Kriss Ostrom, Ed Gillen and others who wrote with encouragement and support about my experiences with rheumatoid arthritis as I reported in my editorial in the March 2003 issue. I’m glad back to work full time now—and really look forward to weekends!

Happy Reading!

Wendee Eyler
Editor, Associates
rivwe@citrus.ucr.edu