golf bookings,

  payment of tax by credit card.

Volunteers are developing other applications:

  historical newspaper Index,

  local child care directory.

MARC records are used rather than metadata and some have up to 50 URLs in 856 fields.

The library director is a member of the county's IT steering committee and he and his

staff were keen to point out the importance of vision and leadership in ensuring that the

library plays a key role in the e government agenda. The county government (the board,

its staff, etc.) is seen as important a constituency as the public, presumably on the

premise that if the messengers cannot be convinced, the end result might be that the

message is corrupted. To pursue the analogy, it is in the messenger s interest to make

sure that the message is correct, accurate, up to date, and intelligible, otherwise the old

adage about what happens to messengers with unacceptable news might apply! All this

points to good information management systems.

Strategically, the library felt that it was advantageous to relocate its 12 full time IT

staff in the county IT department rather than keep them in the library. This they felt was

a correct move and one that has brought synergies between the library and other 

agencies/departments. They now benefit from 24/7 service  uptime all around,  and feel

they benefit from what happens in the whole culture.

Training 

Staff competencies are critical.  Keep it fresh  is the aim for the staff skill base. The

public benefit from 2,500 one to one Internet tutorials. Volunteers who deliver this

training are recruited mostly from the many high tech companies in the county. Training

takes place in the body of the library, rather than in functional suites. The library is seen

as a safe place for  seniors  of minority communities, and this means that they are 

willing to take up training opportunities there rather than anywhere else.

Infrastructure

Bandwidth is not an issue in Fairfax. The county has OC3 connection with libraries

having 221 connections. 

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