ICON’S May 21 st program featured our webmaster, Sarah Marshall, who gave us a virtual tour of the Springfield Greene County Library via their web site. I can assure you, when it comes to the library’s web site, Sarah knows her way around quite well, and I believe everyone in attendance learned something!

Since beginning work for the library in July of 2002, Sarah has looked at hundreds of thousands of lines of code, going through most of the pages on the library’s site as they expanded existing features, and added many more, to their huge offering.

In her presentation, entitled; “It’s Not Your Father’s Library!” Sarah shared with us many of the services offered by our library, including online reservations, interlibrary and MOBIUS (seamless inter-academic library) loans, Local History (including subscriptions to “Ancestry.com” and “HeritageQuest.com”, for you genealogists), bookmobile, walking books, COOLCAT (online card catalog), drive-up checkout and returns, as well as digitized collections.

In 1901, Andrew Carnegie donated $50,000.00 to help Springfield get the library started, and I believe he would be proud of what his donation has grown into. Our library system is something we should all be proud of. With eight branches, two “Destination” libraries, and a web site rivaled by very few, it is on par with some of the top libraries in the United States. Wow! It really isn’t your father’s library!

Thank you, Sarah, for this enlightening program wherein you shared a bit of the technology that not only brings our organization together, but that we all struggle to keep up with!

On June 18th, beginning at 12:30 PM, at the Library Center Auditorium, ICON will celebrate 15 years of service to its members and the community, by serving coffee, cake, and ice cream prior to our regular meeting. Our program will feature guest speaker, Scott Turk (senior computer specialist / instructor) from Ozarks Technical Community College (OTC). Scott will share with us, some of the opportunities available through OTC’s continuing education program (particularly in the area of computers and related technologies). Don’t miss this important event! Charter and life members, past and present officers, as well as others, will be given special recognition during the meeting. Please arrive early so the meeting can begin on time.

On July 16th, at St. John’s Mid-America Cancer Center, a representative from Springfield City Utilities will visit us to explain how computers are used in delivering, regulating, and monitoring of our utilities. Check our website (www.iconusersgroup.org) for more details.

Be there, learn more!

Happy Computing,
Terry