10:00 a.m. – 11: 30 a.m., Columbus Convention Center

  Attending: SERRC Users – 5; AMC Users – 20; Other – 6

  Attached is the Agenda for the 10 a.m. user group meeting.

John Whyde discussed the procedures for Medianet customer service.  All Medianet users are to contact John Whyde at John Whyde  whyde@infohio.org If John is not be available he will email all customers as to the appropriate contact person in his absence.

Tony Marshalek  and John Whyde attended an advanced Medianet training this past July in Halifax.  The training materials were designed using the MS PowerPoint format. INFOhio now has these training modules available for training.  John and Tony will provide training on the modules in regional settings as soon as it is established in which areas the users would like to have the training. Tony shared a one page tip sheet on how to add and test hyperlinks to the Medianet web module.

The Modules will be posted on the INFOhio Medianet web page and will be links for all users to download and view.  Users should look at these links as soon as possible and determine if they would like to have a training session done on the specific topic addressed by the PowerPoint program.  As soon as enough interest is expressed in a topic, John & Tony will schedule regional workshops on the topic. These workshops in most cases would be hands-on and from 4-6 hrs in length.

Medianet PowerPoint Program Topics:

Beyond the Basics: Database Structure

Defining Your Value: Marketing Strategies Part I (Push/Pull Technologies)

Report Usual – Common Reports for Client, Print, Subject and Title

Beyond the Basics: Running Reports

Maintaining Your Web Pages

One regional workshop is already scheduled for the Spring in Clermont County on email and mail merge options of Medianet. Information with specifics will be posted on the INFOhio Medianet web page.

Peter Mason, President, Medianet/Dymaxion Research Ltd presented a number of helpful tips to those attending the user group meeting. Topics in his PowerPoint presentation included:

Expanding Web Services            Simplify Reports

Personalize Web Services            File Management

Power Searches                      Back-Office Webification

Cool Options                            Version 7.5 – Available soon!

A question and answer session was guided by Lisa Santo from the Franklin County AMC.  Lisa also distributed the INFOhio/Medianet brochure which was designed at the INFOhio user group retreat last June by those Medianet users that attended. Lisa reminded those in attendance that they should start planning to attend the retreat this Summer on June 19-21. The location has not been announced at this time. Having one meeting a year for all regions to discuss and share ideas on "How to Promote Medianet and Our Media Centers” was also discussed.

INFOhio provided a box lunch for all those attending the user group meeting and those that were attending the 1 p.m. potential user meeting.

Why Use Medianet?

Peter Mason, Theresa Fredericka, John Whyde and Tony Marshalek met with representatives from five organizations at the 1 p.m. meeting for potential users.  Organizations represented were:

Fairland Local; Sylvania City Schools; Centerville City Schools; South-Western City Schools and Clark County E.S.C.

This was the agenda for the hour meeting.

Does your school, district or agency have a large collection of media titles that are available for your users? If so, consider providing on-line WEB access for searches, reservations and tracking to your teachers.

Find out how the Medianet Web Module:

·        saves staff and teacher's time by enabling teachers to reserve materials from home or school

·        allows educational agencies to participate in the statewide resource sharing initiative

·        reduces paper catalog costs

·        increases access to educational materials

·        and much more

Questions/Comments

Medianet Support
On October 23^rd all Medianet sites received the following information from Medianet Customer Support with an updated password.

Medianet Users Group Web Resource Area
Medianet provides some great resources in an area restricted to just Medianet sites...  the Medianet Users Resource Area.  Check it out!!
Table of Contents

·        Tools to Help You Train Your Clients           

·        Tools to Help You Train Your Staff

·        Links to PowerPoint and Word tools to help you use our resources

·        Other Cool Things

Remember: we are always looking for your suggestions as to how to make it even better!

We enjoy expanding this site to provide you with helpful hints, tips, notes, articles, files, text, graphs, pictures, and other material related to the training and support needs of all Medianet users.

Please forward your submissions and ideas for the Medianet Users

Resource Area to MUGPAGE@DYMAXION.COM.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Medianet Customer Support

Keith Burke                                      Internet: KBurke@Dymaxion.ca
Medianet Application Specialist         Phone: (902)422-1973 Ext. 181
Dymaxion Research Ltd.                   Fax: (902)421-1267

Medianet Enhancements

At this time Peter Mason is working on the following for consideration by INFOhio and Medianet sites:

1. Programming to de-dupe AMC Medianet sites against existing media MARC records in the INFOhio Union. This would allow holdings to be added much faster than the current process employed at the NEO-IMC. This would allow the majority of AMC sites to have their holdings viewed by next Fall and provide acess for statewide resource sharing (MORE) via the Union.
2. Programming to move 1,400 plus Follett WebPath Express records that are in the union to all AMCs that have those titles and provide a systematic process for sending records back to Follett for updates in the future. The cost of sharing the records with all the centers was paid by the NEO-IMC from a SchoolNet subsidy.
3. Continued  development of an automated system for moving MARC records to and from the INFOhio Union and the Medianet databases.
4. Peter Mason offer to provide a Medianet maintained list serve for all Ohio Medianet sites at no cost.

At this time the cost for these three enhancements has not been decided.  The AMC will share the cost for enhancements # 1 & # 2.