Welcome back to this new school year of 2006-2007! We hope you have a great year and also hope that SUNLINK will help make this year even more productive for you and the students and staff in your school.

The SUNLINK database was completely updated as scheduled on August 1. We have more schools, more records, and more features. Our "stats" are:

• Number of schools: 2,695
• Bibliographic records: 1,730,939
• Individual holdings: 26,247,034
• Book cover images: 396,112
• Cataloged web records: 25,113
• Streaming Video (Video on Demand) records: 1,545
• Florida Memory records: 500

New to this updated version of SUNLINK is the inclusion of 1,545 Annenberg Media "Video on Demand" records! The majority of these streaming video records are professional development for educators.

Got a minute? Do this quick search on SUNLINK to see what these records offer on the subject area of reading:

• In the "Quick Search" box, enter these keywords: video demand reading.
• The resulting "Titles" list will have over 50 cataloged records on this topic, click on the first one: 100 Days of Reading.
• A bibliographic record will display describing a series of videos. Click on the url just under the title.
• You are now at the overview for: Teaching Reading K-2: A Library of Classroom Practices. This is a collection of videos featuring teaching practices (100 Days of Reading is just one of these individual program videos).
• Select a video sampling of one of the programs by clicking on the VoD icon. You will be taken to a log-in screen. Sign up is quick and it is free! As soon as you are signed up, you can view any video in the collection!

Got another minute? Do the same search with a math teacher (video demand math) and see over 150 records available! Need it more specific? Maybe "fractions"? Do the search again (video demand fractions) and see the search narrowed to under 20 titles.

We can make it even easier to promote this new feature with your teachers. Check out an instructional "QuickFlix" at: http://www.sunlink.ucf.edu/train/quickflix/.

We have a change in searching any web based record on SUNLINK with this new version of SUNLINK just released last month.

All web based bibliographic records (web sites, Video on Demand, and Florida Memory images) are searchable ONLY at the district, region, or state levels. You will no longer be able to have them included in a local building level search.

Example. If you did a keyword "Quick Search" of 'weather' at the individual school location level of Clay HS, you would get results of the related books and AV items located at that local library collection. However, if you did the same search at the district level of Clay (or the Region or the entire state), you would get the book and AV results of the library media collections in those areas PLUS any web sites, Florida Memory images, or Video on Demand records.

The age of collection numbers and pie graphs have been updated to reflect the updated SUNLINK database. You can search your own school, your district, or the state average. Or you can search any of the schools and districts in the state to compare to your collection. Go to: http://www.sunlink.ucf.edu/collection/.

The Florida Department of Education is looking at Interlibrary loans (ILL) at the K-12 level, one of the original purposes for the SUNLINK project.

Please watch for the annual ILL statistics work form coming soon from SUNLINK in September. Keep track of any and all ILL actions (to schools within your district as well as with other districts) by making a "hash mark" on the work form as you request or send out an ILL. At the end of each month, it is then easy to add up your total. SUNLINK will send you a "clean" sheet with your school name towards the end of the school year. Simply transfer your counts from your worksheet to the final sheet and fax it to the SUNLINK office by the May 31 due date. (We are working on providing an online way for you to send in your ILL counts. We will let you know!)

Remember that this is the ONLY statewide method to collect ILL statistics for K-12 schools, so please do include any borrowing or loaning that you do—with AND without SUNLINK.

For the approximately 100 schools left in the state that would need a retrospective conversion to bring their records into SUNLINK, we are still offering an online application process! It is easy. It is fast. We work with you one-on-one so your recon will be completed in a very short time frame.

Find the online application at: http://www.sunlink.ucf.edu/application/

Many have discovered that SUNLINK Announcements is a great source of information for school library media professionals. Check it out at http://sunlinkannouncements.blogspot.com/. If you like what you see, you can subscribe by submitting your email address in the upper right hand corner of the page, or you can subscribe to the RSS feed. That way you won’t miss a thing!

The FAME 2006 Conference is scheduled in Orlando on November 1-3 at the same location as last year: Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort. SUNLINK will have a booth (#425) so we can meet with you and visit! It's always good to see all our SUNLINK users across the state! And we'll have a surprise or two for you. More next month!