Author: NEKLS

Categories
Library News

I’ve lost my password what do I do?!

This happens. Here’s how to fix it.

Pre-emptively (as in, before you lose your password):

Make sure that your librarian account has an email address associated with it.

    • Log in
    • Click Users
    • Click Librarian
    • Make sure that your email address is entered in under Contact information.
    • If you added or changed the email address, click “Update User”

Oh no! I’ve lost my password!

  • On the login screen, click “Lost Your Password?”
  • Type in your username (usually librarian) or the email address associated with your account.
  • Click “Get new password”
  • Check your email for the confirmation link
  • Click the link from your email.
  • Check your mail for your new password
  • Go back to the login screen and use the new password to log in.

Now, we want to change the password to something we know and can remember:

  • Log in using the new password
  • Click Users
  • Click your user, usually librarian
  • Scroll down until you see the two “New Password” fields
  • Type in your new password in each box
  • Click “Update User”
Categories
Library News

KLOW in Computers in Libraries

We’re excited to report that KLOW was featured in an article in Computers in Libraries this month.

Read it!

Our own Sharon Moreland wrote the article, and it’s very exciting for us to be featured in a national library magazine!

KLOW Featured on librarian.net

Jessamyn West highlighted our project on her blog at librarian.net.

Aw, shucks. *blush*

As to who in Kansas are the brains behind the project, it was started by Brenda Hough and Liz Rea at the Northeast Kansas Library System in 2006. Liz is still on the project (*wave*) but Brenda has moved on, her place being very capably filled by Sharon Moreland, NEKLS Technology Consultant. It is funded by NEKLS and the State Library of Kansas.

Thanks for the nod!

Categories
Tutorial

Add a search box to the State Library of Kansas Databases

Ever wanted to make a page devoted to resources external to your library? Resources such as the State Library of Kansas sponsored databases?

Oh you have, have you? Well funny you should ask… here’s how you do it!

  1. Log into the administration side of your site.
  2. Click Presentation
  3. Click Widgets
  4. Find an empty Text widget
    • If you don’t have a blank one, scroll down and increase the number of text widgets that are displaying, and click Save. Then use one of the new ones you’ll see in your “Available Widgets” box.
  5. Drag it up to one of your sidebars.
  6. Click the “Configure” box on the right end of the text widget you dragged up. A pop up will appear with a blank white area.
  7. Copy the following text and paste it into the box: 
    <form method="post" action="http://ksuc-agent.auto-graphics.com/homepages/customerwide/ValidateGlobalIP.asp?cuid=ksuc&amp;lid=kw9&amp;stfftype=Z&amp;defaultlang=english&amp;qmisc=&amp;s=ESS&amp;mode=S">&nbsp;<input name="term" type="text" size="18" />
<p></p>
<label>&nbsp;&nbsp;<input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Go!" /></label>
  8. Click the X in the upper right corner.
  9. Click Save Changes (VERY IMPORTANT)

You will now have a SLK search box on your sidebar. Those of you a little more advanced with your HTML could paste this into a page and increase the size of the search bar area. The sky’s the limit!

Categories
Library News Tutorial

HOWTO: Integrating your Library’s KLOW site with an RSS Screen Saver

Today we have a guest post from Thatcher Rea from Basehor Library. Enjoy!

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Thatcher Rea
Technology Services Coordinator
Basehor Community Library

Hopefully your decision to use KLOW for your library website has been an incredibly enjoyable experience – Basehor Library’s move meant not only could we more quickly publish content to our website, we could have multiple librarians and staff authoring content as soon as it was ready, instead of waiting for a webmaster to massage and publish the content.

The use of KLOW brings a number of really helpful and interesting features – one of which is RSS. If you’re not familiar with this feature, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and is quickly becoming the preferred method of keeping up to date with other web sites in an automated fashion, without visiting the website from which the content originated.

Users of KLOW will also have the added benefit of being able to create specific categories, and then use RSS feeds from those categories specifically (Which KLOW does for you automatically). Combine this with a freely available RSS Screen Saver and you now have a simple, yet powerful tool for prominently displaying information in your library. Update the website, and your information is automatically updated and displayed without any further effort on your part.

This sounds great you may ask, but what would we use it for? By being able to subscribe to an RSS feed for a specific category within your KLOW site means you can use this approach for a variety of different uses. For example:

  • Displaying helpful tips on your public access computers for patrons at your library
  • Display upcoming events on a public computer marquee
  • Any other creative uses – the sky is the limit!

One such product that we at Basehor have used is by NuParadigm – there are other free RSS Screen Savers out there, and you may find one that you like better, but so far this one has worked out well for us.

Click below to see how!

Continue reading “HOWTO: Integrating your Library’s KLOW site with an RSS Screen Saver”