School Libraries Go Global
An Update on the Texas Library Connection
Jeanne Martinez

The Texas Library Connection (TLC) has had an impact on so many areas of school librarianship that I want to share them with you from my vantage point as a library support person at the Education Service Center, Region 20, in San Antonio. In the TLC training sessions I’ve conducted I have seen this project move librarians from the early stages of telecommunications to the magic of downloading software from a computer in California to a desktop in Texas.

At regional library meetings, TLC librarians walk in with armfuls of books requested by other TLC librarians. "I brought along other dinosaur books in case you needed more. These are some of my favorites." One librarian provided her students research materials for a UIL project in this manner. TLC has made school librarians wiser shoppers when considering electronic databases, automation software, and electronic records for print materials. "Do you think TEA will consider purchasing a statewide license for a Spanish research database?" TLC has stressed the importance of good USMARC records and many TLC librarians now realize how valuable an investment it is to have an accurate local database linking to the statewide database. "My records aren’t going to be the ones that get shown, right?" One Region 20 librarian with a zest for USMARC cataloging overcame her reluctance to make presentations and shared her expertise in downloading records and working with USMARC records at our regional library conference this past fall. "I can download records from home now!" I’ve witnessed the ease of interlibrary requesting and loaning in training sessions where librarians in neighboring districts peruse for the first time each others’ library collections. "Hey Suzanne, can I borrow this book? Someone I know has just been diagnosed with diabetes and I don’t have anything in my collection to offer him." I have had the pleasure of assisting a couple of times in the physical transfer of those interlibrary loan materials.

Let me now share some background information about the Texas Library Connection with those of you who have not had the opportunity to experience it.

In 1993, as part of a successful TLA legislative program, the 73rd Legislature allocated to the Texas Education Agency (TEA) funds to create a statewide database of school library holdings. After some delays related to having an unfilled TEA library position, the vendor selection process was conducted by Gloria McClanahan and a committee of school library experts. The committee unanimously decided that it wanted a Web-based on-line product, and not a static CD-ROM product. At that time (1995) there were few vendors that sold such a product. Auto-Graphics, Inc. based in Pomona, California, had a Web-based catalog and was awarded the contract to create the Texas school library holdings database.

Early versions of the Auto-Graphics software, Impact/ONLINE™ were supported by our former TEA text-based Inter-net telecommunications system, Tenet. A librarian could login to their personal Tenet account and then make a connection to Auto-Graphics and the TLC database. This process involved loading disks on DOS machines and required a fairly sophisticated telecommunications capability.

In 1996, Auto-Graphics released a Web-based version of its database software. The Impact/ONLINE™ administrative functions are platform-specific (Windows). WebPAC is accessed over the World-Wide-Web using a graphical browser. It allows library staff and patrons to search library catalogs and generate interlibrary loans over the Internet. Anyone on the Web can search the Texas database with its easy to use interface: http://www.tea.state.tx.us/technology/TLC/index.html. Click on "TLC Resources," then on "Search TLC—all participating Texas school library catalogs." Library staff have password access to interlibrary loan tracking, catalog record downloading, and holdings maintenance functions through WebPAC. These functions are restricted to TLC members only.

The TEA plan for training has utilized the train-the-trainers model, which calls for one or two persons per Education Service Center (ESC) region to be trained and then to serve as trainers for their region of the state. The 20 ESCs serve public school districts similar to the way the ten regional library systems serve public libraries. However, not all ESCs have a librarian on staff to work with school librarians. More ESCs have hired librarians since the Texas Library Connection has gained participants and recognition, but only 11 of the 20 currently have librarians on staff.

Each ESC did send a representative to the 1997 TLC Master Trainer’s Institute this past August and each should have someone available to provide training for TLC member district librarians. The training sessions involve some administrative functions that customize a campus webpage for searching the statewide database. For example, an elementary school campus librarian can decide to have that campus’s students and staff search area elementary school library collections for needed materials instead of the entire state. Librarians also learned how to set up interlibrary loan for their students and staff. WebPAC allows for some sophisticated Boolean searching and librarians enjoyed lots of searching practice during this training. The most popular searching exercise has been locating USMARC records for books and videos. By conducting an ISBN or LCCN search, librarians are able to locate the matching USMARC record needed for importing into local automation systems.

The TLC project is closely linked with the recently adopted School Library Programs Standards and Guidelines for Texas. TLC participants who meet certain criteria (e.g., the library is supervised by a certified librarian; the library is robustly connected to the Internet; students have access to the Internet in the library on at least three workstations) have full use of all TLC resources. Currently those resources include the following three full-text information databases.

Britannica On-line, "a fully searchable and browseable collection of authoritative references, including Britannica’s latest article database, hundreds of articles not found in the print Britannica, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (10th edition), the Britannica Book of the Year, and thousands of links to other Web sites selected by Britannica editors."

Austin American-Statesman "with over eight years of Austin American-Statesman back articles on-line."

UMI ProQuest Direct, "one of the world’s largest collections of information, including summaries of articles from over 5,000 publications, with many in full text, full image format." UMI has also provided training sessions using this valuable resource.

One way that TLC librarians communicate with each other is through the TLC listserv (TLC@LIST.TETN.NET). News related to the TLC project is distributed via this discussion group, which is managed by the TEA. One recent discussion dealt with the number of times Texas students access the full-text databases available through the project. One listserv member wrote, "Three cheers for Joy Foshee at Groesbeck High School. Her students have accessed over 166 on-line documents! Carolyn McCown’s students have accessed 115 on-line documents!" At a recent meeting of the School Library Council, one school library coordinator reported that TLC is saving her district $26,000 in subscription fees to the UMI ProQuest database alone.

The Texas Education Agency is currently holding an open enrollment application process that will close on March 31, 1998. Eligibility requirements are posted on the TLC Web page (http://www.tea.state.tx.us/technology/TLC/intro.html).

The Texas Library Connection is a project for Texas public schools, but also incorporates public and academic libraries that are part of regional library consortia. If you explore the TLC database, you will discover that, as Auto-Graphics customers, we have been allowed access to other state databases. In a training session, we discovered that the state of Oklahoma has already done what I believe will happen one day in the state of Texas. Through one common interface (WebPAC) Oklahoma librarians can search a statewide database that includes the holdings from school, public, academic and special libraries. One of the missions of the TLC is to enhance "the ability of participating libraries to contribute to and participate in local, state, and national resource sharing initiatives including the academic library statewide initiative, TexShare, and the public library statewide initiative, the Texas State Electronic Library."

The success of statewide programs like the Texas Library Connection, TexShare, and the Texas State Electronic Library rests on the librarians who ultimately implement the program. If TLC resources are to be fully utilized and their value realized, it will be because of the school librarians who teach students how to locate the most relevant information needed to solve the research problems of the day. It is my charge to support school librarians in this pursuit.