Moving the building library to the 21st century.

I'm the agent bishop this year in our three ward building and I've been watching the use of the building library in anticipation of making some changes. After obtaining feedback and some observation, I've noticed the large library now primarily serves to distribute chalk, scriptures and to make copies. The several shelves of VHS tapes, TV/VCR combos, large laminated pictures and overhead projectors are never even touched.

This year I would like to direct a complete overhaul of the building library and I'm looking for ideas of how other wards have transformed their libraries into a more usable tool. I can already see us dumping the overhead projectors at least. Perhaps even the laminated pictures in favor of several copies of the Gospel Art Book (06048090). I definitely don't want to transfer the old VHS tapes to DVD as they are of a by-gone era and not appealing to many members. They can easily be replaced by copies of the newer DVDs recently produced by the Church. If we go DVD, then we can dump all the TV/VCR combos.

Thoughts & ideas? Thank you.

macsense wrote:I'm the agent bishop this year in our three ward building and I've been watching the use of the building library in anticipation of making some changes. After obtaining feedback and some observation, I've noticed the large library now primarily serves to distribute chalk, scriptures and to make copies. The several shelves of VHS tapes, TV/VCR combos, large laminated pictures and overhead projectors are never even touched.

This year I would like to direct a complete overhaul of the building library and I'm looking for ideas of how other wards have transformed their libraries into a more usable tool. I can already see us dumping the overhead projectors at least. Perhaps even the laminated pictures in favor of several copies of the Gospel Art Book (06048090). I definitely don't want to transfer the old VHS tapes to DVD as they are of a by-gone era and not appealing to many members. They can easily be replaced by copies of the newer DVDs recently produced by the Church. If we go DVD, then we can dump all the TV/VCR combos.

Thoughts & ideas? Thank you.

Years ago we used to make multiple copies of the satellite broadcasts at the stake center in VHS format and give these copies to each of the building libraries. With the availability of many of these broadcast in the member's homes, we found that the popularity of these recordings has diminished to where we no longer make these copies.

In addition we only make one copy of a satellite broadcast and this copy goes into the stake library. From what I can tell these copies are not a high check-out item. Again, for the same reason - that the broadcasts are available in member's homes and they tend to record what they're interested in.

I think we've entered a phase of Church technology where the various media presentations are more available - often in member's homes, which has resulted in a reduced use of the meetinghouse libraries.

I'm surprised you're seeing such little use of the large laminated pictures. It would seem to be the easiest media to incorporate into a lesson. If the teachers are unwilling to use those, then I don't know as there's much hope for anything else.

You might check and see if the issue is the lack of a list, or suggestions of what pictures might go with a particular lesson. At one time I think the teacher's books had suggestions, but I don't know if they still do.

Same here on the VHS tapes, although I don't see everything that goes on.

I typically see laminated pictures, especially of things not in the Gospel Art Book, and some others because that is there, and I do see the TV/VCR combo out there, we have one of those and two DVD plyaers. The DVD player gets used every week because I use it for the new Family History curriculum when I teach that. I have seen other wards use more or less on the video things as well, but I'm often the only one that takes out the DVD player most weeks.

Sometimes pictures of the temple (Provo in my case) get taken out also.

Oddly, I don't see the Gospel Art Book being used, so I find the right picture for some lessons and put that up for the person giving it, and some have after class asked about it.

What we're both seeing may be US-centric, outside the US and more developed areas we could be seeing something quite different when it comes to what is used from the Meetinghouse Library (or Materials Center as some signage calls it).

We are in the process of also eliminating the VHS tapes that are not in the Church catalog. We are also replacing all of the VHS tapes we can with DVD's. A former librarian took a picture of each of the pictures in our library and printed a catalog of pictures. Each page contains 3 - 5 pictures and is arranged by Old Testament, Book Of Mormon, etc. We are in the process of updating this material.

One of the problems I see is that teachers are not using the AV equipment because they do not prepare early enough. We have some teachers come in at the beginning of class to have materials copies. Another obstacle includes TV's that do not work. It has taken me a year to get all 4 VCR/DVD's and TV working. That lasted one week. Someone broke the VCR/DVD. The VCR/DVD was replaced but it will not work with the TV. We have been told we will not be getting a new TV as the budget will not handle it right now. I agree with this so we are waiting for a donation of a good TV from a member.

Our library uses the philosophy that if we do not make it convent and pleasant for the members, they will not use the materials. We will set up the TV's and VCR/DVD for them and even find what they want on the VHS tape or DVD. Whatever it takes so they use the materials.

I taught school for 40 years and found people will not use the materials if it is not convent and easy for them. Many of the teaching members forget they are teaching the video generation. The young members are used to Twitter, Facebook, and on line media. We have wireless in part of the building but none of us can access it in the classrooms. This will gradually change. Just keep trying to move the change in human nature.

At the risk of side-tracking the discussion, are DVDs really better than VHS? What if the teacher only wants to play back one paragraph of a talk? Yes, it's a hassle with VHS since you may have to first find that talk in a 2 hour tape, but once you position it, it stays there (or reasonable close to there). With a DVD, all you have to do is hit stop and it's lost it's place.

I agree with the comment that it has to be convenient. That's why I'm suggesting the large pictures are a litmus test - it just doesn't get any easier then that.

RussellHltn wrote:At the risk of side-tracking the discussion, are DVDs really better than VHS? What if the teacher only wants to play back one paragraph of a talk? Yes, it's a hassle with VHS since you may have to first find that talk in a 2 hour tape, but once you position it, it stays there (or reasonable close to there). With a DVD, all you have to do is hit stop and it's lost it's place....

Not quite. Most DVD players will return to the last place they were at if you only press STOP once. If you hit STOP a second time, then you lose your place.

Techgy wrote:Not quite. Most DVD players will return to the last place they were at if you only press STOP once. If you hit STOP a second time, then you lose your place.

Yes, but only if that DVD player remains on. It's impossible to do the videotape-type queuing at home and then bring it to church with a DVD.

The videos I have had to show were made much easier by first ripping the DVD to my computer and then copying to my iPhone or iPod. I was able to queue it up perfectly and have it remain there ready for me to show via a composite video cable from the device to the TV.

macsense wrote:The videos I have had to show were made much easier by first ripping the DVD to my computer and then copying to my iPhone or iPod. I was able to queue it up perfectly and have it remain there ready for me to show via a composite video cable from the device to the TV.

Now you're talking! How about attaching an iPod to each TV in the library via the composite cable. Install a video server in the library and rip the entire church dvd library to the server. Write a small app for the iPod and every TV in the building can instantly access any church video over the buildings WiFi network!

I'm in.

Hmm. I wonder how many iPods would make it back to the library with the TVs?

nimebe wrote:Now you're talking! How about attaching an iPod to each TV in the library via the composite cable. Install a video server in the library and rip the entire church dvd library to the server. Write a small app for the iPod and every TV in the building can instantly access any church video over the buildings WiFi network!

I think it's going to take a lot more then that. Most teachers are not interested in playing a whole talk or video. They need snippets. You'd need a simple, fast interface to find those snippets.

I think the starting point is for someone to go though the lesson manual, locate every quote, find the matching video, rip that part to a video clip and then create an index, or perhaps a play list by lesson so that it's all ready to go for the teacher. THEN it might get used.

I note that Macsense did ask for how others HAVE (successfully) changed their library. I fear I have contributed to the speculative angle.

RussellHltn wrote:I think the starting point is for someone to go though the lesson manual, locate every quote, find the matching video, rip that part to a video clip and then create an index, or perhaps a play list by lesson so that it's all ready to go for the teacher. THEN it might get used.

A play list would certainly work for those instances where he lesson material tells the teacher exactly what part of the video to show. More often I've seen teachers pick sections from videos they are familiar with. In this case there is no guessing what section of a video may be used. The ability to pre-queue the video and have it remain in position indefinitely would suffice for most people.

That said, I don't see most wards spending budget dollars on 3+ iPods and a video server.

All these ideas are great and I would love them to work at our Stake center. We have wireless but know one can use it unless you have special permission from the Stake presidency. I have four TV with VCR/DVD players. One TV is broken and will not be replaced now because of lack of funds. I may have one or two teachers use the TV unit per Sunday. Most of our use of these units is for seminary. One of the teachers uses the iPod and has a cable to the flat screen TV.

One of the biggest problems is the kids taking the remotes. I can imagine what would happen if we had iPods.

Work within your wards and make it work. So many of the programs we have in the Church start with a grass roots movement and then grows. The Church is very careful with their money and will invest in technology that they believe will be around for awhile.

Most people in my stake have computers & printers @ home. Small quantities -- and sometimes large quantities -- of copies are made at home, not @ the library any more.

Ripped video from conference talks, etc., seems more convenient to prepare than requesting a DVD or video because then teachers know that it is ready & available. (Again, this is true where members have the resources for this & will vary in other areas.)

When I was a building librarian 30 years ago, I created a form for teachers to fill out & turn in ahead of time. Prior to our Sunday meetings, I had all copies made, movies (reel to reel back then) cued, pictures, & chalk & erasers ready to go for each teacher who planned ahead.

I had two lines @ the library: An express lane for those who planned ahead & for substitutes. A regular line for everyone else. People actually took to this well, which made things flow more smoothly on Sundays.

When I teach today, I use resources that I own, rather than borrowing materials from the library. The full-fledged materials center is a dying resource in my area.

I realize that this is a technology forum and discussions are always going to head off in that direction, but I would like to see a more serious discussion on how we can or should reorganize our library. Would there be enough interest in this topic to justify a new forum? I would think that since every building has a library and there are almost as many librarians out there as there are clerks.

We talked about doing that exact thing! We apart from the Ipod and iphone thing. But to put all VHS videos and DVDS onto a Huge computer database. Then when someone would like to play something, they could just user the media station and use the menu to select what clip to play.

We never did it, but its still talked about, just need someone dedicated enough to get it done.

I can remember when I'm in the mission, at São Paulo Brazil Missionary Training Center. In the classrooms we have a simple PC with a projector where we can find (in Windows Explorer) a video directory at the network (located in a server at 1st floor of the building) and access training videos ripped from Church satelite meetings, DVD releases, etc. We can do same things at meetinghouses, but the price can be really expensive...

wrigjef wrote:I realize that this is a technology forum and discussions are always going to head off in that direction, but I would like to see a more serious discussion on how we can or should reorganize our library. Would there be enough interest in this topic to justify a new forum? I would think that since every building has a library and there are almost as many librarians out there as there are clerks.

Yes, I would welcome a serious discussion about the reorganization of the meetinghouse and stake libraries. Our stake library has VHS tapes back to the 1970's and only five the current DVDs. I've boxed up the old VHS tapes from the 1970s to the end of 1999. The TV/VCRs are not used and rarely work, no one checks out, or rarely checks out the VHS tapes. Most of the time the TV/VCR players don't work or the remote quits working when the teacher wants to use it. The TV/DVD setups are always broken, or we can never get the remote to work. We've purchased numerous remotes, universal remotes, but can never get them to work or stay working, even though we spent hours programming the remote to work with the old TV and VCR. The TVs we have in the meetinghouse libraries and the stake library are the old analog curved screens, so watching a DVD is not the best, especially when there's writing to be read. We still have old reel-to-reel projectors with some church produced content on reels, cassette tapes and players, typewriters that don't work, and other equipment that I don't know what they're called. All the old equipment is stored in the cupboards or on the shelves and never used.

So, what are the guidelines for updating the library? The church handbook section about the libraries is not helpful in answering these questions. Will there ever be a budget for such a massive update?

I'm winging this off the top of my head.

I think the FM group deals with replacing broken equipment. You can talk to the stake to see if the FM is willing to replace old TV sets that are still functional. But as long as they function reasonably close to the way they did when they were new, I wouldn't count on anything. Worn out and fuzzy is a different deal.

Work with your priesthood leaders on a budget for buying new DVDs and such.

Off hand I'm not sure what the guidelines are for old equipment.

I've often said that when I get release from my current calling, I want the meetinghouse librarian calling. I think there are great ideas on this thread for updating a meetinghouse library (i.e. get rid of or digitize VHS, purchase DVD collections, create on-demand video servers)

One thing, however, that was not brought up was the fact that the church, even in new meetinghouses, are not using LCD screens, even though you can get larger, better screens for a reasonable price. I don't know what corner of the world is still manufacturing CRT tvs - but they are bulky, require a huge amount of space in the library, are usually positioned on a too-tall cart to be effective in a classroom environment, have a poor quality picture, and are just scary!

I asked about this, and can't remember if they said it was a local policy of the FM group, or a wider church policy. I suppose they feel like the screens are too much of a theft risk.

But for a primary class of 5 kids, do you really need a 32" CRT? Nah.. you could do well with a small 19-23" LCD, on a manageably sized cart.

Has anyone seen LCD screens used in their building?

When teaching the 14 year old kids in Sunday School, I gave up trying to use the analog TV/VCR/DVD equipment. It was much easier to bring my laptop to play the church DVD segments for the lessons. The remote on the meetinghouse equipment never worked for the DVDs, so I could never select the right segment for the lesson. Plus, we couldn't read the text on the TV because it was so fuzzy. Many of the church DVDs have scriptures, general authority quotes, etc. on the short segments that go with the lessons. There are 20 or so segments for the lessons throughout the year and reading the menu on the DVD was next to impossible. I had the same problem at home trying to read the text on a DVD with an analog TV, so we replaced them with the LCDs.

sammythesm wrote:One thing, however, that was not brought up was the fact that the church, even in new meetinghouses, are not using LCD screens,

Has anyone seen a flat screen mounted on a cart? Maybe that's the problem.

I'm not sure if the church is ready to mount TVs on every room that it might be needed.

RussellHltn wrote:

sammythesm wrote:One thing, however, that was not brought up was the fact that the church, even in new meetinghouses, are not using LCD screens

Has anyone seen a flat screen mounted on a cart? Maybe that's the problem.

I'm not sure if the church is ready to mount TVs on every room that it might be needed.

We have a flat screen on a cart in our building. It isn't mounted, it just has the weighted base.

It has been nice to use as I've done training for our bishopric.

RussellHltn wrote:Has anyone seen a flat screen mounted on a cart? Maybe that's the problem.

I'm not sure if the church is ready to mount TVs on every room that it might be needed.

Looks like there are a lot of models out there: http://www.google.com/images?q=LCD+cart - and securing the TV to the cart is done more securely than you can secure a CRT to one of those really tall carts. There are even locking mechanisms on some carts that prevent the LCD from being removed from the cart.

RussellHltn wrote:Has anyone seen a flat screen mounted on a cart? Maybe that's the problem.

Our library has two of them. The base is cross strapped to the top of the cart. The player is on the shelf below as before. Works fine.

This is an interesting discussion. Our building has two wards in it, and a fairly small library. My wife is one of the librarians. We have three TV's one crt and two LCD's and between the two wards they are used 3-5 times a Sunday. Each has a VCR and DVD player and both formats are used by the teachers in the Wards.

As far as the large pictures go, many of them are used each Sunday. My wife made a list of each of the pictures by number and description and mounted it on one of those foam boards, large ones on one side and Gospel Picture's on the other. The teachers then can look at the board and have the ones they want retrieved for them. The idea of the photo catalog is an interesting one too, though.

Someone said that "most of the members have. . . " "Most" means "one more than half". I would not want to make any of the information or materials unavailable to 49% of the members of the ward because they didn't have or were not comfortable using the newer technology. I hate to break it to some of the people who use this forum, not all, probably not even half of the members of the Church are as "Tech Savvy" as you are.

And along those lines, many of the leaders and teachers in the Wards and Branches don't have iPods or iPhones or iPads or laptops or any of the other toys that some of you seem to have.

The technological revolution is continuing, and that is good, but let's not assume that all the people in the world or even in the U.S. are jumping on the bandwagon.

My rant is over. God Bless and let us all work together for the progress of the Lord's Kingdom on Earth.

In thinking of the bishop's initial observation, I am impressed that the root of the problem may lay with the teachers. Having taught primary, YM, Elders, HP, and most importantly, Teacher Development, I find that most teachers do not adequately prepare their lessons as the Brethern & Sisters teach us. If they did, and were aware of the library's resources, they would soon make better use of it. I, for one, seldom taught a lesson, particularly in Primary, without two or three large laminated pictures. As the Scoutmaster Basic course teaches, "use your resources".

mprusse wrote:I'm the agent bishop this year in our three ward building and I've been watching the use of the building library in anticipation of making some changes. After obtaining feedback and some observation, I've noticed the large library now primarily serves to distribute chalk, scriptures and to make copies. The several shelves of VHS tapes, TV/VCR combos, large laminated pictures and overhead projectors are never even touched.

This year I would like to direct a complete overhaul of the building library and I'm looking for ideas of how other wards have transformed their libraries into a more usable tool. I can already see us dumping the overhead projectors at least. Perhaps even the laminated pictures in favor of several copies of the Gospel Art Book (06048090). I definitely don't want to transfer the old VHS tapes to DVD as they are of a by-gone era and not appealing to many members. They can easily be replaced by copies of the newer DVDs recently produced by the Church. If we go DVD, then we can dump all the TV/VCR combos.

Thoughts & ideas? Thank you.

I am new to the calling and looking for ideas too.
Thanks,

RussellHltn wrote:Has anyone seen a flat screen mounted on a cart? Maybe that's the problem.

I'm not sure if the church is ready to mount TVs on every room that it might be needed.

We got an LCD last year. It's bolted through the base to a cart.

Just a quick comment... The new Helping in the Vineyard site (vineyard.lds.org) allows anyone to help with Church volunteer projects, one of which is to tag Church pictures, video snippets, whole video segments, etc... to later be used. I imagine some of these resources will one day allow some of the ideas on this thread be implemented, like pulling up specific stories or segments of Conference talks.

I was called as a meetinghouse librarian for a short period of time. I found the calling quite frustrating because there was no standardized protocol for the calling. I was able to find some resources that helped me as I served in that calling but I'm afraid to say that now that I have been released those things that I worked so hard to institute are not being used. Let me share a few of them with you. Are you aware that the church has an account with a large office supply company that they order supplies through? There is even a person within that company (companies name escapes me) that handles all LDS orders. The librarians can call an order in for supplies including copier toner and drum which can be quite costly for a member to purchase and then wait to be reimbursed. The librarian can use the ward unit number when ordering these items and the supplies are shipped to the librarian. This was quite useful to me. I am surprised that this information isn't passed down to each new librarian that is called. You can also use the churches meetinghouse library inventory to set an inventory for each library, a sort of shopping list/inventory control if you will. You can copy and paste this information to a spreadsheet to use. It also makes finding resources for members easier. If you use it as your libraries inventory of materials you either have it or you don't. No searching or wondering if the item exists. This may or may not be helpful information to you. I found that there is little written instruction to follow as a librarian.

mysmithfamily wrote:Are you aware that the church has an account with a large office supply company that they order supplies through? There is even a person within that company (companies name escapes me) that handles all LDS orders. The librarians can call an order in for supplies including copier toner and drum which can be quite costly for a member to purchase and then wait to be reimbursed. The librarian can use the ward unit number when ordering these items and the supplies are shipped to the librarian. This was quite useful to me.

The contact is with Staples. (It used to be under Corporate Express .) However, I'm not sure as the Librarian has the authority to order supplies without going though a member of the Bishopric. It seems unusual that the supplies would be shipped to the librarian's house rather then to the bishop's.

I'd love to head/participate in a volunteer group to document a meetinghouse library catalog. It seems like every ward librarian has to reinvent the wheel when really what is needed is a standard index (like what is found in the old Church Materials Catalog) of the Church-produced materials available, or appropriate, and their numbering system explained so reference and retrieval could be improved.

I'm a current MLIS grad student at UW (Seattle) and would love to contribute my domain knowledge on the subject. I actually tried contacting someone from the Consortium of Church Libraries and Archives (http://ceslc.byu.edu/) about whether there are any resources out there for Sunday Schools/librarians in the church. No response yet.

Anyhow, let's get something going!

I'd be all about a focus group for improving meetinghouse libraries and making them more relevant. It seems, in my ward at least, that people don't even know you can check materials out to use in your home! (I'm a newly called Sunday School president and I've been reading all about this in the Handbook, etc.) Anyhow, I can definitely see a forum for ward librarians on LDS Tech.

A problem I see is actually finding material or even knowing it even exists in the library. Our library has multiple copies of the same picture in multiple locations as at one time someone divided the library into gospels. I would love to see a computer in the library and all of the materials listed in a database. If patrons could type in a simple topic search, and see a list of materials pertaining to that topic appear with its respective location in the room, more people would be more apt to use the library for more than just a copy center. The backside of the library, where patrons can't easily see, has new looking materials from the 70s that look like they've never been used.

It would be nice if the church had a standardized database program for the library that included search queries and location of material. This would allow everyone to get familiar with 1 system that they could find throughout the world in all Wards/Branches.

Anyone have trouble with too many cords on their TV Tray? We have a LapTop, DVD Player, Video Player, cam corder. They each have their own cords, and then there's the extension cord, HDMI to HDMI cord, AV Adapter cord, etc. Any ideas on this?

columbo2 wrote:Anyone have trouble with too many cords on their TV Tray? We have a LapTop, DVD Player, Video Player, cam corder. They each have their own cords, and then there's the extension cord, HDMI to HDMI cord, AV Adapter cord, etc. Any ideas on this?

Since each of those devices requires a power cord - not to mention the several additional cords for HDMI, etc, my solution to this conglomeration of cords is to purchase a few VELCRO straps and tie each cord into a small loop so it doesn't get in the way. The electrical cords could be strapped to the cart. The additional cords such as the HDMI, etc should be tied individually and kept away from the power cords to minimize interference.

todd.d.robbins wrote:I'd love to head/participate in a volunteer group to document a meetinghouse library catalog. It seems like every ward librarian has to reinvent the wheel when really what is needed is a standard index (like what is found in the old Church Materials Catalog) of the Church-produced materials available, or appropriate, and their numbering system explained so reference and retrieval could be improved.

I'm a current MLIS grad student at UW (Seattle) and would love to contribute my domain knowledge on the subject. I actually tried contacting someone from the Consortium of Church Libraries and Archives (http://ceslc.byu.edu/) about whether there are any resources out there for Sunday Schools/librarians in the church. No response yet.

Anyhow, let's get something going!

I've been an agent ward librarian for about 6 months now and am a librarian by profession as well. I would LOVE to get the library materials in a digital catalog!!! I have ward members call me and ask if we have a certain DVD segment or picture in the library; it would be great for them to be able to search the library catalog online. Any other news about if we can do this or how to do it?

I too was appalled to find that there is NO electronic database of things that should be in the ward library! Salt Lake should have a complete electronic download for every item available (now and in the past) from the distribution center.

Luckily someone in my stake had put together a spreadsheet, but it still was not searchable. I had to create separate listings for Description and other stuff. I would then print those in a two column format using Libre Office word processor. What a pain!

Since my library has been around for 25+ years, we have lots of stuff such as the old Gospel Library Kit in blue boxes. I had to scan those indexes in and OCR them to get their listing into the spreadsheet "database." It took me about 6 months, but I finally had a listing by number and description, but still no topics, categories or anything.

People now come in and ask for a particular item, and I give them the listing notebook. However, if the keywords they are looking for are not in the description, then we are sunk.

I also have the additional problem where we are supporting a Spanish ward with their own materials. As it turns out, the church will put out a video tape in English and give it the number of 53034. The Spanish version is 53034 002. This works fine if you are trying to sort by number, but then there is no way to isolate the spanish description from the English one. I ended up putting and "s" on the number for Spanish items and adding a "-" to their descriptions. This way the descriptions in Spanish end up all together in the listing.

I have written a database program using SQLlite3 to allow me to add in categories, topics, speakers, movie titles, and other stuff to the listings. This way, I can print an index for each of the above items. That would allow a teacher to look for pictures of the prophet or the temple, look for talk topics, look for a movie by title when three on a certain VHS tape, or look for talks by a particular person, etc.

I am in the process of [long pause while an idea struck me....] importing my existing spreadsheet by reading the xml file (libre office writer is nothing more than a zipped xml file). That is pretty much done, but then the pause happened and I realized I could export the spreadsheet as a csv and be 100% accurate now. So, I guess I could say that within a few hours, I wll have my 800+ item spreadsheet imported into the SQLlite3 DB. There are other tables which can be imported the same way, so I am on my way to having all of the items listed above as searchable indexes.

I would appreciate any opportunity to work with someone on this effort.

Paul

I had some time to kill after knee surgery this summer and wrote a database program that lists the 800+ unique items in our library. This program has the ability to look up a topic and list all items related to that topic. To test the program I manually scanned through the description for each item and found 94 items for Book of Mormon. Now when I click on the Book of Mormon topic, the inventory list shows only those items.

My problem now is getting more topics cross-referenced to inventory numbers. I called and asked Salt Lake for an electronic copy of the distribution catalog, because I think there was a complete cross-reference in the back of that book. Of course, I was told "It is not available" or some other words that basically said "Not a chance."

If someone has one of those old catalogs with the cross-reference, then we could look at converting it to electronic form.

Otherwise, I and hopefully others, will have to go through every picture and video tape to determine topic(s).

The program is written in Gambas (similar to Visual Basic) and if needed I think could be converted fairly easily to VB. At this point it runs under Linux. It does have instructions for capturing VHS tapes or other media to the computer and then could have instructions for making a dvd.

Any help would be appreciated in carrying this forward. However, I feel like many on here that the problem is multi-faceted: 1) teachers do not prepare well enough, 2) librarians cannot find materials on topic "X" fast enough, 3) lack of real support from Salt Lake, and 4) declarations from stake presidents who say "that's great that you want to make the library more useful, but there is absolutely NO money for materials or equipment, and we have not idea how to do it anyway."

Paul