NOLA Staff Mentoring Program
In an effort to help the NOLA staff to better understand and serve the needs of the membership, NOLA is instituting a library staff shadowing program. Through this program NOLA staff will visit member libraries for day; during which time they will learn about, observe and may possibly participate in typical work tasks (such as circulation, reference, technical processing, and other duties). If your library would like to volunteer to participate in this project please contact Brad Stephens in the NOLA office at 330.847.7744 x14.

NOLA Executive Director Interviews
On November 11 and 12 the NOLA Executive Director Search Committee will be interviewing the two finalists for the NOLA Director position. All staff from member libraries are invited to the NOLA Office for an opportunity to meet the two finalists at a light lunch which will follow the interviews and begin at noon on both days.

Voices from the Net
Instant Messaging (IM) allows users to carry on real-time, on-demand chat with others on the net, the equivalent of a text based phone call. The use of IM technology (particularly AOL’s Instant Messenger) continues to increase at an amazing rate. Look for this trend to continue in the next twelve months with AOL’s newest enhancement – the addition of audio messaging to their IM product. Using AIM Talk users can "speak" to one another, similar to a telephone conversation - without the long distance fees. Visit www.aol.com for more information

Another voice over Internet technology announced this week may have an even larger impact - dialpad.com allows users to connect to the Internet and use the free dialpad software to make telephone calls not to other computer users, but to traditional analog phones allowing users to call long distance without the charges. The sound quality isn’t perfect, it sounds like a cell phone - but with free long distance I don’t think users will really be concerned. If you’d like to know more visit the Dialpad website at http://www.dialpad.com.

How the Sexes Surf (From: www.anchordesk.com)
By Allen Weiner
VP of Analyst Services at NetRatings

When it comes to men and women, I'm old school. There's clearly different wiring going on in the brains of each gender.

To prove my point, look at the latest figures from Nielsen/NetRatings on how the sexes use the Web. Men are looking to improve their financial status. Women are interested in health and quality of life issues.

Nielsen//NetRatings Top Sites for Males 18+: September 1999

Nielsen//NetRatings Top Sites for Females 18+: September 1999

The battle of the sexes on the World Wide Web is not your classic fight for the TV remote -- a face-off where screen time is divided between "Monday Night Football" and the latest installment of "Oprah".

Looking at Nielsen//NetRatings data for the month of September, it appears both genders are focused on using the Web as a utility. But that’s where the similarity ends. A quick drill-down reveals men over 18 are focused on increasing personal riches, while women are attempting to better their health and quality of life, as well as to capitalize on the Web’s ability to create new efficiencies.

Web Benchmarks
Ever want to see which is faster Explorer or Navigator? Think it would be cool to test the speed of you connection or see if PC’s really do outperform Macintosh’s for web browsing? Then I-Bench is the tool for you. I-Bench a free web-based tool developed by Ziff-Davis allows users to test and compare web performance for a variety of different systems, connections, and software packages.