Loading...
The Goderich Signal-Star, 1987-04-22, Page 7GODERICH SIGNAL -STAR, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22, 1987 --PAGE 7 TICE Let it be known that GERD C. HEIDINGER is in no way associated with Samuelsons Jewellers of Goderich. Samuelsons Jewellers wish to thank the people of Goderich and surrounding area for their coati ruing patronage. Samuelsons Suaac se AUX Gadarfrb P:f TRUST THE "ALL-PRO.TEAM" YOU CAN DEPEND UPON. Me Bog p groin tae rbmpdnr um ltd Canada' leading mamAattu,eo ut p.bnogr m . a.. You have duo asSuran.e that Bog 1, pm5L. .,.,00 Wiling os the finest a+dddLIe hur leputdn.a no. ., r on It fur rehabte ,nstdllaGnn Contact HODGINS & HAYTER LTD. Farm & Municipal Draina=ge R.R. No. 3 Parkhill 559-238-2313 CaII us for all your drainage requirements. Allen Hayter or Bruce McKichan tIAI.ITX.'pRO¢iJCTS .{r G)IJALCTV ItiSTALLA The Benmiller General Store, closed since 1975, is under new management and openor business once again.•The.original store burned doWni in 1938 aid was. rebuilt in 1940. New Owners Gary Benmiller Gener ' A century -old tradition was 'revived recently, when partners Garry Woodcock. and Giena Wyss opened. the Benmiller. General Store, which had been closed, since 1975. ' The original Benmiller General Store was built at least 100, years ago., It burned down in 1938 and was rebuilt in 1940. "Woodcock, from Sarnia, who has lived in this.area for the past two years, purchased the building along with local resident Wyss Last October and immediately began an ex- tensive renovation program. • "I had' been driving by this place for a year and saw that it, was closed. I said to Woodcock and Giena Wyss have had extensive renovations made, but kept an old-fashioned look to the store. The o'ifical grand open- ing will beheld Friday, April 24. Store opens again BUSINESS BEAT myself '"That's a shame. Something should. be done with it," said. Woodcock. Renovator Work was carried out with careful attention to the history . of the building; Woodcock said.. "I .wanted to make it look old', to retain the flavor of an old time general store."- Toward;this end, the owners added such touches as bearawork done by Dungannon area Mennonites, personalized wrought . iron chairs for the coffee shop made at Sharp .Creek Forge,. and a 14 -foot high,. porch over the front entrance. - Many local 'businesses were involved in the renovations and some 'local citizens „even volunteered itemsv such as an antique Sleigh, to give the store a unique atmosphere. • "The locals like the idea of having a store here again," said Woodcock: , An open }lease, featuring free coffee and cold beverages,will be held Friday, April 24' at the store. ederal action to reduce water levels The federal government is committed to doing everything in its power to combat the problem of high water, levels on the Great Lakes, Environment Minister Tom McMillan, said today on releasing a brief report outlining federal actions. . McMillan stated.. that other levels of government have also been asked to co- operate in efforts to reduce the current levels on the Great Lakes. Shoreline management ' is a provincial responsibility. The federal government's jurisdiction over water levels. on the Great Lakes is limited to bilateral actions with the United States. "Federal initiatives are due in large part to the efforts of several Members of Parlia- ment on the government.side whose consti- tuencies border the Great Lakes and who have made this problem one of the top priorities," McMillan concluded. In addition to the specific initiatives, the federal government is ready to consider any requests under federal disaster financial assistance arrangements that may be made by the Province of Ontario. Following years of above-average precipitation, Great Lakes water levels ex- ceeded all-time highs throughout much of 1985 and 1986. Near-mormal precipitation in 1986 itself has resulted in a moderate' im- provement on the upstream lakes — Lake Superior is now more than half a foot below levels of a year earlier, and levels on .Lakes Michigan -Huron are showing a downward trend. Massive amounts of water already in the system, however, must still move "through the lower lakes. Even with normal precipitation, dangerously high levels will persist on Lakes Michigan -Huron, St. Clair and Erie for at least 'another two to three years.' • Efforts. are being made to relieve the main bottlenecks in the system, the Niagara River and, to . a lesser extent, the St. Lawrence River, in order to accelerate drainage of the lower lakes. Second priority Huron Library moves into electronic age This has been called the Information Age and Huron County Library is ready to be part of it. Using state of the art technology Huron County Library is building a machine-readable catalog using optical laser disks. But what is more ex- citing is the fact that this is being done in cooperation with 20 other libraries in the Province. OLC Ontario Consortium represents a group of county, city and town libraries that have agreed to pursue the goal of automation together. OI.0 was founded two years ago to look at future automation projects for county and medium sized city libraries., A deci- sion was made in 1986 to place the catalogs of all the libraries on a single data base. The technology chosen to do this uses laser disks. Each library has a set of four 5.5 Web disks which contain 5 million records of books in the Library of Congress. The library uses a personal computer and checks its titles against these disks and puts any it finds onto floppy disks. These disks are sent to the OLC to be incor- porated into the combined base. Books that are not found in t laser disks willbe checked against a larger data base by Brodart Automation, a company which has been hired to produce the Database. In a years time all the libraries will have sub- titted their catalog records and OLC will produce a single laser disk with the 600,000 titles of the twenty-one libraries. This disk can be searched by author, title, subject, key word or numeric keys. Users will be able to use the sophisticated search'techni- ques that are used in on-line searching without the expense of going to an on-line system. The system will also be very 'user friend' with a beginners mode for the novice. This is the largest Cooperative venture ever • undertaken- by public libraries in.*On- tarso. It is also a unique example of cooperation betwen all levels of govern - ment (Local, Provincial and Federal). Local authorities have committed $300,000 over three years to the project. The Pro- vincial Ministry of Citizenship and Culture has made a grant of $476,600 and the Federal Government's Ministry of Employinent and hnmigration has provid- ed Job Development Grants to train and employ computer operators. Each -library ha& two or three workers hired through the Job Development Branch, to search the disks and input the titles. OLC has organiz- ed a year long training program to train these workers not only in the specific library application but in general com- puter operations such as word processing, spreadsheets and data base management. At the end of the year the workers will be able to.find a job in the work place as skill- ed computer operators. The course is con- ducted by Lambton College in Sarnia which will give certificates• to the suc- cessful workers. Huron County Library is contributing about $18,684 over three years toward's a catalog building project based on a cost of $.26 a title. This cost includes an IBM com- puter, a CD ROM Player, Laser Disks and the final OLC Laser Disk Catalog. OLC has organized the Job Development Grants and the training program. Lambton Coun- ty Library has contracted to act as the pro- ject management team for OI,C with Ron Baker the Lambton County Librarian, ac- ting as the Chief Executive Officer. 01,C expects to present a plan to its member libraries by the fall in ways to use its new Database to automate other func- tions in the Library. At present libraries keep most of their records on cards which have to be filed and changed each time a transaction takes place. In the near future, these transactions can be done at elec- tronic speeds allowing the staff to spend "more time in helping the publiThe elec tronic library is just around th corner for Huron County Library. is being given, to longer-term solutions. These focus on improved shoreline manage- ment a provincial responsibility as recommended by six international, federal/provincial and other major studies carried out in the past 35 -years,. Try our chicken schnitzels, chicken nuggets siid chickfingers. GET 1 FREE OPEN: Tuesday, Wednesday 8. Thursday 9 a.m. - 6 p.m.; Friday 9 a.m. - B p.m.; Saturday 9 a.m. - 3 p.m.