Through community partnerships, Wauconda (Ill.) Area Public Library developed Spanish- and English-language brochures, as well as a video that was posted to YouTube. Housed in a brand-new doublewide trailer, the tiny Pinewoods branch of the Athens (Ga.) Regional Library System developed a volunteer ESL training manual that’s on the library’s website. These are among the … Continue reading Dollar General Invests in the American Dream
Public libraries have maintained that they are significant in boosting children’s literacy since the first children’s section was established in the late 1800s. But in times of economic uncertainty, decision-makers find it easy to levy budget cuts against discrete, relatively powerless entities such as libraries. Regional approaches create entrée for libraries to gain greater visibility … Continue reading Early Literacy: A Sustainable Statewide Approach
We strive to provide great customer service, yet few of us actually use the “C” word. We have many names—patron, borrower, user, reader—but “customer” remains controversial and typically we avoid it. Not so at Howard County Library, located in the Baltimore suburbs. At HCL, they embrace the term, feeling that it accurately conveys the relationships … Continue reading The Customer’s Always Right
I recently answered a call on ASK NYPL, the New York Public Library’s telephonic and electronic reference line, from the New York City Police Department. A 16-year-old girl was threatening to throw herself off the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge that links Brooklyn to Staten Island, and the only identification that she had in her effects was an … Continue reading When Crisis Calls
The much-hyped OCLC Web-scale Management Services (WMS) moved from pilot phase to production last month with the release of acquisitions and circulation components to around 30 early adopters. The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga has posted an ambitious timeline that would make it the first institution to go live with the product on August 30; … Continue reading OCLC’s Web-scale Management Services Released to Early Adopters
When Noelle Rader, a junior at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, applied for a student job in the library’s music and dance department, she was mostly looking to earn some money to pay rent and tuition. And as a music major and violist, she was also interested in working with the library’s viola … Continue reading Reaching Undergrads: Recruitment via Internship
The next time you find yourself in Canton, Ohio, make a stop at the National First Ladies’ Library, home of the Abigail Fillmore Library Room. This room replicates the first permanent White House library, established by Millard and Abigail Fillmore in 1850. Although the library remained mostly intact for more than 50 years, just a … Continue reading The First First Library
If by vocation or avocation you’ve come to cherish children’s literature, you’ve no doubt encountered some skepticism about this particular passion. For too many people, children’s books simply don’t merit serious consideration. As Seth Lerer aptly observes in his award-winning Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter, “For a long time, what … Continue reading It’s Not Monkey Business
Kim Wayans, joined by her husband Kevin Knotts, shared a bit of her life growing up in a family of comedians at the August 6 author luncheon during the Black Caucus of the American Library Association's seventh National Conference of African American Librarians in Birmingham, Alabama, "Culture Keepers VII: Bridging the Divide with Information, Access, … Continue reading Kim Wayans/Kevin Knotts Writing Team Brings Laughter to Authors Luncheon
Lady Gaga is totally playing us. I mean, “Alejandro,” a song that even ABBA couldn’t get past the semifinals of the Eurovision Song Contest, a video that includes her wearing a machine-gun bra that Madonna would be embarrassed by . . . and it’s a worldwide hit. (For my money, “Bad Romance” is much more … Continue reading Who’s in Charge Here?
Librarians and their supporters spoke loudly and clearly about the value of libraries during the American Library Association’s 2010 Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., June 24–29. On Library Advocacy Day, June 29, some 2,000 librarians and library supporters registered for a rally at Upper Senate Park, according to Emily Sheketoff, executive director of ALA’s Washington … Continue reading Librarians Head for the Hill to Rally for Reading
Whenever I’ve created an instructional handout for students, I’ve struggled with what to include. For everything that ends up on the sheet, there’s usually five times as much that would be useful to students in the class. I include the URL to a web page with more content, but URLs are often long and I … Continue reading Guided by Barcodes
