Presenting Storytime with Jane Cobb

Washington State Library is proud to bring Jane Cobb, author of I’m a Little Teapot! Presenting Preschool Storytime and What’ll I do with the Baby-O? Nursery Rhymes, Songs, and Stories for Babies, This full day workshop is funded with LSTA (Library Services and Technology Act) funds from IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services.)

Youth services library staff (and those who conduct storytimes at the library) are invited to attend this free workshop at one of the seven locations around the state. If there is space left three weeks before each workshop, registration will be accepted from non-youth library staff as well.

Read the rest of this entry »

Register at http://www.secstate.wa.gov/library/libraries/training/trainingCalendar.aspx

From WSL (in person)

Serving Patrons who have Physical/Mental Disabilities Effectively

February 24, 9:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.; Burlington Public Library

Ensuring the library experience is a positive one for patrons who have physical and mental disabilities is important. This workshop will provide communication and interaction best practices as well as practical techniques and strategies to enhance the patron’s library experience and ensure the best service provided.

Presenter Nancie Payne is from Payne & Associates, Inc. in Olympia, WA and has over 30 years conducting trainings and keynote addresses on various topics including serving customers with non-apparent disabilities. Register here.

Read the rest of this entry »

Staff at the Washington State Library (WSL) will host two sessions of a free online grant-writing workshop on January 27. The one-hour presentation with time following for questions will give attendees an insider’s look at several of our grant cycles, including Washington Rural Heritage, Supporting Student Success, and Hard Times. WSL staff will discuss project requirements as well as tips and helpful advice for successful grant applications. This presentation is perfect for anyone considering a grant-funded project with the State Library as well as those wanting to brush up on their applications skills.

The presentation will be January 27 from 9–10:30 a.m. and repeated at 3:30–5 p.m. Please register at www.sos.wa.gov/quicklinks/grant-writing. It will be archived within twenty four hours of the presentation if you are unable to attend. If you have any questions, contact Kirsten Furl at [email protected].

This training opportunity is available to library staff in Washington State.

Since the Library Development team is out on the road a lot visiting libraries throughout the state, we often take advantage of our visits by taking some pictures of the libraries and their surrounding areas. This let’s us keep a visual record of the libraries we serve, but also allows you to tour a number of Washington libraries without having to pay for gas!

Check out all our photos online via Flickr, or look below to see some of my recent favorites.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Washington State Library made the front page of the Olympian this morning. Unfortunately the headline reads: “State Library Faces Cuts.” I’ll keep my fingers crossed that one day in the future we’ll make it to the front page again with a better headline, something like “State Library prospers in new age of cultural awareness.”

In the meantime, the article has some information on what’s going on at the State Library and the sorts of cuts we’re anticipating.

Similar versions of the story appeared in other McClatchy papers, notably Tacoma’s News Tribune and The Bellingham Herald.

For more information on the cuts, and to find out how the State Library serves the vulnerable, and why we have to keep up a certain amount of Maintenance of Effort for Federal Funds, check out the Washington State Library’s State Library Budget Cuts information page.

Ask-WA Statistics – December, 2009

December tends to be a slower month for Ask-WA, mainly because academic traffic drops off so sharply during the holiday breaks. In numbers:

• Email questions received: 3319
• Chat sessions requested: 3474
• Chat sessions accepted: 2883
• Qwidget requests (% of total): 791 (22.8%)

On a positive note, our answering percentage rose from its dangerously low 74% last month up to 83% in December, which is ideal. The best part is that this higher ratio is due to every cooperative maintaining a good ratio in December (as opposed to one group doing super-well and raising the rest up). Qwidget requests, as a percentage, rose from November to come back up to their average 20-25% level.

The word cloud highlights some of the most-used words left in survey comments throughout December. Some great words this month include: amazing, awesome, prompt, kind, helpful, useful, and wonderful.

Read the rest of this entry »

The American Library Association released on January 12th a new report detailing economic trends in US libraries and providing an outlook for 2010. Says ALA Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels: “This report was prepared to inform and assist library leaders as they plan in these very difficult times. It succinctly brings together diverse strands of data from the past decade to provide a useful benchmark for the library community and its advocates.”

There’s some great data in the report worth looking at, including some of the following snippets about public libraries:

• 25.4 million Americans reported using their public library more than 20 times in the last year, up from 20.3 million households in 2006.
• The average number of  in-person public  library visits rose to 12.7  in 2009 from 9.1 in 2006.
• Use  of  the  public  library  by  computer  (from  home,  work  or  school)  doubled from 2006 to 2009 (6 times per year, up from 2.9 times in 2006).
• 22% of Americans visited their public library by computer from home, office or school more often in the last 6 months. This percentage may seem low, but it is about 51 million Americans.

The report contains a lot of information about the economic situations of libraries in the past ten years, and uses graphs and charts to help display information in a meaningful way. You can download the full report (or library type-specific reports), and view the full press release, over at the ALA web site.

eBooks (and eReaders) have been getting a ton of press over the past couple months, and I have a feeling that they will continue to do so throughout the year. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is happening in Vegas right now, and a lot of the buzz coming out is about ebooks and readers. In case you haven’t been paying attention, though, I’d like to highlight some of my favorite articles and thoughts on ebooks to date and for the coming year.

First, and you’ve probably read parts of this, Sherman Alexie was interviewed for Mother Jones, and he has some particular remarks about a particular ebook reader that are quite risqué. I won’t reprint them here, but the entire interview is worthwhile and available at motherjones.com.

Robert Darnton gives his case for books at Publisher’s Weekly, and says the following about ebooks:

“I want to write an electronic book. Here is how my fantasy takes shape. An “e-book,” unlike a printed codex, can contain many layers arranged in the shape of a pyramid. Readers can download the text and skim the topmost layer, which will be written like an ordinary monograph. If it satisfies them, they can print it out, bind it (binding machines can now be attached to computers and printers), and study it at their convenience in the form of a custom-made paperback. If they come upon something that especially interests them, they can click down a layer to a supplementary essay or appendix. They can continue deeper through the book, through bodies of documents, bibliography, historiography, iconography, background music, everything I can provide to give the fullest possible understanding of my subject. In the end, they will make the subject theirs, because they will find their own paths through it, reading horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, wherever the electronic links may lead.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Tomorrow is a new year. Some would even say a new decade (though we know that technically that’s not until 2011). Either way, it’s a time of year when people get introspective and think about how they can work to improve their lives and the world around them.

Maybe your resolutions this year involve getting and staying fit, reconnecting with friends, furthering your education, or getting rid of some bad habits. Those are all admirable things, to be sure, but I’ve got another resolution you should add to your list.

In 2010, make a resolution to support your local library. Not sure what supporting your library means or how you can do it? Read on for a few tips.

Step 1 – Find out who your local library is and where they’re located

Okay, so maybe this one is a no-brainer. After all, if you don’t know who your library is, or where they are, that makes it tough to support them in any real fashion. There are a lot of ways to souse out your local library. One that I like for being pretty universal is the National Center for Education Statistics “Search for Public Libraries” page, located at http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/libraries/librarysearch/.

You can search by name, or by city and state, but the easiest method is probably to enter the zip code or your home or work, and search within a mile radius (I recommend starting with 10 miles and then expanding outward if you don’t get any results). Chances are there is a library closer than you think.

Read the rest of this entry »

Comcast Newsmakers talks with Sam Reed about the various functions of his office. It’s a good summary of the (rather odd) variety of functions the Office of the Secretary of State performs: elections, corporations, charities, archives, legacy project, the state library.

The Washington State Library gets excellent treatment, both time-wise and praise-wise. If you’re impatient, you can skip ahead – we’re covered from 1:01 – 2:16.