Volume 11, June 11, 2015 for the WSL Updates mailing list

Topics include:

1) MAKE HISTORY COME ALIVE WITH ZINES!

2) PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT GRANTS

3) BOOK YOUR BANK PILOT PROGRAM OPPORTUNITY

4) NORTHWEST ELEARN CONFERENCE 2015

5) JUNE IS GLBT BOOK MONTH

6) FREE CE OPPORTUNITIES NEXT WEEK

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1) MAKE HISTORY COME ALIVE WITH ZINES!

Washington State Library, a division of the Office of the Secretary of State, is sponsoring the 1st Annual Historical Zine Contest with co-sponsors Washington State Archives and Timberland Regional Library. Participants are asked to create a zine about some aspect of Washington History.

Entries will be accepted from four age groups:

• Grades 4-6;
• Grades 7-9;
• Grades 10-12;
• Adults of all ages.

Workshops will be held to learn how to make a zine at:

• Olympia Timberland Library – Saturday, July 11th from 2:00 – 8:00 p.m.
• Yelm Timberland Library – Saturday, July 25th from 1:00 – 4:00 p.m.

For more information go to sos.wa.gov/q/zine. Questions? Please contact Judy Pitchford at [email protected].

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2) PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT GRANTS

The Professional Development (PD) Grant Cycle is open. The Washington State Library has phased out Continuing Education (CE) grants. Professional Development (PD) grants replace CE grants. PD grants use a revised process for applying, reporting, and claiming reimbursement. There are some major changes.

Applying for PD Grants:

• Only libraries may apply for PD grants;
• Individuals can no longer apply;
• Qualifying libraries include public libraries, schools and their school libraries, academic institutions and their libraries, tribal libraries, and non-profit institutions and their libraries.

Libraries can apply for two types of PD grants:

• Libraries may apply on behalf of individual staff members. The grant can allow up to $1,000 per person per year. The maximum per library is $6,000 per year.
• Libraries may apply to bring training into the library. The maximum is $3,000 per library per year.

Either a library or its parent institution, depending on their structure, has the authority to apply for these grants and receive reimbursements. In either case, only libraries and library staff are eligible to use the grants. If branches of a library or library system apply, they are considered part of a single library for award limits. Libraries serving a population of less than 5,000 are eligible for a waiver of the required match.

For more information, including application forms, visit sos.wa.gov/q/pdgrants. Questions? Please contact Maura Walsh at [email protected].

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3) BOOK YOUR BANK PILOT PROGRAM OPPORTUNITY

Bank On Washington’s mission is to provide un-banked and under-banked individuals with access to financial education and mainstream financial services. Sponsored by the Washington State Treasurer’s Office, Bank On Washington is a network of government entities, financial institutions, and non-profit organizations which includes nine local Bank On partners in eleven counties. These partners work closely within their communities to fulfill this mission. Currently, the counties included are Cowlitz, King, Kitsap, Mason, Pierce, San Juan, Skagit, Snohomish, Spokane, Whatcom, and Yakima.

Bank On Washington has been awarded a grant from Bank On 2.0 to reach out to the un-banked and under-banked in rural and hard-to-reach communities. Bank On Washington’s grant creates a pilot project called “Book Your Bank” which plans to work with local public and tribal libraries to create a financial safe place where community members can come once or twice a month to receive financial counseling and classes, get their credit score checked, access computers to do online banking, and open up bank accounts.

If your library is interested in participating in Book Your Bank or for more information, please contact Gina Stark, Director of External Affairs, Washington State Treasurer’s Office at 206-550-7329 or [email protected].

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4) NORTHWEST ELEARN CONFERENCE 2015

Registration is now open for the tenth annual Northwest eLearn Conference. This year’s event will be held in Olympia, Washington from Thursday, October 22 – Friday, October 23, 2015. Two exceptional keynote speakers, Jesse Stommel of Hybrid Pedagogy and Audrey Watters of Hack Education, will launch Northwest eLearn Conference 2015.

NWeLC provides an opportunity for higher education and K-12 faculty, administrators, instructional designers, and technologists to come together to discuss best practices, collaborations, and ideas in integrating technology in learning.

This year’s NWeLC will be held at the Olympia Red Lion. To reserve a room at the conference rate and find out about transportation options, visit the conference travel & hotel page at nwelearn.org/travel-hotel.

Register for the Northwest eLearn 2015 Conference at nwelearn.org/registration by Friday, September 11, 2015 for discounted rate.

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5) JUNE IS GLBT BOOK MONTH

The American Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Round Table announces June as GLBT Book Month. Librarians, booksellers, and community advocates are invited to celebrate and highlight the work being done in GLBT literature. Visit www.ala.org/glbtrt/glbt-book-month for more information.

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6) FREE CE OPPORTUNITIES NEXT WEEK

June 15

• Conference Attendee Tips – ALA in San Francisco (Idaho Commission for Libraries); 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. PDT
• Digital Literacy Services in Action: Online Webinar (Washington State Library); 2:00 – 3:00 p.m. PDT
• Developing Competencies for Virtual Classroom Facilitators (InSync Training); 10:00 – 11:00 a.m. PDT

June 16

• Library Love for Library Reads (Booklist); 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. PDT
• Developing a Strategic Plan for Volunteer Engagement (VolunteerMatch.org); 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. PDT

June 17

• PNR Rendezvous: PubMed Update webinar (National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Pacific Northwest Region); 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. PDT
• How to Ask for BIG Gifts from Individuals (in 3 Easy Steps) (4Good); 10:00 – 11:00 a.m. PDT
• Engaging the Volunteer of the Future: A California Library Literacy Services Webinar (Infopeople); 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. PDT
• Engaging Your Local Writing Community (Library Journal); 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. PDT
• Take Your Message Online: Digital Advocacy for Small & Rural Libraries (Techsoup); 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. PDT
• Manage Work. Inspire People. Three Ways to Transform Your Managers into Leaders (Training Magazine Network); 10:00 – 11:00 a.m. PDT
• ELibrary Curriculum Edition (ProQuest); 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. PDT

June 18

• Show Your Work: The New Knowledge Management (InSync Training); 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. PDT
• Learning & Development and Its Importance to Employee Engagement (Training Magazine Network); 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 p.m. PDT
• CultureGrams (ProQuest); 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. PDT
• SIRS Issues Researcher (ProQuest); 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. PDT

For more information and to register (unless otherwise linked above), visit the WSL Training Calendar at sos.wa.gov/q/training.

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The Washington State Library has gone social! Friend/follow us at:

         Facebook: on.fb.me/FBWSL;

         Twitter: twitter.com/WAStateLib.

The American Library Association (ALA) celebrates Banned Books Week from September 30th to October 6th.  Banned Books Week celebrates its 30th year raising awareness about censorship and intellectual freedom by highlighting each state (including Washington) and its history of intellectual freedom.  ALA has also created a YouTube site that features book lovers reading passages from their favorite banned books.

The Washington State Library celebrates Banned Books Week by informing everyone that many Washington libraries have policies on intellectual freedom, and all should have a collection development policy that guides what books the library will purchase.  In addition, most libraries also have policies and procedures for patrons to voice their complaints regarding materials present in the library’s collection.  These complaints are then normally presented to the library director or library board to determine the appropriateness of the complaint based on the collection development policy.  If you are curious about what your libraries policies are, give them a call or visit their website; libraries freely offer this information to all that ask.

The most commonly banned books may not be items one would normally guess.  Many of them are considered classics, or are books written primarily for children or young adults.  ALA publishes a list every year of the most frequently banned books.  The top ten for 2011 are as follows:

1. ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle
2. The Color of Earth (series), by Kim Dong Hwa
3. The Hunger Games trilogy, by Suzanne Collins
4. My Mom’s Having A Baby! A Kid’s Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy, by Dori Hillestad Butler
5. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
6. Alice (series), by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
7. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
8. What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
9. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily Von Ziegesar
10. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

ALA Banned Books websites:

http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/

http://www.ala.org/advocacy/banned/bannedbooksweek

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/bannedbooksweek?fref=ts

Laura Sherbo with her mom at ALA

One of the first sessions I attended was the Unconference (wonderful, by the way).  At the Unconference I was talking with one of the other attendees about this being our first ALA and she said, “Oh wait! Someone forwarded this to me this morning.  There is free food on Saturday! Give me your phone number and I’ll send you the information.” Lo and behold it was the ASCLA Awards Ceremony.  Initially I was a little indignant.  How could these moochers attend the awards ceremony for anything besides honoring Laura?!?!?!  Maybe they are serving champagne, I thought, to console myself (turns out it was pretzels shaped like Mickey Mouse).  Or maybe ALA just knows that the best way to spread a message is with free food.

On Saturday I dressed in my conference best and went to meet Laura and all the other conference goers enjoying mini quesadillas and cake pops.  I also got to see Jeff Martin again and meet Laura’s Mother, who is twice as nice as she is charming. As an aside, I now look forward to my own mother’s presence at all future awards ceremonies in my honor.  The awards honored librarians, students, partnerships, and programs in specialized libraries with five different awards.  When the presenter read all the wonderful reasons why Laura won her award, Laura received the loudest round of applause of all the recipients. I can only imagine the myriad of emotions and admirations running through the minds of every person in the crowd.

Laura has been my supervisor for three years now, and more than anyone I have ever worked for, she is able to motivate her staff to greatness.  In the beginning, I was astounded by the loyalty everyone felt toward her and the Institutional Library Services, but now I understand.  Through budget cuts and layoffs, it becomes more abundantly clear with each hurdle she has encountered, that Laura is dedicated not only to serving the underserved, but also her staff.  She has the strength and high standards of a Titan, while still somehow making her staff feel comfortable giving input, starting new programs, and questioning her decisions, sometimes incessantly, probably much to her chagrin.  In short, Laura is the embodiment of leadership and all of us at ILS are lucky to work for her.

Also, she said the reason she won the award is because of her staff, which I’m not going to argue, because we’re pretty great.

Laura Sherbo

The American Library Association (ALA) has just released the news that Laura Sherbo, Program Manager for Washington State Library’s Institutional Library Services, will receive the 2012 ASCLA Leadership and Professional Achievement Award. After more than thirty years of library service to incarcerated patrons, no doubt Laura has some interesting tales to tell……perhaps in future blog posts! In the meantime, we’ll let her bask in the glory of the Anaheim sunshine as she travels to the ALA Conference this summer to accept her award.

Check out my letter of recommendation here.  Kathleen Benoun’s letter of recommendation and Neal Van Der Voorn’s letter of recommendation here.

Prison librarians have long fostered a spirit of collaboration in their field of librarianship. Information is shared and questions are asked by any with an interest in prison libraries. To further this along, Libraries Serving Special Populations Section (LSSPS) of the Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies (ASCLA) formed a prison discussion list that has become a welcome forum for information gathering. Over the years, a directory of prison libraries was built and maintained by the library staff of the Maryland prison libraries. With changes in the air and money lost they are no longer able to maintain this directory. 

So in the full spirit of collaboration the Washington State Library Institutional staff has taken on the task. Glennor Shirley, Library Coordinator Correctional Education Libraries of Maryland, said “It is great to see that we can work together as a community and where one system like mine can no longer do the directory, then another takes over.”

The National Prison Library Directory can be found at http://wiki.sos.wa.gov/ils/

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.

ALA Librarians Need Coffee to Survive

Thanks to the Friends of the Washington State Library and the Washington Library Association, I was the lone staff-person at the Washington State Library who got to sneak off to Chicago last week for the American Library Association Annual conference. Attendance was pretty good at the event (I think even more than last year), but I imagine these were mostly east-coast attendees and less folks from Washington State.  As such, I thought I would share my notes (pardon their lack of organization) and general impressions.

I liked Chicago a lot more than I thought I would. I’d built up a bias against it from travelling through it, but had never stopped and looked around inside the city proper. There was a lot to do, plenty of excellent food and interesting sights, and I walked until my feet issued a proclamation that if I didn’t stop walking they would be writing up their two weeks notice. I saw quite a few Segway tours, which I found amusing but had to admit were actually pretty sensible.

The conference itself was a bit of a mixed bag. I was mainly there for my Emerging Leader work (which was the only reason I got to go in the first place), and that was interesting and fulfilling and all things good. The other sessions I squeezed into my schedule were hit or miss, and the only thing that kept my awake at certain points was sneaking peeks at ALASecrets and ALASecrets2009 on my netbook. It should be noted that this was perhaps one of the more interesting things to happen during the conference. Not only did a secret back-channel ALA conference gossip rag pop out of nowhere and blossom (200 followers within a couple hours); but it was subsequently censored, and presumably by a librarian. That it was replaced within an hour with a non-censorable but equally accessible alternative speaks volumes for the ingenuity of people in our profession and, in general, the total lameness of censorship.

But we all knew that already. Right?

I enjoyed the conference in the end, though I always think there should be something more, like I’m missing something. I definitely enjoyed Chicago, and would recommend it to anyone who likes an active vacation in the big city.

Detailed “session” notes after the break.

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