From the Desk of Will Stuivenga.

The Washington State Library recently hosted the first ever face-to-face User Group Meeting for members of the Washington Digital Library Consortium, a group of 44 (soon to be 45) of the state’s mid-sized and smaller public libraries that provide the OverDrive-powered Washington Anytime Library to their patrons.

61 people (including Cindy Aden, State Librarian, and 4 additional staff from the State Library) attended the event, with all but a handful of member libraries represented. The event ran all day September 27, and through lunch on September 28. Libraries represented at the meeting were from as far away as Camas, Clarkston, Lincoln County, the Olympic Peninsula, Richland, Walla Walla, and pretty much everywhere in between.

The event was organized and coordinated by Will Stuivenga, Cooperative Projects Manager for Library Development at the Washington State Library, a division of the Office of the Secretary of State. Will manages the consortium’s day-to-day operations with the assistance of a 3-person Executive Advisory Committee. Funding provided by the State Library comes from the Library Services & Technology Act (LSTA), administered through the Institute of Library and Museum Services (IMLS). Currently, member libraries contribute most of the regular ongoing funding for the organization.

As a result of this meeting:

• Washington Anytime meeting participants now have a much better understanding of the challenges facing their collaborative;
• Advisory votes were taken on the several important questions regarding the governance of the consortium and customer service issues;
• 26 individuals volunteered to serve on committees to undertake necessary work in the  following areas:
  • Governance,
  • Weeding,
  • Collection development,
  • Curated title lists for the Anytime Library;
• People came away with a better knowledge of the support which the State Library has provided to organize, grow, and financially subsidize the consortium and its Anytime Library collection.

Attendee reviews of the event were universally positive. People said they especially enjoyed the opportunity to meet and discuss important issues with their peers from other libraries, both small and large, and many expressed hope that similar events can be scheduled in future.

For more pictures from the event, visit our Flickr Album

The Anytime Library in Russian

Part of Will’s job involves managing the Washington Anytime Library, a collection of eBooks and eAudiobooks shared by 43 of the smaller libraries throughout the state. Recently they added a Russian language interface to the digital library. Now patrons can choose to have the Anytime Library menus and instructions appear in English, Spanish, Chinese, or Russian. The books are still in English (for the most part), but the interface that helps you find them can be displayed in these other languages for the convenience of patrons who are more comfortable using them.

Checking out the new Russian language interface, Will noticed that the language interface selection box options were capitalized for English and Spanish (don’t ask him about the Chinese!), but not for the Russian, which uses the Cyrillic script. Uncertain if Cyrillic uses the same capitalization conventions as the Roman script used for English and Spanish, Will took a look at the rest of the Russian interface, and sure enough, he saw that the first character of most words was larger than those used for the rest of the word, but perhaps there was some exception to the rule for the word “Russian” itself when displayed in Cyrillic?

So he wrote back to the vendor rep and asked, who promised to check with the translation team. By the next day, the interface had been updated to show the word “Russian” in Cyrillic with the first character capitalized. So yes, Will can proof-read (albeit to a VERY limited extent) even for Russian Cyrillic!

Recently the Washington Anytime Library celebrated the addition of its 30th member library to the group. The Grandview Library became library number 30, meaning that almost half the state’s 62 public library entities are now members of the Washington Anytime Library!

The Washington Anytime Library provides a substantial collection of downloadable eBooks and audiobooks to its patrons. The Anytime Library is the cooperative effort of a consortium of Washington public libraries, coordinated by the Washington State Library. A list of participating libraries is available on the Anytime Library’s web site.

Congratulations to Grandview Library, and to the Washington Anytime Library for providing this valuable service to library users throughout the state!

This project is funded in part through the use of LSTA (Library Services and Technology Act) funds provided under the auspices of the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) through the coordinating efforts of the Library Development Program at the Washington State Library. Additional funding comes from the participating libraries.

Other Washington libraries provide similar services to their patrons. A list of libraries offering downloadable  audiobooks is available on the project website.

Questions about the project may be directed to Will Stuivenga, Cooperative Projects Manager, Washington State Library.