BOARD WILL DECIDE READY TO READ GRANT PROGRAM RULES
HB 2116, which passed in the Legislative session earlier this year made changes to the Ready to Read Grant Program that need to be reflected in the program’s administrative rules. At their October 19th meeting in Salem, the State Library Board will hold a public hearing on changes to the rules and then deliberate on the proposed changes. A draft of the proposed rule changes was sent to public library directors and made available to other interested persons in mid-August. HB 2116 changed the focus of the Read to Read Grant program to early literacy programs and summer reading programs. Prior to the passage of HB 2116, grant funds could be used for any program that improved library services to children. The Administrative Rules will need to reflect these changes to the purpose of the grant program. In addition, HB 2116 calls upon the Board to adopt a definition of “the statewide summer reading program.” At issue is whether Ready to Read Grant funds could be used for any summer reading program, or whether funds must be used to support the statewide collaborative summer reading program co-sponsored by the State Library and the Oregon Library Association Children’s Services Division. The public hearing on the proposed rule changes will be held at 10 a.m. on October 19th in Room 102 of the State Library.
At this meeting the Board will also hear recommendations from the Library Services and Technology Act Advisory Council about competitive grant awards for 2008 and needed changes to the LSTA five year state plan recently adopted by the Board. They will also review performance the State Librarian’s goals for 2006-07 and set new goals for 2007-08. The meeting will begin at 9:30 a.m. in Room 102. An open forum is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Anyone may address the Board at the open forum.
STATE LIBRARY LAUNCHES NEW ADVISORY COUNCIL
September 25 was the first meeting of the new Government Research and Electronic Services (GRES) Advisory Council. The State Library Board created this council to assist the GRES team in evaluating, creating, and promoting their services to state employees. The new council is appointed by the State Librarian and will meet quarterly with GRES staff. The first meeting provided the Council with an overview of GRES services and activities.
The members of the Council are:
Chris Bell, Cultural Resource Specialist
with the Oregon Department of Transportation, Chair
Sandra Allen, Office Manager for the Speaker's Office at the Legislature
Perrin Damon, Public Affairs Manager for the Department of Corrections
Chane Griggs, Senior Policy Analyst at the Department of Administrative Services
Kathi Riddell, Electronic Publication Design Specialist at the Employment Department
The Council's next meeting will be in November, and their initial focus will be on outreach and training activities to raise awareness of GRES services.
OREGON DOCUMENTS DEPOSITORY WEB EXHIBIT LAUNCHED
As part of the celebration of its centennial year, the Oregon Documents Depository Program has published a web exhibit. The Oregon Documents Depository Centennial includes a brief history of the program, a collection of "Documents That Changed Oregon", information about the new Oregon Documents Repository, and "Fun Stuff."
Both "Documents That Changed Oregon" and "Fun Stuff" include digitized version of some older Oregon Documents. "Documents That Changed Oregon" collects documents key to eight important events in Oregon political history in the last 100 years: initiative and referendum, public beaches, the Tillamook Burn, the Bottle Bill, land use planning, the Oregon Health Plan, vote by mail, and physician-assisted suicide. The documents in this collection were selected by State Library staff and digitized by staff at the Southern Oregon University Library.
"Fun Stuff" celebrates the unique, quirky nature of some of the older items in the Oregon Documents collection. It includes a 1937 booklet about teen-age drivers, a hand-drawn, 1961 pamphlet about rabies, a 1942 booklet about war psychology, and plan for constructing a pit-type privy from 1940. The documents in this collection were selected by State Library staff, and digitized by Sarah Coelho, an intern from the Promise program.
FREE ONLINE TRAINING OPPORTUNITY
The following webcasts are being made available free of charge to staff from Oregon libraries through a statewide membership to BCR, paid for by the Oregon State Library with LSTA funds:
Mapping the Library Landscape: Every Library Worker a Trendspotter (Soaring to Excellence 2007-2008)
October 26, 2007: Finding the Trends
That Matter: Get Your Environmental Scan On
February 8, 2008: People Watching With a Purpose: Meeting Needs Before They
Need It
April 11, 2008: Trends, Fads or Folly: Spotting the Library Trends That Really
Matter
Library Challenges and Opportunities
March 7, 2008: Library Trends
May 9, 2008: The Future Library
Register online for the satellite downlink or the webcast by completing BCR's online registration form. For more information go to BCR.
STATE LIBRARY AT THE NATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL
Katie Anderson from the Oregon Center for the Book at the State Library and Oregon author Susan Fletcher hosted a booth in the Pavilion of States at the National Book Festival in Washington D.C on September 29th. This year the Oregon booth featured the 2006 Oregon Book Awards finalists and winners, and books by Susan Fletcher. Susan’s latest book, Alphabet of Dreams, was selected as Oregon’s title on the United States map and reading list distributed to young readers and their families attending the festival. The National Book Festival, organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress and hosted by First Lady Laura Bush was held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
NOW ACCEPTING SUGGESTIONS FOR NOMINATIONS TO LSTA ADVISORY COUNCIL
Ever wanted to be involved with an
interesting, cohesive group working with funding Oregon’s libraries’
visions? If so, consider suggesting yourself or someone else for a nomination
to the LSTA Advisory Council. The Council meets twice a year for a day in May
and September to discuss competitive grant requests totaling roughly $1 million.
They also discuss ongoing statewide programs such as OSLIS, L-Net, and more.
They make recommendations on funding to the Oregon State Library Board of Trustees.
The term is three years, starting in January 2008.
The Oregon State Library is currently looking for suggestions of people for
the following Council positions:
• 3 representatives of library users
• 1 school library representative
• 1 representative of disadvantaged persons
Please email any suggestions to Ann Reed. Please include the person’s name, email or phone number, city they live or work in, and a sentence or two on why they would be a good LSTA Advisory Council member.
VOTER'S GUIDE
The Oregon State Library, Talking
Book and Braille Services in collaboration with the Secretary of State's Office
will be distributing the Audio Voter's Guide in October. The voters guide will
be available in cassette, CD or Braille and will include important information
on the two statewide measures on the ballot for the November election. The guide
does not include local races or measures. If you have anyone in your community
that can benefit from this service, please call Talking Books at 1-800-452-0292.
One does not need to be a patron of Talking Books to receive this information.
CHINESE LIBRARIANS VISIT OREGON
Two groups of librarians from China visited Oregon in August and September and toured libraries throughout the state. The first group came as part of the Horner Library Staff Exchange Program which the State Library has sponsored since 1998. Four librarians from the Fujian Provincial Library, the Xiamen Municipal Library, and the Fujian Norman University spent three weeks in Oregon and toured libraries in the Portland area, Salem, Corvallis, Bend, and Eugene. Then in early September, two librarians from the National Library of China, hosted by Blackwell Book Services, spent several days touring libraries in Portland, Salem, and Corvallis.
The Horner Library Staff Exchange was managed this year by the International Relations Roundtable of the Oregon Library Association, chaired by Bruce Flath of Mt. Angel Abbey Library. In October, as part of the Horner Exchange, three Oregon librarians selected by the IRRT will travel to Fujian for three weeks to visit libraries there. The librarians are Teresa Landers from the Corvallis-Benton County Library, Gretta Siegel from the Portland State University Library, and Rosalind Wang, from Multnomah County Library. The Horner Library Staff Exchange program is named after the late Dr. Layton Horner, whose generous gift to the State Library allowed the program to be established with the cooperation of the Fujian Provincial Library in China.
"RURAL IN FOCUS" WEBINAR SERIES CONTINUES
On October 25, 2007, from 11:00am
to noon, WebJunction will sposor "Bringing People Together at the Library:
Rural Libraries as Place, " a free live webinar. More and more people are
accessing information and resources from home and work computers. Does that
mean the physical library will go away? NO WAY! This webinar will focus on the
evolving role of the physical library space, highlighting innovative and interesting
rural library examples. The cost is FREE and no registration is required. However,
if you have not recently attended a WebJunction live webinar, then you will
want to read about how
to join the webinar in advance of the webinar date. Each month the Rural
Library Sustainability Project presents an "In Focus" webinar on a
particular topic of importance to the work of sustaining Rural and Small libraries.
Visit the In
Focus Message Board! Keep the conversation alive by visiting the In Focus
Message Board area...share your ideas, questions, and suggestions for the Rural
In Focus monthly webinar series.
I hate to have to criticize the editorial writers at the Medford Mail Tribune. In recent months, as the Jackson County Library (along with the Josephine County Library) has faced the worst crisis that any public library in Oregon has ever had to face, the Mail Tribune has been stalwart in its support. They supported both funding levy attempts that failed in November of last year and this past May. They wrote eloquently about the value of a county library system and how it would be costly and inefficient to break up the system.
So I was pretty dismayed to read the headline of the August 24th editorial, “Library Deal Deserves Praise” congratulating the County on their plan to outsource library operations to a Maryland-based for-profit company. After pointing out quite a list of the negatives associated with this plan, they nevertheless “applauded” the County’s outsourcing decision. Among the negatives, of course, is that it “shuts out the union that protected employee wages and benefits over the years.” I admit to being somewhat offended by the choice of words here. Why would anyone think that the modest compensation of library workers is something that has to be “protected”? But that’s not my real beef with the editorial.
The editorial writers say they applaud the decision “because it seems government heard the message the public sent and responded.”
I am always highly dubious of anyone who claims to be able to divine the messages voters send in an election. Unless you spend a lot of money on polling, any such interpretations are oversimplified and speculative. I’m sure there were many reasons why people voted against funding for the Jackson County Library, and it was the combination of them that did the Library in. As I wrote about the May election in this space a few months ago, I’ll bet many people are hurting economically right now and just can’t support a tax increase of any kind for anything. There is probably also a large number of people who would prefer that the Federal government continue to pay for their library services, as they have, off and on, for decades. As long as that is still a possibility, however remote, why vote to raise taxes?
My speculation would be that very few voters voted ‘no’ because they thought the Jackson County Library had a bloated budget. And whoever did think that was mistaken. In 2005-06 the Jackson County Library had income per capita from the County of about $39 per capita. That’s well below the average for JCLS’ peers in the state, and about average for all public libraries in Oregon.
Jackson County Library never had
a spending problem, it had a revenue problem. So to outsource the library to
a for-profit company that claims to be able to cut spending is a solution to
a problem that didn’t exist. The County had several other options that
they refused to look at. They could have continued to run the library system
on a reduced budget themselves. They could have looked to another local government,
the community college district or one of the larger cities, to run the system.
I believe the solution they chose involves a great deal of risk of eventually
turning sour and further complicating an already difficult situation. –
Jim Scheppke
Technical Assistance: 503-932-1004.
Library Development: 503-378-2525, MaryKay
Dahlgreen, Val Vogt, Darci
Hanning, Ann Reed, Patty
Sorensen, Katie Anderson.
Talking Book and Braille Services: 503-378-5389, Susan
Westin, Marcia Martin.
Government Research and Electronic Services: 503-378-5030, Robert
Hulshof-Schmidt.
State Librarian: 503-378-4367, Jim
Scheppke.
LTLO Editor: 503-378-2464, Robin
Speer.
Letter to Libraries Online is published monthly by the Oregon State Library. Editorial office: LTLO, Oregon State Library, 250 Winter St. NE, Salem, Oregon 97301-3950, 503-378-2464, editor: Robin Speer.
Letter to Libraries Online is available free of charge and is available only in electronic form on the publications page at the Oregon State Library's homepage: http://www.oregon.gov/OSL. Opinions expressed in the articles are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Oregon State Library. News items or articles should be sent to Robin Speer, or mailed to LTLO, Oregon State Library, 250 Winter St. NE, Salem, Oregon 97301-3950.
To unsubscribe from libs-or, either send an 'unsubscribe' message to libs-or-request@listsmart.osl.state.or.us, or visit the website: http://listsmart.osl.state.or.us/mailman/listinfo/libs-or/. All materials may be reprinted or distributed freely.