LIBRARY LOUNGE

IMMEDIATE ACTION NEEDED on an important national legislative issue:
Please Contact Our Senators and Ask Them To Support Federal Funding For America’s Libraries.

Senator Allard: 202-224-5941 (you’ll speak with aide Jon Van Meter)
Senator Salazar: 202-224-5852 (you’ll speak with aide Piper Su)

You can leave a message overnight if you don’t want to talk to a person. If you don’t mind human contact, all you need to do is ask them to “cosign the “Library Funding Request” (AKA Reed/Collins “Dear Colleagues”) letter”. If they want to co-sign, they should call either Elyse (4-4642) with Senator Reed, or Nikki (4-2523) with Senator Collins to indicate their support.

We need to make these calls no later than Monday, March 31st, so please take 2 minutes and do this right now…

The “Library Funding Request” letter is addressed to the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriation Subcommittees and requests that the Senate include President Bush’s request of $214.432 million for the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) and increased funding for the Improving Literary Through School Libraries program for FY 2009. $2.8 million is what Colorado will receive in LSTA funds.

LSTA and Improving Literacy Through School Libraries are two of the most important federal programs for libraries today. If we don’t have every Senator sign on, the letter will not be taken seriously, and it will appear as if Members of Congress do not care about libraries. Programs that don’t have a vocal support network are in danger of being cut.

Clarification: when you contact your Senator, you must ask him or her to call Elyse(4-4642) with Senator Reed or Nikki (4-2523) with Senator Collins, in order to “co-sign” the letter. You should not call Elyse or Nikki directly.

Thanks for your support!
—
Martin Garnar
President, Colorado Association of Libraries
Reference Librarian and Associate Professor of Library Science
Dayton Memorial Library, Regis University
3333 Regis Blvd., Mail Stop D-20
Denver, CO 80221
303.964.5459 (voice)
303.964.5497 (fax)
mgarnar@regis.edu

Here is a design for our new Library near Wright Farms from a grade schooler who was asked to design the perfect library.
Mindy

Just finished reading the Movers and Shakers from Library Journal and I was really excited about some of the programs these Librarians have implemented. Tony Tallent of PLCMC had a great one that he calls “Drop Everything and Learn Day”. He describes this as a “learn-and-play program encouraging staff to stay curious and inspired as they learn from one another.”

When I read this I just had a gut feeling that it would be an effective team building exercise/program for our staff. I would love to put the word out asking staff, “what skill do you have that you would like to teach your fellow workers”. We could then gather up these “mini” programs and offer them during an in-service day. Staff could pick and choose to attend what they think would be fun and helpful for them. Each one would be 45 minutes and throughout the day staff would rotate through the programs they choose.

Some ideas for mini programs: Yoga, 4 of my favorite Internet Tools (Flickr, Protopage, Pandora, Bloglines), Second Life 101, Independent Bookstores - Why They are good for libraries and for consumers, How to manage your schedule (and more) with Outlook, Time Management Tools, How to Improve Your Credit, Shopping for Bargains in Adams County (the best of the best) etc.

So many of our staff have interests that they are passionate about and by being asked to share their passions I think we can make a huge stride in building a “team” at our Library.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” Mark Twain

This one was just too good to pass up!
“For most of my lifetime, I’ve heard that reading is dead. In that time, disco has died, drive-in movies have nearly died, and something called The Clapper has come and gone through bedrooms across the nation. “But reading? This year, about 400 million books will be sold in the United States. Overall, business is up 1 percent—not bad, in a rough economy, for a $15 billion industry still populated by people whose idea of how to sell books dates to Bartleby the Scrivener.”
—Author Timothy Egan, responding to Steve Jobs’s comment that “people don’t read anymore,” in “Book Lust,” New York Times, Feb. 20.

I found it in American Libraries Direct 2/27/08 - which is an e-mail sent to me every week.

“We don’t accomplish anything in this world alone… and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one’s life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something.”
Sandra Day O’Connor