The Library Connection
The Monthly Newsletter of the Eastern
Shores Library System
www.esls.lib.wi.us
Volume 30 Number 2 February 2010
Click here for the Winter 2010 Bookmobile Schedule
ESLS and Mead Public Library Receive LSTA Funds
The Library Services and Technology Act will fund
five projects within Eastern Shores Library System in 2010.
Mead Public Library will use $4,500 of LSTA funding
to continue its project of digitizing historic records by converting
select volumes of city directories from the years of 1884-1905 to digital
format. Bob Thomes, Project
Administrator says “these volumes contain a wealth of information for
the researcher, genealogist, and local history enthusiast”.
ESLS will
receive $39,500 to fund four projects.
Eastern
Shores will use $11,300 from the Library System Technology Category to
continue to provide funding for ESLS’s share of the total
telecommunications costs from TEACH.
The grant will also pay for part of the cost of the system’s
member libraries’ TEACH line to the BadgerNet WAN.
A license for GoToWebinar Software will be purchased
with $1000 of LSTA funds from the Web
Conferencing software category. This
software will allow libraries to participate in regional or statewide
meetings or workshops by using VoIP and integrated phone conferencing.
ESLS received $7,800 in the Special Needs,
Accessibility category. These
funds will be used to assist Elkhart Lake and Oostburg Public Libraries
purchase and install electronic door openers and to provide 19” monitors
for 10 libraries in ESLS.
Improving Employment Skills in ESLS was funded in the amount of $19,400. This project, part of the Job Search & Employment Support Category will involve creating a portable computer lab that will rotate among member libraries for job training workshops. Instructors from area technical colleges, UW-Sheboygan, Sheboygan County Job Center and local high school teachers will conduct the workshops. The lab will consist of 5 laptop computers and a projector. In addition to the portable lab, this grant will provide a subscription to the LearningExpress Library database. The subscription will include the basic component, the writing improvement program and the computer skills tutorials.
The
Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA), a section of the Museum and
Library Services Act of 2003, promotes access to information resources
provided by all types of libraries.
Update on the Final Report of the Joint Ozaukee Sheboygan County Library Service Plan
Ever wonder what the System Director or local Library Directors are
really doing? Sometimes they are working late to attend meetings
with local townships, villages and cities. Every five years the
System Director and library directors meet with a county library planning
committee or two, to plan for future library services. Local Library
Directors provide input at the meetings. They might also be attending meetings with
the Board of Supervisors in each county. The System Director may
also attend local library board meetings.
What is discussed at the meetings? It really comes down to funding,
because everyone wants service. After the six monthly meetings to
develop the Final Report of the Joint Ozaukee Sheboygan County Library
Planning Committee, System Director Weinhold and some local Library
Directors have been meeting with various governmental bodies to discuss
the plan.
In January, a presentation on the Final Report of the Plan for County Library Service in Ozaukee and
Sheboygan County for the years 2011- 2015 was made to the Ozaukee County Board of
Supervisors. The Board of
Supervisors asked that the Town and Village Boards and City Councils show
their support of the County Library Service Plan and each pass a
resolution to that effect. These resolutions would include continuing
support of the Bookmobile Service in non-libraried areas and to reimburse
public libraries at their full cost for serving non-libraried residents.
On February 3, all Ozaukee County local governments were invited to review
the plan at an information session.
Ozaukee County Chair Rob Brooks announced at the meeting that the Town and Village of Belgium and
the City of Cedarburg had indicated their support of the Final Report and
the recommendations for the increased level of reimbursement and the
bookmobile service. Mr. Brooks hopes that the County Board can act
on the plan in May.
Children's
Librarians Corner
Library Olympics/Percy Jackson Event
Tammy Federspiel, Lakeview Community Library Random Lake
In honor of the Winter Olympics and the release of
the movie The Lightning Thief, the Lakeview Community
Library hosted a combined Library Olympics & Percy Jackson Event. I took advantage of an early school release day on Wednesday,
February 17 to schedule the program. It was open to children in grades 1
– 6.
As kids arrived, they could choose from three
different craft projects that I set up on tables with teen volunteer
supervisors. The first craft
was making Pan’s Reed Pipes out of straws and cardstock.
They liked this quite a bit. The
second craft was an Olympic Torch made from paper towel tubes and cut up
strips of red, yellow and orange construction paper.
The third craft was Medusa’s Masks.
I had leftover masks from last summer and the kids loved painting
them. I use the tempera paint
cakes and sponge brushes for little mess and lots of fun!
After thirty minutes I started the Olympic games.
Kids could still work on crafts while they waited for their turn
to compete. I hung three
hula-hoops from the ceiling for targets for the discus toss and javelin
throw. The discs were
flexible Frisbees and the javelins were long skinny balloons.
Of course several kids had swordfights with the balloons while
waiting!
Another popular game was the shoebox speed skating
relay. I had skaters choose
their shoebox skates and line up on one end of the carpeted meeting room,
with their partners on the opposite end.
They had to keep their feet in the shoeboxes and skate across the
room, giving their partner the skates to skate back to the starting line.
We were able to race four teams at a time.
Another chaotic but fun event was the snowball
parachute contest. I divided
the parachute in half to make the teams. I
had kids crumple scrap paper snowballs and fill the parachute with them.
Then when I said "Go" they shook the chute!
Whichever side had the least snowballs on their half of the floor,
won! This was done several
times because the kids loved it! I
didn’t have any prizes for the games however,
I did give them paper trophies made from the Ellison die cutter.
There was also an Oracle’s Wheel Claiming Ceremony
as an activity for kids to do while waiting for their turn in the games.
This “Wheel of Fortune” type spinning wheel had the sections
labeled with the names of the Greek gods featured in the Percy Jackson
series. Kids could spin the
Oracle’s Wheel to find out which Greek god or goddess claimed them.
I had wrote certificates of each of the gods/goddesses
description and symbol to give to the kids.
During the last ten minutes of the program we served
hot chocolate “ambrosia” and cake. The cake was blue with blue
frosting in honor of Percy’s mother who likes celebrating with blue
food. Word to the wise,
don’t use a yellow cake mix! We
did get the added benefit of a science lesson showing that yellow and blue
make green!
I ended up with more activities than I had time for
so I saved some for the summer when I will have a Percy Jackson Camp
Half-Blood event for grades 4-8. I
downloaded some reader’s theater scripts from the Percy Jackson web site
as well as several word searches and crossword puzzles.
I also made Mad libs out of the Oracle’s Prophesies from all five
books. The website I used is:
http://www.hyperionbooksforchildren.com/percy_jackson_eventkit.pdf
New ESLS Board Member
Mead Public Library has welcomed Henry Nelson as a new Library Board member. Mr. Nelson will be replacing Marilyn Toepel who resigned before moving out of the City of Sheboygan. Mr. Nelson is a former County Board Supervisor and is employed by Werner Homes. Mr. Nelson has also been appointed by Sheboygan County to serve on the Eastern Shores Library System Board as the representative of the Resource Library.
Mr. Nelson recently served on the Joint County Library Planning Committee as a citizen member representing a libraried community. As the Chair of the Committee he said this about the Committee’s work, "Too often local governments pay lip service to shared services and cooperation and rarely accomplish anything meaningful. This county library planning process illustrated that municipalities in both counties and both Counties are doing more than paying lip service to shared services. The library system and the county library service provide meaningful and necessary benefits to all residents of the counties. I believe the proposed Plan in this Final Report continues this cooperation at a reasonable and equitable cost to the non-libraried taxpayers and at a reasonable and equitable reimbursement to the municipalities and their libraries.”
Welcome to the Eastern Shores Library System Board Mr. Nelson.
Position
Open on the ESLS System Board
The System Library Board is looking for an individual currently serving on a public library board in Sheboygan County to concurrently serve on the ESLS Board. One representative from the Plymouth Public Library Board, Attorney Jim Hughes, is already serving but another position remains unfilled. The resource library also has a delegate. A representative from the Lakeview Community Library just completed a term on the ESLS Board. The position would be filled from January 2010 to December 2013. The person would need to be confirmed by the Sheboygan County Board of Supervisors.
If you have any questions or concerns please contact System Director David Weinhold at weinhold@esls.lib.wi.us or 920/208-4900 ext 312.
Polaris Deletions
For anyone that works in serials this time of year is
filled with the dreaded "where are we going to put the discards"
feeling. To make sure the serial holdings records are accurate the most
common process is to delete a year's worth of magazines from each record.
Until recently the records in Polaris contained all of these issues and
everything else that had been discarded since the change over to Polaris
on October 17, 2008.
In Polaris the item was given a deleted status however, that information
does not
transfer to WISCAT. This means if you work in interlibrary
loan you might get requests for items you no longer own. Since December
the Polaris deletions have been automated via scripts run by Paul Onufrak,
the Automation Librarian. At the February SLAC (Shared Library Automation
Committee) meeting it was decided that starting in March, he will be
running the scripts twice a month, on the fifteenth and last day of the
month. According to Mr. Onufrak, "the WISCAT records are still being
worked on," and the deletes/holdings adjustments in OCLC will likely
be completed via batch loading of some form or another and that still needs to be
resolved.
Deletions from Polaris:
December 2009 -- 60,978 item records
January 2010 -- 11,334 item records, 36,207 bib records
Two Upcoming Continuing Education Opportunities
Information Literacy Education: A National Overview will be broadcast on Friday, March 12 with presenters Dr. Lisa Stock, Dr. Jean Donham and Dane Ward. When President Barack Obama declared October 2009 as National Information Literacy Awareness Month, Information Literacy received national attention. The declaration stated: “In addition to the basic skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic, it is equally important that our students are given the tools required to take advantage of the information available to them.” He asked “people of the United States to recognize the important role that information plays in our daily lives, and appreciate the need for a greater understanding of its impact.”
The presenters will "give a background briefing on the working standards and assessments for national literacy and open a dialog on what librarians can do to strengthen efforts to encourage and build information literacy efforts not only in your own library, but in concert with your colleagues around the country."
On Friday, April 9 Technology Trends in Libraries: Tools, Skills, Staffing, Training will be presented by Eric Lease Morgan and Marshall Breeding. "This teleconference will address the current status of technology in the library and explore future technological trends as more information sources--and people-- migrate to online environments."
Both teleconferences are 90 minutes in length from 11:00 a. m. to 12:30 p.m. Contact David Weinhold at weinhold@esls.lib.wi.us for more information and to sign up for these College of DuPage teleconferences.
Interesting Items
* Eastern
Shores Library System has added the DVD of the Webcast Millennials in the Library, by the College of DuPage, to the
professional collection.
The Webcast features Jennifer Kushell, president of ysn.com (Your Success Network) and author of Secrets of the Young and Successful who provides tips and strategies that libraries can employ to understand and better serve the Millennial Generation as patrons, students, and staff. The 90 minute DVD circulates for 14 days and can be reserved in EasiCat.
* The Pew Center on the States, supported by Pew Charitable Trusts, has just reported that, " Wisconsin is a national leader in managing its long-term liabilities for both pensions and retiree health care and other benefits. It has funded nearly 100 percent of its total pension bill—well beyond the 80 percent benchmark that the U.S. Government Accountability Office says is preferred by experts—by consistently meeting its actuarially required contributions." To view the information about Wisconsin click on this link and for the full article go here.
* Starting March 1st the Oscar Grady Public Library (Saukville) and the W. J. Niederkorn Library (Port Washington) are participating together for a second year in the One Book, One Community program. Book discussions will be held in April. This year The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak is the selection Books can be checked out or purchased at either the Oscar Grady Public Library in Saukville or the W. J. Niederkorn Library in Port Washington. Copies are also available at the Port Washington High School Library.
According to the W. J. Niederkorn Library web site: The Saukville and Port Washington libraries and communities in conjunction with the Port Washington Saukville School District and the Character Counts organization are bringing together readers in both communities to read and discuss one book which focuses on character, how we measure success and the value of libraries, schools and education for all.
* Pepsi is looking for people, businesses,
and non-profits with ideas that will have a positive impact. The Pepsi
Refresh Project wants you to look around your community and think
about how you want to change it. The program
accepts 1000 ideas every month ranging from $5,000 to $250,000.
For more information download the Pepsi
toolkit .
