August's Flower is the Poppy
The Library Connection
Volume 25 Number 7 July 2005
August's Flower is the Poppy
Click here for the Summer 2005 Bookmobile Schedule
These were the words of Megan Ellenbecker, an 8-year old from Cascade, who won her second national award in the 2005 Reading Rainbow "Young Writers and Illustrators" contest. Megan chose to write about her love of books and the ESLS bookmobile that brings books to her, even though she lives "in the middle of nowhere."
In Megan's words: "Books are my favorite things in the world. I am excited to see the librarians in the bookmobile. Their names are Connie and Sue. They are not the kind of librarians that go SHHHH all the time." Read the entire book on the Reading Rainbow site.
The Eastern Shores Bookmobile has added three more Bi-Folkal kits to its collection. ESLS used funds from this year's LSTA grant to purchase three mini-kits and then purchase additional items for each of the kits. The new kits have the themes: Remembering Mothers, Remembering Fathers, and Remembering Aprons.
Items added to the Mothers mini-kit are: a CD (Mothers & Daughters) by Rosemary Clooney, a rain bonnet, pink curlers, bobby pins, hair nets, an embroidery hoop, an embroidered dish towel, and advertising from the "old days." The Fathers kit includes: a fishing video, a pipe, a tie with a tie bar and cufflinks, and a deck of playing cards. The Aprons kit has a cross-stitch apron and two butcher aprons, as well as a large book with colored pictures of many different types of aprons.
All of these kits are available through any of the public libraries or the bookmobile. They are checked out for two weeks and may be reserved up to three months in advance. For a complete listing of all of the kits and their contents: www.esls.lib.wi.us/kits/bifolkal/bifolkallist.html
Additional kits with the themes of Music and Dancing, Wisconsin, Gardening, Parades, and Inventions will be available soon.
The Friends of Mead Public Library in Sheboygan have invited all existing Library Friends groups within ESLS and those interested in starting a Friends group to a time of information, sharing, and fellowship. The event will be held in the Rocca Meeting Room at Mead Library on Saturday, September 10 from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
The program is planned around an informal sharing of organizational questions, fund raising, and meetings. Each Friends group is invited to give a short presentation about themselves, their history, their current and past projects, their successes, and even their failures.
If an ESLS Friends group is in the midst of a fundraiser, they can bring their items along and sell them to the public and to others present at the workshop. A registration form will be sent to the Friends groups in August. Contact Sharon Quicker at 920-458-6254 or squicker@excel.net with questions.
Children's
Librarians CornerLooking for a teen or “tween” program? Try a party about the popular teen movie Napoleon Dynamite. The Lakeview Community Library hosted a Napoleon Dynamite party on Friday, June 10. This was the last day of school for most of our local schools. We chose to do an “after hours” evening program so that we didn’t have to worry about noise levels and staffing the circulation desks. The party began at 7:00 p.m. and lasted until 10:00 p.m. The SLP Teen program kick-off was offered to those in grades 6 - 12. Registration was required. Most of the participants were in middle school but a few high school students showed up. A special prize (chap stick) was awarded to those who came in costume! We had five adults on hand and about 22 kids. We played the video in the beginning and then had a snack break in the middle of the movie. We served soda, Tater Tots, and cheesy dip with nachos. The Tater Tots were extremely popular! Unfortunately our budget couldn’t afford steaks to make the food movie authentic!
Next we made parachute men with army men and plastic bags and string. This was our way of re-enacting Napoleon throwing his action figure on a string out of the school bus window. We have a balcony in our library and had supervised parachute jumps.
I had arranged to borrow several fun clothing items from our local thrift shop and had a Glamour Shots by Deb area. They dressed up in outrageous outfits (worn over their clothes) and posed for pictures. I used a digital camera and told the kids to stop back at the library this summer to see the printed pictures. At the same time as the glamour shots, we had an informal Napoleon Dynamite trivia game. I was able to find more than enough trivia questions on the Internet. The girls won the trivia contest. Then we had soda refills and finished watching the movie. It was timed just right to end at exactly 10:00 p.m.
I had a book display featuring characters that march to the beat of their own drum and made a booklist titled “Oddballs.” If anyone wants a copy of the trivia questions and answers or the booklist email me at tfeders@esls.lib.wi.us and I’ll send them your way.
A number of collection development policies are linked on the Trustee Resources policy page under the heading "Materials Selection, Collection Development, Challenged Materials, Weeding at: http://www.dpi.state.wi.us/dpi/dltcl/pld/policies.html
Some suggestions:
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Be sure your resulting policy has a clear procedure for handling complaints, including the appeal process. For instance, you might have a staff committee (rather than only the director) review the formal requests for reconsideration (don't conduct these as public hearings). If the complainant doesn't like the outcome, s/he would appeal to the library board. |
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Be sure your policy addresses all forms of materials--many older forms are book-specific, but today complaints more often request removal of video materials. |
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Design your policy to also address complaints that a particular title is NOT in your collection. This circumstance often arises in regard to donated materials or targeted requests from special interest groups. By having a clear policy with an appeal option, the process is delineated and confrontation alleviated for the staff and director. |
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Address how the library will handle donations of materials, and whether the library will return items donated but not added to the collection (this can be a cumbersome process and can also lead to further confrontation since the donor may want to know why their items were not added). |
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The collection development policy often includes the
process for weeding materials, including disposal of withdrawn and discarded
items, though some libraries have a separate deselection policy. A clear
policy can defuse complaints when discards are found in the dumpster or
withdrawn items are on the sale cart. |
September
is Library Card Sign-up Month, a time when libraries throughout the country
remind parents that a library card is the most important school supply.
PLA is promoting a library card as the smartest card you can have in your
wallet.
Check out their website for promotional ideas. You can find downloadable graphics, a proclamation, a sample press release and PSAs (in English and Spanish), lots of good PR ideas, and a downloadable poster of George Lopez that you can have ALA customize with your library logo at no charge.
The book industry started the transition to the thirteen-digit ISBN on January 1, 2005. The ISBN website has helpful information about this process, including a conversion tool that you can use to convert your ten-digit number to the thirteen-digit number. The complete implementation guidelines are also available on the web site.
The National Information Standards Organization also has a lot of information, including a "Librarian's ISBN FAQ" page. As library vendors formulate their planning statements about how they meet the 2007 conversion deadline for input, validation, and searching, they will be posted to this web site.
The Churchill Centre in Washington DC, an organization dedicated to preserving Winston Churchill's memory and legacy, will send a complimentary biography of Winston Churchill to a school or public library upon request. The book, Churchill, was written by Churchill's granddaughter, Celia Sandys, and is written at a high school through adult (nonhistorian) level. The book was published in the UK and not distributed in the U.S. Free copies of the biography (offer good while supplies last) are made possible by a grant from the Annenberg Foundation and by the members of the Churchill Centre.
More information on the Churchill book and the order form are available at: http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/forms/form.cfm?id=10&pageid=906. The form is designed to show a teacher requesting the book, but the librarian's name will suffice. Public librarians should adapt the form for a public library setting. For the source code you should specify WI Library.
Bartimaeus Library for the Blind, Inc. is a not-for-profit 501(c)3 corporation supplying Christian fiction and non-fiction on 2-track cassette tapes to those who cannot read standard print books. To request a copy of their catalog, e-mail bartlibraryfortheblind@juno.com or phone 763-561-6955.
ZERO TO THREE (the National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families) has developed a set of camera-ready articles on a variety of child development topics for FREE educational, non-profit use. This series of articles ("Pointers for Parents") is designed to be reproduced "as-is" and the series is ideal for use in newspapers, magazines, newsletter features, and on Web sites. You do not need to obtain further permission to use these articles "as-is"--just download and share with others. You can find the articles at www.zerotothree.org/handouts. The topics include:
Pointers for Parents: Keep
Your Youngsters on the Go
http://www.zerotothree.org/motion/pdf/article.pdf
(English)
http://www.zerotothree.org/motion/pdf/article-sp.pdf
(Spanish)
Pointers for Parents: Smart Ways to Help Children Learn
http://www.zerotothree.org/schoolreadiness/pdf/SR-article.pdf
(English)
http://www.zerotothree.org/schoolreadiness/pdf/SR-article-sp.pdf
(Spanish)
The 2005 WLA convention will be held in La Crosse from October 25-28, 2005. The keynote speaker will be Martha Teichner from CBS News Sunday Morning.
A second incentive to attend the conference is the Foundation's beer-tasting gala at the City Brewery. You will learn more about different beers and you will receive a commemorative beer glass and a great feeling of "Gemutlichkeit" as well. Those who don't drink but like German food can partake of nonalcoholic beverages and an optional German buffet.
The WLA Literary Awards Committee has selected the winner of the Banta Award,
presented for literary achievement by a Wisconsin author. The winner
is: The Turtle Warrior by Mary Relindes Ellis. Selected for
outstanding achievement were:
Inheritance by Lan Samantha Chang
The Tattered Autumn Sky: Bird Hunting in the Heartland by Tom Davis
Dog Angel: Poems by Mary Logue
Let's Do by Rebecca Meacham
The Last Day of the War by Judith Claire Mitchell
Stone Cribs by Kris Nelscott
The Turk and My Mother by Mary Helen Stefaniak
Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story by Timothy B. Tyson
The Forest Lover by Susan Vreeland
Three Notable Wisconsin Authors were named for their body of work: Robert Bloch, Irving Wallace, and John Gurda.
If you would like to have a speaker from the Regional Library for the Blind & Physically Handicapped at your library or group, contact the Regional Library at 1-800-242-8822. Library staff and library ambassadors are available for presentations.
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, the state's first and oldest book publisher. The WHS Press will be honoring this landmark occasion with events throughout the year, topped off with a "Big Book Giveaway" on October 17, 2005.
The WHS Press will give away to one Wisconsin public school or public library a complete set of all WHS books in print - more than one hundred titles. Individuals are invited to nominate their favorite school or public library. The winning library, chosen by random drawing, will take home the big prize, and the individual will win one WHS Press title of his or her choice.
Winners will be announced on September 30, 2005, and the books will be awarded on October 17 at the grand finale to the Wisconsin Book Festival. WHS Press's remarkable collection of books in print includes something for everyone, from amateur genealogists to folklore enthusiasts; from Badger fans to Harley riders; from kids and families to students and scholars. The Press's author list is equally impressive, including illustrious, well-known writers from Jerry Apps to Richard Zeitlin. The complete collection of WHS Press books in print is valued at more than $3,000.
To nominate a library for the Big Book Giveaway, fill out the form by September 15, 2005 at www.wisconsinhistory.org/publications/.
The Library of the Wisconsin Historical Society needs your help. They currently subscribe to 9,000 newspapers and periodicals published in Wisconsin as well as across North America. They know that they are missing many local publications. If you know of any local publications, particularly the free distribution titles, send a copy to the Historical Society. You can use the South Central delivery service. Local ethnic titles would be of particular interest. If the Society does not know of their existence, they cannot subscribe. And if they cannot subscribe, they cannot preserve the title on microfilm.
"When I was about 8 years old, my favorite was a book by Elizabeth Goudge called The Little White Horse. It is a very magical book. There's a lot in it about the heroine's dresses, which I really enjoyed, but I would imagine most boys would not. Quote by J.K. Rowling when asked about her favorite book.
