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The Library Connection
Volume 25 Number 11 November 2005
Click here for the Fall 2005 Bookmobile Schedule
In November, the county boards of Ozaukee and Sheboygan Counties approved the 2006 appropriations for county library service. The appropriations provide bookmobile service and reimburse public libraries in both counties for providing library service to the non-libraried residents of their respective counties.
Due to action by the state legislature and the Governor, the tax levies are subject to tax levy limits--2.3% in Ozaukee County and 2.8% in Sheboygan County. The limit is determined by the increase in value of new construction in the counties. In previous years, special taxes like the county library tax were exempt from these types of limits. This year the Department of Revenue determined that the county library tax was also subject to those levy limits for 2006 appropriations.
In Sheboygan County, the request for the 2006 appropriation fell within the guidelines of this limit. The appropriation was based on the 2006-2010 Sheboygan County Library Services Plan adopted earlier this year by the County Board. The plan states that public libraries should be reimbursed at 86% of the costs they incur to serve the non-libraried residents. It also states that the county's share of the bookmobile service should be based on Sheboygan County residents' use of the service.
The 2006 appropriation of $980,530 provides $858,395 for reimbursing libraries and $122,135 for bookmobile service. The 2005 appropriation in Sheboygan County was $991,076.
In Ozaukee County, the administrator proposed an increase in the county library service appropriation based on the 2.3% increase. However, the Ozaukee County Board adopted the recommendation of its Administrative Committee to provide county library service funding at the 2005 level. They also adopted a resolution which distributes the reimbursement amount at different levels to the public libraries.
The initial request for the 2006 appropriation in Ozaukee County was based on the 2006-2010 Ozaukee County Library Services Plan adopted earlier this year by the County Board. The plan states that libraries should be reimbursed at 85% of the costs they incur to serve the non-libraried residents. It also states that the county's share of the bookmobile service should be based on Ozaukee County residents' use of the service. The request asked for an appropriation of $308,165, of which $233,547 would be used to reimburse the public libraries, and $62,918 would be used for bookmobile service. The final appropriation of $287,432 provides $213,395 for reimbursing libraries and $52,337 for bookmobile service. The 2005 appropriation in Ozaukee County was also $287,432.
The County Library Tax is levied on only those property tax payers who reside in areas of the counties that do not support a municipal library. Residents in municipalities with libraries do not pay the county library tax. In Sheboygan County, the county library tax rate drops from $0.372 to $0.336 per $1,000 of equalized value. A property owner whose property is valued at $132,000 will pay $44.36 for county library services. In Ozaukee County, the county library tax rate drops from $0.296 to $0.270 per $1,000 of equalized value. A property owner whose property is valued at $120,000 will pay $32.45 for county library services.cDigital Audiobook Use
ESLS (and other members of the Wisconsin Public Library Consortium) are now live with the Digital AudioBook Service. Customers in Sheboygan and Ozaukee Counties can download audio books to their home computer and transfer them to a portable listening device that uses Windows Media Player or burn the book to a CD.
At the moment, 15 customers in ESLS have registered for this service. A total of 1,041 customers throughout Wisconsin are participating. Since August, 1,503 e-audiobooks have been checked out. The WPLC collection currently has 561 titles in the collection.
Because of the limited number of titles available, ESLS librarians continue to publicize the "soft rollout" of the service to their customers on a one-on-one basis.
The option to see what is available to how to participate is available from the ESLS website: http://dbooks.wplc.info
How can children's librarians determine how well their library is serving a population group? At the November meeting of ESLS youth services staff, David Weinhold, ESLS director, gave the group a number of suggestions of where to look for statistics and how to use them to show the value of children's services to library boards, common councils, and potential donors.
The first thing to do is get information on the juvenile population in your community. Local school districts are a good source for the number of children (birth to 18) in the community. Another source is the demographic data section of the DPI website, where you can see the characteristics of students in each school community by public or private school and also by grade, gender, race/ethnicity, English language proficiency, disability, and poverty status.
Statistics from Wisconsin public library annual reports are also available online at http://dpi.wi.gov/pld/dm-lib-stat.html These reports contain information about circulation of juvenile materials, the number of youth services programs and their attendance, as well as the number of children registered for the Summer Library Program. David distributed his summary of the ESLS annual reports for the libraries where he does some of the calculations that library staff can use for comparison purposes.
Youth services staff can use the calculations in David's summary to determine the effectiveness of their youth services.
 | FTE per 1,000 population - calculate youth services FTEs for juvenile population |
| Print materials held per capita - calculate juvenile print materials per juvenile population |
| Magazine titles per 1,000 population - calculate juvenile magazines for juvenile population |
| Audio recordings per capita - calculate juvenile audio recordings per juvenile population |
| Video recordings per capita - calculate juvenile video recordings per juvenile population |
| Material expenditures per capita - calculate juvenile material expenditures per juvenile population |
| Collection size per capita - calculate juvenile collection per juvenile population |
A third source of statistics is our local shared catalog, EasiCat. Paul Onufrak, ESLS automation librarian, produces a report for circulation by btype--adult, juvenile, young adult, staff, etc. Libraries can produce their own report that gives a count of the number of juvenile borrowers' cards at each library. The number of juvenile items owned is also available from EasiCat. Children's staff can always contact Paul with questions about other information that EasiCat has and which report(s) can retrieve that information.
Barb Huntington, Youth and Special Needs Consultant at the DLTCL, had other suggestions for youth services staff:
| Compare the juvenile circ to the total library circ. Is the youth materials budget similar to that percentage? |
| Determine the amount of total circ per capita. Determine the amount of juvenile circ per number of children in the community. What is the ratio of the per child circ to the per capita circ? |
| Determine the ratio of registered borrowers to the total population of the community. Determine the ratio of children's cards to the number of children in the community. How do these numbers compare? |
| Compare the square footage of the youth services area to the total area of the building. How does this ratio compare to the circulation measure or the library card measure above? |
| Calculate the ratio of the building's area to the total population. Do the same for the youth services area for the total number of children. How do they compare? |
| Compare the number of materials added over the last three years in the adult area per adult population to the number of materials added in the last three years in the youth services area per child population. |
| Compare the number of computers available to adults to the ones available to children. |
| Compare the amount of use of adult area computers to youth area computers. |
| If you sample library visits, compare the number of library visitors on
days with youth services programs to days without those programs or to days
with adult programs. You may want to take multiple samples and average
them. |
Children's
Librarians CornerI’ll admit it, I’m hooked on audio books. Recently, at the end of one of the books I was listening to, Jim Dale, narrator of the Harry Potter audio books series, talked a little about the benefits of listening to a book, “Listening to audio books is good entertainment and a wonderful way to enjoy a good book when our hands are busy.” Like most of us, my ‘hands are busy’ and as much as I’d like to, I don’t always have time to sit and enjoy a good book. Listening to books lets me enjoy a book and still accomplish the things I need to accomplish.
Jim Dale went on to say that listening to audio books can be a great benefit to the children in our lives. “Being read to is an important step on the road to becoming a good reader and one of the best ways to insure a life long love of literature and reading.” I agree. Audio books can benefit children in many ways. Listening to a good book can improve reading fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. It can stimulate the child’s imagination, creativity and curiosity. It can enhance listening skills and best of all introduce the art of storytelling.
We all know that being read to is one of the most valuable gifts we can give our children. At the November, ESLS Youth Services Meeting there was a discussion on how few parents spend time reading to their children. LeVar Burton, the star of Reading Rainbow says “Many of us who, as parents, once made it a habit to read aloud to our youngsters, stopped this sharing of books once our children learned to read independently.” Audio books can become a great resource for filling this gap. Burton comments that "they bring to life the heart and soul of a book." He goes on to say “audio books can never be a replacement for learning to read but they can effectively enrich the reading experience.” For these reasons, I plan to make it a priority to introduce audio books to more families of young children.
Many audio book titles are narrated by trained readers and famous actors and in some cases a full cast of performers. They can be fact or fiction, humorous, sad or exciting. There has never been a better selection of audio book titles available. We have access to something for every listener's taste. Can you think of a better way to spend time? I eagerly anticipate my next audio book afternoon! Have fun listening and while you’re at it, recommend a good audio book to a child.
I recently retired as the Cedarburg High School Library Media Specialist and
would like to work part-time in a library. I graduated with an M.S. in Library
and Information Science from UW-Milwaukee and continued my education to receive
an M.S. in Administrative Leadership from Cardinal Stritch. I have worked at the
elementary, high school, and district levels and am seeking a part-time position
in children's or reference services. For several years I have gained
valuable knowledge as a trustee of the Cedarburg Public Library. My resume
and references are available upon request.
Vonna J. Pitel
W69N875 Evergreen Ct.
Cedarburg, WI 53012
262-375-4492
vjpitel@execpc.com
Help build support for library funding and legislation that helps libraries! Attend the 2006 Library Legislative Day on Tuesday, January 31, 2006. Begin the day at 7:45 a.m. with a continental breakfast and then listen to a briefing and tips on visiting your legislators. This briefing will be presented again following the keynote speaker. From 10:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. you will be able to visit legislators.
The annual event is sponsored by the Wisconsin Library Association and the Wisconsin Educational Media Association. The registration form is available on the WLA website.
Amazon.com will introduce two new services next year that
allow customers to access books online. The Amazon Pages program will sell
online access to books, by the page or by entire texts. With the Amazon Upgrade
program, customers who have bought the hard copy of a book will be able to pay
an additional fee and have online access to that text. The only books that
will be available in the new programs will be those in the public domain or
whose copyright holder has granted permission. Decisions about whether
users will be permitted to print pages from the Web or cut and paste text, as
well as pricing, will be made by publishers and copyright holders, according to
CEO Jeff Bezos. In a separate announcement, Random House has said it will begin
making arrangements with online retailers and search engines to offer some of
its books in electronic format. Books that the publisher includes in the program
will be searchable, and users will be able to see up to 5 percent of the text
for free. Beyond that point, users will pay per page for further access.
The Great Books Foundation has been a pioneer in book group development and activity throughout the United States since 1947. Two educators at the University of Chicago launched the Great Books movement that year. They shared a vision of book discussion groups around the country in which passionate readers could meet and talk about enduring issues and ideas. The Great Books Foundation currently sponsors more than 850 book groups across the country.
A Great Books group is easy to start. They do not require specialized training or scholarly expertise, and they have a proven track record of building traffic for libraries that host them.
To get a free starter kit: contact Daniel Born 1-800-222-5870, ext 282 or email daniel.born@greatbooks.org
Google has reportedly proposed a plan to rent books online.
An unnamed publisher said that Google suggested the idea of letting consumers
pay a fee, equal to 10 percent of the price of a printed copy of the book, to
have online access to the text for one week. Rented books would not be
downloadable or printable, according to the publisher, which said that although
the fee Google suggested is too low, the notion of renting texts might represent
a viable new model for content distribution. A spokesperson from Google said
that although "Google Print is exploring new access models to help authors
and publishers sell more books online," the company at this time has
nothing to announce. Other publishers said they were curious about a rental
program for books and are interested in hearing more details, as long as the
program ensures that copyright holders are compensated. David Steinberger, chief
executive of Perseus Books, also noted that for a rental program to be
successful, it would have to augment physical book sales, not limit them.
Public and school librarians can apply for the newest We the People Bookshelf grant. This year's theme is "Becoming American."
For the first time ever, ALA will be awarding a Bookshelf - 15 classic books for young readers on the theme of "Becoming American" - to 2,000 school and public libraries. This is four times the number of Bookshelves they have awarded in the past for a single application deadline! They hope you will take advantage of this easy opportunity to acquire free books for your library.
Guidelines and the online application are available at www.ala.org/wethepeople from September 6, 2005 - January 17, 2006. Libraries interested in receiving the collection are required to develop and host a program to introduce the collection and its theme of “Becoming American” to students and/or patrons. Unlike past We the People Bookshelves, there will be no second deadline for “Becoming American.” All applications are due by January 17, 2006
To access a list of titles and further details, please visit http://www.ala.org/wethepeople. With questions, contact publicprograms@ala.org .
What better gift for the book lover or librarian on your Christmas list than a calendar, poster, or set of greeting cards with photos of beautiful old libraries? The Renaissance Library Collection has a calendar with twelve color photographs of libraries from 597AD to 1838, with brief history and description of items of special interest. Also available is a set of twelve greeting cards and prints and posters. Past years calendars are also available at reduced rates. The company will customize the calendar with your logo for gifts to library supporters or for fundraising. Go to: http://www.renaissancelibrary.com/
Ingredients:
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 egg
½ cup beef or chicken broth
2 Tablespoons wheat germ (optional)
½ teaspoon garlic salt
½ teaspoon onion salt
½ teaspoon garlic powder
Tools
Mixing bowl
Liquid measuring cup
Measuring spoons
Wooden spoon
Large microwave-safe baking dish
Cooking Steps
Place the flour in the bowl. Add the egg and enough broth to moisten the flour. Add the remaining ingredients.
Roll the dough into a ball. Sprinkle flour on the work surface. Break off small pieces of dough ball. Form them into rolls or ring shapes. Place in the large baking dish in a single layer.
Bake on HIGH in microwave for 10 minutes, or until firm. Let the biscuits cool and harden before giving them to the smoochy pooch on your gift list!
Makes 20 biscuits.
