It’s great here! I’ll try to post later, but now I have a class to deal with.

I love technology!

I’m starting the semester in Seattle. I’m attending my first ALISE conference and then attending the ALA Midwinter conference. I’ll be observing and recording a focus group on romance novels. I also hope to gather audio for LISRadio shows for this semester. I plan to try to live-blog the conferences as much as possible, with pictures.

The first semester went by in a kind of haze. I was overwhelmed by the transition… it was much more difficult than going from being an undergrad to a graduate student. I wonder if it was made harder because I was in the same institution, so I was used to things being a certain way. Being a doctoral student is definitely an education.

I was pleased with how my classes went in the fall. I came out of them with two ideas that I’m going to work into presentation proposals.

Ms. Florea talks about collaborations with different community agencies. Some examples:

• Creating tote bags with books about issues facing families (divorce, death, new babies) and having local aid agencies give parents “prescriptions” for the tote bags
• Leaving recently de-selected but still decent books at WIC offices for parents to read while they’re there or even take home if necessary
• Providing traveling storytimes for community centers with childcare, such as the Y or Boys and Girls Club, who can’t always get their children to the library

Various funding options were discussed. Some of the outreach was carried out with the help of grants from Health and Human Services and other organizations.

Attendees also shared examples of outreach from their communities.

Presented by Vera Florea, Springfield-Greene County Library
10:00-10:45, Thursday October 5, 2006

This session immediately followed a Make it and Take it session for children’s librarians, so we met a few friends who were leaving with their plant-pot bells and their paper plate bean shakers. It looked like their session was great fun.

Vera Florea discussed several of the different projects the Springfield library carried out with other organizations. Some of the collaborations were with Friends of the Library, Parents as Teachers, YMCA, Boys and Girls Club, Salvation Army, the school district’s summer school program, house of hope, and their parks and recreation department. She said library outreach is important because children can’t get themselves to the library.

Some of the projects were family reading bags, a wee read program, stories to go, and discovery bags. I will discuss them in another post.

Presented by: The Mid-Continent Public Library’s GLBT Group
Thursday, Oct 5, 2006, 9am-9:45am

This was a great session. The presenters covered how to build a core GLBT collection.

They started with describing how to define this core collection. They looked at lists generated by the ALA and by some GLBT writers’ groups. They compared this list to the holdings at the libary and purchased books using rotating budget money.

Advice for forming the group:
-treat it like a real organization
-send minutes up the chain of command
-gather facts
-know how to evaluate a need

One presenter said the group started with a request for Out magazine. The group started with a small collection and just put it out. Then they watched circulation statistics. They said every item circulated, despite the location and apparent demographics of each branch. Eventually, patrons will start requesting the items. For outreach, they made bookmarks and left them at GLBT centers.

They wanted to make sure the collection fit three types of needs: legal, health, and social. They also wanted to make sure the collection was balanced along the GLBTQA spectrum, without being too heavy in one area.

Then, the subject of talking to the administration came up. The group informed the rest of the librarians what they were doing, then met face to face in a staff meeting. They emphasized the importance of being professional and responsible about the whole thing. Only one book on their desired list was turned down, most likely because it was in Graphic Novel format.

This was a really good session. The presenters noted that the way they went about building the collection served as a pilot program for building collections for other populations (such as foreign language collections.)

Another thing that was neat about the presentation was that at least one board member attended (as an audience member) and spoke up when another attendee asked about how the group dealt with the board. He said their board was supportive of the group.

The only thing that bothered me was the repetition that “They’ll know the authors,” implying that GLBT patrons already have knowledge of what they’re looking for. I’m not sure that applies across the board, though. In a small rural town, GLBT patrons might not be exposed to any kind of information about writers, books, or magazines to watch out for.

After the sessions, I went to the Expo area, where the Book Cart Drill Team competition was beginning. I couldn’t really get a good view. I took this picture holding my camera over my head.

The local team, from Daniel Boone Regional Library, won with their pirate-themed routine. The team shown here was the second-place winner.

After the drill team competition, we wandered around the Expo center and visited vendors… mostly the professors from our school, since almost everyone I was hanging around with graduated last year and wanted to make contact. Then, some of us went to the Missouri Library Network Corporation 25th anniversary reception (poolside… the pool was covered and it was a bit chilly out there, but still nice), others went to the MACRL dinner, and still others went to the Performer Showcase. I wish I had gone to the Performer Showcase as well. It was a lot of fun last year, and my friends who went this year said it was even better. And Bobby Norfolk was there.

This session was far too short. The presenters began with the Assumptions of Democracy (U.S. version): Public participation, informed citizenry, fundamental freedoms, individual rights, and majority rule. We spent a little time discussing what those meant, and then went on to try to figure out what was a library’s responsibility. The presenters asked whether libraries were obligated just to provide information or whether libraries were obligated to inform citizens. They asked for a show of hands. It appeared most of the people in the room believed libraries were simply obligated to provide information, but a few of the younger librarians in the room believed there was an obligation to inform. (I interpreted that to mean that libraries should offer not just materials, but sessions and displays.) It comes down to whether a library should be proactive or responsive. I believe there are good arguments for both.

The topic of library boards came up, as it does. Without a good library board, there’s little a library can do, it seems.

The session ended just as the discussion was really heating up.