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Blog posts from December 2006

Shirley Biladeau's picture
2006 27 Dec

Program Ideas to Attract Boomers to Your Library

The Montana State Library recently published a great programming guide containing nearly 40 adult programming suggestions. The guide can be found at http://msl.mt.gov/whatsyourstory/programmingguide.pdf .

Montana and Idaho are certainly in the same boat as far as needing to reach out to more citizens. A quote from their marketing and communication project page, called “What’s Your Story? Find It At the Library” reads, “Libraries are beloved by citizens and the communities we serve, yet Montana libraries face significant challenges. We are under-funded, short-staffed, and often taken for granted.” That sounds familiar! It goes on to say, “To help remind Montanans of the value of Montana libraries to the communities we serve, the ‘What’s Your Story?’ campaign was born. A group of Montana librarians, representing communities big and small, east and west, and all types of libraries, came together to try to articulate what was needed to help our peers do a great job of promoting ourselves to the large number of patrons we serve.”

gina.persichini's picture
2006 19 Dec

Plus/Delta

As I approach the end of a year and anticipate all that awaits in the next, I usually find myself wanting to perform some kind of review. It's not as much about setting goals or making "resoultions," but more about identifying all the good that has happened and all the things that have been learned.

Most people who have had opportunity to attend a meeting with or had a meeting facilitated by ICFL staff are probably familiar with the Plus/Delta evaluation method. Where the "plus" represents those things that worked well and the "delta," which symbolizes change, is for those things that we might change should we do it again. Plus/Delta is not just for meetings. It's an easy-to-use tool that can be performed for projects or just to review a specific period of time.

Anonymous's picture
2006 18 Dec

Managing Change, e-branch Style

Part of the work of ensuring the longevity of a project such as the e-Branch project involves change management.

In managing change, it’s important to know what you value, and what to do when those values conflict. For the e-branch project, we’ve developed the following list of values, ranked in priority order:

  1. Security
gina.persichini's picture
2006 15 Dec

MySpace Forum & Documentary (Fresno)

I found this via Librarian In Black.  She mentioned that the library in Fresno, CA held a forum about MySpace.  It included an 8-minute documentary that some teens helped to create.

See the documentary at YouTube. Or, read one person’s account of the MySpace forum.

 

    gina.persichini's picture
    2006 08 Dec

    PLA Proposed New Service Responses

    The Public Library Association (PLA) has posted the draft of their new "Service Responses."  They are seeking comments from the library community at the PLA Blog. 

    To learn more about the PLA Service Responses, go to http://plablog.org/plaserviceresponses/.

      gina.persichini's picture
      2006 06 Dec

      LiLI-U PSAs - Vote now!

      Have you seen the LiLI Unlimited PSA’s? You can watch them online, and even vote for you favorite!

        gina.persichini's picture
        2006 06 Dec

        Getting ILL Stats from OCLC

        For those public libraries completing the annual statistics report, you might be interested to know that you can easily get your Interlibrary Loan statistics online from OCLC if your library participates in LiLI Unlimited. To get your stats:

        Step 1 - Go to http://www.stats.oclc.org/

        Anonymous's picture
        2006 01 Dec

        e-branch System's Underlying Assumptions

        Please pardon if these thoughts are a bit rambling, but I've excerpted them from an email exchange with one of our e-branch participants: