ICfL will promote Idaho’s literary heritage at the 11th annual National Book Festival. The Festival, sponsored by the Library of Congress, will be held on Saturday and Sunday, September 24 -25, 2011 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Teen Read Week is October 16-22 and this year’s theme is Picture It @ your library. We have jumped on the bandwagon and tied this year’s project to photography. The ICfL wants to know if you are going to participate in TRW this year! We collected some great baseline data on library and teen participation last year and want to continue gathering information on teen services.

I absolutely love this idea developed by teen services staff at Seattle Public Library. What a great way to engage teens and get them reading. Sounds like alot of fun too.  Here is a brief description of what they are doing:

On Thursday, March 3, the Talking Book Service (TBS) will host an Open House at ICfL from 1-3 pm to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the National Library Service (NLS) which supplies the audio books, magazines and players for TBS to loan to users statewide.

I just had to share this article from the New York Times. It touched my heart!
With a 4 year old daughter at home, I too love to read aloud and look forward to our nightly storytime. This article makes me want to commit to starting our own reading 'Streak'.

Please read on....
A Father and Daughter Bond, Page by Page

Second session at ILA was with Erin Archambeault from Ada Community Library. She shared some of her favorite storytime books, craft ideas, and activities. Erin had all of us jumping around the room, dancing, singing and playing just like the kids from her storytimes at the library. I had a lot of fun and the participants seemed engaged and inspired by the presentation. Thanks Erin!

The Idaho Commission for Libraries is pleased to announce the receipt yesterday of a $15,000 grant from the Fred Meyer Fund for the “Books for Summer Readers” project. One hundred eighteen Idaho public libraries applied by the May deadline to receive free paperback books to distribute to their summer readers. Approximately 6,200 children will receive books.

We've just finished selecting the 1500+ titles that will be distributed in digital format when the Talking Book Service transition begins next year. These titles will be available on cartridges and will play on the new digital players.

The transition to the digital format in the Talking Book Service presents a whole new way to read for those requiring reading alternatives. Users can now download books from NLS BARD onto specialized players. The database is available 24/7 and contains a growing collection (more than 11,000 titles at this time) of books from the NLS collection.