Summer learning
By howard | July 16, 2008
It was a pleasure to read in the Providence Journal a couple of months ago about the value of summer learning (Summer learning makes a big impact by Ron Fairchild, May 29,2008). The proliferation of summer programs for kids is heartening. All Rhode Islanders should be excited about it – kids, their parents, and anyone who treasures education, economic development, quality of life, the future. Mr. Fairchild is right to cite the “study after study” that shows the importance of summer learning programs and to praise Rhode Island for pursuing them. He did, however, fail to mention the mainstay of out-of-school learning for Rhode Island children, the local public library. Throughout the state, public libraries offer quality learning opportunities for kids (and grownups) outside of school. During the school year, it’s homework help, and after school and weekend enticements.
Every summer, through the coordination of the state’s Office of Library and Information Services, Rhode Island’s public libraries offer a Summer Reading program. With a modicum of support from federal, state and municipal government and the help of such partners as the McDonald’s Restaurants of Rhode Island, Pawtucket Red Sox, Citizen’s Bank, Coca-Cola, the Providence Journal, libraries tailor library services and special events to their communities around a common theme. This year, it’s “Catch the Reading Bug!” (as highlighted in a Providence Journal Newspaper in Education Supplement May 19, 2008.) Replete with prizes, presentations and other incentives to keep their minds operating through summer vacation, the libraries provide kids with a fun place to learn.
By working together within the state and by participating in the 45 state Collaborative Summer Library Program, libraries are able to keep costs down and leverage a very small government contribution to produce a very large impact in every RI community. By partnering with local businesses and agencies that serve children, libraries stretch the government dollar even farther. The Summer Reading Program is available to every kid in Rhode Island.
Last year 13,744 kids participated. Twenty-one libraries last year had teen summer reading programs as well. Bradley Hospital and the Meeting Street School helped assure that disabilities would not be a deterrent to participation. Well over half of the participants completed their local library’s program. Upward of 17,000 attended 272 special events. Funding is always a challenge; diminishing state and federal contributions meant a decrease in the number of events at libraries last year, only some of which was made up through local grants and donations. Despite the funding situation, however, this year, libraries are expecting even more excitement and more participation. Knowing what libraries are doing on a shoestring, consider what they could do with more.
“Catch the Reading Bug!” will be different at every library, but will include great reading experiences, of course, storytellers, magic, edutainment and entomophagy. A Summer Reading Club for teens at many libraries will feature “Metamorphosis@ Your Library” with special programs in the young adult department. Summer Reading Program information is available at the local library; a statewide schedule of performances and presentations is posted at www.olis.ri.gov/services/srp.
We’re in the midst of summer now, and young minds in every corner of Rhode Island are keeping active through the Summer Reading Program at their local public library. They will consequently return to school next fall that much more ready to learn. Educators, legislators, policy makers at all levels should be thinking library whenever they consider after school or summer learning
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RI library advocates go to Washington
By howard | May 23, 2008
Last Tuesday and Wednesday I spent with some of my most convivial colleagues. Seven of us constituted a RI delegation to ALA’s National Library Legislation Day (NLLD). We learned a lot and accomplished a lot, and rediscovered how special RI is on the national library advocacy stage. Three members of the LiBRI (Library Board of Rhode Island), chair Mark McKenney, Joan Ress Reeves, and Rose Ellen Reynolds (who also represented COLA), Chris LaRoux, RILA president, Jackie Lamoureux, president of RIEMA, David Macksam RI’s ALA councilor and I participated in a Briefing Day on Tuesday and visited our congressmen and senators on Wednesday. We went armed with information packets for our legislators and for their staffs outlining the federal issues of special interest to RI libraries. See what was in our Packets:
- Facts about Rhode Island Libraries
- Key Issues for Rhode Islanders
- Library Services and Technology Acts
- What happens when the money isn’t there?
- Improving literacy through school libraries, Rhode Island
- Improving literacy through school libraries, RI District 1
- Improving literacy through school libraries, RI District 2
- School libraries work!
- Why should you support your school library?
- Rhode Island Talking Books Plus
Briefing Day was deftly managed by ALA’s Washington Office. It featured a rundown by the Washington Office’s executive director Emily Sheketoff of the hot library issues before the legislature and key messages that ALA wants to convey on behalf of libraries. Emily not only understands libraries of all kinds, but is on top of the what and who of currents events on the Hill. Remarkably, she is able to communicate all that (and it is an ‘all that’!) to us ordinary librarians and library supporters in a way we can understand. The Washington Office team also prepared a slew of papers on ALA’s hot issues and key messages for us to share with our legislators. You can see them at ‘issue briefs’ and at ‘other resources’ on their website: http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/washevents/nlld/nlld2008.cfm. Also valuable was a panel of congressional hill staffers with tips on how the legislative process works and how to communicate with legislators and their staffs.
Briefing Day also held the first NLLD experience of RI as something special. That was the presentation of the first annual WHCLIST (White House Conference on Library and Information Services Taskforce) award to help pay for a participant to attend NLLD. The award was presented by our own Rose Ellen Reynolds, current chair of WHCLIST - RI showing the way.
Wednesday the RI delegation gathered in front of Representative Langevin’s Office in the Cannon House Office Building. We were joined by James Telhia, who is leaving URI for a post in Idaho and was joining both state delegations for legislator visits. We had a friendly and productive visit with Rep. Langevin’s Legislative Assistant Kirtley Ficher.
Thus we began the second round of our “RI is special” experience. Unlike most of our colleagues in other states, we found ourselves more thanking our legislators than petitioning them. Jim added to that feeling; we all noted that he is moving from the nation’s bluest to the nation’s reddest state. Having joined the Idaho delegation for their visits the day before, he could attest to the contrast. We didn’t have any hard sales to make, just reminders that library-related issues need attention.
At Rep. Patrick Kennedy’s office , also in the Cannon Bldg., we met primarily with very knowledgeable legislative assistant Mike Harney. The congressman did stop in for a considerable time to say hi and assure us of his concern for our issues.
After lunch in the Senate Cafeteria we spoke with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and his assistant Regan Fitzpatrick in the Hart Senate Office Building. Again, we said thank you. Senator Whitehouse is particularly involved in our intellectual freedom issues, and eagerly joins Senator Reed in his support of libraries.
The biggest thank yous, of course went to Senator Jack Reed, who saw us in his office, also in the Hart Building, and his legislative aide and long time library advocate Elyse Wasch. Senator Reed continues to be the driving force of library advocacy in the US Congress and Elyse continues to be the librarian’s ideal of a legislative staffer.
In the lobby at Senator Reed’s office, we ran into a delegation from Rhode Island After School Plus Alliance – one of our local natural allies in providing services to children also there to thank the senator and remind him of RI kids’ - and parents’ - continuing needs.
All of our legislators urged patience. Action on library issues (and a host of others) they told us, is likely to wait until the new administration takes over. Dollar items especially, are likely to be on the shelf until next spring. We can wait until March, we intimated, but our needs, especially full funding for LSTA, SKILLS and NLS for Talking Books Plus, e-rate, net neutrality and the issues that impinge upon intellectual freedom. We had a successful and satisfying NLLD.
Many thanks to all who helped: at OLIS, especially Debbie Cullerton who did all the logistics for our delegation and Alicia Waters who helped Debbie put the information packets together - in time.
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Building Burrillville
By howard | April 30, 2008
Few circumstances are so conducive to humility as sharing the podium with Senator Jack Reed. Yet, there I was last Sunday, April 27, 2008 under a tent in front of over 100 Burrillvilleans and friends celebrating the Grand Opening of the new Jesse M. Smith Library sitting next to the Senator awaiting my turn to speak. Also at the top of the tent were Congressman Patrick Kennedy and Nancy Binns, Burrillville Council president. The speechifying itself was a treat. Every speaker made it clear that he or she “got it;” i.e., understands the library’s importance. All spoke of the library as a place, as a collection, as a gateway to the online world, as a staff of helpful guides. The Congressman was full of fire for the library’s role as bastion of democracy. Nancy Binns alluded to a number of illustrative tales proclaiming the library’s role in the lives of people of all ages and stations.
David Ketcham, Chair of the building committee and the day’s MC told us that the most used word in the visitor sign-in book since the library’s “soft opening” at the beginning of the month was “awesome.” Upon that basis, he suggested the library’s name be changed to the “Awesome Jesse M. Smith Memorial Library.”
That provided the Senator with a segue to his invocation of the significance of the role of librarians in lthe library, counter-proposing as a new name the “Sandra Mundy Jesse M. Smith Memorial Library” to honor the incredible efforts of the library director.
I thanked Burrillville on behalf of Rhode Islanders everywhere, noting that every LORI library was an asset to all.
We often hear that a chain is no stronger than its weakest link but are rarely challenged to consider the obverse: that a chain can grow no stronger than it strongest links. RI libraries are all linked by LORI; linked as places; linked as collections; linked as skilled staff who can guide the members of their discrete communities, who are all members of our aggregate community to each other. We are more of a web than a chain, but the principle is the same. OLIS is proud to have had a part in creating the opportunity for Burrillville’s library service to grow stronger.
Burrillville, thank you and congratulations!
LORI is stronger, too.
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Service, Service, Service
By howard | April 21, 2008
At the URI GSLIS annual gathering Friday night Camila Alire reminded the assembled that service is the essence of the library profession. At first I bristled at that (maybe because I could hear in that the voice of one of my first library mentors at the University of Pittsburgh parentally exhorting me “service, service, service”) Isn’t ‘service’ much too broad a term to describe an essence? Sure, we serve our patrons (clients, customers), but doesn’t every store clerk, fire-fighter, dentist, even IRS agent? Certainly a profession devoted to providing access to information, steeped in language could come up with a better description of its essence!
Somehow, though, when I reflected, I kept returning to “service, service, service”. What is the subject of our service? Our product, information, after all is incorporeal; more and more, seeking to serve up our product, we cannot even predict what wrapper we will find it in – parchment? paper? clay tablets? something magnetic? something optical? something online? – let alone describe it in a word.
The essence of that we do is after all, service. On the one hand, it is undoubtably a librarian who serves the noble prize winners with the resources that underpin their achievement. On the other hand, Jimmy Durante found in the library “exactly what I was lookin’ for. It was 4,572 (est.) pages long. . .just the size to fit under the short leg of my pool table. . . .” Service.
Perhaps the most important thing for a librarian to be reading is the patron walking through the door.
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GIA 2009
By howard | April 11, 2008
We are all facing another difficult budget year. I know it is of little comfort, but RI is not at all alone. Although there are pockets of better news, many state library agencies across the nation have been reporting reductions in FY2009. Ohio is facing a 10% cut; in New Jersey and in California, local libraries are looking at a 10% cut in state grant-in-aid; The American Library Association’s news reports are also full of dire circumstances. In Rhode Island, flat funding of library grants-in-aid coupled with reductions in other state aid to municipalities and local troubles stemming from the general downturn in our economy have upped the downward pressure on local library budgets. In some cases that downward pressure could lead to loss of the state grant-in-aid. Local budget decisionmakers will need to be careful about ensuring continued eligibility for state grants-in-aid. RIGL Title 29-6 contains the following:
“§ 29-6-3 Eligibility requirements – Municipalities. – (a) To qualify for state aid under § 29-6-2, a city or town shall:
(1) Appropriate from local tax revenues an amount not less than the amount appropriated the previous year from local tax revenues and expended for library operating expenses. The appropriation would exclude any state funds received for public library services. Any funds received from the state shall not be used to supplant funds from local tax revenues;”
Put simply, that means that municipalities that do not provide library services in FY2009 with the same or a higher level of funding than they had in FY2008 will forfeit their FY2009 grant-in-aid.
The governor has recommended grants-in-aid that would fund a projected 22.86% of municipal appropriations and expenditures two years prior, a substantial part of each eligible public library’s library budget. Note that I say “municipal” rather than library appropriations and expenditures. RIGL Title 29-6-3 goes on to say:
“(2) In the case of a city or town having more than one free public library therein, submit or cause to be submitted to the department of state library services a plan for the allotment or division of the proposed state aid among the free public libraries in the city or town. The plan shall be developed by agreement among the free public libraries of the city or town;”
I will have some discretion to cope with desperate cases, but don’t foresee making any exceptions to the maintenance of effort requirement.
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