Little Free Libraries: A Public Good... Right?

The first Little Free Library, built by  Todd Bol

These days, if you look around the neighborhoods in most cities, you're bound to run across something odd: what looks like an over-sized mailbox full of books with a sign telling you something like "take one, leave one." These so-called "Little Free Libraries" are popping up everywhere, and from their humble roots they are becoming something of a movement. Where did these cute little boxes come from?

The history, as it turns out, is an interesting one. In 2009, a man named Todd Bol built the first LFL in the shape of a small school house. His original intent had been to honor his mother's memory (she loved books and reading), but the idea quickly spread throughout the country and eventually the world. These days LFLs have their own website where interested library lovers can purchase/register their own version, and there are now over 15,000 of them worldwide.

Despite their seemingly innocuous appearance, Little Free Libraries were not without their share of controversy. In a few spots around the country, LFLs have led to citations and "Cease and Desist" letters due to laws that (we assume) simply weren't written with community book-donation in mind. Nowadays, these laws seem to be changing to allow LFLs their spot in the community network, so they appear to be here to stay.

What do you think? Are these unregulated boxes a community resource, or an unecessary eyesore? Would you love to see a box on every corner, or are our roles as library support staff an important part of the book-sharing process? Feel free to leave a comment below if you're passionate about this phenomenon!

September is for Libraries!

It's September which means two important annual events happen this month for libraries. The month of September is Library Card Sign Up Month and the last week of the month is Banned Books Week.

What are some events your library has done to encourage patrons to get library cards? Do you know about the Oregon Library Passport, which lets your patrons use libraries across the state?

Banned Books Week is an excellent time to create book displays and to educate patrons, and is something libraries of all types participate in. Do you know what books were challenged most in Oregon last year? What are some displays and events your library
has done?

We'd love to see ideas/displays/pictures here or you can share on our Facebook and Twitter .

Artwork courtesy of the American Library Association

Great Ideas From Deschutes

Libraries are the place to go for new and exciting ideas and the Deschutes Public Library system is obviously no exception, judging by this article from The Atlantic.

Take a moment to read about their exciting library projects and innovations and then please share yours with us as well, either in the comments below or on our Facebook page. We know libraries all over Oregon (and beyond) are up to some amazing things to meet their patron's needs (often before the patrons even know what those needs are!) and we'd love to hear all about it!

Chicks hatching in a library!

Peep peep!

One of the more interesting additions to a library collection, which were due to hatch April 19th, is the Chick-It-Out Hatch Program at the Homer Library in Illinois. 

You can go to their site and watch a live stream of the incubator, which according to their facebook page has one chick, but looks like it still has eggs in it as of this date.

The chicks will be kept at the library for a couple weeks after they hatch then go back to the farm.

I can't imagine resisting the cuteness while trying to shelve holds or working the circulation desk and would probably find excuses to be out on the floor a lot more.

How much work would you get done if there were adorable, fluffy, baby chicks in your workplace?

Could this work in your library?

Barbary Sanderson, a teen services assistant at Licking County Library in Ohio, came up with a neat new program that lends out guitars to their patrons. 

This article in the Newark Advocate goes into a little more detail.  She's teamed up with a local guitar shop, bank, and the board of trustees.

Their lending policies can be found here on their website.

Licking County will also be adding ukeleles to their collections, among other things.  It looks like a lot of their ideas come from their support staff, too.


What awesome "think outside the box" things is your library doing?  How do support staff help with those ideas?

Libraries in the news

Locally:

A super-late book is returned.  Thankfully, Cedar Mill is not trying to collect the dues.  Or issuing an
arrest warrant, as happens in some other states. 

Congratulations to the Garden Home Community Library for getting a four-star ranking from the Library Journal in their annual Index of Public Library Service!


Nationally:


Here's another interesting addition to a public library to continue to foster a sense of community.  Would you add an arcade video game to your library collection?

Works Well With Others

Today we have a message from Susan Gilmont. It sounds like a great opportunity!

I don’t know how you folks are evaluated these days, but here’s a criterion that goes into my annual evaluation:

“Cooperative effort to achieve common goals; ability to work well with others”

Here’s a suggestion for a way to meet this goal:  join the SSD Continuing Education Committee.

If you’d like to meet and work with top-tier library employees from all over the state, this is the place.  If you’re looking for a growth experience, or to enhance your resume by showing how you can “work well with others,” then this is a good opportunity.  If you have a boss who is pushing you to expand your horizons, this could be the answer.  If you are just looking for a place to make a contribution, boy do we have a spot for you.

The Continuing Education Committee finds presenters for OLA and sponsors sessions there.  There are two flurries of activity around this – one in September, when we propose sessions, and one just before OLA.  Most meeting and planning is done by e-mail, calls or Skyping.  Easier than ever.

What it does for you:  I’ve been on this committee for a lot of years. It’s very energizing.  You find yourself looking at educational offerings in a whole new light:  would this speaker be good for OLA?  What sessions have I always wanted to see?  What do we all think about but nobody talks about (like money)? It turns you outward, makes you look around in a new way.  Very good for a person.  You have a reason to go to that workshop that made you curious.  It’s also justification for you to attend OLA, if you need something like OLA involvement to back up your attendance.

So, please consider joining us.  We’ll have a good time, and we’ll make a contribution.  If you are interested, please contact me at:  susan.gilmont@oregonstate.edu  .

Oregon Libraries in the News this week

 The Rockwood library, part of Multnomah County Libraries, "with the help of Volunteers of America and Catering for a Cause, ... will be offering hot lunches as part of the federal summer food program" to feed hungry kids. How amazing is that?

Does your library have unusual or innovative programs to help out the community?

Oregon City Library

The Oregon City Library, headed by Maureen Cole (also appearing at our conference this year),  is looking to expand in its current location. This has been an ongoing issue for several years. I think the most interesting thing is the Carnegie library was originally built to accommodate an expansion. What a forward-thinking idea! Let's all keep our fingers crossed for Oregon City.

How many Carnegie libraries are in Oregon? Do you work in one?

Library news and ergonomics and slides

This article about crowdfunding is a pretty good answer to the question in one of our previous posts about funding libraries. There are a few other options besides kickstarter.com and it's interesting to see what results people got or didn't get.

Here's a great online course from the University System of Georgia all about library ergonomics that gives more information about what happens when you use your body incorrectly, and makes you pay attention with sporadic quizzes throughout.

You've all seen the library slide by now, right?

Libaries in the news this week: What's unique about your collection?

We start off with a beautiful visualization of catalog searches from the entire state of Wyoming.
Filament Mind from yongjulee on Vimeo.

You can read more about this unique installation in the Wired article Massive Fiber-Optic Installation Lights Up Library Queries.

Public libraries around the country are adding some creative check-out options to their collections: Libraries offer weird things to draw new borrowers. I wouldn't necessarily call these "weird", just... new. Multnomah County is one of the libraries in Oregon offering the "Kill-O-Watt" meter to measure energy usage.  What does your library offer that might be considered "weird" by the uninitiated-to-libraries people? Please tell me there is a library in Oregon that checks out seeds.

And finally, a couple congratulations:
First to the folks at the Broad Channel Library, which just reopened after being wrecked by Sandy,
And second to Paralibrarian of the Year 2013: Laura Poe.

Ouch! Ergonomics for (not just) library shelving

Hi, Rebecca here. I'm the person behind the blog for the SSD and will be occasionally blogging about library ergonomics, as it's something of a personal interest of mine.  I'm by no means an expert, so will be relying extensively on what I find on the web.

There is a really great guide of do's and don'ts for library shelving from the folks in Environmental Health & Radiation(!) Safety at the University of Pennsylvania.  It is a MS PowerPoint document.  If you don't have PowerPoint on your computer, you can look at it through Google Docs Viewer.

Did you know:
"Pinch grip strength is approximately 25% of the strength of using the whole hand, increasing the risk of wrist injury." After thinking about it, it makes sense that using your thumb and only 1/4 of your fingers would be 25% of your hand strength!

Remember to shift between using your right and left sides for shelving.  It can be difficult to get  used to using your non-dominant hand, but that has the added benefit of slowing you down (for a little while anyway) and decreasing your chance for injury even further.

There's a handy chart with the maximum weights for shelving tasks based on starting and ending points.  My only further question is how many items does that translate to?  Books are deceptively heavy.

When you don't lift with your knees, guess how much 10 pounds feels like in your back.  


So my questions to you, dear readers, are: what is your favorite alternative to the "pinch grip"?  What stretches do you use at work, if any?  Will you start stretching after reading this?  Do you know how much what you shelve weighs?

SSD Conference Breakout Session: Coping with Change

We have some great breakout sessions planned for this year's SSD conference. Here is some more information about the Coping with Change session:

If the first three things you think of when you hear about a change at work are “not this again,” or “if I hear about one more change, I'm just going to spit,” or “I can’t take this anymore,” then attend this session! Together we’ll explore the human side of change, trade tips on living through change, and talk about skills which will help you, and therefore your employer, get through change at work. Libraries are being challenged to be adaptable and flexible in order to survive; that has to start with staff. In his session, we’ll work together to adapt our attitudes about change from evil, awful, and horrid to exciting, invigorating and stimulating.

Presenter Bio: Maureen (Mo) Cole is the Director of the Oregon City Public Library, moving to that position in 2009 after working at the Eugene Public Library for 3 years and the Kellenberger Library at Northwest Christian University for 10 years. This year marks her 20th year as a librarian and she notes that the technology has completely changed during that time. Maureen brings a unique perspective because of her broad range of experiences in special, school, academic and public libraries in volunteer, classified and management positions ranging from technical services to public services. She was even a library board member at one point. Even though she is certain that the pace of change has completely exceeded our human capacity to change, she knows that library staff are superheroes who are up to any challenge.

What if everybody read the same article?

Today's guest post is from Susan Gilmont, who is a Library Technician with Guin Library at the Hatfield Marine Science Center. She writes about how she and her team are working together to re-imagine space use in the library -- and this could really apply to any type of change any group is working towards or facing. Be sure to check out her helpful list of resources at the end of her article!


Current Awareness Reading for Library Teams

Is your department facing changes in the year ahead? Would you like to give everyone in your unit a shared vocabulary as you move forward? Current awareness reading is a valuable technique that can help groups adapt to change and form a united perspective.

The Setting:
I work at the Guin Library, a small branch of the Oregon State University Libraries, located over 50 miles away from our main campus and main library. We have 2.75 FTE, including a librarian and two library technicians. Although we travel to our main campus several times a year, and we are able to attend library meetings by polycom, we are to some extent cut off from the rich learning environment of our main library.

The Issues:
The OSU Libraries are in the process of building a culture of assessment, in which we examine and attempt to quantify our efforts. Our staff needs to learn current thinking about assessment. We also need to develop assessment projects of our own to contribute to the Libraries’ efforts.

In addition, we are in the process of redesigning our library. The marine science center where we are based is short on space, and we have an abundance of space in the library. We want to re-envision space to the best advantage for library users. As part of this effort, we are studying how patrons use the library.

Our Process:
The Guin Library Team meets once a week. Each month, we agree on an article to read. Any team member can suggest reading material. We read one article each month. We use many sources to find articles, such as LITA recommended reading resources, discussion lists, or American Libraries Online. To help us think about the articles, our librarian gave us this template to use:

1. Citation for article read
2. Intended audience
3. Methodology used
4. Premise of article
5. Findings
6. Applications for this material / What can be shared?
7. Other staff comments

Results:
Our current awareness reading program has worked well for us. We’ve learned much more about assessment, and one of the articles (Hoivik) gave us the method we used for a recent study of space use. We’ve enhanced our understanding of how technology is changing library use. Better still, we have an incentive to be on the lookout for good articles for the group to read, an incentive to be active learners. Whether you are trying to help someone stubbornly resisting change, or to inspire and re-invigorate your staff, a current awareness reading program might be just the thing for your group.

For those who might be interested, here are some of the articles we have read:

"What a Good Idea!"

Here at Eugene Public Library we have a fun, helpful practice of morning and evening P.A. announcements. Remember from your school days those reminders that let students know about upcoming events? Well, here staff receives a musical reminder that the library is opening in 5 minutes (action stations!), including "Here comes the sun" and currently "Morning has Broken". And about 10 minutes before closing the public is alerted with a song to start packing up and checking out materials . Staff can make suggestions about songs to use and periodically the songs are changed. We've had Sound of Music's "So long, farewell" for example and right now it's "Happy Trails" which sets some people laughing and sends public and staff off lighthearted.

Bright Ideas

In our library, we collect almost 40 different newspapers, from all over Oregon, in addition to the New York Times, the Seattle Times, and the Wall Street Journal. The retention varies for some, but we generally keep a year’s worth of papers in our stacks. These papers are stacked in piles on the outer wall of one of our tiers of stacks. Every month, it is necessary to weed the oldest issues. It is a rather exhausting task, especially when you have to lift up piles of heavy newspapers again and again to check the dates. Finding where the oldest month ends can be rather difficult, especially when each newspaper puts the issue date in a different area of the cover. It is almost as if newspaper businesses made a pact to keep things interesting for people in libraries! Personally, when I am completing a task that requires a lot of exertion, my mind constantly thinks of ways to make it easier. I thought, “What is the most difficult part of this?” Shifting the piles takes physical effort, but there is not a lot of struggling involved. Lifting stacks of issues over and over, however, can be very frustrating.

Then it hit me! Why not turn the newspapers sideways, alternating direction for each month? This would work with daily papers and those published less frequently. I would simply turn every four issues a different way for a weekly, every 30 or so for a monthly, etc. This made it much easier to grab the entire pile. Of course, I double check the issue date on the top and bottom, but I don’t have to “guess and check” to find where one month ends and the other one starts. Genius! Of course, I didn’t personally come up with this pile alternating procedure, as you see it with stacks of paperwork all the time. But the idea of applying it to the newspaper stacks did come to me (eventually…). So I am not trying to “toot my own horn” but simply to say, even if it takes a while to think of it, a good idea is still a good idea. And now, I often have someone else to do the big monthly weeding, so it is even easier for me (because I don’t have to do it very often!) Regardless, when I do perform this task, it will be much easier than it was before. Does anyone else have a bright idea that you or your organization have put into practice?

Jessica Rondema

Oregon State Library