World's tiniest books

Joshua Bright for The New York Times

I couldn't resist posting about this. Have you ever seen such adorable books? The books described in this article about a serious collector are: "By definition, miniature books are properly printed and bound, and for the most part no larger than three inches."  I think shelving them would present the average shelver with a whole new set of ergonomic challenges.

The National Medal for Museum and Library service has been announced. Libraries in our northern and southern neighboring states are included in the list of honorees. Congrats!

The 2013 Conference page has been updated!  Check it out. We have a lot of financial incentives again this year.

What We Owe Donetta Sheffold

Donetta Sheffold, founder of SSD, is retiring from her job at Oregon State University at the end of April.  When I read Susan Gilmont's post on the SSD email list yesterday, I remembered an afternoon long ago - in the last century, in fact!

At the 1991 Oregon Library Association conference in Ashland, in a room overcrowded with interested folks, Donetta asked this question:  Should there be a unit of OLA dedicated to the interests of support staff?  The answer was a resounding yes!  The next year, the Library Support Staff Round Table was born, eventually becoming the Support Staff Division.

Through the years, LSSRT and SSD have had many leaders, and Donetta eventually left her job at the OSU library to work in another department.  But I'm pretty sure that, without Donetta's vision and leadership, SSD wouldn't be here today.  It seems obvious now that support staff are a vital part of libraries, and thus of OLA.  It frequently takes someone with vision and drive to notice the obvious and do something about it.  That's what Donetta did for library support staff in Oregon.

My library life has been much richer, not to mention more fun, because of Donetta's vision.  I'm sure that's true for many others.

So hats off, and best wishes for a wonderful retirement, to Donetta!

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?

Four ways to celebrate National Library Workers Day!

Tomorrow, Tuesday April 16th, 2013, is National Library Workers Day!  What is that, you ask?  It's been happening every April since 2003, and the ALA website states: it is "a day for library staff, users, administrators and Friends groups to recognize the valuable contributions made by all library workers."

Over at ALA website for NLWD, you can:

1. Find a lovely poster, which conveniently fits on an 8.5"x11" piece of paper
2. Be inspired by a ton of ideas for celebrations
3. Submit a star (Oregon is sadly lacking in this department, dear readers!)
4. Talk about pay equity

So, fellow Oregonian Support Staffers, do you celebration National Library Workers Day? If so, what do you do to observe this spectacular day?

And don't forget to shoot a star at a fellow support staffer!

Associates latest issue and a question

The new "Associates" is out for the first part of 2013.  There are articles about the Library Journal Paraprofessional of the Year Laura Poe, certification in Massachusetts, volunteers in the library, spotlights on a couple paraprofessionals and more. Associates is a worldwide journal for library support staff. Check it out!

 There's a kickstarter project to create libraries in Africa. What do you think of this creative way to finance a library? Do you see this kind of technology/social media changing the way your library is funded in the future?