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?

The newest library in Oregon

That axe would be handy for breaking down crates, amiright?

Well, sort of!  The new TNT series 'The Librarians', which is filmed in Oregon, debuted on Dec 7th. 

Have any of you watched the new series?  How do you like it?

Most importantly, is it accurate in its depiction of library support staff in Oregon?!?

OLA Quarterly focuses on Support Staff!

The latest version of the OLA Quarterly focuses on Support Staff this time.  With a wonderful introduction by our very own Margaret Harmon-Myers, it dives right into the Oregon Support Staff world.


Library Support Staff Today and How it Has Changed by Suzanne L. Sager
Where are support staff  used in libraries versus librarians?  Librarians can sometimes become support staff when jobs are scarce, and that can be a very good thing.

In We Are Rich in One Another: The OLA Support Staff Division's First Twenty Years, Susan R. Gilmont acquaints us with the very beginnings of SSD, and how it involved... New Jersey?

Working With, Not For: Confronting the Us vs Them mindset between Information Services and Access Services in a Major Urban Library System by Angela Weyrens
You may recognize your library's hierarchical structure in this article, and if you are looking to shift over to a more collaborative environment, don't miss Angela's sage and sensible conclusions.

Community Relations Profile: "Team CR" Tina Davis and Liz Goodrich by Nate Pedersen and Liisa Sjoblom
The initial picture in this article is worth the price of admission alone! But definitely read it for their own (and better) version of public relations.

Teamwork: It Starts With Hello by Jay Hadley
Not sure what to say to your coworkers? Read this article and wish you could work with Jay, too.

Simple ways to use ergonomics at your library

Have you slipped into some bad habits as we're slipping into winter?   A lot of us want to curl up when the weather turns colder, but you need to uncurl yourself on a regular basis. For some of us, we do that by going to work and shelving, squatting, lifting and walking, etc. But then we have to be careful we use good posture and the right motions when we do these things. 

The proCPR blog has a nice little post about ergonomics called 6 Ways to Avoid Injury with Ergonomics.  I like the 20-20-20 reminder about your eyes.

There is a outdated link in the article to "The Ultimate Guide to Ergonomics". The link provided here should work, but it takes you to it though the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

The iLibrarian link above has a stretching regime, but I always feel self conscious stretching at work, especially out in public areas.  But sometimes you just have to take care of your health regardless of how silly you might think you look.

Do you stretch at your library?  Are you the type that doesn't care what others think, or do you try to find a quiet corner?

Ancient book repair techniques

Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Msc.Patr.41, fol. 69r. Detail.

Have you seen the medieval book repair posts over at Colossal?  There are also some pretty great doodles and marginalia from days of old.   They were pretty creative working around holes and worn spots, even including what looks like crochet and embroidery.  I'm not sure how useful those repair techniques would work in the modern world in a public library setting.  What would the patrons think?

Library Book Mending Resources

Did you know about these resources for book mending?  This is but a small collection of the massive amounts of information and tutorials you can find online:

Association for Library Collections & Technical Services webinar
This is a FREE webinar originally presented on 9/14/11 by Peter D. Verheyen and Marianne Hanley.

"Participants will become familiar with several types of basic repairs for bound circulating collections materials in school, public, and academic libraries. Tip-ins and basic page repairs, hinge tightening, and a variety of spine repairs are covered. Techniques are illustrated and demonstrated with text, images, and video. Links to other resources are provided. Repairs and conservation treatments on rare and special collections materials are NOT discussed."

Simple Techniques for the Maintenance and Repair of Books This is an online manual from Gaylord called Bookcraft, which they've published since 1924.  This version is copyrighted 1996.  In it they cover typical repairs of both the textblock and covers, and talk about cleaning and maintenance.

Tippacanoe County Public Library Book Care and Repair
TCPL has collected a good list of a variety of internet resources on book repairs. They have separated out the list into Specific Situations & Repairs, General Book Care, and Equipment and Supplies.  They also recommend the Syracuse University Library's youtube channel, which is the next link in this list.

Syracuse University Library Preservation's youtube channel 
There are video tutorials about repairs, as well as about books in general and some longer lectures.

Demco Madison's youtube channel
This is a playlist that includes 12 videos from Demco that details simple repairs such as repairing damaged pages, hinges, covers and spines.


Conservation Book Repair: A training manual by Artemis BonaDea
A book repair manual published by Alaska State Library which is downloadable as a whole or chapter by chapter for free.  It is a culmination of presentation methods and handouts developed in workshops given by Artemis BonaDea.

Simple Book Repair Manual
A completely web-based book about mending and repair, the table of contents is a pull-down menu which takes you to each chapter topic.  There is no download time and it's completely free.

"The web version of the Simple Book Repair Manual was created by members of Preservation Services, Dartmouth College Library. "

Do you have any favorite online book repair resources?  Let us know in the comments below.

The Toronto reference library was recently renovated, and they sent a drone flying around it to get a bird's eye view. They now have a salon for "writers, thinkers, artists and innovators come together for conversation and debate."  They forgot to mention ASTRONAUTS.  Have any of you had experiences with drones in your libraries? Or astronauts, for that matter?

It was Banned Books Week last week.  Did you know it is still an issue? The Mercury out of Portland also has a list of books challenged in Oregon.

Did you know Overdrive is integrated with Bing search engine?  Overdrive is the company behind Library2Go, Oregon's digital library consortium.  Search for a title in Bing, and you'll notice now on the right side of the screen there's an option to borrow the book from Overdrive.  I searched for "donna tartt the goldfinch" and despite the weird results (El Jilguero?), I found it under "Read this Book".

The Library of Congress has many many things in its collection.  And people do many many creative things with them. And creepy things. Artist Kevin Weir has more examples over at his site.

Kevin Weir