Multi-District Workshop

If you werent able to make it to the Multi-District Workshop in Titusville today or if you need a refresher, the information from the Grantwriting portion of the workshop is located on a wiki; yes, thats right more of that new Web 2.0 technology. The presenter, Rhonda McMillian-Toth has put it together for us. She will be answering questions on there and will be posting more information as time goes on.

Check it out at:

http://grantwritingoilcreek.pbwiki.com

Have you Written your Legislator Yet?

Public libraries in Pennsylvania need to make their voices heard in Harrisburg. If you have not already done so please call, write, email, or fax (heck do all four!) your local State Representative & Senator; ask them to support an appropriation to public libraries of $79.4 million. This may be a tough sell in shrinking economy, but we must make clear to them that without an increase in appropriations that will allow the State Funding Formula to be run again with current data, libraries in the state will continue to fall behind the rest of the nation. To ensure adequate local support we must have State dollars as leverage. I wrote my letter this morning, it took me 20 minutes. Are you willing to spend 20 minutes to ensure the future of libraries in Pennsylvania? Or are you willing to live with the consequences of another year going by without the formula being run?

Please write today.

http://palibraries.org/issues-adv/view.asp?id=99&page=&cid=3

http://palibraries.org/issues-adv/view.asp?id=98&page=&cid=1

2009 PA One Book

Just in case you want to jump start your Children's Program planning for 2009, next year's selection for the One Book Every Young Child Program is "If You Were a Penguin" by Wendell & Florence Minor. The book will be published by HaperCollins and should be available for order by Christmas. It seems Penguins are back in vogue.

For more information about the authors (who previous collaborated on "Christmas Tree!") see their website http://www.minorart.com/about.htm

Marketing to Teens

Take a look at this great article in School Library Journal about Marketing to Teens.

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6555544.html

Be sure to check out the "If you're over 30..." link, some of that is pretty interesting too and whats more, some of it I didnt know about and I am still in my early Twenties.....ha ha

A Little Wisdom

A small feature of this blog will be occasional little Pearls of Wisdom that we might run across in our daily work and life. The source or the content of this wisdom need not be related to librarianship or libraries. Some of the "best" librarians I know are also the most eclectic of people, they engage in a multitude of experiences, they read a variety of materials, and find inspiration in a even the most mundane places. Case in point is Janice Trapp who is perhaps the model of public library administration in Pennsylvania, one morning she was in Williamsport at a McDonalds getting a cup of coffee and noticed all the old men just hanging out there, having coffee and shooting the breeze, she also noticed business people and office workers buzzing in and out on their way to work and the idea struck her, why not have library card sign ups at McDonalds? By doing this, she was able to tap into an existing audience of people who may not normally come to the library or encounter a librarian. See, inspiration in a mundane place. Anyhow, apart from that anecdote I have only the following quote to give you as this week's pearl of wisdom.

"You hear all this whining going on, “Where are our great writers?” The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?" -Gore Vidal

This was taken from Gore Vidal's interview in Esquire Magazine the June 2008 edition. Please see the full article for more.

Making Feudalism Work

Bill Schell the Director of the Martin Memorial Library in York likes to compare Pennsylvania's system of local government to Feudal Germany (Bill isnt the only person to make this comparison, but he does it the most articulately). Feudal Germany had at its peak was not 1 nation, but rather 365 petty prinicipalities each competing with eachother for scarce resources. Pennsylvania is similar in that we have a huge collection of municiaplities, townships, counties, school districts, etc all trying to govern a shrinking & aging population. Because of stagnant State Library Subsidies, public libraries across the state are begining to refocus their advocacy efforts on local government in the hopes of receiving greater local government support and in the process they are starting to become frustrated by these fragments of local government in their service areas, simply because the sheer number of entities makes advocacy and efforts to raise local government support for libraries a challenge at best.

To illustrate this, I have counted up the various local governments across the District. I only counted those entities that have elected representatives and those that have taxing authority. I did not count the various (100's) municiple authorities, agencies, commissions, and councils.

Jefferson County: Population 46,086
1 County Commission
23 Townships
11 Boroughs
3 School Districts
1 Education Agency


Clarion County: Population 41,651
1 County Commission
22 Townships
13 Boroughs
7 School Districts


Venango County: Population 57,562
1 County Commission
20 Townships
9 Boroughs
2 Cities
5 School Districts

It sort of makes you weary just thinking about all these potential audiences for our message, but if we want to improve funding for libraries and expand our services we must go out and gain the support of our local government entities. If anyone has any tips or success stories about local government advocacy, please share them.

Does Anybody do Booktalks Anymore?

When the Oil Creek and Seneca Districts did our Summer Reading Training this Spring the evaluations showed that you enjoyed Sandee Lalley's BookTalk the best. Well it came in second behind all the freebies, but we're not counting those. So I was thinking maybe we need some resources so we can do booktalks as part of our marketing of Summer Reading.

By coincidence, I went to a workshop called Connecting Boys with Books and the presenter Micheal Sullivan has a website, where he has over 400 prepared booktalks free for the taking!!! Take a look at his site, and feel free to use his booktalks for when you present at schools, preschools, etc. Once you do some of his, try writing a few of your own and see how it develops.

The site is www.talestoldtall.com/booksforboys

Welcome to our blog.

Welcome to the Oil Creek Pipeline. I hope you will all use and explore our blog. Look out for upcomming postings. We expect to have new and exciting content on a regular basis. In the meantime, I am including a link to the PowerPoint of yesterday's Web 2.0 presentation. Hope you will find it as enjoyable & as informative as I did.

http://www.lancasterlibraries.org/lslc/lib/lslc/training_docs/web2.0wowforstate.pdf