Tuesday, November 27, 2007

E.G. Fisher Public Library uses Blog to Keep Patrons Updated

The E. G. Fisher Public Library in Athens, Tennessee, has just announced their new library blog which will be used to keep patrons and other interested persons in what is going on in their library. The blog is in addition to their library website. We just had a look at the blog and it is fabulous! Check it out at:
http://fisherlibrary.blogspot.com
Their website is also worth a look:
http://www.fisherlibrary.org

Community Enhancement Grants - Round 3

The third round of grant awards for the Community Enhancement Grants were announced by the Tennessee Department of State on November 19. The award listing can be found at:
http://www.state.tn.us/sos/grants/CEG.20071119.xls
A few libraries are included, but none from the Fort Loudoun region.

Monday, November 26, 2007

December's Regional In-Service Training Announcement

Topic: Focus on Copyright Issues and Ethics
Date: Friday, December 14, 2007
Time: 9:30 a.m.
Place: Fort Loudoun Regional Library Center, Athens
Trainer: Jennifer Cowan-Henderson, Director, Upper Cumberland Regional Library, Cookeville

Deadline for reservations: Thursday, December 13, 2007. Make reservations by calling 1.800.624.1982 or emailing lynette.sloan@state.tn.us

How might your library be affected by copyright law and ethics?
How can it affect your library's website?
How can it affect your library's programs?
How can it affect your library's services?
How can it affect your library's marketing?

Jennifer will be covering various aspects of copyright laws as they deal with libraries, including public domain, how long copyright lasts, permissions, fair use, copies, and infringement.
In the afternoon, Jennifer will be addressing ethical issues in libraries, in a humorous, but educational way.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Reference Service Resources on the FLRL Wiki

Check out http://flrlwiki.pbwiki.com

We have been adding some reference service resources to the FLRL wiki over the last few days. We are constantly on the lookout for new authoritative websites and free databases that can help our public libraries answer reference questions from the public.

We learned about some of these new resources in a program at the September 2007 conference of the Association for Rural and Small Libraries (ARSL) in Columbus, Ohio. The program was entitled, "Important Online Databases for Small Libraries, Free and Fee", and was presented by Bob Flatley of the Rohrbach Library, Kutztown University, Kutztown, PA.

If you haven't had a chance to review our Reference Resource Links pages on the FLRL wiki, we encourage you do so as soon as possible. We will continue to add new resources as we find them.

The Reference Resource pages are located at: http://flrlwiki.pbwiki.com/Reference+Resource+Links

If you know of some great authoritative websites that we might be missing, just let us know. We will be happy to add them as resources.

Happy Thanksgiving - And Don't Forget the Salary Survey!

The Fort Loudoun Regional Library Center in Athens will be closed on Thursday, November 22 and Friday, November 23, 2007, for the Thanksgiving holiday. The staff at FLRL has a lot to be thankful for this year, especially our hard-working, dedicated library directors, staff, and library trustees throughout the region. We hope that all of you and your families have a fulfilling (and filling!) Thanksgiving.

To our member library directors: Don't forget that the annual salary survey forms are due back to FLRL by November 28 (next Wednesday - a week from today). These forms were emailed to all library directors a couple of weeks ago. If you haven't submitted your library's survey, please do so as soon as possible. As always, thanks for your cooperation.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Kathy Pagles featured on WebJunction!

As I mentioned in my last post, Kathy Pagles from Blount County Public Library was our trainer for the ROSA (Reaching Out for Spanish-Speaking Audiences) workshop last Friday. I failed to mention that Kathy was featured on the WebJunction website as a trainer for this program. Check it out at: http://webjunction.org/do/DisplayContent?id=17853

The Feature on Kathy Pagles:
Kathy has been the director of the Blount County Public Library in Maryville, TN for the past seventeen years. She has watched her community change and grow and the library along with it, until it is now one of the largest, busiest, non-metropolitan libraries in the state, serving the entire county of nearly 115,000 folks. Kathy spent several years in teaching and banking before taking the plunge into librarianship. The world of libraries offered her the chance to remain a generalist - able to pursue many areas of study which continue to interest her - and to advocate on behalf of all to whom the library is a primary source of information and lifelong learning. The opportunity to become an advocate for outreach to the growing number of Hispanic speaking persons who are coming to east Tennessee is one she is grateful to have.

Kathy has been the President of the Tennessee Library Association and the East Tennessee Library Association. She has served as public library representative to Tenn-Share, a consortium of TennShare, an organization of about 600 members committed to resource sharing, particularly those which are digitized and she has served on the Tennessee Advisory Council for Libraries associated with the Tennessee State Library and Archives. She is currently Vice-President/President Elect of the Maryville Kiwanis, sits on the Blount County Historical Museum Board and the Blount County Education Foundation Board. She is active with the United Way and her church. She is most proud, however, of the role her library has come to play as a community center, averaging about 1200 visitors a day who enjoy annual festivals, frequent musical performances, and fanciful competitions, such as Edible Books. She looks forward to the day when the Hispanic community also looks to the Library for resources to help bridge the digital divide and close the information gap.

Looking forward to retirement, somewhere down the road, Kathy has begun to collect books and to increase her yarn and fabric stashes, sure that some day she will have "the time." Until then, she plans to enjoy her family and friends and the beautiful surroundings of Blount County - and read and knit when she can.

ROSA Workshop report

For those of you who were unable to attend the ROSA (Reaching Out to Spanish-Speaking Audiences) workshop on Friday, November 16, 2007, at the E. G. Fisher Public Library in Athens, you missed a FABULOUS workshop!

Kathyn (Kathy) Pagles, Director of the Blount County Public Library (Maryville, TN), presented an introductory workshop on developing services and programs for the rapidly-growing Spanish-Speaking population of our region. Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and WebJunction as the Spanish Language Outreach Program, this was the first of a series of workshops that will be held across the state of Tennessee between November, 2007, and March, 2008.

Kathy received "training-the-trainer" training in Seattle in October, along with three other trainers from Tennessee. Their job is to return to Tennessee to "spread the word" about how to build relationships with leaders of the Latino/Hispanic community, how to identify their needs, and how to develop a plan of action to provide the needed services and programs.

Did you know that the Spanish-Speaking population is now the largest minority in the United States?

Excellent workshop materials, activities, handouts, and resources were provided by the WebJunction program. For those of you who were unable to attend, these materials may be found at: http://webjunction.org/do/Navigation?category=8122 . Unfortunately, all the excellent discussion and idea-sharing could only be accessed by attending the workshop on Friday.

For more information about the WebJunction Spanish Language Outreach Program, check out their community at: http://webjunction.org/do/Navigation?category=10555

We would like to thank Kathy Pagles, for her excellent workshop delivery. We appreciate her time commitment to attend the training in Seattle in October, as well as her provision of three workshops in East Tennessee. If you were unable to attend the November 16 workshop, your next chance to participate in this important training will be on January 31, 2008, at the Pigeon Forge Public Library.

Monday, November 5, 2007

Community Enhancement Grants - 2nd round announcement

The second round of grant awards for the Community Enhancement Grants were announced by the Tennessee Department of State today. The award listing can be found at: http://www.state.tn.us/sos/grants/CEG.20071105.xls
The listing includes 100 grant awards, only one of which was a library -- Sullivan County Library.

Thursday, November 1, 2007

Fort Loudoun Regional Board meeting for November canceled

The regular quarterly board meeting of the Fort Loudoun Regional Library Board of Trustees for November, 2007, has been canceled, at the direction of the Board Chair.

The next meeting of the Regional Library Board will be Thursday, February 7, 2008, at the Regional Library Center in Athens. Pot Luck Dinner will be at 6:30, with board meeting to follow at approximately 7:00 p.m.

November Workshops Announcement

November is Special Populations Month in the Fort Loudoun Region
Workshop #1

Regional In-Service Training

Topic: Services for Special Populations: Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped
Date: Friday, November 9, 2007, 9:30 am
Place: Fort Loudoun Regional Library Center, Athens
Trainer: Ruth Hemphill, Director, Tennessee Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped

How to Register: Wednesday, November 7. Please register by calling 1.800.624.1982 or emailing cathy.smith@state.tn.us

Join us as Ruth Hemphill, Director of the Tennessee Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped in Nashville, explains all the (FREE) services of LBPH for the physically handicapped and the learning disabled.

Who Should Attend: All library staff and trustees from public libraries in the Tennessee Regional Library System are welcome and encouraged to attend.

Workshop Cost:
None. All regional in-services are free of cost to participants. Lunch will be on your own, so you might want to bring lunch money.
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Workshop #2

Special Workshop (Sponsored by the Tennessee State Library and Archives and WebJunction)

Topic: Reaching Out to Spanish-Speaking Audiences
Date: Friday, November 16, 2007, 9:00 am
Place: E. G. Fisher Public Library, Athens
Trainer: Kathryn Pagles, Director, Blount County Public Library

Deadline for Registration: Tuesday, November 6.
How to Register: e-mail bettyjo.jarvis@state.tn.us your name, e-mail address, library you're affiliated with and date and location of the workshop you want to attend. Put ROSA in the subject line.

Who should attend? All public, academic, prison, and school library staff and administrators interested in developing an action plan for reaching out to Spanish speakers and increasing their access to public computers in libraries. Library board members, friends of the library, and community partners with an interest in collaborating on action plans are also encouraged to attend. Libraries are encouraged to send more than one person to the workshop.

Workshop cost: Thanks to a partnership between WebJunction and Tennessee State Library and Archives with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation there is no charge for the workshop and lunch is included.

Community Enhancement Grant Awards, Part 1

The first round of Community Enhancement Grant Awards have been posted on the website of the Tennessee Secretary of State. You may access this first award list at: http://state.tn.us/sos/grants/grant_awards.htm
We will keep you posted when additional awards are announced.

New Director at Tellico Plains

We would like to welcome the new Library Director at the Tellico Plains Public Library (Monroe County), Sherry Palmer. Sherry begins her new position officially today, November 1, 2007. Sherry takes over the position vacated by Linda Morris, who retired officially yesterday, October 31.

The Fort Loudoun Regional Library staff will miss Linda, who provided many years of steadfast leadership and guidance for the Tellico Plains Public Library. Linda is looking forward to spending many happy hours with her family.

Sherry Palmer has already spent many hours working with Linda learning the ropes of running the library. She has also had three partial days of training with the shared library management system, Unicorn, preparing to be part of the IRIS Consortium. The FLRL staff looks forward to working closely with Sherry and her staff.