[Libs-Or] January LTLO

[Jessica Rondema]

Letter To Libraries Online

An Electronic Newsletter from the Oregon State Library.......Volume 21, Issue 1, January 2011



Library Board News


STATE LIBRARY BOARD AWARDS PLANNING GRANT TO HOOD RIVER COUNTY

At their December 10th meeting at the Lebanon Public Library, the State Library Board awarded a $10,000 planning grant, using LSTA funds, to Hood River County. The grant will be matched by $10,000 from the Hood River County Library Friends of the Library and the Library Foundation. The money will allow the newly elected library district board to hire a planning consultant. The request to the Board was made by Sara Duckwall Snyder, who was recently chosen to chair the new board. The district board needs to plan for the reopening of the Library sometime next year. They hope to hire a new director sometime prior to July 1st and be able to offer some services in the summer. Tax revenue from the new library district levy won't begin to arrive until next fall, so it will be a challenge to try to provide some library services before then. In other business, the Board decided not to seek partial support for the L-net program, which is funded with LSTA funds, in 2011-12. The State Librarian recommended against this because LSTA funds appear to be adequate for the time being, and public libraries are experiencing reductions to their Ready to Read grants this year. The Board approved a Ready to Read Grant to the Rainier Public Library based on an appeal of a staff decision to deny them a grant this year. The Board also elected new members to the LSTA and Talking Book and Braille Services Advisory Councils and made an amendment to their bylaws. The next Board meeting will be on February 7th at the State Library in Salem.

BOARD ELECTS NEW COUNCILORS

The Oregon State Library Board of Trustees elected five new members to the Library Services and Technology Act Advisory Council and one new member to the Talking Book and Braille Services Advisory Council at their December 10th meeting. The new members of the LSTA Advisory Council are Paul Adalian from Southern Oregon University, Natasha Forrester from Multnomah County Library, Sharon Smith from Southwest Community College, Jim Hayden from Redmond, and Bruce Kinsch from Pendleton. The Board also elected Elizabeth Della Santina to the Talking Book and Braille Services Advisory Council as the new Patron at Large representative and Kitt Jordan and Leone Holden were reappointed to their positions as Senior Citizen Patron at Large and Parent at Large respectively. The Board also approved an amendment to their bylaws that will allow the LSTA Advisory Council to have 13 members. The Board had already approved other amendments to the LSTA Advisory Council bylaws that reduced the five library user positions to three, and increased the academic and school library representatives to two.
State Library News


LESS THAN 1% OF SCHOOLS MET QEM LIBRARY GUIDELINES IN 2008-09

The Oregon Quality Education Commission<http://www.ode.state.or.us/search/results/?id=166> seeks to establish, through the Quality Education Model (QEM), an objective and research-based link between student achievement and the resources devoted to Oregon schools as a guide to adequate school funding. Annually the School Library Consultant at the State Library uses data supplied by the Oregon Department of Education<http://www.ode.state.or.us/> to compare how school libraries fared against QEM fully funded guidelines for school library spending and staffing. For the 2008-09 school year, only 10 schools met the minimum criteria - 9 elementary, 1 middle, and no high schools. At the elementary level, criteria included employing at least a .5 FTE licensed school librarian and .5 FTE library support staff while spending $26 or more per student on library books and periodicals; for middle schools it was 1 FTE librarian, 1 FTE support staff and $31 per student; and for high schools it was 1 FTE, 1FTE, and $36. Forty-six schools met QEM guidelines in 2006-07, the school year for the most recent prior report. The results are not surprising since staffing in school libraries has steadily declined for the last three decades. In 1980 there were 818 FTE librarians for 1,284 schools. By 2009 that figure shrank to 319 FTE librarians for 1,297 schools. During that same time period, the number of students served by one librarian increased from 547 to 1,761. A press release about the 2010 QEM report<http://www.oregon.gov/OSL/LD/school/2010QEMreport.pdf> led to several newspaper articles<http://www.oregonlive.com/beaverton/index.ssf/2010/12/sole_beaverton_elementary_school_is_only_one_in_portland_area_to_meet_quality_school_library_criteri.html> and coverage<http://www.kgw.com/video?id=111571474&sec=547977> on the evening news.

PRELIMINARY PUBLIC LIBRARY STATISTICS ON THE WEB

The preliminary 2009-10 public library statistics are on the Web in downloadable Excel format on the Public Library Statistics<http://oregon.gov/OSL/LD/statsploregon.shtml> page. If you need a customized spreadsheet, or have a data correction to report, please contact Ann Reed<mailto:ann.reed at state.or.us>.
P.S. (From the State Librarian)


In October I spent nine amazing days in our sister province of Fujian, China. Fujian is in southern China, on the coast, just across from Taiwan. The State Library has had a sister library agreement with the Fujian Provincial Library since 1989, and since 1998 we have conducted the Horner Library Staff Exchange Program in cooperation with the Provincial Library and in partnership with the OLA International Relations Round Table. To date we have exchanged a total of 25 librarians from Fujian and Oregon. This year we hosted three librarians in April and we sent three librarians to Fujian in October.

In the past I have often been invited to accompany our exchange librarians, but have never been able to go, for one reason or another. This year I was determined to go. I squeezed the trip in between a State Library Board meeting and a state librarians' meeting. I arrived in Fuzhou, the provincial capital, at the same time as the Horner librarians: Brandon Barnett from Multnomah County Library, Nancy Hoover from the Shoen Library at Marylhurst University, and Amy Lee from Fort Vancouver Regional Library (yes, we let a Washingtonian come - she was our very able translator).

The Horner librarians spent three weeks in Fujian. I was just there for the first nine days. After a day in Fuzhou we travelled by train to the rural northwest corner of the province to Wuyishan, where, as luck would have it, the Fujian Library Association was having a conference. Brandon and I made presentations at the conference, which was fun. We did a bit of sightseeing and then it was back on the train to Fuzhou for a few days there to visit libraries and confer with our hosts at the Provincial Library. The last days of my trip were spent in the second largest city in Fujian, Xiamen, which is down the coast from Fuzhou. There we were delighted to be joined for a few days by Deborah Carver and Bob Felsing from the Knight Library at the U of O, along with Deb's husband John.

As it happened, Typhoon Megi<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Megi_%282010%29> made landfall just south of Xiamen the day after we arrived. Having not had any experience with a typhoon I was a little apprehensive. But our hosts took it all in stride. Fujian normally experiences typhoons every year. There were torrential rains and strong winds, but nothing more. The Xiamen Public Library didn't even close. We went about our visits as planned.

We kept a blog<http://horner2010.wordpress.com/> of our experiences, and the Horner librarians plan to add more to the blog in the future. They also will be presenting a program at the Oregon Library Association Conference in the spring.

My trip to Fujian was a wonderful experience. Our hosts were so warm and gracious and they worked so hard to plan our time very productively. You cannot fail to be impressed by how rapidly the quality of library service in Fujian is improving. We saw some really fine public and academic libraries. Most of the buildings are new (built in the last two decades) and they are enormous compared to our libraries. And there are even more libraries under construction. I came away convinced that China wants to have the best libraries in the world, and before too long, they may well meet that goal. - Jim Scheppke
Contacts at the Oregon State Library


Library Development: 503-378-2525, MaryKay Dahlgreen<mailto:marykay.dahlgreen at state.or.us>, Mary Mayberry<mailto:mary.l.mayberry at state.or.us>, Darci Hanning<mailto:darci.hanning at state.or.us>, Ann Reed<mailto:ann.reed at state.or.us>, Jennifer Maurer<mailto:jennifer.maurer at state.or.us>, Katie Anderson<mailto:katie.anderson at state.or.us>.

Talking Book and Braille Services: 503-378-5389, Susan Westin<mailto:susan.b.westin at state.or.us>.

Government Research Services: 503-378-5030, Robert Hulshof-Schmidt<mailto:robert.hulshof-schmidt at state.or.us>.

State Librarian: 503-378-4367, Jim Scheppke<mailto:jim.b.scheppke at state.or.us>.

LTLO Editor: 503-378-2464, Jessica Rondema<mailto:jessica.rondema at state.or.us> . Letter to Libraries Online is published monthly by the Oregon State Library. Editorial office: LTLO, Oregon State Library, 250 Winter St. NE, Salem, Oregon 97301-3950, 503-378-2464, editor: Jessica Rondema<mailto:jessica.rondema at state.or.us>. Letter to Libraries Online is available free of charge and is available only in electronic form on the publications page at the Oregon State Library's homepage: http://www.oregon.gov/OSL. Opinions expressed in the articles are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Oregon State Library. News items or articles should be sent to Jessica Rondema<mailto:jessica.rondema at state.or.us>, or mailed to LTLO, Oregon State Library, 250 Winter St. NE, Salem, Oregon 97301-3950.

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