Friday @ ALA Annual 2011

I arrived last night and met up with my roomie, fellow blogger Joanna, and my sister. Yes, it is hot and muggy but WOW torrential down pour? Who knew. Ran into a few library pals at dinner, looks like we have taken over the city already.

Today proved much nicer weather wise, well at least so far no rain. The crew hit up the tourist hot spot Cafe du Monde for beignets

Jo headed off to the Movers & Shakers lunch, my sister and I wandered around the French Market--good times, I would say put this on your list to do if you're visiting. Tonight it's time to get into library mode with 3 publisher socials.

 Stay tuned!

Sad Day for Escondido Residents

After a long, drawn-out political battle, Escondido City Council has voted to move forward with closing the East Valley Branch of the Escondido Public Library. This location, which has served patrons on the east side of Escondido for more than 15 years, will be sorely missed. This is the press release that was sent out:

East Valley Branch Library Closing June 16, 2011

On Wednesday, June 8th, the Escondido City Council passed a budget for Fiscal Year 2011-12 that discontinued funding the operation of the East Valley Branch Library, located at 2245 East Valley Parkway in the East Valley Community Center. The branch library will close effective Thursday, June 16 at 6:00 PM.

After June 16th, library patrons will pick up all reserved materials at the Main Library at 239 S. Kalmia St. As a convenience to the public, outside book return units at the East Valley Branch Library will remain open until mid-July. After that, all books and library materials must be returned to the Main Library.

The City Council has directed staff to explore options to maintain public access to branch library computers at the East Valley location; however, computer access will be unavailable until a new plan is developed and implemented.

The Main Library will continue to serve the community with computer access and to offer outstanding services and programs for children, teens, and adults. Summer Reading for childrfen and teens begins June 16th and runs through July 31st. For more information on these and other programs, visit the library's website at http://library.escondido.org/ or call 760-839-4683.

Diary of a Summer Reading refugee

Summer Reading 2011 started today for my library system, and the moral of this post, if it is too long for you to read, is...Use EVERYTHING you have.

 My library system has been hit pretty hard for the last few years by budget issues. In my dept, where there was once a staff of 5 Librarians, 3 para-professionals, and 2 library clerks, there is now just me and 1 library clerk. We also do not have a Friends Group for the Youth Services Department (long story there) so we are unable to get fancy swag to help bolster SRP that some libraries are able to. Couple that with the completion last week of my super-awesome grant project and I will be honest and tell you I started really thinking about SRP last week. I am in no way a procrastinator, but my "baby" had my attention and there was no one else to pick up the slack. So with that in the open, I will also tell you that it is turning out ok because...

#1 The SRP manual is great: I created a wall display using an idea I got from the "Promoting" section. I still need a headliner, but here is a photo of the "Read Around the World" wall

#2 The SRP manual is great plus ALA is in two weeks: Since I can't afford to give kids prizes for reading more than the required amount (10 books) I am doing a number of other literacy based activities and using the free swag from ALA as prizes for my "Prize Box". I found the Incentive Game (p. 38 of the Manual) that kids can do on their own and when they complete eight of the activities they get to pick a prize. The Family Summer Reading Ride (p.36)  has activities for everyone to do together and after families complete eight activities they will be entered into a raffle for a four pack of IMAX tickets.

#3 Hoarders can be your friends: Apparently there have been a few hoarders who have worked in the dept. in the past so our shelves are overflowing with random nicknacks and craft stuff. I'm having a snack and craft every Wednesday and believe me, I will not be doing anything but scowering the shelves in order to prep for that one. Today I was wondering "how the heck can I make a foam spider craft fit into the theme" and I thought two things: 1. it doesn't matter & Oh yeah... 2. ANANSI!

#4 Don't forget the bay-bays. I've been baby crazy all year doing tons of research about early literacy for my grant so I didn't want to neglect my little darlings. I created the Pre-Readers Summer Reading Program that I am going to force all my teen parents to participant in. If you're interested I can send you a copy of my card, I know a few other blogs and sites have similar programs, including Abby the Librarian

And at the end of the day, even when your boss has lost her shoes, you have a grease stain down your shirt and a black and blue arm from lugging 350 SRP bags to offsite locations, your go-to partner has given you the "NO MORE" look at least twice in the last hour, and people are still calling about missing incentive items, remember it's ok! It's just Summer Reading :)

A side note:
I should mention that I have mixed feelings about SRP...ask resident blogger Dave if you want the uncensored version, he has heard my rant :). I grew up and participated in SRP at a beautiful little library that is HARD CORE. For every book we read we had to give a verbal book review/summary to the Librarian. She (I remember Ms. Carol the best) would give us a stamp or a sticker for the log and after 5 we got to go to Pizza Hut for a personal pan pizza. Aww... the good old days. But there was no faking it there, you really had to read if you wanted that pizza.

Teen Volunteers - How much is too much of a good thing?

Volunteers are wonderful and many of our libraries would struggle to operate without their committed service. Most of our volunteers throughout the year are senior citizens but come summer we get a huge influx of teen volunteers who sign up to help exclusively with our summer reading program. In the past, we've taken everyone who has applied and fit our criteria of being between the ages of 14-18, and our largest group topped out at 50. This year, we expect to register close to 2500 children and 500 teens and have taken on 70 volunteers. Unfortunately, I've turned away about 20 more. I attribute this increase to three factors:

1. The economy is struggling and whereas before many of the older teens would've gotten part time jobs, now they are competing against (and losing out to) adults with work experience.





2. The 2nd largest teen volunteer organization in Escondido, Education COMPACT, lost its funding and was forced to disband their summer volunteer groups.





3. We throw a fabulous thank you party at the end of the summer complete with lush goody bags, delicious food, and letters of recommendation verifying their hours that they can use for scholarship applications and school requirements. :)

I want to provide as many teens as possible with volunteer opportunities, but at what point does the program become more work than it's worth? Recruiting, screening, training, scheduling, and evaluating volunteers is a huge task. On top of attending a training session, teens often need to be reminded of the basics over and over again before it truly sinks in, and it often feels like once they finally get it their parents take them away on vacation or their summer band camp begins and you never see them again. So here are my questions to you YA librarians out there:

1. How do you screen your applicants to make sure they will be an asset, not a detriment, to your program?





2. What is your scheduling procedure? Do you allow teens to choose their own shifts or do you work with their availability and then create a schedule for them? If you allow them to choose their own schedule, do they do it for the whole program at once or just a few weeks at a time?





3. Do you guarantee them a minimum # of hours over the course of the summer?





4. Do you require that they commit to working a minimum # of hours in order to participate?

I appreciate any comments or feedback on this as I'm always looking for ways to improve the program for next summer.