Thursday, June 2 & Friday, June 3

Unistructure-MRC Wing, Bryant University

Books are dying! Reference service is dying! Libraries are dying!

Wrong. Books, service and libraries are changing. But change doesn't mean death--it means growth and innovation.  Hear what's good, new and ground-breaking about libraries at the upcoming RILA conference. There's no shortage of information to share.

The conference offers programs for all types of libraries on how to keep providing novel and cutting-edge services.  Learn about showing films or having fun with animation. Take the library mobile to engage users on the go. And who are your users? Find out and make it easier to target your services. Utilize Web 2.0 to develop information literacy in students.

No matter how high tech we get, though, we still we maintain the human connection and help people. Learn how to create safe spaces for LBGTQ youth. Empower yourself to be ready for the next time you encounter a patron in crisis with Mental Health First Aid. Find out what to do if a patron is being cyberbullied or stalked.  Children's personnel can debate the harm consumerism does to our youngest patrons.

In that same vein, no one should be surprised that reading still matters. Stories will never go out of style. Feed the need and learn about a different sort of book club. Keep up with the latest teen literature. Talk graphic novels, and learn how to use the illustrations and design of a picture book in storytime.

With all that's fresh, let's not be afraid to tell our patrons what's really going on in their libraries and work on shaping our own image. Discover how to optimize your website for better visibility. Get the maximum from your print and e-publications. Get inspired by the research of Dr. Donald King who has lots of promising results to share.

There are plenty of behind-the-scenes developments to examine, too.  Track how systems librarianship is changing. Get inspired to create an environmental sustainability program. Discuss unionization in the current climate. Fine tune your resume and pick up some tips on productive job hunting. Learn the specifics of IMLS and LSTA funding.

Most of all, keep a sense of humor about it all when Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum of Unshelved fame deliver their talk on Surviving the Public.

This year, too, the RILA Conference is making some change--you won't want to miss the debut of a new feature: poster sessions on topics ranging from Signage that Works to Using Jing in IM Reference!

What's the next big thing? We are. Register today online at or print out the form and send it in by May 13 for the early bird rate.

There are bills pending in the Rhode Island House of Representatives that would exempt the communities of Pawtucket and West Warwick from funding their libraries at the level currently required for them to receive state aid. Should these proposals pass, the libraries' ability to meet the minimum standards for public libraries in Rhode Island would be compromised. Their participation in the Ocean State Libraries consortium would also be threatened.  

In a letter to Helio Melo, the Chairperson of the House Committee on Finance, RILA stated that, "Abrogation of those requirements in one community will adversely affect library users in every community." Should these bills pass, all public library staff and patrons should be concerned about the future implications. Stay tuned for further developments.   

As we shift into summer mode, we are reminded that it is also time to prepare for the annual summer rush.  No ... I am not talking about the fun and excitement of summer reading.  I am referring to the onslaught of requests from teens for volunteer opportunities to meet the requirements for graduation, confirmation and other religious rites, girl/boy scout achievement, and court orders.  Admit it, just thinking about it can send a shiver down your spine.

Well, I am here to let you know that you don't have to let that fear get the better of you.  Whatever reason teens are coming to you, they can be a big boon for the library by helping to free up staff to do specialized jobs while leaving the more simple and tedious (though crucial) tasks for these volunteers. Remember, they are choosing to ask to do the time at the library because it is a place where they feel comfortable and would have the best experience for their community service requirement.

The most important thing is to be ready for these volunteers before they even arrive. First, you need to make plans for how to answer requests by teens to do their hours at the library. Policies need to be set up for application forms, the interview process, mentoring, and rules for the potential volunteers. If this planning process is not done, the volunteer coordinator will quickly become overrun with managing teen volunteers.

It would be natural for the young adult librarian to become the coordinator for these volunteers, particularly if the library does not already have a volunteer services coordinator. This librarian already knows and works with teens, in general, and probably with the individual teens looking to volunteer. This would also provide a chance for the teens to work specifically toward improving the space, collection, and services provided for young adults in the library. Whether it is painting a mural, shelving books, or helping organize the area, the teens will get a feeling of ownership over that part of the library, creating a special place for it in their hearts. Can the library be that uncool, if you helped make it what it is?

As with employees of the library, you want to make sure to fully train all volunteers on the task they will be completing. This starts with deciding what tasks they are able to complete based on their skill set. It is not fair to the volunteer, and may actually cause more trouble than assistance, if he or she is not properly trained. It is important to make sure volunteers are comfortable and willing to work on the assigned tasks. If they are bored or unhappy with an assignments, volunteers (and, in all honesty, anyone) are likely to do a poor job. Also, feel free to ask the volunteers what they might want to do. Doing so might allow you to find a talented bulletin board artist, a web designer, or a veteran storyteller. Draw upon their talents!

When instructing on specific tasks, you should start by demonstrating how the project can be completed. This should be done while providing the instructions verbally, illustrating what you are saying. Feel free to have them duplicate what you have done so you can offer comments if necessary. Also, emphasize that they should always feel free to ask questions. Supervisors should periodically check in with the volunteers from time to time for two reasons:

1. It gives the supervisor an opportunity to check on quality and progress 
2. This shows an interest in the volunteer and gives her/him a chance to ask any questions. Often, volunteers feel that they are asking "stupid" questions. Reassure them that this is not the case. The most important thing is to have tasks completed correctly.

Book Buddies, Craft Buddies, and some of the other inter-age and inter-generational programs can be used to fill such hours. Teens love to mentor and offer their special knowledge to others who need it. Teen advisory boards can also be used for such a purpose and can be a bonus to the library for bringing in teens with opinions that might differ from those of regular library users.  Recently, I utilized a number of teen volunteers to complete a themed book lists, aka Radical Reads to assist young adults (and others) with searching the novels in the young adult section. The teens are able to not only see how their work is helping others, but some have even had the opportunity to use the lists themselves to locate a novel for an assignment or pleasure.

As with employees, you do need to have a procedure for dealing with volunteers who are providing unsatisfactory service. Such challenges can include sloppy work, low productivity, inconsistency, disrespect, and behavioral issues. It will likely parallel that for employees, but it should provide for termination if it is necessary. Libraries should never feel required to keep volunteers. If the volunteer is serving to earn a scout badge or medal, for community service requirements, or for court ordered sanctions, there is an unspoken understanding with the referring agency that the volunteer needs to meet certain levels of service.

Finally, you want to make sure to always show your appreciation. Everyone needs validation. Whether we get paid or are volunteering, we all appreciate a pat on the back every once and a while. Supervisors, and other library staff, should always offer thanks for the volunteer's help. This can be taken a step further by offering an annual (or more often) awards ceremony to honor the service of regular volunteers. Often regular volunteers will receive small, appropriate gifts of recognition.

Now, you can feel free to take this friendly advice and have fun while helping the teens complete their community service requirements.  They will get to have a positive experience at the library, and hopefully give them a sense of ownership, and you will have extra sets of hands to get all those projects you wanted to get to completed.   

If that isn't a win-win situation, I don't know what is.

I recently went to a workshop on content management systems (simplified systems for administering and entering web content using templates) and learned that there are many libraries around the country making their websites on WordPress Blogs.  Some libraries, especially public ones, are using them to create up-to-the minute web content that requires very little or no knowledge of HTML and CSS code.  One of the speakers demonstrated this public library website she created entirely from WordPress

Blog entries were used to create the announcements that run down the home page.  Then, the "Pages" feature available on the "Dashboard" that you can access when you log into your WordPress account was used to create tabbed inner pages (see the top of the Beverly Library homepage) .  These are the "Calender," "Ask a Librarian," "Services," and "About Us" tabs.  

One of the biggest challenges when making any website is the graphic design - making the website look pretty.  In WordPress, you choose various templates which add color, structure, and design to the information you put on your webpages.  There are hundreds of templates to choose from.  Each template will organize your website or blog in a different way.

To use WordPress, a free account can be created on the WordPress.com site. WordPress.com will host your blog/website for you.  Or you can download and host your own WordPress site using WordPress.org if you have a web server that supports PHP and MySQL.  

If you want to see more examples, check out this list of libraries that have used WordPress to create their websites.

National History Day is a yearly event where students select a research topic based on a theme and then produce an exhibit, web site, performance, documentary or paper. Students compete within their school and the winners are selected to compete at the state level. Fifteen Rhode Island school districts were represented at this year's statewide competition on April 30 at Providence College where both judging and a run-off competition took place. The statewide winners from each category will then compete nationally at the University of Maryland this June.

I've always loved helping students with National History Day Projects at the Reference Desk. Whether I was assisting a class of Providence seventh graders with the subject headings related to immigration in the RI Index at Providence Public Library or directing a Bayview high school student to a collection of primary sources on the Vietnam War in a Reference volume at the East Providence Public Library, I never tired of taking students on a hunt for the most relevant sources for their projects. I'm sure any Reference Librarian would agree that the only thing that could make this process even more rewarding would be to touch base with these students later on and find out how they incorporated their research findings into their projects, perhaps even getting the chance to read a paper or two.

Volunteering to judge for this year's National History Day event seemed like the perfect opportunity to learn about the end result of a student's project and to further support the efforts of our state's budding young historians. I let our one of our state coordinators- Marie Parys of the Rhode Island Historical Society- know that I was interested in judging the high school historical papers category. I then received a very hefty packet of eleven papers with relevant judging material related to this year's theme, Debate and Diplomacy in History: Successes, Failures, Consequences.  

Topics ranged from the slave trade and 1950s pop music to the Marshall Plan and the Yalta conference and I set about the task each night of reading papers and checking their source material. Although I couldn't come to any final conclusions without interviewing the students or conferring with the other two judges assigned to my team, it became evident that in all but a few instances that these students were not availing themselves of the in-person or remote use of their libraries or of the many excellent authoritative websites containing primary sources.

The day of the judging event I convened with the two other judges for my division and we discussed each paper, came up with our interview questions, and started the ranking process. Although a few papers shone-they were well-written, historically accurate, widely researched, and demonstrated fine analysis and interpretation, etc.- my judging team found the majority of student source material used in these papers to be sorely lacking in quality, accuracy, and authority. This in turn of course affected the quality of those papers and their historical veracity.

A question that I consistently asked each student was "How did you go about researching your topic?" No librarian would be surprised to hear that nearly each student began his or her research with a Google search but I was surprised that more than half of the students never went beyond Google. I often followed up with a question like, "Did you go to a library or speak with a librarian?" Only one student replied that he actually visited a library and spoke with a librarian. Several students claimed they visited either their school or public libraries but did not ask for help and several explained that they did plan to search for books at the public library but had no means of transportation.

Although I found this disappointing, interviewing the students was instructive and overall very enjoyable. They were all well-spoken and passionate about their topics. They clearly each worked very hard and learned a great deal from the process of writing a historical research paper. One of these students even chose to participate in History Day on his own, meaning it was not required for class credit. I'm sure the students we interviewed could all write excellent history papers with better awareness regarding public library resources.

According to the National History Day National Program Evaluation Executive Summary, several studies found that national History Day students "outperform their non-NHD peers on state standardized tests in multiple subjects, including reading, science and math, as well as social studies," and "are better writers" than non-national History Day students. I highly recommend participating as a History Day Judge at the municipal or state level and becoming a part of this learning process. It's a fun, interesting and positive way to support the research endeavors of some of our young library patrons.

Further Reading:  

National History Day 

National History Day Executive Summary

RI National History Day  

"Diverse" - that is how I like to think of my reading choices. And that's probably a good way to describe the path I took to librarianship.

Throughout my undergraduate education at URI, an internship at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, and enrollment in a graduate program at The American University in D.C., I wanted to be an applied anthropologist. This meant I planned to work as an anthropologist in an organization, but not necessarily teach. Through my internship at the Field Museum, I became passionate about Native American ethnohistory, particularly the evolving perceptions by whites about Native Americans. I did extensive research about this subject using historical photographs and a wide array of popular culture materials, such as tourist publications, maps, advertising, and ephemera. I looked forward to a career in museums.

OLIS's Donna DiMichele

Toward the end of my graduate program I was fortunate to begin a job as an illustrations researcher for the "History of Indian White Relations" volume of the Smithsonian Institution's Handbook of North American Indians. Finding authentic images and writing captions to be used in articles about Indian-white relations was enthralling. When the project ended, I transitioned into the Smithsonian Institution Archives to work on the series Guide to Photographic Collections at the Smithsonian Institution. At some point it finally dawned on me that I loved working with documents and being a professional archivist was right for me.

I began to think about any next steps I might need to take when, oops, I become a "trailing spouse" when my husband and I moved to North Carolina . . . Turns out it was a great move! I took a job in Special Collections in the Duke University Library and was able to get my MSLS at UNC- Chapel Hill. Basketball rivalries aside, UNC and Duke were a great professional combination for me.

My husband and I decided that we wanted to move closer to family, so we moved to RI where I spent the first 22 years of my life. After a couple of project archivist positions in RI, I accepted the position of first Head Archivist at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center. All my background in Native American ethnohistory, archives and special collections, and museums came together in this position. After developing the collection and seeing the archives emerge as research facility, I pulled up stakes and in February 2000 took my current position as Program Manager at the Office of Library and Information Services.

I opened this piece with an observation about my reading choices. If forced to choose only one genre to read, I would choose contemporary literary fiction. Thankfully,  none of us have to make such choices! I also enjoy historical fiction, fantasy, history, Christian fiction, and thrillers - dead serious ones (pun intended) as well as fun ones. I think that both Lisbeth Salander and Stephanie Plum rock!

Lexi Henshel (North Kingstown Public Library) has been appointed to the 2013 Printz Award Committee."I love YA lit, and can't believe I will be part of the search for "a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature!" she said. 

RILA has retained the services of RI Capitol Strategies, a government relations, consulting and lobbying firm. The former State Legislators and lawyers at RI Capitol Strategies specialize in representing client's interests to the Rhode Island General Assembly members, statewide elected officials and local municipal officials. RILA hopes this new relationship will assist in promoting awareness of the importance of libraries among our lawmakers.