Happy New Year! The RILA Board thanks the volunteers and partners who worked with us in 2013, which was an incredibly productive year. What were we up to? Read on!

We doubled our membership numbers in 2013 and rolled out several new initiatives, including the statewide Geek the Library community engagement campaign. We also introduced the Information Literacy Action Roundtable, an official RILA group that aims to address information literacy needs, trends, and developments in schools and libraries. 

We strengthened important partnerships, collaborating with School Librarians of Rhode Island to bring awareness to Information Literacy Month and working with COLA & OLIS on the Essential Libraries community building day.

RILA's social calendar was chock full of exciting opportunities for our members, from trivia night to the Alex & Ani Charmed by Charity fundraiser. Speaking of fundraisers, we also successfully launched a little Tattooed Librarian Calendar project you may have heard about! These efforts resulted in much needed revenue for our small nonprofit, which ensures we can continue 

working on behalf of RILA, our members, and Rhode Island's libraries in 2014 and beyond.

One of RILA's top priorities is advocating for libraries locally and in Washington, and 2013 was no exception. In addition to meeting with our DC legislators during ALA's spring Legislative Day, we shined the spotlight on libraries at the state level. We put forward two proclamations which earned Governor Chafee's support and officially recognized Geek the Library Week in  

September and Information Literacy Month in October.

Our advocacy efforts will continue as the new state legislative session gets underway. Let me also take this opportunity to welcome Howard Boksenbaum as RILA's new interim ALA Councilor. Howard is headed to ALA Midwinter to represent Rhode Island at the national level. Eileen Dyer, our former ALA Councilor, is focusing her energy on co-leading RILA's Legislative Action  

Committee with Eileen Socha of the East Providence Public Library. Need help with advocacy efforts in your area? Contact the Eileens!

How will we top 2013? Plans are already in the works, starting with Library Legislative Awareness Day on 2/11, followed by Money Smart Week in April, and the Annual Conference on June 2-3. Please renew your RILA membership for the new calendar year to see what develops!

As we begin the new year, the Membership Committee wants to remind you of how RILA works for all of us - for librarians, for libraries, and for Rhode Island.  The mission of RILA is "to promote the profession of librarianship and to improve the visibility, accessibility, responsiveness and effectiveness of library and information services throughout Rhode Island".

In order for RILA to be a nimble and effective organization we need YOU! 

This month as we begin the annual membership renewal process, please remember that every member does count.  When your RILA renewal form arrives in the mail, please renew. Your membership supports our work and provides strength for the committees that bring you an informative Annual Conference, keep you abreast of Intellectual Freedom happenings, meet with legislators to protect library funding, bring you all the library news across the state, and much more!

The Membership Committee is composed of several volunteers from all different types of libraries.  Adrienne Gallo of Cranston Public Library and Mary MacDonald of University or Rhode Island Library are the committee co-chairs. The rest of the committee is comprised of:
Stefanie Metko, Student Coordinator, GSLIS, University of Rhode Island
Dorothy Swain, Assistant Director of Greenville Public Library
Miranda Nero, Cataloger, Ocean State Libraries 

Sarah Zajac, GSLIS, URI student 
Kirsten Anderson, GSLIS, URI student

Join us! We are committed to gaining and keeping members and enhancing the membership experience.   We invite all library staff and library supporters to join or renew for 2014. We're here to serve librarians, support staff, trustees, students, volunteers, retirees and affiliates. RILA is yours and always will be.

Youth Services Librarian, East Smithfield Public Library

Youth Services Coordinator/Program Specialist OLIS

Clementines in a basket, tangy cheese, savory crackers, and a few tasty sweets await the arrival of the passionate readers.

This group of public librarians, school librarians and teachers gather together four times between September and January to discuss the potential Newbery winner and honor books. Because different books are discussed at each meeting, new members can join at any point. The last meeting of the Mock Newbery Discussion is an exciting night when the all-important voting takes place. Rhode Island librarians and teachers will be voting for our 2014 mock Newbery winner and honor books on Wednesday, January 22^nd, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m., at the Oak Lawn Branch of the Cranston Public Library.

This program is offered through OLIS and is a lively discussion filled with laughter and serious opinions about plot, characterization and setting.  As one of the participants pointed out, it is a very unique forum. It is also a nice way to collaborate with librarians and educators from across the state of Rhode Island. It keeps the readers on top of the mountain of the best books that have been published in the past year. The books discussed are among the most critically acclaimed, as well as books with "buzz" from librarians around the country engaged in other mock Newbery groups and on blogs.

For some it is a thought-provoking night out, an informative and meaningful mini workshop. As one participant shared, it is the "whole package", we are thinking and discussing more deeply about the books. We all learn from each other and one of the teachers who attends shared that she truly appreciates the librarians' knowledge of so many juvenile books that she doesn't always have the time to read but would like to feature with confidence in her curriculum. Reading a review of a book is one thing, but actually reading the book and formulating your own point of view is something else entirely. It's like being in a book group but instead of discussing one book in an evening you are talking about several. The reading list is posted on the OLIS site for each meeting.   We discuss the pros and the concerns that each book brings to the table and then ultimately the question is - Keep or Drop. The group's decision to keep a book on the final voting list is based on the official Newbery Medal criteria: In identifying "Distinguished Writing" in a book for children, committee members need to consider the following:

• Interpretation of the theme or concept
• Presentation of information including accuracy, clarity, and organization
• Development of a plot
• Delineation of characters
• Delineation of setting
• Appropriateness of style
• Excellence of presentation for a child audience.    

Note: Because the literary qualities to be considered will vary depending on content, the committee need not expect to find excellence in each of the named elements. The book should, however, have distinguished qualities in all of the elements pertinent to it.

So we read, read and read some more. As the list gets whittled down over time we know that eventually the collective decision needs to made.

As one participant pointed out," It is always more fun when you hear the awards being announced and you have already read the books!"

The 2014 Newbery Award will be announced at the American Library Association's Midwinter meeting. You can watch the ALA Youth Media Awards announcements live from www.ala.org/yma beginning at 8:00am (eastern) on Monday, January 27^th. To follow the announcements on Twitter, use the hashtag #alayma.

History of the Newbery Medal (from the American Library Association website)

http://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/newberymedal/newberymedal

The Newbery Medal is awarded annually by the American Library Association for the most distinguished American children's book published the previous year. On June 22, 1921, Frederic G. Melcher proposed the award to the American Library Association meeting of the Children's Librarians' Section and suggested that it be named for the eighteenth-century English bookseller John Newbery. The idea was enthusiastically accepted by the children's librarians, and Melcher's official proposal was approved by the ALA Executive Board in 1922. In Melcher's formal agreement with the board, the purpose of the Newbery Medal was stated as follows: "To encourage original creative work in the field of books for children. To emphasize to the public that contributions to the literature for children deserve similar recognition to poetry, plays, or novels. To give those librarians, who make it their life work to serve children's reading interests, an opportunity to encourage good writing in this field".

Bryant University 

This past fall, the Douglas and Judith Krupp Library at Bryant University published its first book, Bryant College Goes to War, by Bryant University Professor Judy Barrett Litoff.   This project actually started five years ago with the rediscovery of a cache of letters written by Bryant students stationed around the world during World War II.  These thank-you letters were written to the Bryant College Service Club, a student-run club that sent monthly packages of cigarettes, candy, cookies, letters, and knitted articles to Bryant men and women serving in the U.S. military. By the war's end, approximately 500 Bryant women and men had received letters and packages from the Club, which, in turn, received over 1,300 letters of thanks which included firsthand accounts of wartime from students and alumni stationed in every major theater of war.  

The Bryant Service Club

Once the letters were found in 2008, the library immediately notified Litoff, a leading authority on the history of American women and letter writing during World War II.  From the start, the library assumed that Litoff would eventually write a narrative based on this collection.

While Litoff was contemplating a publication, the library began digitizing and transcribing the handwritten and typed letters which had been collected in 4 large scrapbooks. This eventually resulted in the Bryant College Goes to War website which arranges the letters by author and date.

As she began writing Bryant College Goes to War, Litoff worked closely with special collections staff who provided research assistance and additional documents from Bryant's archives to help tell the story.  Due to the staff's intimate knowledge of the letters and other World War II documents in the collections, Litoff asked the library to help design, edit and publish Bryant College Goes to War.  The library welcomed this opportunity enthusiastically!  Library staff rolled up their sleeves to learn Adobe InDesign and started playing with the book's images and text in the design program.  When the book layout was complete, pdf copies were created and meetings were held to convince Bryant's administration to fund the book's printing as part of the University's 150th anniversary celebration.  A full color edition of Bryant College Goes to War was finally published in October 2013 and is available for purchase through the  Bryant University Bookstore.

2014 marks the Centennial of the founding of Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island. As part of a yearlong celebration, the JWU Library is coordinating a digital oral history project to document the stories of the people who have witnessed, enacted, and reacted to various changes and events within the University's recent (30-40 year) history.

Led by Dr. Rosita Hopper, Dean of Libraries, the JWU Oral History Project has been in planning for nearly a year. The project is close to launch, with the first interviews to be recorded in a few weeks.  Future plans include gathering interviews by setting up portable 'drop-in interview stations' at campus-wide events, and possibly making use of web-based submissions.

The project faces a few challenges. The first major challenge that arose related to scale: JWU consists of four physical campuses, all of which are considerably distant from each other (Providence, Charlotte, Miami, and Denver). Given this scenario, what kind of workflow might we establish so that interviews can be collected separately at each campus and then consolidated, edited, and published to the web from one location?

The answer turned out to be multipart: rigorous virtual training sessions; extensive documentation; practice interviews; and most importantly, the provision of easy-to-use technology. It is essential that each interviewer be able to handle the technological aspects of the interview with ease so that they can focus their attention on the actual stories and ensure that they are properly captured and preserved.  One of the scariest things to happen to an interviewer is to hear a riveting and heartfelt story, and then realize that the microphone was off the entire time!

The second challenge is more universal: budget. As consistency is an important part of this project, all campuses must use identical equipment. But as sound quality is an equally important consideration (for both archival and aesthetic purposes) we needed to find something that seemingly didn't exist - a recording technology that was user-friendly, affordable, portable, and of professional quality.

In answer to this challenge, we developed a DIY compromise that required only a portable tripod and a professional-quality dual-microphone digital audio recorder (Tascam DR-40 Handheld 4-Track Recorder). When set up in this configuration [see Figure 1] we were able to use our audio recorder's two movable microphones to gather clear, high-resolution audio separately from interviewer and interviewee. Furthermore, this configuration produced audio quality that was nearly indistinguishable in quality from other configurations we tried with expensive external microphones.

Figure 1: Improvised Microphone Placement (Excerpt from training documentation)

The De Johnson Scholarship Fund grants travel support to current students pursuing library degrees, or recent graduates of a library program.  The Scholarship was established in memory of longtime member and former RILA President Derryl ("De") Johnson to help promote active participation in the field of librarianship by providing an opportunity to the newest colleagues in our

Volunteer for RILA

Pawtucket Public Library is pleased to welcome Carrie Ann Perez to their Reference Staff.

Maria Cotto, the Bilingual Children's Librarian at the Pawtucket Public Library, has been awarded the 2013 Juanita Sanchez Grant from the Rhode Island Foundation. 

Maria will be using the money to increase the current Español/Bilingüe Collections currently offered at the Pawtucket Children's Library. Ms. Cotto will also use some of the fund money to bring in Hispanic Cultural programming to the children of Pawtucket. Maria currently runs a Bilingual story class in the Pawtucket Children's Library and promotes diversity within the Children's Library by serving on both the REFORMA and Cornucopia committees. According to the 2013 Rhode Island Kids Count Factbook, 29% of the child population under the age of 18 are Hispanic or Latino.

Tiverton

Tiverton Library officially broke ground on their new building October 26, 2013.  More than 100 library advocates, including Senator Jack Reed, attended the event.  For more on Tiverton's long road to a new library, check out this excellent article in the Rhode Island Library Report.   

Rhode Island Historical Society Library

The Rhode Island Historical Society announced that is has received a $209,397 grant from the Champlin Foundations to replace windows at the society's library in Providence. In a news release, the historical society called the grant "the capstone" of its efforts to to pay for renovations to what is a former church building at 121 Hope St. The Champlin grant, plus money from the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Humanities and a Save America's Treasures grant from the National Park Service, will cover the rehabilitation of the library.  

Scarecrow Press

Scarecrow Press is seeking chapters from librarians for three library anthologies: Google in Libraries: Uses for Patron, Student and Staff; Making Libraries Integral in the Lives of Baby Boomers; Creative Management of Small Public Libraries in the 21st Century.  See full descriptions of each book as well as submission process on RILA's website.