The 2014 Rhode Island Library Association Conference is going to be a blast this year. We have an exciting lineup of programs. Our presentations offer something for everyone, whether you're affiliated with a K-12 school, YA section in your library, special library, or university or college library. We even have fun after hours events planned. Headliner Lisa Zawadzki will be informing and entertaining us at Newport's Fifth Element lounge on Monday night, and on Tuesday presenters Keith Stokes and Theresa Guzman-Stokes will lead a tour of Newport's rare and fascinating African Burial Ground.

It's all happening in Newport on Monday, June 2nd and Tuesday,

June 3rd  at beautiful Salve Regina University's Antone Center! Register at http://rilibraries.org/annual-conference!

Makerspaces and flexible learning spaces are big this year, including our headliner Nate Hill, Director of Chattanooga Public Library. Nate will be speaking about the library's 4th Floor project, a community library space that serves uses as varied as makerspace, production room, coder dojo, and event space.  Evan Barta and Diane Greenwald will be presenting Warwick Public Library's IdeaStudio, and Cindy Wall and Lynn Pawloski will be discussing maker programming for kids.

Looking to keep up with the latest advances in libraries and tech? Hailie Posey and Marc Caprio will be providing a hands-on introduction to text encoding initiatives and demonstrating some tools that can help you follow through on successful digital projects. Poster presenters David Meinke and Lisa Spicola will cover DIY website usability testing. Kieran Ayton and Corrie MacDonald will share their findings for best practices for lending iPad and Android tablets at public and academic libraries, and Ed Iglesias will be talking about 3D printing and skillsets needed to offer 3D printing services to patrons.

Would you like to spice up your services to teens and children? Listen as Eugene Jeffers and Solange Morrissette share the secrets to their successful summer reading program at Pawtucket Public Library. STEM/STEAM programming for teens is on the agenda when Sue Rousseau gives her presentation on how to host  innovative programs on a shoestring. Ed Graves and Emily Brown give the lowdown on gaming in the library, explaining how gaming can bring in the kids and teach them multiple literacies. If you want to keep up with the latest, greatest books for teens, Brandi Kenyon and Andria Tieman will give us a sneak peak at the 2015 nominees for the RI Teen Book Awards. In our poster sessions, Brandy Danner gives us new programming ideas with Fun with Food, Michelle Novello and Verenis Polanco get us ready for K, Barbara Slover and Melissa Robb clue us in on the partnership of libraries and homeschool families, and Babs Wells talks about book groups for young readers.

Are you looking to improve your outreach and instruction? Check out Dave Brier and Vicky Lebbin's hands-on workshop about using drawing in the classroom for information literacy instruction. Sarah Naomi Campbell and David Meincke reveal the secrets of making super-short, 60 second films for your library, and poster presenter Lisa Kenyon gives the low-down on student-driven programming to improve connections beyond the classroom.

Library leaders need inspiration too. Kathryn Taylor offers her tried and true practical outline of best practices in fundraising, poster presenters Karisa Tashjian and Mary Jo Feeney tell us about ALL Access in the Libraries, an IMLS-funded demonstration program, and Sally Ijams and Dot Kelly talk about how they built a LEED Gold certified building and greened their library.

Preservation and cultural heritage is on the docket with Michael P. Dyer and Mark Procknik's explication detailing how the Kendall Whaling Museum Library's digitized their primary collection and hugely expanded online access to their resources with the help of a regional internship program. You can also hear Keith Stokes and Theresa Guzman-Stokes share their amazing work on God's Little Acre, a colonial cemetery for Africans in Newport and Chelsea Dunn and Elyssa Tardiff discuss the RHODI Project, which provides library and heritage organizations with a platform for collaboration.

No conference would be complete without sessions to improve fundamental skills and services. Visit Deborah Mongeau's session on updating your government information access skills, Paul Richards on dealing with difficult personalities in the workplace, Andrew Jackson on providing high quality customer service, and Melissa Chiavaroli and Jenn Cournoyer on what their undercover visits to libraries across RI and MA revealed about new ideas to improve atmosphere, displays and programming in your library. You can also hear Rachael Juskuv give a poster presentation on adult summer reading and Brandy Danner present on Readers' Advisory for all ages.

Maybe after all of this skill improvement you'd just like to sit back and get the big picture at some fascinating library-related presentations. Listen to keynote speaker Lee Rainie present on The Pew Research Center's latest findings on libraries in American society and Veronica Hobbs of the RI Supreme Court discuss the school to prison pipeline and what libraries can do to break this cycle. Hear Amy Greer and company present on the success of Rhode Island's Human Library project, Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz and Joshua Dick enlighten us about young Americans' attitudes toward privacy and security.

We can't thank our sponsors enough. We're looking at you, AskRI, AtoZdatabases, Broadband RI, EBSCO, Harrington School of Communication and Media, HELIN Library Consortium, IGI Global, Innovative Interfaces, Mango Languages, OCLC, OLIC, and World Book, Inc! You can see our sponsors' latest innovations at the conference. Check the schedule for the sponsor demo room when you get to the conference.

REGISTER for the 2014 RILA Annual Conference and view the full online brochure at the conference website: http://rilibraries.org/annual-conference

For those who don't already know me, my name is Emily Grace, and I'm the children's librarian at Mount Pleasant Library, a weekend reference librarian at North Scituate Public Library, and on-call at Ashaway Free Library. This summer, I would like to add "RILA Secretary" to that list as well.

I joined RILA in Fall 2012 to help revive the Public Relations committee. My intention was to raise awareness of all the amazing events that our organization plans and supports for the state, as well as the many, many ways that libraries in general can help individuals and communities across the country and world. Together with my co-chairs and colleagues, I feel that we have all done a great job of bringing an abundance of positive attention to RILA and our initiatives.

While continuing to help steer the RILA PR ship, I would very much like to take over for Amy Greer as RILA's Secretary. Thanks in large part to Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, formative years spent working as a bookkeeper, and a long (now mostly regrettable) history of writing down all of my feelings back when LiveJournal was still "the" place to blog, I am a fast and accurate typist and excellent note-taker.

As Secretary, I will keep the minutes neat and tidy for the good of the organization, but I also promise to keep shaking things up publicity-wise as well. I believe that combining the two roles will be beneficial for everyone involved, as it will keep me even more up-to-date with all our goings-on. I look forward to serving and growing with you all in this new capacity.

You may have seen the recently aired mid-season finale of the Ghost Hunters on February 26 that was entitled "Nine Men's Misery" and starred the Cumberland Public Library.  Since then the staff has been getting a number of questions about what it was like to be a part of an investigation by Rhode Island's very own The Atlantic Paranormal Society, or TAPS as they are better known, I figured I would summaries the experience.

Playing host to the team of investigators and television producers and crew was actually both interesting and fun. Our involvement with the group started almost two and a half years ago, when one of the producers of the show contacted Celeste Dyer, the library's director, about the possibility of doing an investigation at the library. TAPS had heard that a number of rumors about ghosts at the former monastery had been going around both Cumberland and throughout the whole state for some time.  They thought that, combined with the interesting history of the monastery grounds, which included a massacre that resulted in what might be the nation's oldest military memorial (Nine Men's Misery) would make for good television.  Apparently, TAPS also likes to do investigations in libraries, and they try to have at least one episode a season focusing on such an important community resource.  After a little thought, the library's administration and board of trustees gave permission for such an investigation.

So you can probably already see how "Hollywood" has affected the tale because throughout the episode, the cast repeatedly said that Celeste was worried about the safety of both her staff and patrons.  While Celeste truly cares for everyone's safety, there has never been any concern that our ethereal visitors were a danger to anyone.

Over the course of two years, we would receive emails from the producer for some sample pictures, but things sort of settled down to the point that we thought they were not interested any more.  All of that changed last autumn, when they contacted us again about scheduling dates.  They ended up choosing two evenings and two days for filming in December over the course of a week-long period.  The first day, the crew came with the cast to do primary shooting, and then they used the rest of the period to shoot interviews for possible inclusion in the episode and additional shots to fill in between the cast experiences.

Before their arrival, producers had contacted the library about getting some personal experiences that could be shared as interviews in the episode.  Some of these would be highlighted with personal interviews with those who had the experiences while others could be used to share with the crew as the basis of some of the techniques they would use during the investigation.  We put an electronic form on our website that we marketing in-house and through social media, bringing in a number of such experiences from both current and past staff as well as some of our patrons.

One of the things we were most amazed about was how quickly they would come in and unpack before being ready to start shooting, and they were able to do the same thing to pack back up when they were done each day.  The cast and crew were amazingly friendly and easy-going while doing what they could to do their investigation while interfering as little as possible with the work of the library.

Once the filming was done, the producers and Syfy were able to provide us with some indication of when the episode was going to air.  Since we had been hoping to have a big live showing at the library, their doing so was something we greatly appreciated.  We were able to contact TAPS, and their local investigative team, which does not participate with the show, was willing to come and talk with patrons attending the live showing event.  They shared their own personal experiences, some evidence that they had collected during their own investigations as well as a chance to look at and touch the tools with which they work.  We had almost 200 people attend the live showing, and a fun time was had by all.  Observers could see how into the episode they were because the room would fill with noise during the commercials, and would become almost silent once the episode picked up again.

Toward the end of the episodes some of the investigators gave our Children's Room mascot, Beverly the Bookworm, a star-role scene after talking about all the great things that libraries offer to the public to use for free.  It was very rewarding to see them explain why more people should take advantage of what is available at their local public library.

The experience was a positive one.  Attendees enjoyed the program, and our participation proved to be a good marketing tool.  Within the few weeks after the episode aired, the library received a number of phone calls and emails from people not only living in Cumberland or Rhode Island as a whole, but from all across America, including Arizona and California.  People weren't just calling because they were intrigued by the possibility of the library being haunted, but they were very interested in sites history relating to both the monastery and Nine Men's Misery.  We also found that it brought out an aura of excitement from our patrons as they asked about it both before and after the episode aired.  In the end, we truly think that it brought in people who were not previously library users into the building, and hopefully, they have continued to come back for some of the services, programs, and materials we offer.

We were amazed at the amount of local coverage that was provided about the visit. This included an article in the Woonsocket Call and a piece on ABC6.

So, you are probably wondering if the Ghost Hunters found that we were haunted ... Well, I am not going to tell you the answer to that so you will have to watch the episode.  I can tell you that when you are walking through the library, you might have a little bit of paranormal company.

Ocean State Libraries is excited to announce the acquisition of three new 27-inch, high-definition touchscreen monitors called Overdrive Media Stations. These devices are designed to showcase our digital collection from Overdrive. It's a fun way for users to browse and discover OSL's digital collection of eBooks, audiobooks, music,and video and then send a checkout link to themselves by QR code, email, or text message.

Overdrive Media Station at the Cranston Public Library

Two of the OverDrive Media Stations will be traveling around parts of the state during the next year to several libraries. Schedule is as follows:

Media Station 1:  

Media Station 2:

In addition, the Cumberland Public Library and the Warwick Public Library have purchased Media Stations for their own libraries.

The third Media Station is currently located in the lobby of the Rhode Island Department of Administration (Powers Building) across from the State House in Providence. Ocean State Libraries purchased a special kiosk made of aircraft-grade aluminum in order to house and protect the monitor, and included our logo on the front. So far, response to the kiosk has been positive with lots of visitors commenting on the high-tech device. OSL is hoping to eventually move the kiosk around to different venues in Rhode Island, like T.F. Green Airport and the Warwick Mall.

OSL's digital kiosk at the Department of Administration building

OSL's eZone digital download service is available anytime by visiting http://ezone.oslri.net or by downloading the free Overdrive app for iOS or Android. eZone titles can be checked out with a valid OSL library card, and enjoyed on all major computers and mobile devices, including iPhone®, iPad®, Nook®, Android™ phones and tablets, and Kindle®.

If you are new to Overdrive, you can take a look at these online "Getting Started" guides, or contact your local OSL library for assistance. Contact Jessica D'Avanza for more information on the Overdrive Media Stations at jessicad@barringtonlibrary.org

I just flew in from PLA last week, and boy, my arms are still tired!

First of all, thank you to all of RILA, to Rachael and Julie at North Scituate Public Library, and specifically the De Johnson Memorial Scholarship for giving me the opportunity to go to the Public Library Association conference in Indianapolis this year. I had a blast and am so grateful to have had a chance to learn and meet some really awesome people.

Highlights included meeting up with my former PR co-chair Chelsea Dodd and learning about all the amazing things that she's doing at her new library in New Jersey, the wild party Mango Languages threw for all the librarians on the first night, and attending a variety of programs and "converstations" ranging from marketing, to children's services, to adult programming. As someone who wears hats for all of these topics and more, my only complaint was that I suffered from analysis paralysis each morning when reviewing the day's schedule - there were just so many options to choose from!

My favorite programs were those relating to selecting and presenting informational texts for children and ways to create STEM story times by subtly incorporating science, math, and engineering, and technology lessons into virtually any work of juvenile fiction. I really enjoyed these in particular because of their outstanding value, both for my own work as a new children's librarian and also across the board. As the presenters explained, most informational texts are naturally of high-interest to kids at all reading levels, often help boys find their niche if they are struggling readers, and early exposure to them can help break down the antiquated notions that math- and science-based interests and careers are for "for nerds" or "for boys." Additionally, the speakers were clearly very knowledgeable, experienced, and passionate, which makes an enormous difference, of course.

Other important lessons included:

• People will go to their friends or other people that they know and trust when they have a question first, so be that person that they know and trust.
• "Embeddedness" is vital, and it's more than just being present or telling someone about how the library can help them; it's about being truly active in your community, asking how the library can help, and then really listening to what they're saying (and sometimes even what they're not saying).
• Time is the new money; people are always looking for ways to save time and kill two birds with one stone. Think ways to offer services accordingly.
• Small and inexpensive things really can make a big impact. Even a simple invitation can make an event or program seem even more special, take photographs, play music, remember to smile, and send thank-yous whenever possible (handwritten are best!).

Thank you all again for this great opportunity! If you have any questions, or would like any additional information about what I learned at the conference, please be in touch.  

Pre-loading Apps on Your Library's Tablets

By Kieran Ayton  

Emerging Technologies Librarian, Rhode Island College

At the Rhode Island College Library, we are planning to begin lending Nexus 7 tablets this summer to faculty, staff, and students.

We already have a successful iPad Lending Program and are looking forward to offering another type of tablet as well. What we have discovered is that while both Nexus tablets and iPads do similar things, both allow very different forms of customization for educational use.

A major topic of interest in both classroom and library settings is pre-loading these tablets with educational apps. We currently pre-load our RIC Library iPads with over 40 apps and web clips (the web clips are bookmarked links to frequently used RIC website pages). A complete list of our pre-loaded iPad apps can be found here: http://ric.libguides.com/ipadapps.  We also allow patrons to download whatever they like to our iPads if they wish to use their own Apple / iTunes account.

Pre-loading the Android-run Nexus 7 tablets with apps is not as simple a process as it is with our iPads. With our iPads, we use a program called Apple Configurator to both image and pre-load the iPads with apps. More information about this process can be found here: http://ric.libguides.com/appleconfigurator .

One of the benefits of using the Apple Configurator program, is that it is designed for short term loans where the user will borrow an iPad for a few weeks and then return it. Users are not required to supply their own Apple or iTunes IDs. It is an option they can choose if they wish to download apps on their own.

We were wondering if this same option was available to us with the Google Nexus 7 Tablets. The Apple Configurator program is not compatible with the Android operating system that runs on the Google Nexus 7 tablets. After working with several Google reps, we learned that Google does have a program whereby Nexus tablets can be preloaded with apps.  It is called Google Play for Education.

Google Play for Education utilizes the educational apps available from the Google Play store. It is described as a "digital locker for students and faculty" that can be used to store "school websites, school documents, school videos, school calendars, and school emails."  However, to achieve this level of integration, Nexus tablets are generally given to students on long term loans (called a 1:1 program). This means the student theoretically "owns" the tablet for the school year and most likely takes it home as well as uses it in the classroom.  

To set all of this up, your school's web domain must be verified by Google as an educational institution. Then you can assign Google Apps administrators who create Google Accounts for the teachers and students who will participate in this 1:1 loaning program. Alternatively, it is possible to setup a shared tablet for classroom use, but that tablet must have its own unique Google Account that has been setup by a Google Apps Administrator. Personal Google accounts are not used.  More information can be found here: http://ric.libguides.com/googleplay.

This innovative program being piloted by Google is already taking off in educational institutions around the country. However, for short term loans in a library setting, it does have its limitations. We have decided not to set up unique user accounts for every single RIC student, faculty or staff member who might borrow a Nexus 7 tablet. We have chosen, in our case, to lend the Nexus 7 tablets "as is" with no special apps pre-loaded. The Android OS 4.4.2 version which run on our Nexus 7s already have a set of generic Google apps like Chrome, YouTube and Google Drive. We will let our patrons log in with their own Google Play accounts (if they have them) and download any additional apps they like.  We will be doing a factory reset on each device as it is returned to wipe out patron data.

As tablet computers which run Android Operating Systems continue to compete with iPads in the classroom (and in libraries), it will be interesting to see how the Google Play for Education Program evolves.

Heritage Quest is a database available through AskRI.org that provides research information for genealogy seekers. Information can be found through its six database areas. Heritage Quest also has a new Learning Center which includes videos by experts on genealogy topics including using the databases and performing genealogical searches to help with finding detailed records for beginner, intermediate, and advanced researchers.

Search Census

The Basic Search has Surname, Given Name, Census Year and State as search options. Any of the fields or all can be used. For a more Advanced Search, the patron can limit searches by age, race, sex, and other parameters in addition to the options in the Basic Search (some of these will limit the range of results, for example, if age, sex, race or birthplace is used, the results will be from 1850 forward). If a researcher is interested in specific series of the census and has the information, full pages can be searched for by entering the series, roll and page of the census.

Search Books - This database includes information on people and places as described in over 28,000 family and local histories, almost 14,000 local histories, and over 250 other primary sources. A researcher can search by person, place, or using keywords, and also browse through the

Search PERiodical Source Index (PERSI™) Archive - This database allows researchers to find information about people and places from this index of over 2.3 million genealogy and local historical periodical articles (1800-2009). This database also allows for browsing by title of the periodical. PERSI includes a section to assist new researchers to find articles on research methodologies. There are over 6,600 journal articles and 2.3 million article citations included in this database that can be searched using names, places and keywords.

Search Revolutionary War

• Over 81,000 pension files

• Over 138,000 pensioners and dependents

The records reproduced in this microfilm publication pertain only to pensions granted or paid pursuant to public or private acts of the U.S. Government. These are reproduced selected genealogical records from an estimated 80,000 pension and bounty-land-warrant application files based on the participation of American military, naval, and marine officers and enlisted men in the Revolutionary War. Most of the records are dated between 1800 and 1900. The files are part of Record Group 15, Records of the Veteran Administration.

Search Freedman's Bank - Freedman's Bank (1865-1874) was incorporated by an act of Congress approved March 3, 1865 (13 Stat. 510), as a banking institution established in the city of Washington, District of Columbia, for the benefit of freed slaves. Search for individuals in Freedman's Bank database, which includes:

• Over 105,000 depositor accounts

• Over 489,000 individual names

On the 27 rolls of this microfilm publication are reproduced 55 volumes containing signatures of and personal identification data about depositors in 29 branch offices of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, 1865-74.

Search U.S. Serial Set - Documents cover a wide variety of topics and may include reports of executive departments and independent organizations, reports of special investigations made for Congress, and annual reports of non-governmental organizations.