Horse play at Lexington Public Library

All of the LPL locations have a special treat this summer - horses and foals painted by local students. The program, called Horse Play, is coordinated by LexArts and benefits arts programs in the public schools.



Each library is displaying several foals (and one big horse in the entryway) from elementary and middle schools in our neighborhood.


It's really fun when the kids who helped paint them come in to see the display.



Bill, the Northside branch manager, poses with one of the foals, which is decorated with recycled materials.

More pictures from IRRT at Library of Congress

I just could not resist taking pictures of this beautiful building and of all the fun we had!

International Relations Round Table reception at Library of Congress

I am so glad that I stayed Monday night for the IRRT reception (original plan was to drive home Monday since Circe and I had to work Tuesday, but she and Jen - my carmates - were amenable to staying an extra night and leaving super early Tuesday so we could make it to work). I had never been to the LC before, and it is gorgeous. The reception was packed with librarians from dozens of countries, some in native dress. It was fabulous.



Jamie introduced me to Amy (above with Deborah) from the Richland County Public Library in Columbia, South Carolina. She lived in Granada, Spain for five years, and I think I convinced her to do the Prague program.



Amy, Deborah, and I were the last to leave from the reception - we climbed up some stairs to a viewing platform of the Reading Room, and when we came down, there were just a few LC staff there breaking down the party!



This turned out to be a fabulous thing, as we met a police officer as we were trying to find the exit, and he chatted with us for quite awhile and took us around to some non-public areas of the library.










Our new friend, William.

Gale / Library Journal Library of the Year 2010

Many thanks to Gale (especially Kara!) for the invitation to this wonderful event. The award ceremony and reception for the Library of the Year 2010 - Columbus Public Library (Ohio) - was held at the Historical Society of Washington DC.


The Columbus Public Library director, Pat Losinski, gave an inspirational and passionate acceptance speech. Apparently the CPL staff that was able to attend had all taken a bus that day to get there, and they were excited! It was so fun to see.



Pat spoke about some of the library's successes, and said that the staff is encouraged to take risks. He told the story of meeting with a local CEO who told him "you have turned that library from a noun into a verb!"



After the speech, my school-librarian friend Deborah posed with the award money. She was so inspired by Pat that she said she suddenly wanted to be a public librarian!



The CPL staff were mingling at the reception, and Deborah and I had a great conversation with the CFO, Dewitt Harrell, who reiterated how wonderful the whole staff is. I asked him how management was able to involve all staff and have buy-in at all levels, and he told me that it's all about maintaining a positive approach, from the top down. He likes to focus on the strengths that each staff member brings to the table. He said that everybody brings different strengths that are valuable, and if you think of each person as having two unique strengths, in an organization of hundreds of people . . . well, that's a pretty strong organization.

He did caution, however, that we must always be asking ourselves "we may know how to do things right, but are we doing the right things?" We have to be open to change and the always-shifting needs of our communities.




Sarah and Deborah.



Sarah and Jen.

Lunch with Ebsco

On Sunday, Circe and I attended a lunch hosted by Ebsco for public librarians. After feeding us, a few staff spoke about some of their new products and enhancements.

They briefly demonstrated the new interface of Novelist (there is a link right on the homepage of the current interface to see a preview). The new version will be released in about a month, and it seems like it will make the most-commonly used tasks (recommending new authors or series) more prominent and easy to use. They are also now integrating Novelist into the online catalog with their program Novelist Select: it can do some really cool things like recommend other titles and authors, which especially comes in handy when the requested book is unavailable, and it will show series information in title order. Check out the catalog for Houston Public Library, which is already using Novelist in their catalog. It sounds like all current subscribers will get the new interface, but I imagine the catalog integration is an additional cost.

Footnote.com is a new genealogy database; the only one that indexes NARA (I imagine this means something to the genealogy folks out there!).

EBSCOHost is rolling out several new features, too. One that looks good is text-to-speech, which enables the user to select a section of the article, or the entire article, and have it read aloud with voice technology. What I liked about it is that the words being spoken are highlighted as the voice reads them. I could see this being useful for struggling readers. If it's not there already, we should be seeing the audio toolbar on results soon.