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#4 Reports A. Activities Report Hedberg Public Library Activity Report November 2010 Adult Services René Bue attended WLA as a presenter (with Ruth Ann Montgomery) and as the Chair Elect of the OSRT. While there she also attended the EMIERT meeting and several sessions on programming and collections development. She also met with Anita Streich from the Beaver Dam Public Library to discuss their Spanish collection and what Anita has done to develop her Spanish Collection. René hosted the Faces of the Worldmulticultural fair which had 709 attendees and where she received a high honor from the Native Americans. Booths representing 19 countries and five local service organizations were located in the program room and throughout the library. René left on November 29 for Guadalajara, Mexico to attend the annual International Book Fair. She was able to attend as a result of being selected as a recipient of an ALA/FIL (American Library Association/Feria Internacional de Libros) grant which covered most of the expenses (hotel, fair registration, some food and part of the airfare). The library offered programs for adults in November that coordinated with the annual multicultural fair, Faces of the World. Pat Hill, a Spanish teacher from Beloit Memorial High School, shared information about his recent trip to Jordan as part of a UW-Green Bay Fulbright- Hays program and Erin Conway shared information about her Peace Corps work in Guatemala and the ancient tradition of backstrap weaving. Additional adult programming included the second and third sessions of the Life Online: Navigating a Digital World series. Presenters covered Facebook, GoodReads, LibraryThing, OverDrive, RockCat and other sites online for readers and social networking this month. Susan Braden, Kate Hull, Carol Kuntzelman, Diana McDonald, Carolyn Messer, Jennifer Twardzik, and Jean Yeomans each presented a portion of the three sessions. As of the end of November, the Hedberg @ Home program has 52 individual patrons and 6 facilities enrolled. Volunteers are constantly being sought for selection and delivery of library materials to these patrons. Jean will be serving on the Wisconsin Library Association’s Literary Awards committee. The first meeting of this year’s committee will be in December in Sun Prairie. The committee is responsible for selecting the recipient of the R. R. Donnelly Award honoring a Wisconsin author, the Wisconsin Library Association Literary Award, maintaining a list of Wisconsin authors, and overseeing the annual Discover Wisconsin Authors Week annual project. Members of the committee are appointed by the Readers Section leadership. Jean Yeomans taught an art and architecture class at the Janesville Senior Center on November th 17. Pat Tobin, the Senior Center’s recreation programmer, suggested Jean teach the program when Jean presented library materials/services at the center’s Hobby Mania event in early October. Future programming is possible and is under discussion at this time. Central Services Since eliminating closed access by patrons to TV DVD collection, the circulation continues to climb with an increase of over a thousand from last month. Staff workflow has improved with the capability of printing reserve slips at point of sorter th induction which was implemented Monday, November 15. nd The highest circulation day was Tuesday, November 2, Election Day with a circulation of 3,654. The library opened at 7 a.m. offering patrons an additional two hours. The number of people entering library was also the most active day of the month with a gate count of 4,836. Collection Development Gab Bags, tote bags containing multiple copies of books plus a notebook containing discussion questions, reviews and read-alikes, are no longer shelved behind the checkout desk. They have been relocated to the shelves at the front of the new magazine area and have new signage directing patrons to the newly accessible collection. Book discussion leaders may choose from a wide variety of genres, including mystery, romance, young adult literature, and children’s titles. Collection manager Carol Kuntzelman joined mystery book selector Jean Yeomans in attendance at “Murder and Mayhem in Muskego” held at the Muskego Public Library. Among the many mystery writers discussing the art of mystery writing, and also selling their new titles, were Ridley Pearson, Marcus Sakey, and Wisconsin author Victoria Huston. The annual gathering also provided us an opportunity to discuss book discussion titles and techniques with other book discussion members. Human Resources/Accounting David Wreford received an “I Made a Difference Award” for volunteering to work a split shift specifically to clean the Program Room after a program, saving many other staff time. Some WLA conference expenses were offset with Foundation funds designated for that purpose. The December Expenditure Approval List does not reflect final expenditures for 2010. Bills paid in January 2011 will include 2010 expenses, so the totals are preliminary, and will probably not be finalized until February 2011. Reference Services Total Patron Questions: 2010 2009  Patron questions asked at Reference Desk – 2794 2753  Patron questions asked at Service Desk – 2790 2767  Asked at Youth Services 2136 2007  Asked at Bilingual Desk (when staffed) 0 9  Asked at Teen Central (when staffed) 121 38  Asked via email 41  Total patron questions 7882 7488 Reportable Reference Questions:  Asked at the Reference Desk 1081 1243  Asked at Service Desk 280 240  Asked at Youth Services 622 736  Asked at Bilingual Desk (when staffed) 0 2  Asked at Teen Central (when staffed) 20 21  Asked via email 20  Total for all service points 2023 2242 Statistics from InterLibrary Loan:  Items requested from other libraries for Hedberg patrons – 374  Items received from other libraries for Hedberg patrons – 357  Requests received from other libraries to borrow Hedberg materials – 692  Items lent to other libraries from the Hedberg collection – 496 Reference is receiving an increasing number of questions about access to the Overdrive Digital Library, including how to place holds and check out materials, how to download materials to specific devices such as iPads or Sony Readers, which formats can be used with what devices, what device is not compatible with Overdrive (Kindle), and confirming that Wisconsin cardholders can check out materials from computers in overseas locations. Reference librarians are becoming increasing adept at finding information on Overdrive’s many help screens, and Overdrive representatives are available by phone or email to answer questions we cannot find online. The patrons we talk to are delighted with this option to check out audio books and eBooks electronically. Friday December 17 is the last Friday HPL will stay open to 9pm. After the holidays we will begin the new Friday hours of 9-5. Service Desk is losing four hours a week and Security is losing four hours a week as part of this change. At the same time, one Service Desk /Security employee wished to reduce his working hours, and will reduce his schedule by eight hours a week. Senior Service Desk / Security Assistant Jill Osmond and Department Head Mary Buelow revised the schedules to reflect the changes. Question of the month: The Young Adult Librarian and one of the Reference Librarians gave a library tour to a class from one of the local schools. One of the students came to the Reference Desk two days later. She was looking for a green book the librarian had featured in the tour. This green book had two speeches in it – the one John F Kennedy intended to give in Dallas November 23, 1963, and President Johnson’s “Let Us Continue” speech. The librarian at the Reference Desk hunted for a green book of speeches, but could not find the right one. She finally tracked down the librarian who gave the presentation. It turned out the patron was remembering Annals of America, a blue set with primary documents (including speeches) from American history. The librarian had talked about this set right before she demonstrated Current Biography, which is a green set of books about people in the news from 1940 to the present day. Technical Services End of year orders of new titles, published in time for the Christmas season, kept TS staff busy during the month of November. Acquisitions also ordered a new addition, called “Little Pym”, to the on-line Mango Languages database. It offers foreign language instruction for children and is chockfull of colorful graphics a pre-schooler will love. Youth Services Children’s Services The Children’s Room staff visited every first grade public school class this month, as well as the first grade classes at St. John Vianney School. We delivered the message of the public library as a fun place to be with stories, including our own version of “If You Take a Mouse to the Library,” and a plastic book bag and pencil for each child. Awesome Activities this month celebrated the wildly popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid series with a party based on the books. Twenty-seven children joined Camille Rammer for some serious fun. The Harry Potter movie marathon ended with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on Friday, November 12. Many families have stopped to tell us how much they enjoyed having movies at the library. Children’s Room staff were happy to have Asian countries represented in the Children’s Room for Faces of the World. Saturday Story Shorts that week featured a story, rhyme, and craft from Korea and many families stayed afterward to enjoy the activities of Faces of the World. Young Adult Services The eighth grade class from St. John Vianney School visited the library in November for a library tour and study session to work on research papers. Each student was required to locate Reference and circulating books and microform or database sources on their topics. Mary Buelow and Laurie Bartz conducted the tour and staff from all public desks helped to make the visit beneficial for students. A ninth grade class from Craig High School also visited the library. Students were given a library tour and then chose picture books portraying positive character traits to read to first graders at an elementary school. Interest in volunteering has continued. Interviews were conducted for new volunteers and current volunteers contributed 21.75 hours in November at Faces of the World, Saturday Story Shorts and Library Explorers. Teen volunteers, under the direction of Laurie Bartz, served as ambassadors for Faces of the World, welcoming patrons to the program and directing them to the many activities and events happening at the library that day. Attendance at B-Force Middle and High School book club has grown each month this year. After several conversations with TAB members, the format was changed from everyone reading one selected book each month (we never had more than 5 teens with this format last year), to each teen discussing a recently read book that he or she enjoyed, trying to convince others to read it so that the group can vote on a top ten list for library staff to recommend to teen patrons. There were 12 teens eating pizza and talking about books at November’s B-Force meeting. Other Youth Services News: Laurie Bartz, Julie Westby, and Sharon Grover completed the new application for Wisconsin Federation of Independent Colleges intern for summer 2011 and Laurie Bartz filed the application with the WFIC office. HPL has been accepted as a WFIC site for summer 2011 Laurie Bartz attended a College Goal Wisconsin Task Force conference call meeting. Remodeling began in the Youth Services workroom and YS staff and their working materials are currently scattered around the library. Dave Peters and the workers are doing a great job and we’re all looking forward to the final results.