Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Bad news from Sacramento today

I just heard that Governor Brown announced that the first Tier of the Trigger Bill cuts will go into effect January 1. This is REALLY bad news for libraries. This will completely defund the Public Library Fund, Cooperative Systems and Support for Literacy Services in the State. All together, Library funding was at a low point of $15 million for all of these services, across the state. The elimination of this small amount of State support puts a further $16 million in Federal funds at risk.

What does this mean for Huntington Beach? It means that we lose grant support for our active and vital Literacy programs. We have less money to buy books and to support general library operations. We have less money to support interlibrary loan. And we will have fewer grant opportunities specifically for libraries, so it will be harder to find additional support for what we do. The elimination of State funding for public libraries will make it harder for all our residents to find what they need, and to get the services they need.

Libraries are one of the best things that government does, and the loss of State support hits hard.

Monday, December 12, 2011

A Kickstarter for Libraries?

This past week, I was participating in a strategic planning session for a Library Agency called Califa -

It was a great session, and we came away from the meeting with some really good ideas and a good sense of direction.

In the course of the day, one of my colleagues mentioned this interesting web site called Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a crowdsourcing, fundraising web site - you have an idea for a project, you know how much it costs, so how do you get the funding? Kickstarter gives you a platform to share your idea and ask for support. If people like your idea, they give you money within a timeframe. It is a really interesting web site - many of the projects listed are creative - documentaries or short films, interesting inventions, and lots more. (There is even a project for chocolate 20 sided dice - though I can't imagine that the dice would last very long!)

But it does get you thinking -

Fundraising can be really tough right now. There are so many worthy causes, and so many needs to be met. Where do you put your money? Kickstarter is definitely an option, that let's you see a wide range of worthy projects. As a Library that is looking to raise money and support, I really like the idea of having a service where you could test ideas for new services or products, and see if there was any support for the idea.

The idea of a Kickstarter for libraries came up at the planning session, and I think that is a terrific idea. I can see this working for all kinds of things...

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

EBooks, Tablets and EReaders, oh my!

This week, the Library offered our first class on EBooks and EReaders for the public. With the holidays approaching and all the buzz about the IPad, the new Kindle Fire and all the other tablets and readers out there, we thought it would be a good time to offer an introduction and to let people know about our EBooks.

We thought we should probably cover the current market, just so everyone knows a bit about what is out there. Then we moved into the resources that we have available for the various gadgets. We rounded out the class with a brief demonstration of how to check out a book for a Kindle and how to check out a book on an IPad.

The NOOK is harder to demonstrate, for a variety of reasons, so we provided links and resources online for participants to review later. (We are going to explore how we can do more for our local Nook users - so stay tuned for more offerings.)

We are offering the second session of our EBook introduction on Thursday, December 8 at 5 PM in the Talbert Room at the Library, and I am looking forward to another interesting session. If you are interested in EBooks, EReaders and what the library has, stop by.