Every fall the anticipation among librarians is palpable: the trips to the office supply store to purchase new pens, pencils and erasers, perhaps a pencil sharpener, a manila envelope or two, maybe even a new calculator. Who can resist the lure, the absolute delight, of completing and filing the Annual Vermont Public Library Report and Application for Minimum Standards? Oh, the thrill of the hunt to find copies of last year’s report, and those reports given to the Trustees and SelectBoard. What about the hours hunched over the forms, punching the calculator buttons?
We at the Department of Libraries have to disappoint you this year, however. You won’t receive paper copies of the Report or the Application in the mail. You won’t mail these documents back to us. Instead, you’ll log into a website maintained by the Department of Libraries’ partner, Baker & Taylor, called Bibliostat Collect. You’ll complete your Report and Application online.
Unfortunately, the disappointment continues. You won’t need last year’s Report. All of last year’s responses will be visible to you as you fill out the online forms. Worse, you probably won’t need a calculator, since the calculations will be completed for you by the computer. And, the coup de grâce? You won’t get to make that special trip to the post office to mail your forms to the Department of Libraries. Everything is done electronically.
To ease the pain, the Department of Libraries, in cooperation with Baker & Taylor, has arranged two training sessions for librarians, to show you how to use this new system. They’ll be held on October 1st. One will be at 9:30 in the morning at the Fletcher Memorial Library at 88 Main Street in Ludlow, NOT Burlington. The second session, at 1:30 in the afternoon, will be in the conference room at the Midstate Regional Library at 578 Paine Turnpike, North, in Berlin. Each session will run for about an hour and a half.
Every public library is urged to send a representative to one of these sessions.
Register for these sessions by September 17, online:
- Fletcher Memorial Library, Ludlow, 9:30 AM: http://tinyurl.com/lh7lc5
- Midstate Regional Library, Berlin, 1:30 PM: http://tinyurl.com/mvb9qg
More information will be forthcoming, but the training sessions will be the place to begin learning about this new system.
If you have any questions please contact:
Rob Geiszler
Regional Consultant
Vermont Department of Libraries
271 North Main Street
Rutland, VT 05701
(802) 786-3839