VLC 2017 Session Notes

Many thanks to our volunteer note-takers for documenting the discussion and resources highlighted in these unconference sessions. To submit notes for a session, please email vermontlibraryconference AT gmail.com.

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Outreach and Collaborations (Oscar Wilde)

This session had several breakout discussions. More notes are welcome! Send them to vermontlibraryconference AT gmail.com

Academic and Public Libraries Collaboration. Notes by Margot Malachowski, National Network of Libraries of Medicine

Lifelong learning opportunities through a collaboration between academic libraries and public libraries. Barriers include licensing restrictions on research databases, economic restrictions, and funding. Seniors, high school students, older students. Not just a “space” but a “presence” in the community.

    Resources:

  • Goddard College. Library Science Students. Brooks Memorial Library (Brattleboro).
  • ACRL meeting licensing JSTOR, $20/year for Goddard.
  • Colleges, distance learning, public libraries. “Community borrowers” (and alumni) have restrictions.
  • Distance learning programs have low-residency requirements and are changing the style of education.
  • “Against the Grain” newsletter

Recruiting Non-Users. Notes by Nancy Mark, Castleton Free Library

  • Plan a specific event that includes fun– community and families– with mailed invitations. Use grand list to see who is not a patron.
    Books for Babies/welcome packets to new residents.
  • Table at town meeting, town festivals, farmers markets, etc.
  • Attracting a variety of interests: hunting, fishing, hunter safety.
  • Reach out to groups such as Lions, Rotary, Fire Department. Let them know the library is more than books: technology, Kindles, programs.
  • Laptops available that offer privacy.
  • Offer classes at other sites. Senior center class, “how to use your iPhone.”
  • Ability to celebrate all the book groups in town that now can order books because of courier service.
  • Information at general store and CSA pick up point.
  • Have specialty items to loan such as snowshoes.
  • Have museum passes available to draw families.

Teen Outreach. Notes by Sarah Hibbeler, Dorothy Alling Memorial Library (Williston)

So, how DO we get teens to the library?!

What are key ingredients for a successful teen program?

  • Timing … Rebecca Cook (Poultney) finds summer to be ideal for capturing teens. Teen programming during the school year is far more challenging.
  • Food!!!
  • Volunteer opportunities. Tap into teens’ need for community service hours and volunteer experience.
  • Incentives to participate. Rebecca gives teens a BINGO-style sheet to complete. She asks them to do activities such as 4 hours of reading, attending a library program, recommending a book, and helping at the book sale or doing another volunteer activity. As a reward for completing their worksheets, Rebecca offers teens a lock-in at the library.

What are some components for a successful lock-in?

  • Food!!!
  • Games—Murder in the Dark, videogames, laser tag, etc.
  • Movies
  • Timing—tie it to a special event or time of year (Halloween, end of summer)

What about PDA at lock-ins?
Set expectations as a group: ask permission before touching someone, no sitting on laps, etc.

How do people market their teen programming?

  • Local radio stations (free PSAs)
  • School and library newsletters
  • Speaking at school assembly
  • Facebook
  • Texting = best way to reach teens (versus email)

How do we reach teens in communities where kids leave the area for high school (e.g., Killington, Shoreham)?

  • Build a strong middle-school program (create social bonds among a set of kids)
  • Offer volunteer opportunities that high schoolers need. Collaborate w/ school librarian?
  • Food!!!

Have any libraries tried to promote the library as a venue for teens?

  • Dorothy Alling (Williston) collaborates with high school art teachers to offer a digital and physical space for students to display their work.
  • One library had a teen lead musical story time to satisfy a community service requirement.

What are some tips for working with teen volunteers at the library?

  • Be specific with instructions. Write clearly and provide detailed directions.
  • Offer food!!!
  • Make volunteering FUN. One library had teen volunteers do a scavenger hunt.
  • Capture teens’ programming ideas while they are there to volunteer.

What types of volunteer activities can teens do?

  • Physical labor…moving things!
  • Prepping materials for programs
  • Assisting with programming
  • Shelving…Shoreham has teen volunteers take a “Shelvers’ Oath.”

Library Security, Safety, and Social Work (Gateway)

Notes by Jennifer Murray, South Burlington Community Library, and Amanda Perry, Winooski Memorial Library.

Summary of discussion: Concerns about general safety, librarian as social worker, dealing with challenging patrons, Internet safety, and loss prevention.

    Challenges and solutions identified:

  • One staff member often in library at a time
  • How to handle incidents, upset patrons, potentially violent situations
  • Remote locations/small staff
  • How to diffuse situations
  • Are there resources and skills training available for librarians-as-social-workers?
  • What are cost-effective loss prevention strategies?
  • Internet safety
  • Fletcher Free Library (Burlington) has security guards and is getting more. Staff training. Goal to create feeling of safety for staff
  • Dorothy Alling Memorial (Williston) provided training for staff conducted by former FBI agent (see below). Trained staff for lockdowns, dangerous situations, etc. to help staff feel safe in these situations.
  • Have a procedure for power outages day and night.
  • Have an inclement weather policy.
  • Libraries need specific emergency plans that may be different than their municipalities’.
  • Conduct regular building checks with patron counts.
  • During confrontation, don’t touch the person or reach out as if to touch. Get their name(s), keep the exits accessible, keep movements and voice calm.
  • In case of child neglect or abuse, any “mandated expert”, including retired teachers, can report on a problem.
    Resources identified by the group:

  • Howard Mental health offers a grant to help libraries with teens and adults with mental health issues? Also mentioned: Capstone and Washington County Mental Health
  • Call 211 for assistance in handling social issues
  • Marti Fiske, from Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Williston, invited a trainer in for a staff development day. Bill McSalis, former FBI agent who currently presents several active shooter response courses for the National Center for Security and Preparedness (NCSP) at SUNY Albany. Email 2coolwood AT gmail.com or my mobile number, (802) 578-6954 FBI trainer provided walk-through to identify safety points and issues, active shooter training, evacuation, created code words for situations staff may face.
  • Dorothy Alling Memorial Library safety procedures documents
  • Local police departments will provide a walk-through.
  • Local clergy can also be helpful.
  • Academic Active Shooter Training is used by academic libraries but useful: webinar at alicetraining.com
  • Staff carries library specific emergency plan and pocket guide with all necessary contacts.
  • Suggested actions: regular building checks with patron counts.
  • Procedures for potential incidents, power outages (day/night), inclement weather.

Separate discussion of cost effective loss reduction focused on DVDs and audio books:

Various security systems include file cabinets behind desk for files DVDs, binders of DVDs behind desks, locking cases, visibility from desk, signage, and security tags/systems (cover the tag with date due slip).
Pros to locking cases: cheaper in bulk
Cons to locking cases: staff time to find disc, patron time to checkout movie, having enough space to store behind desk. Some cases disable the security tag!
Resource: Vendor Check-point for Radio-Frequency Tags

Social Media (Northstar 1)

Notes by Josh Muse, Burnham Memorial Library (Colchester)

Summary of discussion: What social media venues do you use? Facebook, Front Porch Forum, Instagram, others. Depends on your target population. Facebook may work better for retirees and middle-aged patrons. You may catch younger ones with Instagram. High school students may use Snapchat. “Facebook is for older people (now).” Kelly McCagg (Burnham Memorial Library, Colchester) referenced a study that Facebook was most popular among those 30-55+.
Post with photos, especially funny/quirky ones (or those with animals) do best. Include displays and other similar photogenic activities.
A suggestion to post relevant local interest groups on Facebook (for example, mommy groups) to get your message out, and to lure people to join your page. Ask patrons about such groups, or reach out to local organizations.
Similarly, posting a display that references a local artist or tags individuals (appropriately/relevant) can pull in all their fans/friends.
Reposting current news or events and referencing library resources (example PFOA solution).

Social Media Policy
For municipal libraries, the town/city and library may have different policies, and may have significantly different approaches. Towns tend to be more risk averse, while libraries tend to be more interested in connections. Trustees can be a resource where conflicts occur.
Politics generally suggest that you conduct yourself in a professional manner.
Policies that impact the use of individuals’ personal accounts may not be legal. Important that you check with a lawyer. Requirements where staff need to include a disclaimer that they are acting as private individuals where it might be confusing might be okay?
Staff need an account (either personal or shared) to administer a Facebook page.
Ask Kelly McCagg for town social medial policy, kmccagg AT colchestervt.gov
Vermont League of Cities and Towns has a sample policy.
Suggested social media book: Start a Revolution, Stop Acting Like a Library by Ben Bizzle.

Collection Management and Diverse Collections (Northstar 2)

Notes by Margaret Woodruff, Charlotte Public Library

1. Collection Management

a. Weeding

i. What to do about profilic authors?

ii. Make sure you attend to community sentiment, even if not in your personal taste

iii. Share examples/tell stories about why you need to weed collection: years books have gone unread, etc.

iv. Sarah Snow, Ainsworth (library@williamstownvt.org): Possible to shift collections and weed at the same time.

v. Marlboro College: Important to keep weeding public and transparent; “library cannot be book warehouse”

vi. Destinations for weeded books?

1. Amazon Marketplace

2. Better World Books

b. Collection Management Policy

i. Jim Mancuso, Northeast Baptist College (j.mancuso@nebcvt.org) developed policy for college, “Flag what’s not being use, filter out what doesn’t fit”

ii. Amy Howlett, Springfield Town Library (stlib@vermontel.net): Collection development policy

iii. Tom McMurdo, VT Department of Libraries: sample policies on DOL website
(http://libraries.vermont.gov/services/public_libraries/library_policies)
c. ILL Courier Service

i. Possible to make weeded items available (ex. James Patterson, Clive Cussler backlist titles)

ii. Could work on more formal “cooperative collection development:” Plan which libraries will add or hold onto which titles

2. Diverse Collections

a. Multi-lingual book collections: How to offer books for non-English readers and families who want to maintain first langague that is not English

i. Can Department of Libraries offer collection bins to share throughout the state?

ii. Look to local cultural organizations (ex. Japan Society of Vermont, Alliance Francaise)

iii. Possible to contact Refugee Resettlement Program for book ideas?

b. Overall diversity of collections

i. Can be tough to justify if items not circulating but important to have access

ii. Consider rotating collection (again managed by Department of Libraries?)

iii. Resources:

1. We Need Diverse Books

2. Reading While White

3. Disability in Kid Lit

Legal Reference (Escapade)

Notes needed

Programs and Summer Reading (Oscar Wilde)

This session had several breakout discussions. More notes are welcome! Send them to vermontlibraryconference AT gmail.com

Summer Reading Program notes by Hannah Peacock, Burnham Memorial Library (Colchester)

Week-long summer camp. Looking for ideas. 9-5, ages 8 and up. Day 1: creating puppet show for Fairy Tale Festival. Other ideas: stop motion, cardboard city, donations for food shelf (build with those, then donate)
Brainstormed summer reading ideas: Partner with animal shelter/hospital to build pet condos.
Break it/make it contest.
Lego Club: “building” for summer, different materials and challenges.
Litter Bugs: recycled materials
Reading Without Walls, adapted for teens. Reading wall with bricks.
Let’s Stick Together. Using CSLP art, use it to mark books/participation with stickers.
Vermont Energy Education Program. Workshops/programs. Two programs, $300.
Tinkerbelles. Encouraging girls to get involved with STEM. Invite women working in tech roles to speak about their job, run an activity. Look at Vermont Works for Women.
CSI Camp. Crime scene by local police.
Vermont Fish and Wildlife.
Minecraft self-portraits. You can buy a piece on the Minecraft server.
CSWD. Free recycling programs.
Summer reading prizes:
Building kits as prizes. Small Lego kits. Books. Trinkets. Popsicles from local store (tickets). Gift card from local businesses. Bingo raffle, activity-based.
Recommended performers:
Michael Clough, Dennis Waring, Kurt Valenta, Dinoman, Mike Randall, Rockin’ Ron, Tom Joyce, Simon Brooks.

Electronic Resources and Discovery (Gateway)

Electronic Resources notes by Wendy Sharkey, Bennington Free Library

Digitizing Newspapers

Save your time. VTLib is negotiating currently for all local Vermont newspapers to be digitized. Copyright is 1923. Sometimes after doing everything that isn’t copyrighted an agreement for the rest is reached!

EBSCO discovery.

Searching is strange and doesn’t seem to give the most relevant results! Academic librarians who wanted to discuss this in detail split off from the main group.

Databases

New ILL-Auto-graphics-Gale results will show up. It is believed that it will be possible to first choose libraries on the courier system. It’s a matter of how things are set up. Patron initiated holds.
Universal Class-Use pictures near to relevant sections in the stacks to help market. So for example post a picture with the link to an Excel class in the computer section.
How do we get statistics from Universal Class? If you don’t know then contact Mara she will help.

QR codes…These seem to be losing their fascination for those who have been using them.

Overdrive

First time sign up should always use website and not a phone. This is true for OneClick as well.
Try the getliby app
Listen-up Vermont used to have Marc records available for catalogs, but no longer do this due to the dynamic nature of the collection. Instead in VOKAL when performing a search a clickable link for titles in Listen-up VT will appear. If Catamount want this they should ask ByWater.

VTLib

Has and is still hiring subject specialist consultants.

Christian Steel will be IT consultant.

Discovery notes by Stacey Knight, Saint Michael’s College (Colchester)

Discussed various discovery systems being used by academic libraries.

  • EBSCO Discovery (St. Michael’s College – Stacey Knight)
  • EBSCO Discovery (Marlboro College – Amber Hunt)
  • OCLC WMS (School for International Training (SIT) – Patrick Spurlock)
  • OCLC WMS – beta testing (Champlain College – Emily Crist)

Selection Process: Had major vendors come do demos of their products (OCLC WMS, EBSCO Discovery Service, Ex Libris Primo, ProQuest Summon). Relevancy of search results as an important criteria for discovery selection.

Discussed issue with handling newspaper content and scholarly content in a Discovery Service. How much do you “turn on” in Discovery? Some schools chose not to include certain databases in Discovery because they made the search results less relevant. It would be nice to be able to weight discovery content for search results.

Issues:

OCLC WMS: SIT is going through a reclamation project with OCLC but having issues because OCLC changed the 001 field in their marc records to the OCLC number (035 field). This has made it harder to handle ebooks (ebrary migration to ebook Central), etc. Also had problems with 856 linking. Table of content links were labeled as Read Online which made users think that the book was available online when it actually is a print book.

ExLibris Primo was very customizable, but when implemented at UVM, it had dedicated technical staff to work on it. Customer service was not great. EBSCO Discovery Service was a very turnkey implementation.

In EBSCO Discovery Service it would be nice to have more integration between discovery and the library catalog so that students could check their library accounts and see what they have checked out, etc., directly in discovery.

Teaching with Discovery Discussion
(Beth Dietrich – St. Michael’s College, Charlotte Gerstein – Castleton College, Tracy Harding – Green Mountain College, Emily Crist – Champlain College)

Talk about discovery as another database and show students what it does or does not contain. There are many specialized databases that can’t be included in discovery. Use subject guides to show students specialized databases that are not in discovery. Treat discovery as another database when doing instruction. Have discovery default to only search what the library owns.

Look at search statistics to see if databases not in Discovery are being used less.

Websites and Marketing (Northstar 1)

Notes by Marti Fiske, Dorothy Alling Memorial Library (Williston)

Google Analytics allows you to track each page on your website.
Bookbox and Good Reads Feed for new materials from website.
Facebook is a quick way to keep information out in the public eye. Make persona for library.
New books listed in newsletter get more response than on website.
Trustee minutes written and linked on website in Google Docs.
MailChimp, iContact, Constant Contact used as newsletter by several libraries.
Logo branding: contests done at Williston and Fairfax.
Online registrations: on Eventbrite (Colchester) free if no charges. Google Forms used. Team Up as calendar and reservations of meeting room. Eight calendars for free with the Waterbury Library website. Joomla has update with registration feature.
Wix.com used for website. Has several plug in capabilities to Instagram, etc. (Warren) Weebly has good rep, too.
Mobile-friendly workaround for ugly website: Google Web Light, http://googleweblight.com/?lite_url=[http://destinationURL]

Library Directors and Solo Librarians (Northstar 2)

Notes by Amy Howlett, Springfield Town Library, and Cindy Weber, Stowe Free Library

Resources:

  • WebJunction, searchable national resource for webinars, articles, tech help, grants, all aimed at public libraries
  • Vermont email listservs to find out what peers are doing
  • VTLIB website, use the search box
  • Other state library departments – Connecticut, Maine, Indiana, for examples
  • regional groups
  • ARSL Listserv – automatic subscription when you join Association for Rural and Small Libraries. (2017 Conference is in Utah; there are scholarships and plenty of info at http://arsl.info)
  • Find your peers– meet by county? Put a call on VALS for other solo librarians? Invent!
  • 2016 ALA Managing the Small Library handbook for new directors
  • VTLIB Certification process — State Librarian Scott Murphy says it will come back

Important to prioritize your task and duties.
Important to advocate for yourself with board and others – let them know what you are doing and how you have to prioritize your tasks.
Do a time audit to see how you spend your day at the library– one week, write down how you spend your time
Add phone calls to stats
Have a board member as a volunteer – group not in agreement on this; confusion over are you working for them or are they working for you?
Enlist students for “off campus work duty”
Work smarter not harder; schedule specific time to tackle emails; do the hardest thing first in the day
Make a to-do list/annual calendar so you aren’t surprised by budget request from town, etc.
Time management tip – report your projects on an index file and add to the card when you have accomplished part of the project
Use a yearly calendar for budgets, building maintenance/inspection, etc. – helpful for you and for your possible successor
Ideas: spring cleaning at library, enlist girl scout troop, church groups
Have a cleaning plan – do not do it yourself.
Have job descriptions for trustees.
Business plan for Libraries – use the Harvard Business Review as a management resource
New directors: download Handbook for New Public Library Directors
Carol Smallwood – How to thrive as a solo librarian.

Recruiting Trustees and Finding Donors (Escapade)

Notes by Jennifer Murray, South Burlington Community Library

Elevator pitch to fundraise,or like a “Christmas letter.”
Donors want to give funds for books.
MOUs between Friends and Trustees.
Regional fundraising to get bigger profits. Howard Burrows from Brooks Memorial Library (Brattleboro).
Friends at some libraries oversee building maintenance.
Different modes of selection on boards, and at different libraries trustees are more/less active.
Advise to recruit local business owners and those with library experience.
Recruit from the three Ws: work, wealth, and wisdom.
Elected trustees (and appointed?) are ATO, authorized town officials.
Do we look to the same people for donors and board members? Friendraising before fundraising.
How to boost the Friends energy?
Giving money to the Friends is easier to carry over than with city budget.
Use strategic planning to survey what people want to strengthen in community (at fair, farmers market).
College library: no endowment but college-wide office accepts money for all areas.
Use infographics to create accessible report. Pictochart is the vendor with templates. Some are free.
Need to articulate what we need in Board members and for donations.
Friends of the Library/Foundation/Board of Trustees: All libraries should have a Foundation to to hold money and appraise special collections. Use ALA’s United for Libraries for templates.

VTLIB, Library Future, and Strategies (Oscar Wilde)

Notes needed

Space Planning and Storage Solutions (Gateway)

Notes needed

Media Literacy and Evaluating Sources (Northstar 1)

Notes by Josh Muse, Burnham Memorial Library (Colchester)

How to make a good apolitical program for patrons?
Using sites that are intentionally unfactual to compare with legitimate sites. High school lessons.
Panel by League of Women Voters about civil discourse. Featured local media and ACLU.
Focus on advertising with tween-age users.
Talking about changes that have occurred in the way we get information over the recent history.
Make your own media. Public access television. Stories that are contentious or are not covered.
How do you entice users in? Bring donuts?
Be aware, if you’ve never heard of a source before, it may be dubious.
It’s a tough issues. People may not want to spend the effort.
Bait and switch to bring people in. Start fun, then get weightier.
How much is it taught in school? It is taught, but never enough time.
Flyers/handouts on media literacy and fake news.
“The Science of Fake News” at Norwich Library, collaboration with Dartmouth. Google Harvard Fake News, with good resources and infographics. Snopes, Politifact, Media Bias. Browser plugins. Program was very well attended.
Who do you trust? Can tend towards skepticism to media, government.
Castleton University hosted a session on fake news. Academics, media, some pushback against scientific information, but less contentious than expected. Jami Yazdani, Director.
Did anyone do anything with Wikipedia/Wikimedia? Local representative (NH?) might be willing to present on it.
Are there specific tools for librarians to help on topic?
Helpful to collaborate with academic libraries. They need to be current on topic.
As a public library, you may need to get dubious books for patrons. Collection development balancing accuracy vs. public interest. What to do?
Convincing people they are wrong is super hard.
Academic librarians have moved beyond seeing an entire venue as accurate/inaccurate (“The New York Times is always accurate,” for example). Focusing on the nuance of individual information.
ACRL Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education uses a more involved, nuanced approach. Academic libraries and librarians can be a good resource.
Is any one using cool reference stuff online, RUSA (from ALA) or ARBAonline.
Charlotte Public Library help privacy workshop. Presenter from VT AG office. Also Jessamyn West. Lebanon Library in NH, online self defense class. Chuck McAndrew.
Library Freedom Project.
Varying levels: Tor browser at one extreme, “I only have one password” at the other.
San Jose Public Library privacy toolkit.

KOHA Users, User Experience, and Cataloging Workflow (Northstar 2)

KOHA Users notes by Wendy Sharkey, Bennington Free Library

Barcodes

Why do libraries need to change their barcodes? Why do they have to be 14 digits?
If you are a stand-alone library then it doesn’t matter, but for a system/consortium to share items then the barcodes need to be consistent. It is essential for patron-initiated holds.

Courier System

This is a great system. It works well. It is a godsend. Some libraries have saved thousands using this. It was expressed that it was a pity that all libraries did not have the courier system. Apparently GMM declined to deliver to some libraries. Maybe that will change in the future.

Reports – Tricks

Items deleted during a reporting period will not be included in the circulation history. If an item is returned damaged and is immediately deleted from the system that checkout will not be in the circulation statistics.

Run monthly reports from the 1st of the month you require to the 1st of the next month. This will make sure that the last day of the month is not missed.

Ask for help when creating new reports. Support staff have a vast knowledge of how to do it and where to go for extra help.

User Experience notes by Jennifer Murray, South Burlington Community Library.

User experience investigates how people approach, think about and interact with services. Users might not use services as they are instructed to, so the question is “how do we design services so that they are used effectively”? UX explores the angles of human behavior and technology.

With UX, we track what people think as they are using our services, which leads to changing how we offer them. For example, with a web site, we could put up a Beta site and record keystrokes to see if people travel around the site as we expected. If not, change the design and possible remove items. When testing, be careful of small samples use to generalize to a large group. Try to create a test base across ages, disciplines. Test how people understand or use something, then change it, then test again create a loop of testing and response.

Many examples use technology to track, but UX can also observe and change without interacting with users. For example, when a certain chair is moved to a new position every day, possible outcomes might be: move chair to that location, put chair on wheels to move easily. Another example, Suggestion Box wasn’t used. Take it to the student advisory group and ask them what to change. Their recommendation: post responses to the suggestions and include history so that people know they are read.

    Resources:

  • WEAVE is a new UX journal.
  • Recommended book is User Experience in Libraries by Priester and Borg.
  • Blogs from big UX conference in the UK. Andrew Asher also has a blog, and offers a toolkit with quick and easy ways to gather information.

Cataloging Workflow notes by Stacey Knight, Saint Michael’s College (Colchester)

Discussion about handling copy cataloging backlog.

St. Michael’s College uses GOBI Library Solutions (formerly YBP) for pre-processing of many books. When books are ordered from GOBI, the library is sent brief records for the library catalog. When the books are shipped, the library receives full PromptCat records from OCLC. These records are batch imported and replace the existing brief record and create the holdings and item record with barcode. Books also come physically processed (i.e. tattletaped, stamped, call number label, etc.) and can go straight to the shelf.

St. Michael’s College populates its library catalog with order on demand books. The library gets records from GOBI to download based on its collection development profile. Users can click on a Request this Book link in the catalog and choose to have it rushed (3 day turnaround), 1 week, or no rush. Books are then ordered from Amazon and rush cataloged when they arrive.

Colchester Burnham Library – Collects statistics on withdrawn items monthly. In Koha, items are marked Withdrawn in status field. Run statistics report on withdrawn status monthly and then delete the records.

    Other topics:

  • Using MarcEdit to make batch changes in ebook records
  • Cataloging in Koha
  • Content DM
  • Retroactive reclamation with OCLC
  • OCLC – submitting original cataloging records; export record from your library system; when record is uploaded to oclc, it will do some validation before accepting the record.

Grant Writing, Funding, and Advocating for Libraries (Escapade)

Notes by Abby Adams, Platt Memorial Library (Shoreham), and Margot Malachowski, National Network of Libraries of Medicine

Public Library Statistics as an important tool for advocacy. Identify your “peer” libraries by demographics and write reports to see how you compare.
Looking for people? Try Americorps, local colleges, library science grad students.
Try your local bank, hospital, Rotary Clubs and local businesses for “charitable giving” opportunities.
Develop a strategy for accepting and managing community (patron) donations of materials or money.

Collected resources:
The Visualizing Funding for Libraries data tool can help public, academic, and school libraries, as well as special collections, archives, and digital libraries, identify funding opportunities to support innovative projects and solutions for their communities.
GrantSpace provides easy-to-use, self-service tools and resources to help nonprofits worldwide become more viable grant applicants and build strong, sustainable organizations.
Rural Business Development Grants. This program is a competitive grant designed to support targeted technical assistance, training and other activities leading to the development or expansion of small and emerging private businesses in rural areas which will employ 50 or fewer new employees and has less than $1 million in gross revenue. Programmatic activities are separated into enterprise or opportunity type grant activities.
The National Network of Libraries of Medicine funds projects to advance the NLM’s mission to improve access to health information. We support short-term outreach projects that involve advancing health information resources in collaboration with local community groups; the development of instructional programs that improve the knowledge and skills of librarians; and enhanced technology access to and delivery of health information.
Vermont Humanities Council. Our grant program supports humanities-related projects of other nonprofit organizations serving Vermont audiences. Vermont Humanities will reject any project that does not involve at least one humanities discipline. We will consider proposals for new, as well as already established, programs.
Using a model that is essentially “book club meets science café,” Public Libraries Advancing Community Engagement: Environmental Literacy Through Climate Change Discussions (PLACE) engages people in their own libraries and within their own communities to discuss local weather challenges and threats.
Our Community Fund Grant Programs are competitive grant rounds managed by our staff and awarded in partnership with our advised fundholders who have the opportunity to support individual proposals through Giving Together. In addition to our staff-lead competitive grant rounds listed above, the Foundation is also host to a number of committee-advised grant rounds. The following grant programs make grants to organizations across Vermont.
The Children’s Literacy Foundation is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to inspire a love of reading and writing among children up to age 12 throughout New Hampshire and Vermont. Since 1998, CLiF has served more than 180,000 low-income, at-risk, and rural children in 400 communities across every region of the Twin States.
The mission of the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation is to engage Ben & Jerry’s employees in philanthropy and social change work; to give back to our Vermont communities; and to support grassroots activism and community organizing for social and environmental justice around the country.
In 2017 Stewart’s Shops and related family foundations will donate $7.5 million to local charities. We also have our Holiday Match Program in which Stewart’s matches all customer donations made in our shops from Thanksgiving Day through Christmas Day. Stewart’s Holiday Match customers have helped us contribute over $24 million to thousands of organizations since the program’s inception in 1986. As a good corporate citizen, we support a local charity at many of our new shop openings.
In the U.S., the mission of The TJX Foundation is to help families who need it most build a better future – a future where families’ and children’s critical basic needs are met and where they have access to the opportunities they need to succeed and thrive.
The Dollar General Literacy Foundation believes learning to read and receiving your high school diploma or equivalent is an investment that opens doorways for personal, professional and economic growth. That is why our commitment to literacy remains strong. It is the one gift that no one can take away – the one gift that lasts a lifetime.