The Amelia Bloomer Project

Joy Worland, the director of the Joslin Memorial Library in Waitsfield, highly recommends The Amelia Bloomer Project, a project of the Feminist Task Force of the Social Responsibilities Round Table of the American Library Association. Founded in 2002, its mission is to select and recommend quality feminist books for ages birth to eighteen. The committee of seven public, school and academic librarians from all over the country recently met at the ALA Midwinter Conference to create this year’s list.

Joy has been following this project since she first heard of it when working on her MLS, so was thrilled to get to participate this year, spending hours with smart, opinionated, passionate committee members evaluating over 100 books to create this year’s list of 68 books.

The list is a diverse compilation including a picture book about a girl sherpa, a graphic novel about a girl fencer with the potential to save the world, a zine of advice for teen girls, and many more works of fiction and non-fiction exploring and celebrating the stories of resilient and inspiring girls and women.

For more about the project and the complete 2011 list, go to http://ameliabloomer.wordpress.com/

Vermont Library Substitute Pool Update

We now have 55 participants in the Vermont Library Substitute Pool (VLSP) representing every county in the state! If you are a person interested in making yourself available to work as a temp or sub in a library, feel free to fill out the Vermont Library Substitute Pool Sign-Up Form hosted at the Vermont Library Association website. Libraries with a staffing need are able to request a single log in to access the VLSP. Email vermontlibrarieswebmaster@gmail.com with the name and email address of your library representative.

If you currently have access to the VLSP list for your institution, I am delighted to announce that I have worked out some bugs in the spreadsheet and it now has proper column headers so that you know what data is in what field. Apologies for the confusion! I think you will find the whole thing much easier to use now.

To sort alphabetically by the column that contains the information you want most, simply right click on the lettered column header above the information of interest and select either “Sort Sheet A-Z” or “Sort Sheet Z-A”. For example, if you want to sort by “County”, that information is held in column “G”. There is also a pull down menu that appears when you roll over the lettered column header and you can sort using that as well.

In addition, we have a new field that allows participants to list the Automated Library Systems, such as Follett or Koha, that they have experience with if they choose to provide that information. All current participants were notified of the change and allowed the opportunity amend their entries with that information. You will see it there now if it has been provided.

Check Out the Vermont Library Substitute Pool

In our rural state, many libraries are staffed by a single staff person, or by a very small staff. This can make it a challenge to accomplish large projects within a short time period, have an extended vacation, or take advantage of a professional development opportunity. Also, those librarians who work part-time sometimes would like to expand their experience, network and income with additional work within their profession.

The Vermont Library Association (VLA), Green Mountain Library Consortium (GMLC) and Vermont Consortium of Academic Libraries (VCAL) are excited to introduce the Vermont Library Substitute Pool!

Volunteers Needed for NELA Conference in Burlington 2011

The New England Library Association is holding its annual conference in Burlington in October 2011. The NELA conference committee is busy making preparations and need help from some Vermonters to assistant in designing programs and making connections with Vermont’s resources.

NELA is in need of about four Vermonters to join the conference committee for program planning. Any previous experience with conferences would be helpful, but not necessary. In particular they are looking for assistance with local contacts, help in learning about Vermont resources and advertising the conference to Vermont library workers. There will be a minimum of travel, the majority of the work will be done by email, etc. The expected dates and locations of meetings are as follows; January 14 in Leominster Massachusetts area, February 24 virtual on web, April 1 in Burlington Vermont and June 6 in Wilton New Hampshire.

For more information and to volunteer please contact Mary Ann List– NELA Conference Chair at malist@cityofportsmouth.com , 603-766-1710 or Mary Ann Rupert –NELA Conference Manager at marupert@pobox.com, 603-654-3533.

Interested in having an MLIS student for an intern?

The Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Rhode Island invites library and information service organizations to register possible professional field experiences (PFE) on their PFE database. This database is intended to help students in the Professional Field Experience (LSC 595) course locate placement sites, and to help potential host institutions attract appropriate student interns.

Students taking LSC 595 (Professional Field Experience) must complete forty-five hours of work for each credit. Students may take the course for anywhere from one to six credits. Details regarding the course may be seen at http://www.uri.edu/artsci/lsc/Academics/Courses/PFE.html. Instructions for viewing the PFE database are also given on this page.

A PFE may be primarily service oriented. For example, the student might work on the Reference Desk and teach information literacy courses in an academic library or the student could catalog new entries in the digital collection of archival institution. The PFE could also be project oriented, where a student could develop a new website or redesign an existing website for a public library or work on a research project for a corporate library. The PFE may also involve a combination of service and projects. The details of each PFE are worked out cooperatively between the student, the supervising library, and the full-time faculty member teaching the course.

If you would like to be listed in the PFE database, please complete the Site Supervisor’s Form at http://www.uri.edu/artsci/lsc/Academics/Courses/PFE/SiteSupervisorForm.pdf and send it to GSLIS as indicated on the form. The full-time faculty member teaching LSC 595 will be happy to work with you and the student to try to find a good match for the PFE.

Vermont Library Conference – Save The Date!

The 117th Annual Vermont Library Conference will be held Tuesday, May 24, 2011 at St Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont. This will be an exciting one day event so mark your calendars now and keep your eyes out for updates coming soon!

Vermont Library Conference – Save The Date!

Call for Papers for Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve

Call for Papers for Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve
The Routledge/Taylor & Francis peer-reviewed Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve (JILDDER) is now accepting articles for Winter 2010 and Spring 2011 publication. Of particular interest to JILDDER are articles regarding resource sharing, unmediated borrowing, electronic reserve, cooperative collection development, shared virtual library services, digitization projects and other multi-library collaborative efforts including the following topics:
Read more→

Midstate Library Service Center to Re-open October 19

Good news!

The Midstate Library Service Center will re-open to school and public libraries on Tuesday, October 19.

DOL will send a letter this week (via email) to all school and public libraries with details about MLSC services and our new borrowing policies. We urge libraries to review the new policy (to be posted later this week on the DOL website) before visiting MLSC. Please note that we are not able to extend service to the general public.

New MLSC hours: Tuesday and Thursday, 10 am – 4 pm.

MLSC will keep this schedule of reduced hours until further notice. We are continuing the long, arduous process of weeding and merging three book collections (Midstate Library, State Library in Montpelier, and Northeast Regional Library) which will be completed no later than June 30, 2011.

Thanks for your patience and understanding. If you have questions, please contact Jeremiah Kellogg at MLSC (828-232-0) or Assistant State Librarian Christine Friese (828-2714).