Making Connections with More Special Librarians

On Thursday, November 16th, the Library of Michigan's (LM's) Public and Technical Services Director Elaine Harrison hosted the librarians involved in the Michigan Council of State Agency Libraries (COSAL). Elaine has been involved with the group for years, now, and my impression has always been that they appreciate their connection with her and with LM and the State Law Library. The COSAL librarians manage the libraries at the various state departments, including Community Health, Environmental Quality, and Corrections. They are for the most part one-person operations serving significant specialized needs and unique clientele, and it's great that their COSAL participation gets them together to share their thoughts, issues, and ideas and to just plain connect with one another periodically.

I was invited to join them for a bit at the beginning of their meeting, and it was an eye-opener for me to learn how really isolated they are in their various libraries and, for the Corrections librarians especially, how the unique restrictions imposed upon their operations often challenge our customary concepts of patron services. Since prisoners are not authorized to have access to the Internet, the librarians whose operations reside inside the secure zone of the prisons they serve are not able to access much of the online information that abounds on the Michigan eLibrary (MeL) and elsewhere. They are able to order materials from the Library of Michigan, including faxed copies of law materials and so forth, but it's not as easy as it is for those of us in other, more open settings, to serve their own information needs, those who staff their institutional facilities, or the prisoners those facilities house. The librarians serving other State of Michigan departments are less constrained, of course, but they are also challenged with fulfilling the information needs of their departments' staff as well as the citizens those departments serve.

I am glad I had the opportunity to meet some of these COSAL members and to begin to learn about the special services they provide and to brainstorm a bit with them about how the Library of Michigan can make a difference for them in their successful service to their patrons and co-workers! I look forward to continuing the conversation we've just begun and am glad to have the chance to highlight them and their efforts at least in this small way.

Two Meetings and a Tour at Suburban Library Cooperative

Suburban Library Cooperative (SLC) Director Tammy Turgeon invited me to join their members council meeting on the morning of November 9th at Roseville Public Library. I enjoyed hearing about the cooperative's activities and issues, and I was happy to have a chance to engage in some discussion with the SLC library directors and to hear about the programming and successes at each of their individual libraries.

Roseville Public Library's assistant director, Jackie Harvey, gave me a brief tour of the library before Tammy and I headed out for the day. The library was bustling with people at the public access computers and activity in the children's area where Jackie and I are pictured.


My first stop on Tammy's tour of several SLC libraries was St. Clair Shores Public Library. Director Rosemary Orlando gave me the grand tour of this extremely busy operation. They had 917 participants in summer reading this past summer, which will give you an idea of how much business they get. Rosemary and I are shown here in the Arthur M. Woodford Local History Center in the lower level of the library with the city mascot, Morrie the Muskrat -- he's in the glass case just above my right shoulder.


After our tour, which included a look at the computer lab space and the adjoining tutoring/study rooms, the new state-of-the art elevator, and more, the three of us were joined by Assistant Director Sue Mihalic for a delicious lunch at the library's Galley Cafe. Not only was the food good, but the decor is splendid, as it includes the stunning stained glass windows commissioned and created by the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.




Our next stop was the fabulous new building that will house the Warren Civic Center Library. Wow! The library is not quite ready to open, but things are really coming along nicely, and Director Amy Henderstein and Librarian Oksana Urban showed us around the wonderful new space, with its many windows, copper circulation desks, tiled bathrooms and fireplaces, nicely appointed furniture and carpeting, the neat teen room and cozy children's room, etc. Here you see Oksana, me, and Amy at the children's circulation desk and Tammy, me, and Amy in front of the pretty fireplace in the large special collections area. The patrons of Warren will be thrilled to have this facility and all that it has to offer them. I believe they are planning on opening up in the next couple of weeks.


Keeping right on schedule, we moved on to Troy Public Library, where we were warmly greeted by Assistant Library Directors Meaghan Battle and Hedy Brodak, who were standing in for Director Brian Stoutenburg whom I had the opportunity to meet during the morning meeting at Roseville P.L. This visit and tour was particularly fun because Troy P.L. is where Tammy actually started her library career, and everyone there remains understandably fond of her! The management and staff at Troy are very forward thinking. They have their doors open prior to having the desks staffed, just so community members can enter the library to use the computers to access the Internet and/or check their email, or so they can find some quiet time and space for morning reading in the public seating areas. Their display case, shown here with Hedy, Meaghan and me, holds their new "Special Needs Collection" which is provided by their Friends and which includes toys and educational materials addressing all disability categories. The other new idea I garnered from my tour there was the brainchild of Teen Librarian Kathy Rice who goes to the two area high schools during the lunch hour to facilitate teen book discussions, since the youth frequently are so busy they cannot get to the library itself. What a great idea!


Our last stop of the day, prior to the evening dinner meeting with the SLC trustees, was a visit to the town of New Baltimore to see the MacDonald Public Library. Director Margaret Thomas and her staff told us about the fact that the library's name stems from the building donor's name, and they showed us photographs of the old city motor garage that housed their previous library.

Margaret wanted me to be sure to see their "Happy Library Tree", the centerpiece of their children's area. The tree was named by a contest that had the community's children submitting their ideas for names. The artwork that abounds on the walls all through the library all includes a water focus, being as they are right on the shores of Lake St. Clair's Anchor Bay.

The teen area wall is graced with a stunning mural that was designed and painted by local area teens. I was so impressed with it. It looks great even in this small photo, but you should see it in person. The artists made sure to incorporate an alarm box on the wall into the design, adding wings around it to make it look like a space vehicle or creature (it's in the top right hand corner of the mural). After our tour and on our way out the door, the staff made sure to gift us with a bag of the town bakery's famous and delicious cookies known as "belly buttons." Yummmm.

A Day with White Pine Library Cooperative

It was so nice of Director Bryon Sitler to invite me to join the White Pine Library Cooperative membership for their annual in-service day in Saginaw on November 8th. After giving a brief update on the goings-on here at the Library of Michigan, I got to sit down and just take it all in the rest of the day. What a treat!
We learned about the ins and outs of identifying, preventing, and responding to identity theft from Angela Branch of the Michigan Attorney General's Office. We were motivated and inspired about how to deal with stress and difficult people (how to take charge of our own attitudes, really) by the very entertaining Maureen Burns (shown here with Bryon and me). And we learned about the process and what kinds of materials are being written and published by Anne Lewis and her husband at Mackinac Island Press. Great food, great presentations, and great company. I really enjoyed getting the chance to casually get to know some of the White Pine directors and staff.



Before we headed out late in the day, Bryon took me to visit the recently renovated Thomas Township Library, where Director Tari Dusek and Michelle Sosinski gave me the grand tour. They have an unusual fireplace mural that a local artist painted for them before they had a real fireplace installed during their renovation. It looks real, doesn't it!? They were preparing for an evening children's book session as we departed, and I know their community library is well-used and appreciated since I spotted the sign behind the circulation desk on the way out -- you may not be able to read it, but it says, "Over 1.1 Million Items Checked Out Since May 1989! Your Library at Work!" I'm glad I had time for one fun library visit in a very full day.

Brief Return to Library School

On the evening of Monday, November 6th, I traveled to Detroit to join in a panel discussion for a Wayne State University Library and Information Science Program class taught by Kim Schroeder. Judy Field, our state's special libraries guru, Sandy Yee, WSU Dean of Libraries, and I had a great time discussing our thoughts about being library leaders. Kim, the students, and others attending the panel session raised thought-provoking questions. It was a unique opportunity for the three of us to think about the education and experience needed to be a library leader in today's world; the challenges library leaders face today in contrast to those in the past; and what successes and learning experiences we have had in our careers. Hopefully, the audience learned something from us, but I'm confident that with our three quite varied perspectives on the topic, Judy, Sandy and I all learned a lot from one another. We all agreed that one essential trait of leadership is that we should expect to continue learning throughout the course of our careers!

Visit to the MAME-33 Annual Conference

On Thursday morning, October 26th, I had the pleasure of attending the opening session of the 2006 annual conference of the Michigan Association for Media in Education (MAME) in Grand Rapids. The crowd was quite animated and welcoming for such an early morning start! I've been working with a large group of media specialists and media center library enthusiasts for a little over a year now, facilitating their work in creating an online and possibly cd/dvd marketing piece to tout the importance of well-funded, well-equipped school library media centers and the need for experienced staff to make sure they are utilized to their fullest to ensure the success of our students in Michigan's schools. Additionally, we've begun work on reviewing and revising the benchmarks that were published in 2003, to update them and to establish some sort of certification process by which the Library of Michigan and others might endorse the benchmarks and the library media centers that meet them in the future. The work is not completed on either of these initiatives but work continues apace.

After commenting on the progress we've been making in these areas, I was glad to have the opportunity to stay to listen to the keynote speaker, David Warlick. He's a very engaging speaker and a real supporter of school libraries! His comments about technology and how today's young people use it to interact, socialize, learn, and especially to create are both challenging and inspiring. He rightly urges us to go beyond the challenge of simply providing the information (it's already out there), but to work to ensure that students know how to evaluate and use the vast body of information that is available to them to create their own new ideas. I look forward to hearing David speak again sometime, as his presentation was so full of thought-provoking perspectives and suggestions for working with today's students. Truly, it's not about the technology but about what social, educational, and creative avenues it opens up.

60th Anniversary and Chicago Weekend Interlude

On the weekend of November 3rd, my parents-in-law had a lovely 60th anniversary celebration at the Fortnightly Club of Chicago. Thanks to my thoughtful mother-in-law, at the end of the evening my mother, my daughter-in-law Jenny and I had the unexpected opportunity to see one of the Fortnightly's treasures, a rare copy of the edition of Chaucer's works published by the famed Kelmscott Press. (As I did not get a photo of the Fortnightly's copy, check out this link to an image of Cornell University's copy). The party was wonderful, and nearly 60 of Ray and Mary Helen's closest family and friends joined in the celebration. Jim and I were so happy to be there to them and to wish them our love and congratulations!



While there, of course we had to do some sight-seeing. Here is a shot of me taking a picture of my mother and me as reflected in "the bean" at Millennium Park. It was cold and blustery, like Chicago should be in early November, and we were clearly bundled up for the occasion.

A Perfect Day for a Ribbon Cutting!

On October 7th I had the pleasure of driving up to Charlevoix on a picture-prefect Michigan autumn day, complete with full color and a cloudless blue sky. I arrived in Charlevoix for the grand opening of the new Charlevoix Public Library. The building is a renovated 1927 school building that also includes two additions.

As you can see from this picture of CPL Director Val Meyerson and me, the renovation included restoration of some beautiful original tile-work and other original decor. The large room housing the main adult collection is in the old gymnasium, and Val informed me that the original wooden ceiling of the gym just needed to be fully cleaned and dusted off, and is used as-is in the current building.

The crowd gathered at noon or so and included long time Library of Michigan friend and current board member Fran Pletz and several of her family members from the Charlevoix area and way beyond. Things kicked off with the high school band marching from the old building several blocks down to the new one, playing an inspired round of "You're a Grand Old Flag." The event, which was held outdoors, finished off with the release of two cages full of white doves that flew silently off into the blue. It was great!

Congratulations to the Charlevoix community and to the library director, staff, board, and friends. When you are next in their area, be sure to stop by and see the beautiful result of their restoration and transformation of the old school building into a state-of-the art public library!