Category Archives: Communications

Indiana State Library’s ‘Race into Reading’ bookmark design contest now accepting entries

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The Indiana State Library, in conjunction with the Indiana Center for the Book, is pleased to announce the return of its annual bookmark contest. This year’s theme, Race into Reading, was chosen to coincide with Indiana’s book choice to represent the state at the Library of Congress’s National Book Festival’s Pavilion of the States in September, “Race Car Count” by Rebecca Kai Dotlich.

Race into Reading is a fun theme that celebrates speed, acceleration, racing and Indiana.

Sampling of last year’s entries, including the grand prize winner and three additional top five finalists.

The contest is open to all students in Indiana schools, from kindergarten to third grade. The first-place winner will have their bookmark printed in color and distributed to libraries throughout the state, their school will receive a supply of the winning bookmarks and, starting on July 1, 2017, their school or local library will receive one year of the InfoExpress library delivery service. Four honorable mentions will receive the same perks as the grand prize winner, except for the year of InfoExpress service. Bookmarks will be judged on artistic quality, use of color and use of theme.

Additionally, the winning designs will be featured at Indiana’s booth at the Pavilion of the States during the National Book Festival in Washington, DC. The Indiana Center for the Book gives away thousands of bookmarks to festival participants each year. The festival is free and celebrates the joy of books and reading and features authors, illustrators and poets of all ages.

For more information, contact Michael Hicks, InfoExpress Coordinator, Indiana State Library.

This blog post was written by John Wekluk, communications director, Indiana State Library. For more information, email the communications director at communications@library.in.gov.

Happy New Year, guest blogs and the future

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Do you fancy yourself the next Perez Hilton? Well, this post probably isn’t for you then. However, if you are an Indiana library employee and you would like to write a guest blog post for the Indiana State Library’s blog, the floor is all yours.

Is your library opening an awesome new lab? Are you booking a big-time guest presenter? Would you like to illustrate the day-to-day operations of your bookmobile? Have you successfully executed a social media campaign? I want to hear from you. Because libraries cover such a wide range of duties, the possibilities are endless.

The state library is unique in the fact that we provide services to state government employees, house very specialized collections and help develop and train librarians all over the state. Therefore, we don’t necessarily function in the same way a traditional public library functions. Of course, we are opened to the public, and provide some of the best genealogy and Indiana-related resources in the state, but we’ve never suffered a mad rush when a new “Harry Potter,” “Twilight,” or “Hunger Games” book was released. Our friends a few blocks away at the Indianapolis Public Library are the experts when it comes to handling popular new fiction releases.

As the communications director here at the state library, moving forward, I’d like to offer libraries from all over the state a chance to have their say. We’ll also be highlighting more of what the state library does in this blog, by featuring blog posts from members of our Professional Development Office (PDO) and Library Development Office (LDO) in addition to continuing to bring you posts by all of our divisions, such as genealogy, rare books and manuscripts and talking books and Braille.

So, if you have a topic you’d like to cover that appeals to other librarians, library patrons or both, feel free to get in touch with your idea via the email address below. Just remember, no celebrity gossip.

This blog post was written by John Wekluk, communications director, Indiana State Library. For more information, email the communications director at communications@library.in.gov.