Tag Archives: Libraries

2020 LSTA grants for libraries

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Once again, the Indiana State Library will be the recipient of over $3 million dollars in Library Services and Technology Act grant funding through the Grants to State Library Agencies program of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. In IMLS’s latest budget, the federally-funded Institute received $6.2 million more for the LSTA program than the previous year, the largest increase in 12 years. These funds will be divided among all states and US territories based on population – a great reason to participate in the 2020 census.

To see how Indiana used grant funds received during the 2018-19 grant year, check out the following video created by Angela Fox, public library and LSTA consultant:

While a majority of the funds received for 2020-21 will be used to continue support for statewide services like INSPIRE.in.gov, Evergreen Indiana, SRCS and the Talking Book and Braille Library, a portion of the money will be available for 2020 LSTA grants for libraries. Two types of grants will be offered: A technology grant of up to $8,000 and a digitization grant up to $15,000. These grants are available to most libraries, including public, academic, institutional, special and school libraries.

Proposed projects should have demonstrable benefits to the library’s users and community members as a result of new products and services offered through the grant project. Library staff considering applying for a grant should reach out to LSTA consultant Angela Fox. Angela is available to answer questions about proposed projects and even provide a cursory review of applications before they are submitted.

All grant applications will be reviewed by a panel of State Library staff and external reviewers, which will be assembled from public, school and academic libraries across Indiana. Grant applications are due Mar. 20 and award announcements should be made by May 2020.

This post was written by Jen Clifton, Library Development Office, Indiana State Library.

2020 Census outreach

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The U.S. Census Bureau held a kick-off for the 2020 Census ad campaign Tuesday, Jan. 14. For each decennial census, the Census Bureau hires an agency to conduct research and distribute messaging to encourage participation in the U.S. Census. The 2020 campaign, according to a Jan. 14 press release, “employs multi-language ads, partnerships and trusted voices.” The Census Bureau’s tagline, revealed in 2019 is “Shape your Future. Start here.” Examples of the new ads are available here. Census partners are encouraged to have local organizations use the national campaign materials in news media, social media and other outlets.

Efforts to publicize the census have been underway in Indiana for the past several years. The Philanthropy Alliance of Indiana made it a priority to connect its members with census resources early on in the state’s efforts. The Indiana State Library’s State Data Center has worked closely with the Indiana Business Research Center and the Indiana Department of Administration to coordinate efforts at the state level. The IBRC maintains the Census in Indiana website, a “for Hoosiers by Hoosiers” resource for digital and print materials promoting the 2020 census.

New on the site is a Promotional Tool Kit section which includes images and widgets for your websites. For librarians, there is a 2020 Census Toolkit containing important dates in the census, talking points and FAQs for Indiana libraries, an online resource list and ideas for displays and programs. The Census Bureau’s Facebook and Twitter pages contain daily updates about 2020 Census promotion. The State Data Center’s Facebook and Twitter pages post national, state and local updates about the 2020 census.

In mid-March, most U.S. households will receive an invitation to fill out the census online. A series of mailings will follow until each household completes the census online, by paper form or via telephone.

Please contact the library’s State Data Center for questions about the 2020 Census.

This blog post by Katie Springer, reference librarian. For more information, contact the Reference and Government Services Division at 317-232-3678 or submit an Ask-A-Librarian request.

Professional development in the new year

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The Professional Development Office is excited about the new year and all of the things we will be offering to Indiana librarians. We are starting a new series of webinars called What’s Up Wednesday?, which are scheduled for the last Wednesday of every month – except December – at 10 a.m. EST. The first one will feature one of our own Indiana librarians, Jennifer Taylor, from Hagerstown Public Library and the webinar is called “Quick Play Gaming for Teen Outreach.”

The next thing we are doing is offering the first Indiana online conference, “Hot Topics for a Cold Winter’s Day.” It will take place online Monday, Feb. 17 from 9 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. EST. Our keynote speaker will be Julius Jefferson, Jr., ALA’s 2020-2021 president-elect. Also speaking will be Cyndee Landrum of IMLS, Pam Seabolt of MCLS, ILF President Susie Highley and Kelly Krieg-Sigman, retired director of the LaCrosse Public Library in Wisconsin. Stay tuned for registration information.

The Difference is You conference is scheduled for Friday, Sept. 18 at the Indiana State Library and is in the early planning stages. This year we will also present our 2020 Indiana Library Leadership Academy on Oct. 28-30. Participants are selected through an application process so keep your eye out for the application. This opportunity is open to librarians from all types of libraries – public, academic, school, special and institutional.

We are also happy to announce that we have hired a new Northwest regional coordinator, Laura Jones. She will be working remotely from Argos. Laura has experience in both public and school libraries.

We have updated and added to our Face to Face Training options. There are several new options: “Teambuilding 101,” “Soft Skills for Librarians,” “Developing Community Partnerships” and some new subject-specific INSPIRE trainings. We are excited that we have been able to redo our tech kits with new choices and we will have three kits now instead of two. We have added the littleBits Star Wars Droid Inventor Kit, Squishy Circuits, Dash Challenge cards and the Code and Go Robot Mouse Activity set. Checkout for the updated tech kits will begin in February. Please talk to your regional coordinator if you would like to reserve one. In addition, we purchased two Breakout EDU kits which we will also be circulating this year.

Of course, we will continue offering webinars at various times throughout the year so please check our calendar so you don’t miss out. I hope you are as excited about 2020 as I am! It’s going to be a great year!

This blog post was written by Kara Cleveland, Professional Development Office supervisor at the Indiana State Library.

What does the children’s consultant do, exactly?  A year in review

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In my role as children’s consultant in the Professional Development Office of the Indiana State Library, it’s my mission to offer training opportunities, best practices advice and general support to youth services library staff across the entire state. Out of my three years in this position, this year has been the busiest so far. I’ve been lucky to be involved in a number of exciting projects!

NASA @ My Library: The year began with the good news that the Indiana State Library would be part of the NASA @ My Library program. This program came with a grant that allowed us to create and circulate 13 kits that contained the materials to do a number of space-centric programs in libraries. These kits went to public libraries this summer to support their A Universe of Stories programs. And, you can continue to borrow them even though summer is over! Learn more about the kits here.

Leap Into Science: In February, I attended a training in Philadelphia for the Franklin Institute’s Leap into Science program along with my fellow Indiana Leadership Team members Nicole Rife from the Indiana State Museum, Renee Henry from the Terre Haute Children’s Museum and Sarah Reynolds from Early Learning Indiana. Through the training, we learned how to integrate open-ended science activities with children’s books during programs designed for children ages 3-10 and their families. We brought the program back to Indiana and offered four workshops for librarians and other out of school informal educators in August of 2019; we also plan to offer four more sessions in spring of 2020. Watch for those trainings to be announced early in the year. Read more about Leap into Science here.

YALSA “Teen Services with Impact”: In March, we brought in Linda Braun of YALSA to provide day-long trainings to teen services librarians and administrators about the impact libraries can have on the lives of teens. The sessions discussed how teen librarians can describe the value of what they do for and with teens, and built an understanding of how social emotional learning fits into the work they do for and with teens.

Collaborative Summer Library Program: In September, Indianapolis was thrilled to host representatives from every state, along with several US Territories and island nations, for the CSLP Annual Meeting. At the meeting, we voted to use Oceanography as our general theme in 2023; the slogan will be voted on in 2020. The artist in 2023 will be Frank Morrison. In November, I began traveling the state to offer 11 CSLP training/roundtables on the 2020 program, Imagine Your Story. Dates and locations for the remaining trainings can be found on ISL’s Calendar of Events.

YALSA Connected Learning & Computational Thinking for Teens: At the end of September, I was excited to go to Seattle to be trained by the excellent folks at YALSA on how to incorporate Connected Learning and Computational Thinking into programming for teens. Youth Services Consultants like me from across the US attended these trainings, and we’ll all be rolling out various workshops for teen librarians in early 2020. Watch for Connected Learning trainings in March!

Every Child Ready to Read: As always, I offered a number of ECRR trainings across the state this year. I’m currently in the process of planning another batch for 2020, and hope to announce those by the end of 2019.

In addition to all of that, I continue to offer a set list of trainings, which I can do by-request for library staff days and round tables. I intend to add one or two new trainings to that list in 2020, so keep an eye out.

I hope the upcoming new year is an excellent one for you, your library and the youth you serve!

This blog post was written by Beth Yates, children’s consultant for the Indiana State Library.

Helping librarians that serve the incarcerated – the Fall 2019 Institutional Workshop

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Part of the mission of the Indiana State Library is to provide library services to state government and its branches and employees, as well as to provide specialized library services and training. One of the specialized populations that our Statewide Services Division serves are the prison and institutional librarians across the state. The Indiana State Library provides resource sharing services (e.g., interlibrary loan and book delivery) to the institutions. Additionally, Statewide Services staff provide continuing education to correctional staff, who are required to attend training to maintain American Correctional Association accreditation. To aid these special libraries, the Indiana State Library’s Professional Development Office staff provides site visits throughout the year. Finally, the library hosts an annual workshop where the correctional librarians can gather, network and learn about topics that can help them serve the incarcerated.

Each year, the morning of the workshop begins at the Indianapolis Public Library’s bookstore, where library staff and other nonprofits are invited to “shop” the books remaining after the public sale at no cost. State library staff are present to assist institutional libraries in shipping their materials back to their facilities via the InfoExpress courier service. This year, prison library staff gathered 50 large bags full of books, many of which were like-new popular titles – including James Patterson and Stuart Woods – to fill the shelves of their facility’s library.

The afternoon workshop was held in the Indiana State Library’s History Reference Room. Nicole Brock, ISL’s resource sharing coordinator, provided an overview and refresher on the state library’s resource sharing services. Wendy Knapp, ISL’s deputy director of Statewide Services, gave a presentation on library trends and the future of libraries as a whole, which helped prison libraries understand the current issues and climate of the profession.

Dr. Elizabeth Angeline Nelson (left) and Dr. Susan B. Hyatt

Finally, our featured speakers were Dr. Susan B. Hyatt and Dr. Elizabeth Angeline Nelson, two faculty members from the IUPUI School of Liberal Arts. Hyatt and Nelson have both worked within institutional walls on education and research projects, including the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program and the Indiana Women’s Prison History Project. Correctional staff learned about these programs and were encouraged to think about ways they could support continuing education in their libraries, of which many already hold or are seeking college degrees.

Attendees left with three contact hours which they can apply to their continuing education requirements. Planning has already begun for next year’s workshop and book giveaway, tentatively scheduled for Nov. 23, 2020. For more information on the workshop, contact Statewide Services or subscribe to the Institutional Libraries Listserv here.

This post was written by Jen Clifton, Library Development Office supervisor, Indiana State Library.

Do a browse! It’s fun and everyone is doing it!

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Here at the Indiana State Library – and at many public libraries across the state – we make commercial newspaper databases available for research. The great thing about these databases is that they are keyword searchable. Need to find Uncle Ned’s obit? Done. Need to find articles about the 1960 election? Done. Want to pull up everything the Indy Star has ran on elephants? Done. Research has been revolutionized. I support it 100%.

However, one thing these databases take away is the joy of browsing. Will students know the stumbling dumb fun of coming across something they weren’t even looking for?

If you enjoy the hunt, we have two resources here that keep the browse tradition alive: the clippings files and the Indianapolis Newspaper Index.

The Indianapolis Newspaper Index offers some great moments of discovery. For example, do you know about George and Perry? 

Now you want to know more!

What about Mount Lawn, where folks are living in pioneer log cabins!? Mount Lawn has a sad little Wikipedia page, and not much to be found with a Google search, but here in the card file it called out to me, a lover of log homes, and I wanted to know more.

Indianapolis Star Magazine December 6, 1953, page 21

You can also come into the library to browse our clippings files on the second floor. These are literally articles “clipped” from newspapers. They aren’t just tossed in a drawer; we have subject headings – which are fun to browse and useful, too. The subject headings under “charities” points us to some other ideas:

Charities
– 1939, 1940-49, 1950-59, 1960-69, 1970-79, 1980-89, 1990-99, 2000-
– Community Centers (contains material on American Settlement, Kirshbaum Center, Boys Club, Northeast Community Center, Lawter Boys Club, Hawthorne Community Center)
See also
Indianapolis, Flower Mission
– Community Centers – Christamore
– Community Centers – Flanner House
– Community Centers – Fletcher Place
– Goodwill Industries
– Indianapolis Day Nursery
– Salvation Army
– Suemma Coleman Home
– Wheeler Mission

Did you know you can also browse our online catalog? While you can’t enter our stacks, you can browse the Evergreen Catalog by call number. Say you find a book that looks relevant to your research topic and want to “look” at the shelf around it. Select Advanced Search, then select the Numeric Search tab, then utilize the “Call number (shelf browse)” option and plug in the call number of the book you found.

Happy hunting!

This post was written by Indiana Collection Supervisor Monique Howell. 

There’s something for all you boils and ghouls at the Indiana State Library

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You can’t go into a Halloween store today without seeing a plethora of creepy and scary costumes, but that’s not how things were when I was a kid. I went out on Halloween night in one of Grandma’s old housecoats and her favorite wig, while my brother donned a pair of Dad’s old jeans and a trash bag full of newspapers. We’d walk around the neighborhood getting our goodies, come back to the house, switch costumes and then go out for another round.

The candy and costume industries surely make a lot of money this time of year due to aggressive marketing, but I believe that most people still enjoy the simple things about Halloween.

Who doesn’t like roasting hot dogs over a campfire, bobbing for apples, hay rides, getting lost in the corn maze or sipping on warm cider? Let’s not forget about carving the pumpkin and roasting the seeds in the oven. All of these things make Halloween a favorite holiday for so many goblins of all ages.

So, I did some checking around at the library – with help from some other great people who work here – to see how others here in Indiana celebrated Halloween. Take a look at some of our finds!

Here’s a haunting doily, colored by hand, from our Manuscripts Collection:

Check out some of the clippings we found from Halloweens past. You’ll find these in our Indiana Collection:

You can creep through our catalog and find a spooky novel, like “The Witches,” to enjoy while you’re handing out candy to all the little monsters.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Cleopatra” analyzes the Salem Witch Trials to offer key insights into the role of women in its events, while explaining how its tragedies became possible. It began in 1692, over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister’s daughter began to scream and convulse. It ended less than a year later, but not before 19 men and women had been hanged and an elderly man crushed to death.

You can also pick up a wonderful book, like “A Halloween Scare in Indiana,” from the Indiana Young Readers Center to share with your little goblin.

A fun and funny Halloween romp for children and parents alike! It’s Halloween night, and creatures and critters from near and far are starting to gather outside the front door. And now here comes a whole army of monsters, on broomsticks, buses and bikes, all clamoring in the darkness. What is it they want? Are they coming for you? This humorous, creative story is the perfect Halloween adventure for children and parents to share.

Regardless of how you like to spend Halloween, be safe, have fun with friends and family and take time to visit the Indiana State Library.

This blog post was written by Rayjeana Duty, circulation supervisor, Indiana State Library.

An overview of the federal E-rate program

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The federal E-rate program began over 20 years ago with a focus on providing low-income areas, schools, libraries and healthcare providers with telecommunications services, internet access and internal connections, including installation and maintenance at discounted rates. It is overseen by the Federal Communications Commission and administered by the Universal Service Administrative Company. Within USAC, there is a division specifically for E-rate in schools and libraries.

While the Telecommunications Act that established the E-rate program was passed in 1996, it really grew out of the Communications Act of 1934 that established the FCC and aimed to make telephone service universal, bringing it to rural communities across the nation. E-rate originally focused on both telephone and internet service, but in 2014 the E-rate modernization order was given in an attempt to close the Wi-Fi gap by providing only broadband funding. I guess they figured everyone had telephone service at this point, so yay for us!

The E-rate funding year runs from July 1 through June 30, but libraries actually start the process of applying for funds in the previous year. Right now, folks are starting to join the consortium or notifying vendors that they are seeking services for the funding year 2020, which won’t start until July 1, 2020. So, they’re always thinking at least six months ahead and usually an entire year.

This is the general timeline of the filing windows for the various forms, but the exact dates are announced through USAC’s website.

The State has our own State Technology Grant Fund that we use to help reimburse public libraries for a portion of their internet bills. This is allocated from the Build Indiana Fund and is a completely separate program from E-rate. We do, however, take into account the amount of money a library would be reimbursed by E-rate whether or not they actually file for it. So, if a library received a 90% discount from E-rate, we would only look at that 10% left when determining how much to reimburse the library from the State Technology Grant Fund.

Something that we aren’t involved with here at the State Library, but which may be useful to residents, would be the Lifeline program, which is also administered by USAC. The Lifeline program provides discounted phone and internet rates for those whose income is 135% or less than the federal poverty guidelines, as well as those who participate in federal assistance programs like SNAP, Medicaid, SSI, Federal Public Housing Assistance, Veterans Pension and Survivors Benefit and certain Tribal programs. They may also qualify if their child or dependent participates in any of these programs.

This post was written by Hayley Trefun, public library consultant, Library Development Office, Indiana State Library.

Library service to immigrant communities: Then and now

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According to the Pew Research Center, there were more than 40 million foreign-born people living in the United States in 2017, comprising approximately 13.6% of the overall population[1]. However, over a hundred years ago that number was even higher. The United States saw the largest waves of immigration occur during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the peak occurring around 1890 when 14.8% of people were foreign-born.

Then as now, libraries in the United States strove to provide effective library service to immigrant communities. Numerous publications were created to help librarians with this and the Indiana State Library still retains several of these in our collection. According to one 1919 booklet titled “Making Americans: How the Library Helps” (ISLM 21.28 G722m), libraries were well situated to assist recently-arrived immigrants because “The Library… is unbiased and unprejudiced. It seeks to represent all types of thought, culture, or religion, and is unexploited by any one agency. It is one American institution which can preserve the native heritage of all peoples and exclude the literature of none. For this reason, it has an initial point of contact that no other one agency can have.”

A class of Italians at the Fairmount Branch of the St. Louis Public Library in 1919

Of primary concern to libraries was providing reading materials to immigrant communities in their respective native languages. To this end, the American Library Association compiled a series of booklets with foreign language bibliographies.

An excerpt from “The German Immigrant and His Reading” (1929) (ISLM Z711.8 .P47)

Other books in this series included bibliographies for Italian (ISLM 21.28 S974i), Polish (ISLM 21.28 L472p) and Greek (ISLM 21.28 A372g) immigrant groups.

While stressing the importance of curating foreign-language collections, the authors of these booklets acknowledged the concern that such practices would inherently hamper immigrants from acquiring English language skills. In the booklet “Bridging the Gulf: Work with the Russian Jews and Other Newcomers,” (ISLM 21.28 R795b) the author states that “Definitely and emphatically it is our experience that increases in the circulation of foreign books are always accompanied by increases in English book circulation, particularly in books on learning English, on citizenship and American history and biography.”

Almost a hundred years have passed since these booklets were published and librarians continue to produce guides on providing excellent library service to immigrant groups. In addition to the publications created in response to the large wave of immigrants arriving in the United States at the turn of the 19th century, the State Library has plenty of newer titles concerning outreach to more recent immigrant groups.

Some recent titles from the ISL collection:

Additionally, ALA maintains an extensive list of resources for modern librarians which can be accessed here.

This blog post was written by Jocelyn Lewis, Catalog Division supervisor, Indiana State Library. For more information, contact the Indiana State Library at 317-232-3678 or “Ask-A-Librarian.”

[1] Data from: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/17/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants/

 

Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch to chair Indiana 2020 Census Complete Count Committee

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Here at the Indiana State Library, our Indiana State Data Center Program has had an official partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau since 1978. We share statistical information and talk about the importance of access to good public data on a daily basis. Each decade, however, our efforts with the Census Bureau ramp up and we help “count everyone once, only once, in the right place” as of Census Day, April 1. The State of Indiana includes multiple stakeholders who take part in this effort.

On Monday, Aug. 5, 2019, Gov. Eric J. Holcomb announced that Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch will lead Indiana’s statewide Complete Count Committee for the 2020 Census. The goal of the committee is to encourage all Hoosiers to answer the census. Indiana’s CCC kick-off meeting will be Monday, Aug. 19, 2019, at 1 p.m. Eastern in the Indiana Government Center South Auditorium. You are invited. Register for the meeting here. 

The 2020 Census will be the very first census that provides online response. People can answer via their smartphones, use their home computers and laptops or go to their local library and use a public computer terminal. Because of this, libraries will see increased traffic next year during March and April. Indiana librarians will receive questions about what the census does and why the Census Bureau counts people. We will need to provide help with how it’s done.

This May, the American Library Association released its Libraries’ Guide to the 2020 Census. It explains the importance of the 2020 Census and also addresses the risks that we face if groups of people are undercounted in 2020. This is the reason that CCCs and promotional campaigns carry weight. Our efforts will impact the accuracy and completeness of next year’s count. Libraries are trusted voices, and librarians can make efforts to prepare ourselves to inform our communities.

Start learning about the census with Census Bureau’s Shape Your Future. Start Here website. Get details about promoting the census locally on the 2020 Census in Indiana website. Register and attend the CCC kick-off on Monday, Aug. 19 to learn more!

This blog post by Katie Springer, reference librarian. For more information, contact the Reference and Government Services Division at 317-232-3678 or submit an Ask-A-Librarian request.