National Library Week, April 14 - 20

Beaufort County Library joins libraries in schools, campuses and communities nationwide in celebrating National Library Week, April 14–20.  It's a time to highlight the value of libraries, librarians and library workers who enrich and shape our communities.  Please share with others that you value the libraries of America as a group, particularly those in our state and county!

Libraries continue to be busier than ever helping families, students, seniors, etc., during these tough times. But as we all know by now, public libraries, school libraries, and academic libraries are still struggling to maintain budgets, staff, and resources to serve the needs of their communities.  

Libraries today are more than repositories for books and other resources. Often the heart of their communities, campuses or schools, libraries are deeply committed to the places where their patrons live, work and study.  Libraries are trusted places where community members can gather to reconnect and reengage to enrich and shape the community and address local issues. 

(If you've been keeping up with the BDC Facebook page, you will have learned some surprising statistics about our own Beaufort County Library's materials and services this week.  For those of you who love numbers, statistics regarding materials and services in South Carolina are posted online in the State Library Annual Reports at http://www.statelibrary.sc.gov/annual-library-statistics.) 

Librarians work with elected officials, small business owners, students, government employees and the public to discover what their communities needs are and meet them.  Beaufort County Library will soon start mapping out our institution's Strategic Plan, during which we will ask our community to tell us what they need.  Whether through offering e-books and technology classes, materials for English-language learners, programs for job seekers or those to support early literacy, librarians listen to the community they serve, and they respond as they are able by maximizing limited resources as cost-effectively as possible.

State, county, and oftentimes local governments provide much needed funding for libraries to provide public access to the Internet to everyone, critical databases for individuals and small businesses, homework help, and much more. Beaufort County Library is funded mostly by the taxpayers of Beaufort County.  This means that the individuals elected as representatives to the Beaufort County Council hold the purse-strings for all county agencies, including Beaufort County Library.  If you value the services and programs of our library system, please share that belief with them.

On the other hand, should you feel that the library system is not a positive asset to our community, please contact Jan O'Rourke, Assistant Library Director, and Chair of the Strategic Planning Committee to share your thoughts about how the Library system can better serve you and your family.  Data collected will help form the 2014 -2017 Strategic Plan. 

Everyone On! Libraries Play Essential Role in Connect2Compete Campaign

Recently announced:  A partnership among the Public Library Association, a division of the American Library Association, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, OCLC’s Web Junction, the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies, the Federal Communications Commission, and the non-profit Connect2Compete to provide access to broadband Internet services and digital literacy training for the 100 million Americans who do not have access from home. There is common agreement among the partners that libraries are essential to get “EveryoneOn” and competitive in the 21st century.  EveryoneOn is a public awareness effort designed to help all Americans access free digital literacy training in their libraries and community centers - a topic near and dear to the hearts and activities of librarians and public libraries across the country.    

On the national level, Susan Hildreth, Director of the Institute for Museum and Library Services reports that "Libraries are already stepping up to this challenge. Eighty-three percent of them offer informal training in digital literacy, helping people learn how to use computers, navigate the web, and find the best and most useful information. And 44 percent offer formal classes."

So how does our Beaufort County Library stack up against the national effort? We offer informal and formal training in digital literacy.  We help people learn how to use computers, navigate the web, and find the best and most useful information. According to the recent report of our assistant director, Jan O'Rourke, to our Library system's Board of Trustees regarding our system's progress towards meeting literacy related goals set in the 2011 - 2013 Strategic Plan, we have accomplished a great deal towards our goals:

GOAL 2

Make informed decisions by understanding how to find, evaluate, and use information in all formats. Beaufort County residents will have access to information in all formats and will acquire the skills needed to search for, locate, evaluate and effectively use information to meet their personal goals.

Continue and expand the “WorkStarts” initiative

ü As of December 2012, our WorkStarts presence on our website has been visited 6,713 times.

ü 78 job seeker labs have been offered

ü 158 one-on-one sessions have been held.

ü 353 classes of interest to job seekers have occurred (resume preparation, how to set up an e-mail account in order to apply online, etc.). These numbers, thus far, have exceeded our targets.

ü Additionally we have convened 2 breakfast information-sharing meetings with other entities involved in workforce development.

Continue to provide high speed internet to online information

ü Instruction on proprietary databases, as needed:  approximately 15.

ü Monthly classes on software applications and/or basic computing: 92 total.

The BUILD Team will stay abreast of new technologies and service innovation trends

ü The concepts of makerspaces in libraries, participatory librarianship, using iPADS as early literacy tools, promoting media literacy and transliteracy, using social media tools for programming, book discussions and forums are all ideas that are being explored.  A full report on this as well as what the library of the 21^st Century might look like will be available by spring.

Goal 3

Advance all forms of literacy for all ages. Beginning at birth, Beaufort County residents will have the programs and services that enable them to enter school ready to learn and, throughout life, residents will have the support they need to improve their literacy skills in order to meet their personal goals.

Obtain an early literacy grant to develop and implement a targeted early literacy service plan to pre-schoolers, families and caregivers

ü In 2011 we received a grant for $18,000 + from the Community Foundation of the LowCountry to create a training kit that included board books, resources and a DVD on best practices for providing early literacy tools for parents, guardians, and caregivers.

ü The program, WeeRead, debuted in the Hilton Head and Bluffton branches and will be expanded north of the Broad this year.

At the conclusion of 2012:

·         585 children have participated in some capacity (Summer Reading and/or Story times) along with 467 adults.

·         77 story times have been given.

·         We held 23 training sessions.

·         383 surveys indicated that parents, guardians and caregivers felt that the program was worthwhile.

Continue and expand involvement with the Born to Read Program with funding from the Friends

ü Although we continue to participate in this program we may face some difficulty in expanding the service as the Friends groups are experiencing reduced to support this program.

ü New card registrations increased from 45 in 2011 to 60 in 2012.

By the end of 2012, establish a homework help program through system-led research, development and implementation

ü In 2012 we received a Library Services and Technology Act grant for $2,500.00 that enabled us to hire a consultant to help us develop a model program. Ms. Suzy Lange provided a detailed report that included a recommendation to purchase the 24/7 live homework help product, Brainfuse. 

ü Brainfuse is now available on our website and usage is beginning to climb as of January 2013.

ü Pilot Homework Centers were opened in 2012 in St. Helena and Beaufort.  St. Helena’s program is active and providing homework help every Saturday.  Customer response to Beaufort’s Center was unsatisfactory and the center closed in November 2012.  Subsequent to the setting of this goal in 2011, the United Way created a Women’s Leadership Council that has recruited an impressive number of volunteer tutors to provide reading assistance in the early grades.  Additionally, Title 1 schools are able to provide free tutoring services to children eligible for the school lunch program.  Thus, we have suspended plans to establish homework centers south of the Broad as we feel we are duplicating services and our limited resources should be redirected as a result.

Partner with the Literacy Volunteers of the Lowcountry and other literacy organizations to provide tutoring space for ESL and other literacy volunteers

ü One of our reference managers is on the Board of the Literacy Volunteers of the Lowcountry.

ü Space is available at our branches for tutoring.

Work with the Literacy Volunteers of the LowCountry to establish an adult literacy collection in all branches

ü Our staff member, who is on the Literacy Volunteers of the Lowcountry Board, is assisting in developing recommendations for a core collection.  However, due to budget realities, we are going to pursue grant opportunities for funding of literacy collections.

To read the announcement from IMLS, click Everyone On! Libraries Play Essential Role in Connect2Compete Campaign.  

Jan O'Rourke, Assistant Director of the Beaufort County Library system, stands ready to answer any questions you might have about our current Strategic Plan and our plans for preparing another one to begin in 2014.  Contact: jorourke@bcgov.net; 843-255-6464.

Free Civil War and Reconstruction Opportunities for Learning

The topic of the Civil War has been all around us since April. Recently there has been a bevy of programs, symposiums, exhibits, etc. all relating to some aspect of the Civil War in this blog. Why? Because even though the Civil War officially ended 146 years ago, it is ever present in the minds of many Americans. Let's suppose, though, that you are of a more academic bent and want to delve deeper than a short lecture, or a quick run-through of an exhibit or display can provide:

Longtime readers know that I often draw from the History Channel Club e-newsletter. Here's an opportunity to audit an Ivy League college course, on the Civil War and Reconstruction era, for free - without having to dress for class:

Didn't make the cut to major in U.S. history at Yale? Not to worry. Now you can attend virtually — without student loans — to achieve more than a passing knowledge of the Civil War and its times. Recorded in 2008 for the school's Yale Open Courses, history professor David Blight—director of Yale's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, and the author of numerous books on the Civil War and its aftermath (his final presentations on Reconstruction are particularly involving)—offers 27 hour-long lectures in a course titled "The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877."

The online classroom features transcripts of all 27 lectures, the course outline, and a syllabus of recommended readings.

You have several options for downloading the classroom sessions: iTunes, as mp3 files, or as video files for your computer (high or medium bandwidth). You can even "test" yourself by answering the Final Exam questions.

Heads up: The Beaufort County Library will be closed this Thursday and Friday for the Thanksgiving holidays. We'll look forward to seeing you during our regular hours on Monday.