LA County Library Is Library of the Year 2019 via Library Journal

LA County Library Is Library of the Year 2019

Library Journal: 5.28.2019 by John N. Berry III

@LACountyLibrary

The LA County Library is the 2019 Gale/LJ Library of the Year. That accolade is story enough, but this year the news is enhanced by another breakthrough. With this win, LA County Library becomes the only library to win the Gale/LJ Library of the Year award in the same year that its director was named LJ’s Librarian of the Year—that’s Skye Patrick. And, in late 2018, LA County Library had developed such dynamic, skillful ways to tell its story that its marketing team won the LJ Marketer of the Year Award.

This impressive hat trick was set in motion in 2016 when Patrick took the helm as director, bringing a vision that has since transformed the library system. That ideal focuses every LA County library and service on equity of access and education for every person in the 3,000 square mile area served by the system, no matter their age, gender, ethnicity, origin, sexual orientation, socioeconomic or legal status, nationality, or physical ability and has spurred robust innovation, organizational change, and broad implementation of new approaches across the library system.

THE WINNING FORMULA

Connecting directly with the library’s customers and finding out what they want and need is one key to LA County Library’s transformation. Training the staff to focus on equity and to recognize and eliminate hidden biases was another. Developing programs and services for underserved and marginalized populations was a third. Recognizing and responding to the fact that each community is constantly changing and staff must work to stay abreast of that change and serve the needs it creates is crucial. Finally, seeking out both public sector and private partners, especially those who also serve the same community, is essential. That is the formula that transformed LA County Library; made its programs, services, and staff a model for the future of libraries; and won recognition as the Gale/LJ Library of the Year.

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LJ editor panelists select up to six finalists from among the total pool of entries and invite external judges to participate, including one representative from Gale Cengage Learning, the award’s sponsor; the judges each choose their first-, second-, and third-place candidates from that field and convey their vote to the coordinating LJ editor. Each vote is assigned a corresponding point value, and each vote is given equal weight. The cumulative totals determine each year’s award winner and honorable mentions; any ties are broken by LJ editors.

LIBRARY OF THE YEAR 2019 SPECIAL MENTION

@calgarylibrary

CALGARY PUBLIC LIBRARY

BILL PTACEK l CEO

Canada’s Calgary Public Library has seen a 44 percent increase in active members over the past three years. Its impressive, award-winning new Central Library opened in November 2018 (see “Calgary Rises, LJ 11/15/2018, p. 32ff). Literally connecting parts of the city that had formerly been bisected by a light rail line (now straddled by the building), it not only serves as a hub for collaboration and community, but also became a driver of system-wide culture change.

@chipublib

CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY

BRIAN BANNON l COMMISSIONER & CEO

Chicago Public Library (CPL) is no stranger to these pages, figuring as a special mention in 2018 as well. The system goes from strength to strength, innovating on everything from physical plant, with four branches co-locating with affordable housing among 12 new and 18 updated branches, to nationally recognized laundromat story times, and from a partnership with Illinois WorkNet to develop training modules to make the most of this statewide resource to Peer to Peer Learning Circles that successfully change the MOOC narrative and help distance students persist and succeed in online courses thanks to in-person support.  READ MORE >>

Library of the Year Winners

2018     San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco, CA

2017     Nashville Public Library, Nashville, TN

2016     Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library, Topeka, KS

2015     Ferguson Municipal Public Library, Ferguson, MO

2014     Edmonton Public Library, Alberta, Canada

2013     Howard County Library System, MD

2012     San Diego County Library, CA

2011     King County Library System, WA

2010     Columbus Metropolitan Library, OH

2009     Queens Library, NY

2008     Laramie County Library System, WY

2007     Worthington Libraries, OH

2006     Salt Lake City Public Library , UT

2005     Fayetteville Public Library, AR

2004     San Jose Public Library/San Jose State, University Library, CA

2003     Las Vegas Clark County Library District, NV

2002     Kalamazoo Public Library, MI

2001     Richland County Public Library, Columbia, SC

2000     Gwinnett County Public Library, Lawrenceville, GA

1999     The Valley Library, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR

1998     Medina County District Library, OH

1997     Ann Arbor District Library, MI

1996     Broward County Library, Ft. Lauderdale, FL

1995     Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County, NC

1994     Brown County Library, Green Bay, WI

1993     Austin Public Library, TX

1992     Redwood City Public Library, CA

What Are Public Libraries For? via Experience

What Are Public Libraries For?

@ilovemyanythink

Out with the Dewey Decimal System. In with co-working spaces, podcast studios, and goats.

Experience: 5.21.2019 by Schuyler Velasco

Growing up in Adams County, a sprawling, semirural community outside of Denver, Ser Herr visited his neighborhood library at least once a week, making a beeline to the children’s section. “It was just literally books,” Herr, 31, remembers. “Once in a while my mom would rent a movie for us. But it was about as simple a library as you could get.”

Today, Herr’s most-frequented Adams County branch is an open-concept building outfitted with a coffee shop and decorated with realistic-looking trees, complete with leaves that change color with the seasons. The library system’s name itself has changed; it now brands itself “Anythink.”

The temple of books is changing, as communities like Adams County reevaluate the institution’s role in public life. For over a century, that role was to be the main source of materials and information, says David Lankes, director of the school of library and information science at the University of South Carolina. “A lot of people think of libraries as a place that collects stuff, whether it’s books, documents, music, what have you,” he says.

But now, library patrons need fewer tangible things. Patrons still check out books: Library checkouts in the U.S. dwarfed Amazon book orders as of 2014. But people can also borrow books directly on e-readers, or access them through Spotify-esque subscription services.

Overall, U.S. library visits still are trending downward. The White House’s latest federal budget proposes eliminating federal funding for libraries, an unlikely move that, if passed, would disproportionately affect areas that can’t rely as much on tax funding and friendly local governments.

That means that, to survive, public libraries have to evolve into something more attuned to modern needs and tailor-made to local communities — with uses so diverse they can at times look nothing like a library at all.

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And there are other ways Anythink has found to get people into its seven campuses: studios for producing podcasts and music; 3D printers; ample programming. The libraries held 470 children’s programs in 2018, ranging from STEM workshops to music and movement classes. In the summer, goats visit the libraries, part of a program to teach children about farming. The broad menu has paid off: In 2018, the small county’s library system had 108,555 cardholders and 1,130,415 total visits, both increasing roughly 40 percent over 10 years.

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Some of what Anythink did was just a matter of rebranding. (Buzzy names are a trend; In London, libraries are called “Idea Stores;” a system in Montana goes by “ImagineIf”).

But changing the library’s image has also meant doing away with some staples of the library experience — most notably, the nearly-150-year-old Dewey Decimal System, which organizes nonfiction texts by way of an intricate, numbers-based hierarchy. After a few standalone branches across the country experimented with jettisoning Dewey, Anythink became the first library system in the U.S. to abandon it entirely.  READ MORE >>

Literacy – Spanning the US :: Jackson Hole WY :: Pittsburgh PA :: Suffolk VA

Literacy: Spanning the US

Teton Literacy

Museum of Wildlife Art Goes Bilingual

Its efforts are part of a larger movement to merge Latino and arts communities.

JH News & Guide: 4.24.2019 by Billy Arnold

Just because a painting is hanging in a museum doesn’t mean you have to like it. You could love it, hate it or be put off. The painting’s main purpose is to evoke some kind of emotion.

That, at least, was what Lisa Simmons explained as she toured a group of students around the National Museum of Wildlife Art’s permanent collections. The students’ task was clear: identify a piece of art that inspired them, one that turned them off, and report back. There was, however, a catch.

They’d be asked to address the group in English.

The students were members of the Teton Literacy Center’s adult English as a Second Language class. They were there to improve their English.

For Rosa Elena Nava the class, which met monthly throughout the winter, was an opportunity to expand her English proficiency. That week the adult learners teased out the difference between a “picture” and a “painting,” among other fine linguistic points.

Afterward, Nava explained that her favorite part of class at the museum was learning English in a new context.  READ MORE >>

@LiteracyPgh

Carey Harris is Dedicated to Working on Behalf of the ‘Never-Give-Uppers’

Next Pittsburg: 4.24.2019 by Jennifer Baron

In November 2018, Carey Harris became CEO of Literacy Pittsburgh — the largest provider of adult basic education in Allegheny and Beaver Counties. She leads the nationally acclaimed organization in helping disadvantaged job seekers ready themselves for today’s workforce. Carey, who grew up in Crafton, lives in the South Side with her family.

What upcoming events are you excited to attend?

I’m looking forward to opening night of “We are Among Us” at City Theatre, which gives a window

What’s your big idea for Pittsburgh?

What if Pittsburgh’s next big bet was on young children and their families? What if we invested in making sure every family with young children had opportunities for parents to upskill so they could earn family-sustaining wages?

What if we also offered paid family leave and high-quality early care and education so that parents could take advantage of the opportunities offered by today’s strong economy? What if we built the blueprint for the rest of the nation? We have the talent and resources; do we have the collective will?  READ MORE >>

Suffolk Literacy

Donations to Help Literacy Tutors

Suffolk News Herald: 4.25.2019 by Jimmy LaRoue

The Suffolk Literacy Council will be able to update its tutor training program after receiving money and donations from several groups at the Workforce Development Center Monday.

The Ricks, Benn and Richards Foundation, along with local members of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Omega Psi Phi Fraternity and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, donated more than $1,200, along with supplemental reading books, to SLC.

Dr. Victor Archie of Omega Psi Phi said he hopes this is just the beginning of a collaboration to fight illiteracy in Suffolk. He said all of the organizations were founded on education and lifting up the community, and they wanted to see if they could combine efforts to help with literacy efforts in the city.

“There are a lot of programs that target children, which is excellent,” Archie said. “But it is particularly a travesty … that you have a lot of adults that either cannot read or do not read at a sufficient level.”  READ MORE  >>

Civic Engagement Doesn’t Die In Prison via Chicago Reader

Civic engagement doesn’t die in prison

A state bill outlines an education program for those about to be released.

Chicago Reader: 5.23.2019 by Christian Belanger

In 1992, Nasir Blackwell was desperate. He had been convicted of murder and sentenced to be executed. While incarcerated in Pontiac Correctional Center, he visited the law library—a six-by-nine-foot cell, most of its books published in the 50s—and picked up a volume on homicide. "I began studying law. I was studying history, and so I began studying the history of jurisprudence. I could not believe how law was man-made," he says. "It just became a passion. It helped me litigate on behalf of people that were incarcerated. I was empowering voices—teaching people how to study law, [helping] if they needed a transfer."

Blackwell's death sentence was thrown out by the Illinois Supreme Court in 1996; he received a 49-year prison term after his retrial. In prison, he eventually made it to Danville Correctional Center, where there was a bigger library, and read nearly all the books there. He also helped organize a tutoring program at Danville that, he says, significantly improved educational participation in the prison, whose inmate population until then had a low literacy rate. And he formed groups with other inmates to lead conversations around masculinity, conflict, and basic civics. "We talked about the democratic process and government involvement. There's a lot of negative feedback [from other prisoners] telling you the system is rigged," Blackwell says. "Once you have the knowledge that you can speak out against an issue that affects you, that's empowering."

Upon his release on parole in 2015, he began organizing for the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN). Now, Blackwell, 54, and IMAN are part of a coalition working on a new piece of statewide legislation that would give more inmates access to the knowledge he found so liberating. House Bill 2541, which is due for a full vote from the state Senate later this month, would put in place a civics education program for people who are about to be released from prison, taught primarily by their fellow prisoners—one of the first of its kind in the country.

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While it's difficult to get exact data on how many formerly incarcerated people vote, a 2009 study by political scientist Michael V. Haselswerdt found that only about 5 percent of eligible ex-felons had voted in a 2005 election in New York, compared to 39 percent of the general population. One reason could be that those released from prison don't know exactly how to exercise newly restored rights.

“Preventing someone from exercising their rights, or perpetuating a system where huge groups of people are unaware of their rights, can in itself be a statement about what voting rights are," says Ami Gandhi, director of voting rights and civic empowerment at the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, one of the organizations advocating for HB2541.  READ MORE >>

Literacy Reports & Statistics

Prison

2016: Highlights-US PIAAC Survey of Incarcerated Adults: Their Skills, Work Experience, Education, and Training, NCES Number: 2016040

2013: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Correctional Education, Rand

2013: Saving Futures, Saving Dollars: The Impact of Education on Crime Reduction and Earnings; Alliance for Excellent Education

2011: Correctional Education, OVAE

2010: Prison Count, PEW

2009: One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections, PEW

2006: Locked Up Locked Out: Educational Perspective on US Prison Population, ETS

2003: Literacy Behind Bars, NAAL 2003

2003: Education And Correctional Populations, BJS

1994: Literacy Behind Prison Walls, NCES

National Literacy & Library Events :: June 2019

National Literacy & Library Events :: June 2019

Literacy & Library Events & Conferences

Events-National & International Events

Events-International: Language Magazine

#AudiobookMonth

#GLBTbookmonth

Summer Library Program Libraries Rock

June 02      VALUE Adult Learner Leadership Institute Orlando FL

June 02      Next Library Conference Aarhus Denmark

June 06      Adult Education Research Conference Buffalo State College NY

June 09      National History Day Contest

June 13      Children’s Literature Assoc Conference Indiana Univ-Purdue IN

June 15      National Reading Group Day UK

June 18      Book Summit 2019 Toronto

June 18      Volunteering and Service Conference St. Paul MN

June 20      American Library Association Washington DC

June 20      National Library Legislative Day Washington DC

June 20      Scholastic Reading Summit Chicago Rosemont IL

June 21      ILA Intensive Las Vegas NV

June 23      Boothbay Literacy Institute Southport ME

June 27      Scholastic Reading Summit Denver Denver CO

State Library Associations :: Conferences

African American Book Events

Book Fairs by State Library of Congress

Children’s Book Council Kid Lit Events

College Children’s & Young Adult Literature Conferences Festivals

Everfest Book Festival Calendar

ILA :: Literacy Calendar Worldwide

Storytelling Events

US Book Festivals

Literacy – Spanning the US :: Danville VA :: Carroll Co MD :: Winchester VA :: Sugar Land TX

Literacy: Spanning the US

Project Literacy 

Danville

Fighting Illiteracy Key to Economic Development

Go Dan River: 4.21.2019 by The Editorial Board

In the 21st century economy, the ability to read is a fundamental requirement. 

A person who either is completely illiterate or functionally illiterate or a community that has a high illiteracy is at a distinct disadvantage socially and, more importantly, economically.

That’s why the work of Project Literacy here in Danville and Pittsylvania County is so important to the region’s economic rejuvenation.

The latest statistics paint a somber portrait of the local population. According to data, almost one in five residents — 18 percent — is illiterate, meaning they essentially cannot read at all. When those who are functionally illiterate — who can’t balance a checkbook or read a recipe or a newspaper — are included, the percentage is even higher. By way of comparison, the national rate of illiteracy is 14 percent of population.

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Literacy is tied to everything Danville and Pittsylvania need to confront. From job training to health care, from economic development to attracting new residents and entrepreneurs — a community that is literate is a community that is healthy and thriving.

Conversely, a high rate of illiteracy, combined with functional illiteracy, is a symptom of a community that has problems. Dire problems. Crime thrives where there is illiteracy. Social dysfunction thrives where there is illiteracy. Economic stagnation thrives where there is illiteracy.  READ MORE >>

Literacy 

Carroll County

Nonprofit View: Literacy Council of Carroll County Marks 40 Years Serving Community

Carroll County Times: 4.22.2019 by Sam Greenholtz-Literacy Council of Carroll County

As the Literacy Council of Carroll County celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, I think back to the very beginning when the primary focus of the organization was to teach people to read and write, period. Then being literate meant being able to read and write at a minimal level.

Defining literacy in our changing world is not an easy task. In today’s environment it is more defined as being proficient at reading and math, knowing how to use technology and understanding the basic principles of problem-solving and decision-making.

According to the National Adult Literacy Survey, approximately 44 million people in the United States cannot read well enough to fill out a job application, read a food label, or even read a children’s book. In Maryland, it is estimated 21% of all adults do not have a high school diploma. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that literacy issues cost businesses $225 billion a year in lost productivity.  READ MORE >>

Literacy 

Winchester Area

A Local Hero Found A Unique Way To Fight Adult Illiteracy Comic Books

Nations Well: 4.23.2019 by Joshua O'Connor & Alison Kotch

FIFTY PERCENT OF IMMIGRANTS TO THE U.S. AREN’T ENGLISH-PROFICIENT. TWELVE PERCENT LACK BASIC LITERACY SKILLS. IN VIRGINIA, A LOCAL COMIC BOOK STORE TEAMED UP WITH A CHARITY TO HELP FIGHT ILLITERACY — NO SUPERPOWER REQUIRED.

Four Color Fantasies assistant manager Erik Jones isn’t a superhero. But to the 12 percent of Virginians who lack basic literacy skills, he had an idea heroic enough to make him seem like one.

After giving comics to his niece and nephew when they were kids to try to get them to enjoy reading, Jones went to a comic book convention, sketchbook in hand. He asked his favorite artists to draw sketches for a local charity, Literacy Volunteers Winchester Area. All of them agreed to contribute to the project.

Jones and Literacy Volunteers hope the comics they create might introduce adult readers to literature through image-based storytelling. For them and for other proponents, comics are the perfect medium for non-readers. Many are image heavy and light on text, so visuals might help provide context for what the words are saying.  WATCH 01:32

@ftbendliteracy

Reading is Rewarding at the Literacy Council of Fort Bend County

Katy News: 4.23.2019

David Klotz, a Literacy Council of Fort Bend County student, has been honored as the winner of the Houston Money Week Adult Literacy Essay Contest.  David will be the recipient of a $500 grand prize and will be recognized during a ceremony at the Houston Money Week Wrap Up Event on Tuesday, May 14th.

David is a High School Equivalency (HSE) student and his goal is to attain his GED.  David has been a student of the Literacy Council of Fort Bend County for five years and volunteers at Catholic Charities.  David is not only an inspiration to our organization, but also to our community.

Of his win, David states, “If I can do it, anyone can do it… You just can’t give up!”

David’s most remarkable attributes are his perseverance in pursuing his GED and his positive attitude towards everyone at the Literacy Council.  READ MORE >>

4 Reasons You Should be Reading Books Daily, According to Science via Inc

4 Reasons You Should be Reading Books Daily, According to Science

The ability to derive meaning from letters on a page or screen can be life-changing.

Inc: 5.22.2019 by Christina DesMarais

Reading is an activity which you may take for granted, but the ability to derive meaning from letters on a page or screen (if e-books are your thing) can be life-changing. Here are several ways researchers say reading books is good for you.

It helps you get a better job

A researcher at the University of Oxford analyzed the survey responses of 17,200 people born in 1970, and determined that people who read books at age 16 were more likely to have a professional or managerial career at the age of 33.

It’s a workout for your brain

That’s according to Ken Pugh, director of research at the Yale-affiliated Haskins Laboratories, which studies the impact of spoken and written language.

It develops communication skills

According to a study published in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, reading just one picture book to a child every day exposes them to about 78,000 words a year.

It helps you be a better leader

That’s the opinion of John Coleman, coauthor of the book Passion and Purpose: Stories from the Best and Brightest Young Business Leaders.  READ MORE >>