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New Fall Storytimes

Posted on September 4, 2013 by Library Staff in Library Blog, Library Services, News

The week of September 3, we will start our fall schedule for storytimes! We have a lot of amazing options for every child at all of our libraries, and we’re excited to start them!

However, we have made some changes this fall to make our storytime fun even better for you and your child!

We will no longer be offering storytimes based on age, but rather development stage. Every child develops individually at his or her own rate, and we want to foster more fun and better learning environments for everyone.

Peek-A-Boo Storytimes for Walkers or Prewalkers:

Each program lasts 20 minutes, and involves all sorts of fun literacy activities, such as songs, rhymes, fingerplays, and a book or two. And of course, you’ll have 15 minutes to socialize afterward. Storytimes are a great way to get out and about, and have some fun while making books an important foundation to your child.

Toddler Storytimes

These storytimes are as much fun as the Peek-A-Boo storytimes, and involve music, rhymes, fingerplays, and so much more. Activities are especially prepared for toddlers (approximately 24 to 36 months old) and their caregiver.

Preschool Storytimes:

Get your child prepared for school! For preschoolers, storytime is 30 minutes long with all the good stuff we have in our other storytimes: songs, rhymes, fingerplays, and great stories to instill a love of books and learning. Caregivers are welcome to stay.

When and Where:

As the demographics of our Library District are changing, we have changed days and locations this fall. Be sure to check out the online events calendar to know when and where these amazing storytimes will be.

http://poudreriver.evanced.info/eventcalendar.asp

To learn more about how you can raise a reader, visit our web page at: http://read.poudrelibraries.org/readers

 

 

early literacy, Library Services, preschoolers, Storytime Read More

Biking to Work

Posted on August 11, 2013 by Drew Gaede in Library Blog

Confession: My favorite day of the year is Bike to Work Day. And that is saying something, since my birthday happens to fall on one of the most popular holidays of the year. My birthday is a double-win for me personally and I still love BTWD more, because it combines so many of my favorite elements – bicycling (because it saves the environment, saves me gas money, and contributes to my health), the community coming together in support of bicycling (again, for all the aforementioned reasons), free delicious food, and a general attitude of fun and frivolity.

Chicken toss at the REI station.

Chicken toss at the REI station.

This year’s BTWD on June 26 in Fort Collins was awesome – thousands of people rode, despite the heat (many of us found that after a pleasant morning ride, our commute back home after work was in the 90’s!). There were morning stations and afternoon stations, prize drawing and old-time photo booths… all in all it was awesome.

This year I got an early start and rode myself, before heading to Council Tree Library to help out with the Library BTWD booth. As a library employee,  I was asked to participate on the Library Green Team. The Poudre River Public Library District is part of Climate Wise (a City of Fort Collins environmental initiative program to encourage local businesses to be environmentally friendly) and this year we are trying to move from the Gold level to the Platinum level. Part of this requires us to do at least 2 employee challenges.

The Green Team challenge, which we are in our second year of doing, is our Summer Drive-Less Challenge. For the 3 summer months we encourage all library employees to be creative and find other means of transportation to get to work. Biking is obviously a major option, but walking, busing, carpooling etc. are also included. Really anything that does not involve one individual’s solo use of a gas tank will be counted (despite mentioning it 2 years in a row, no one seems to have gone for the “pogo stick” idea…) and we keep track, do monthly drawings for prizes and have a reward at the end of the summer for the person who did the most trips to work sans car, and the person who covered the most miles.  All 3 library locations are on bus lines and have a lot of options for bike parking. Walking, skateboarding, running, rollerblading, even pogo-sticking… we would love to see you come in with a helmet under your arm!

I hope that those of you who participated in BTWD this year had as much fun as I did, and those of you who did not, at least enjoyed seeing the influx of bikers that day, and maybe got encouraged to get out there yourselves. Either way, biking to work or the store, or any other location, is something I hope you will consider the next time you have somewhere to go – enjoy the summer weather, get yourself some vitamin D and burn some calories while saving gas. Everyone wins!

Did you know? The North Front Range Metropolitan Planning Organization (NFRMPO) has it’s own alternative transportation website to help you track your trips – the site is www.smarttrips.org, anyone can create an account and see how many miles and pounds of CO2 (among other things) they save with alternative transportation!

Some resources for you…

http://www.fcgov.com/bicycling/ – route information, biking conditions, news etc.
http://www.fcgov.com/climatewise/
https://www.smarttrips.org or https://www.smarttrips.org/Pages/about-us

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Rooms for Small Business at the Libraries

Posted on August 1, 2013 by Library Staff in Library Blog, News

As many small business owners and freelancers know, it can be difficult to hold professional conferences, presentations, and webinars from your location—be it your home office, your storefront, your restaurant, etc. Did you know that your local library has resources to help? Here are a few of them:

Collaboration Room

The Old Town Library recently added a state-of-the-art Collaboration Room designed for working on computer projects or holding group webinars. The Collaboration Room features “pucks” that connect laptop computers to a 42” TV—allowing you to see your project or webinar on a big screen. The Collaboration Room can be reserved for up to four hours, and includes:

• 2 HP Notebook laptops, running Windows 7 with Microsoft Office 2010 as well as Skype, GoToMeeting, Webex, and Spreecast
• Mice
• 42” flat screen TV
• Ultra wide angle full HD webcam
• Yeti microphone
• Headset with built-in microphone
• Apple adapters

Learn more about the Collaboration Room. To reserve the room, visit this page , choose a date and time, and enter in your information.
Collaboration Table

Study Rooms

Need to meet with a small team to set the project’s priorities, do research, or just touch base? The Old Town, Harmony and Council Tree Libraries have study rooms that are great for quiet, informative meetings with your small team. Different sizes are available, some are first come first served sign up and some you can sign up for in advance.

Click here for more information about study rooms at your library. Ready to reserve a room? Visit this page to pick a date and time.

Community Rooms

The Old Town, Harmony, and Council Tree Libraries all have meeting rooms available for free rental to non-profits. These are larger rooms with podiums and chairs, designed to hold a conference or presentation to a larger group of people. They all offer free wireless Internet access. Here is a quick rundown of what each location provides:

1. Old Town Community Room – This room can be split into two separate sections, or used as one space. When used as one space, it can seat up to 130 people. It offers:
• Chairs
• Podium
• Projector
• Projector screen
• Sound system
• Tables
• Whiteboard

2. Harmony Community Room – This room can seat up to 100 people, and offers:
• Chairs
• Podium
• Projection screen
• Projector
• Tables

3. Council Tree Community Room – The smallest of the three community rooms, this room can seat up to 80 people. It offers:
• Chairs
• Dimmable room lights
• Kitchenette with sink and counter top
• Podium
• Screen
• Tables

To find out more about the Community Rooms, click here . To reserve a room, visit this page .

Call the Answer Center at 221-6740 with your questions on these rooms.

 

 

Business Resources, Library Services, Meeting Rooms Read More

Behind the Scenes at Poudre Libraries – Collection Management

Posted on July 24, 2013 by Library Staff in Library Blog, News

How the Collection is Managed and Maintained

Having purchased new items for the Library, librarians do not then rest with their feet up on their desks, content with a job well done.  The collection of the Poudre River Public Library holds 405,000 items District-wide.  And each year, 48,000 to 50,000 items are both added to and withdrawn from the collection.  Librarians call this a zero growth collection, made necessary largely by limitations of both budget and space.

However, the 405,000 collection must be managed and maintained.  With over 133,000 borrowers and with 48,000 to 50,000 new items coming in and out, the collection has to be continually analyzed and evaluated.  One approach is to look at circulation figures to see whether the collection devoted to a particular area of interest (e.g., gardening or a certain popular author) needs to be expanded or reduced.  Another way is to analyze the collection in terms of such criteria as whether the item is out of date and/or superseded by a new edition, is no longer relevant or is available from another source, like the Prospector inter-library loan system.

Weeding, which is essential in keeping the collection up-to-date (as well as making space available for new materials), is an on-going process, keeping librarians in the Collections Department occupied much of the time.  A collection cannot remain static and continue to be useful and relevant to the needs of its users.

Of the materials that are weeded out, the Friends of the Library gets a first look to choose what they feel are appropriate for their three giant used book sales a year.  The rest is then recycled.  The library pays a recycling firm $35 per pick up, but this cost  is offset by book sales conducted by the recycling company.  Finally, there is just simply trash; not everything can be recycled and badly damaged materials end up in the trash recycling.

Express checks

Floating Collection

The management of the collection also means that newly purchased items are distributed equitably across the three facilities, with some exceptions in meeting particular demands.  But, you might say, why is it that when I want a particular book, I see that all copies of that book are at Council Tree Library, for example.  Contrary to what you may think, it is not because librarians decided to favor Council Tree over the other two branches with a popular title.

When a patron takes out a book (or other materials) at the Old Town branch and returns it at Council Tree, that book stays at Council Tree until someone borrows it and returns it to Old Town. In other words, sometimes several copies of a book may actually be either “resting” at Council Tree or circulating through another branch.  Soon it makes its way back to Old Town or Harmony, usually by a patron’s use of “Hold.”

The floating collection model is a decision based on budgetary concerns that also makes it easier for patrons to return books and other library items to a branch or dropbox most convenient for them. Particularly in times of tightening budgets the reason for the “floating collection” is simple: the Library has saved over $30,000 annually by reducing couriers to transfer materials from branch to branch. In cost-benefit terms, it is a reasonable decision.

Library books and other materials may look as though they are just sitting on the shelves waiting for someone to come by and borrow them, but actually the collection is very dynamic, constantly being looked at and evaluated by the staff, added to or withdrawn as needs come and go.  The staff not only helps patrons face-to-face out front but works behind the scenes to make Poudre River Public Library District what it is – a collection responsive to user needs, current and future.

The staff welcomes suggestions and comments from users of the Library – feedback is an important part of how librarians successfully manage and maintain a useful and relevant library collection.

#   #   #

And here’s a quote from an early supporter of the public library:

“I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the county under regulations as would secure their safe return in due time.”

Thomas Jefferson, 1809

Happy Reading!

behind the scenes, literacy, material collection Read More

Behind the Scenes at Poudre Libraries – Selecting Materials

Posted on July 17, 2013 by Library Staff in Library Blog, News

Have you ever wondered how the Poudre River Public Library selects books and other materials for purchase?  How do the librarians know what the public wants or needs?  How do they keep the collection up-to-date and relevant to current interests of the community?  Clearly, the collection, which includes not only books but periodicals, reference materials, electronic databases, DVDs and audio books, among many other items, is the foundation of any public library.  What role do the librarians play in all this?

We see librarians out front answering questions and being helpful in finding materials we need, but much of the work of maintaining a good collection goes on behind the scenes.

Carts galore in the new office

Librarians are faced with making choices for their library collection out of an almost unlimited number of items.  How do they do it?  Tova Aragon, Collections Manager for Poudre River Public Library District, says, “Our job is to anticipate demand, add depth to the collection by reading reviews in professional journals and responding to suggestions from patrons.”

Aragon has two full-time staff to help with the selection process:  Marian Sawyer, who is in charge of Children’s Collection Development, and Becky Sheller, who is responsible for Adult Collection Development.  In addition, other librarians on the staff, with specialized interests, select books in their area of expertise on a part-time basis. These areas include: Spanish, Juvenile and Adult books and movies, Teen materials, Business/job materials, Romance paperbacks and Music CDs.

Selection of Library Materials

Basically, librarians follow three basic steps in choosing materials for the library collection:

  • Anticipate demand:  if we take books as an example, the goal is to have a particular book on order by the time it is reviewed in the New York Times or an author is interviewed on TV.  The librarian gets pre-publication alerts from professional journals like Publishers Weekly or the Library Journal and from the library’s vendors.
  • Read professional reviews:  All librarians involved in the selection process rely on reviews from professional journals.  Forty percent of Adult fiction is selected based on reviews; 65-70% of Children’s books is review-based.  Teen and Business selection is also driven by reviews. The librarians believe this adds depth and flavor to the collection.
  • Suggestions from patrons:  The Library receives about 70 to 80 suggestions from patrons each week.  Each suggestion is reviewed and forwarded to the appropriate librarian selector, who then decides whether or not to purchase, based on the collection development policy and collection needs. On average, 60% of suggestions from patrons are selected.

Aragon emphasized that librarians do not rigidly follow these steps in selecting library items.  The selection process relies not only on professional reviews and knowledge about a variety of other resources but also on the librarian’s own judgment, based on her/his professional training, breadth of personal familiarity with books and other materials and an awareness of the diverse needs and interests of the community.

Next post will be about how the collection is managed and maintained…

Happy Reading!

behind the scenes, literacy, material collection Read More
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