End of the Fiscal Year

You probably won't find any parties on June 30, the eve of the new fiscal year. There won't even be any last minute scramblings for us as the year winds down. Hopefully we have enough postage to last. We averted a materials line item crisis, thanks to alert staff.

FY09 was the year of constant parking complaints, the loss of some talented staff members, and termites. FY10 promises to be a scary year for funding, since the State Library's & Enrich Iowa's appropriations can have a direct impact on us. Our LSA's contribution to our budget will be smaller, and will have an impact on our materials budget. City funding is lean, but at least no less than last year.

We try to increase and improve our services. In the private sector, this is often rewarded with increased revenue. For us, the reward has to be more intangible. A patron's smile of satisfaction, a Board's words of approval, an increase in statistics, good media coverage...And then back to the spreadsheet, facing the ever-rising cost of books and overhead versus the constant need to reduce costs. Happy New Year!

WPL's New Amazon Wishlist

When times get tough, good staff members get creative. And that's exactly what they did. When faced with too many titles and not enough funds, the Waterloo Public Library staff created some Amazon wishlists.

We are fortunate to have many community members who help make our materials collection more robust, either by contributing materials, or money that can be used to buy materials. We've tried to make it even easier.

Visit our website (http://www.waterloo.lib.ia.us/wishlist) to see how to do it. Then, if you're so inclined, visit Amazon to give your library a gift that the entire community can enjoy. One contributor will win a free dinner for two at CU, one of our great downtown restaurants.

2009 All Iowa Reads

I'm finding it rather daunting to blog, after my preliminary foray into Twitter. I kind of like the limitation of characters. Keeps it to the point.

This month I enjoyed participating in two All Iowa Reads events. The Rope Walk, by Carrie Brown, is a great discussion book. That's not to say everyone enjoyed the story, or believed that a 10-year-old girl is really that perceptive, or all of the other nuances that made us go "Hmm?" as we read. But it's a great discussion book, and it's not always easy to find one of those. If your book is looking for a title, this is a good one. And of course, you can still enjoy it as a non-book-club title.

All Iowa Reads is administered by the Iowa Center for the Book. The program encourages all Iowans to read and discuss the year's chosen title. The Rope Walk is the 2009 choice, and I think it's one of the best ever. It does fall into the "precocious motherless girl coming of age" genre, and there do seem to be a lot of those around, but the characters are great, and the writing is very good. The Waterloo & Cedar Falls Public Libraries do have multiple copies for your club members to borrow. Let me know what you thought of it.

I was elated to hear yesterday that Olive Kittredge, by Elizabeth Strout, won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. This one received a big "thumbs up" from our WPL Book Group when we read it earlier this year.

....Wishing you were in a book group? Or wanting to join another book group? The WPL & CFPL book groups are open to all, and we have a lot of fun. We talk about this month's book, and anything else we're reading. Join us!

National Library Workers' Day

Today is National Library Workers' Day. There's no parade, no special greeting card, no presidential proclamation. But--we don't really care about that. Library workers do what they do because they love the library and what it entails. The thrill of the hunt for information, the satisfaction of introducing the customer to just the right resource, the joy of hearing satisfied buzz as a group leaves a library program. That's what it's about.

The Waterloo Public Library staff, consisting of 29.68 dedicated FTEs, circulated 413,525 items last year. We facilitated 259,144 patron visits, and answered 78,400 reference inquiries. We deal in statistics, but our real measure of success is your return visit. We probably don't feel very comfortable giving ourselves a pat on the back, but today, let's make an exception.

We hope you feel welcome at the WPL--stop in often!

National History Day

Last Friday, I served as a judge at the Grout Museum for the local level of the National History Day competition. I make no secret of my preference for history lessons sprinkled with some fiction to make them more interesting, but felt that agreeing to judge would be a nice thing to do.

And I'm really glad I did. Over 300 middle-school-aged youth were part of the competition. It was hard to judge, but that was only because the entries in my area were really great. The kids had obviously put their hearts into researching and presenting their individual within a venue designed to capture their audience. According to the website, every day is National History Day, and in addition to encouraging students in "discovering the exciting world of the past," NHD also serves to help develop researching skills, critical and problem-solving skills, builds self-confidence and much more.

Often in my position I hear primarily about the problems with teens. And as a librarian, I do have a particular interest in research. So, it was wonderful to see this age group hand over a multi-page annotated bibliography. They'd done the research! It was mostly internet-based, and not necessarily sources I might have chosen, but I was also given the opportunity to make suggestions. There are thousands of students out there who are interested in excelling at more than their MySpace profile (not that there's anything wrong with MySpace....)! And I was handed a great opportunity to reach out and humbly contributed to their research skills. I was impressed, and I enjoyed my history lessons

Performance Evaluations

I hate performance evaluations, even for excellent employees. I like numbers, I like other sorts of assessments, but it's just no fun for me to do performance evaluations. As a result, I procrastinate. I reward myself with a small piece of chocolate when one is completed. And the day seems brighter when they are all behind me for another year. No profound point to this paragraph, but I do think about library performance evaluations--we do get a little informal feedback. Not a lot, when you consider the number of people through the doors. Always feel free to offer feedback when you get the urge.

I am on disc 3 of the 7 disc set of "The Shack." Sometimes I read just to see what the fuss is about. I am hoping with this title that there's a big surprise coming, because so far, I'm not getting the fuss. I get the part about God, so far. But the conversation going on in the shack right now seems a little ... goofy. I'll stick with it, and assume there's a reward at the end.

Need a tutor?

Does your student need a tutor? Students of any age can now use their library card to access TutorVista, live online computer help available through the Waterloo Public Library. Visit our website and click on the TutorVista link. This is another way we use to link a learner with information.

Our first Chocolate Lovers Love the Library was a success! The Friends of the Library sold over 100 tickets to chocolate lovers of all ages. The event started a chocolate binge for me, but I've gone through withdrawal now. I survived, and I'm willing to do it again next year. The Friends will follow this fundraiser with another popular event, the Book Sale. The special preview for Friends members is on March 5, and the sale is open to the Public on March 6 & 7. It is very inexpensive to join the Friends if you would like to attend the preview, and the money goes for great things at the Library, like the Genealogy Gala. If you can't make get to the sale until the weekend, there will still be lots of great choices.