Juneteenth

Karen Maj, Bookmobile

Tisha and Nancy at the Juneteenth event on June 20 at Eaton Plaza with the Community Bookmobile in the background. Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States.

Carpool and Win

Roberta Barton, Headquarters


Carpooling is not only good for the environment - it can also qualify you to win fabulous prizes, including a monthly $1000 cash prize. Plus, each entry qualifies you for an annual Grand Prize Drawing to win a clean fuel car and other prizes! Go to www.valleyrides.com to learn more.

NOYS: SRP Survey!

PLEASE fill out the SRP survey.

We will begin planning for next year soon and we would really like as much branch input as possible.

Tell us what worked and what didn’t in your branch, and what you’d like for next year….this is your chance to tell us how you’d like to see next year’s summer reading program planned, from performers to prizes. Make sure your opinion is counted!

Thank You!

Service Upgrades

Marie Stanley, Headquarters

Part of the Central Library underwent a makeover this summer in an effort to provide better customer service and acknowledge the changing needs of Library users. The former Readers Services space was reorganized to consolidate public computers and computer assistance functions in a new, more spacious area. A new Computer Help Desk and self-service print release kiosk are now located on the first floor near the Mariposa entrance next to Central’s 30 minute computers. The information finding and periodicals assistance functions of the old Reader’s Services Department have been added to the Reference desk. The Career Center was also relocated nearer the Reference Desk. Additional hour-use computers remain in the Lab on the second floor.

Coming this fall will be the addition of the new Foundation Center collection in the Reference Department area. The Central Library was recently designated a Cooperating Collection and will receive many new publications on grant research and non-profit organization management. The Library already subscribes to online grant research databases from the Foundation Center.

By the Numbers

Roberta Barton, Headquarters

Literacy Services recently submitted its year-end report to the State Library, and the numbers were inpressive as well as interesting.

• 243 active learners remaining at end of reporting period

• 203 active tutors remaining at end of reporting period

• 10,936 total volunteer hours contributed

• 66 learners met at least one goal, including 11 who passed part or all of the GED, 21 who got a new library card, and 47 who found a job

• 108 families served by Families for Literacy program

• 993 children's books given to Families for Literacy families

• 624 parents served by the AprendoVan

• 1,693 children's books given to AprendoVan families

• 134 English as a Second Language adults served in Mendota

Especially notable are the learners who passed part or all of the GED and who found new jobs. Both achievements set new records for the library. The fact that so many learners were able to find employment in this devastating economy is definitely a testament to the value and success of our hard-working Literacy staff and volunteers. Keep up the great work!

NOYS: And the Winner Is...

With the end of summer reading program, so wraps up our first annual staff summer reading program. We are amazed at the work you all put into it. In the course of eight weeks, staff read more than 500 books. Wow!

And now, the winners:

1st place: Gina, Woodward Park (123 books read; 369 points; pictured left)

2nd place: Roberta, Sunnyside (81 books read; 243 points)

3rd place: Lisa, Sunnyside (74 books read; 222 points)


Thanks to everyone who participated. And for those of you who didn't, the website will still be available for you throughout the year. It's a great resource for staff who need to recommend books to teens.

A special thanks to the Staff Association, who helped to supplement the prizes donated by Youth Services staff. We're already looking forward to next summer--in what kind of staff SRP would you like to participate? Children's books? Adult? Audio?

NOYS: Fun Stuff for Teens

In these times of budget crisis, it’s even more crucial to spend every dollar wisely. Just as Adult Services has changed their approach to collection development, Youth Services is making some changes in selection as well. To view areas of responsibility among the YS Collection Development Team, go here: http://intra.fresnolibrary.org/com/child/index.html.

Among the changes in our approach to youth collections is the emphasis on selecting more fun nonfiction for teens. Circulation stats reveal that the majority of curriculum-based teen nonfiction rarely circulates, while entertainment-based nonfiction has a much higher turnover rate. This doesn’t mean we’ll stop buying homework-type books altogether, but it does mean that those books will primarily reside in bigger branches. Meanwhile, smaller branches will slowly transition into more of a popular browsing collection, much like their fiction counterparts. As always, ready reference resources and our complete set of online reference tools will be available at all branches.

This is just one of the changes we’re making in order to serve our community better and spend our money more wisely. We’ll keep you updated in further NOYS posts about other ways we’re working to create useful and well-used collections.

For samples of "fun nonfiction", check out these staff summer reading program reviews or our recommendations on read.watch.listen.

NOYS: SRP 2009 wrap-up

Sunday was the final day of another successful Summer Reading Program for FCPL.

Now that everyone has been so creative and had such a fine time expressing themselves, it's time for us to begin planning for 2010. Your input is very important during the planning stage. Please take a moment to complete the SRP survey this year. The survey is completely online and hosted by Survey Monkey.

Please be sure to enter all the registration slips and grand prize drawing slips into Summer Reader as soon as possible. If you will not be able to accomplish this at your branch, please send all the slips in to Youth Services. We do need your grand prize drawing slips…the grand prize drawings for each branch will be done by Youth Services. Please do not hold the grand prize drawing for the Borders or Barnes & Noble gift cards at your branch!

Thank You!

NOYS: The Final Stretch!

We can see the finish line for the Staff Summer Reading Program!

If you have been reading feverishly, striving to win this, stop doing that on Sunday, August 9th at midnight.

All of the reviews will be posted by Wednesday, August 12th and the winners will be announced and the rewards given out by Friday, August 14. (don't worry, I'll get NOYS-y about the winner!)

For you last-minute, dark horse competitors, enter your reviews here.

To read the MANY reviews submitted for this, look on this part of the Teen Web Page.

NOYS: Feeling Challenged?

I hope you can agree with me when I say that we have a great collection of materials available for patron use. There are so many diverse viewpoints, styles of presentation, and subject varieties available in our collection, it can sometimes seem overwhelming!

Questions and inquiries can arise about whether we “should” have something in our collections. If a question like this is brought to your attention about an item, please offer to provide a Materials Inquiry form to the patron so that they can fill it out, and you can send it (along with the item in question) to the proper person:

For Adult materials – Jeanne Johnson

For Children’s or Teen materials – Lisa Eckman

They will handle it from there.

NOYS: SRP registration

According to the numbers in Summer Reader, SRP participation is down by about 50%, but I don't think these numbers reflect the reality in our libraries.

This is a reminder for busy library staff to send in the registration and grand prize drawing slips.

Send them to Youth Services and they will be entered into Summer Reader, but if you don’t want to send them to us, you need to enter them into the Summer Reader program yourselves.

Even when the kids and teens use the print reading logs, we absolutely need their registration slips and grand prize slips when they finish the 3 books.

This is the only way we can correctly judge the success of the program and plan for next year. For the numbers to be accurate, and so the kids and teens get a chance to win the grand prizes, let's get all of the slips into the system!

NOYS: THIS is why we are all so busy!

Youth Services submitted our yearly statistics on time (as I'm sure everyone else did!) and the numbers look pretty impressive to me.

YS staff did outreach for 684 various programs and locations last year (including Daycare Bookmobile storytimes) and we visited with more than 18,000 children and nearly 5,000 teens.

Now, this is only the people Youth Services saw over the past year through our outreach efforts, it doesn't even begin to count the multitudes y'all in the branches encountered and assisted all year long.

We all meet so many patrons throughout the year, both in and outside the Libraries. I cannot help but be proud of what FCPL does, and when you look at your numbers (and ours), I hope you are too.

We are AWESOME!