Convoy of Hope

Terry Sterling, Headquarters

The library was well represented at the Convoy of Hope on November 7. More than 10,000 attendees were expected. Job Service Outreach Librarian Bernice Kao was joined by Community Bookmobile staff members Ron Martin and Karen Maj. Youth Services staff member Howard Hamm also assisted.

NOYS: 'Tis the Season

Looking for holiday books to recommend to kids & teens? Try these:

Picture Books

Grumpy Badgers Christmas by Paul Bright

The Hanukkah Mice by Steven Kroll

Hoppy Hanukkah! by Linda Glaser


I Love Christmas by Anne Walker

Merry Christmas, Splat by Rob Scotton

Tyrannoclaus by Janet Lawler

Who Would Like A Christmas Tree? By Ellen Bryan Obed







Inbetweens

Candlelight for Rebecca (an American Girl novel) by Jacqueline Dembar Greene

The True Gift: a Christmas Story by Patricia MacLachlan
 
Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Writing Thank-You Notes by Peggy Gifford




Children's Nonfiction

Paper Crafts for Christmas by Randel McGee

Winter Lights: a Season in Poems & Quilts by Anna Grossnickle Hines





Children's Fiction

 
The Christmas Genie by Dan Gutman

Confessions of a Bitter Secret Santa by Lara Bergen

Forever Rose by Hilary McKay





Teens

Ex-Mas by Kate Brian

Jingle Boy by Kieran Scott

Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle

Mistletoe: Four Holiday Stories by Hailey Abbott, Melissa de la Cruz, Aimee Friedman, and Nina Malkin

The Twelve Dates of Christmas by Catherine Hapka

Woman of the Year

Terry Sterling, Community Libraries - East

Sandi Kuykendall was honored by the Orange Cove Chamber of Commerce in October as the Woman of the Year for her years of service to the city through the library and her community involvement. Supervisor Judy Case presented Sandi with a statue noting her award as well as proclamations from the City of Orange Cove, Senator Diane Feinstein and State Representative Mike Villines. Congratulations, Sandi and thank you for your many years of dedication to Fresno County Library.

Annual Meeting Memories

Roberta Barton, Headquarters

Better late than never! Photos from the Annual Library Meeting (way back) in October are now posted on the P drive in the FHQ Public Relations folder in the ALM 09 subfolder. Relive the excitement of service awards, speakers, workshops, basket raffle and edible books!

You may recall that we did not take the time to announce New Hires and Promotions at this year's meeting. This very worthy group is noted here:

New Hires
Gabriela Calderon, LA I, Central - Circulation
Karen Coletti, Administrative Secretary - Confidential, Headquarters
Amirtee Gons, Librarian I, Orange Cove
Dwayne Howell, LA I, Fowler
Jamie Knudsen, LA II, Politi
Monica Lopez, Library Aide, Cedar-Clinton
Lee Martin, Maintenance Janitor, Maintenance
Emma Mejia, Librarian I, Mendota
Janet Murphy, LA II, Cedar-Clinton
Charlie Phanvong, Library Aide, Support Services - Mail/Delivery
William Paul Rayner, SLA, Adult Services - Corrections
Gwendolyn Roberts, Library Aide, Woodward Park
James Verdugo, LA I, Fig Garden

Promotions
Robyn Aguiar, Librarian II, Sunnyside
Faythe Arredondo, Librarian II, Kingsburg
Raman Bath, Librarian II, Caruthers
Laura Fleek, Librarian II, Fig Garden
Gary Jon Gibson, Support Tech II, Support Services
Brian Guenther, Librarian II, Adult Services
Howard Hamme, Librarian II, Youth Services
Kari Johnson, Librarian III, Youth Services
David Rodriguez, Network Systems Engineer IV, SJVLS - Computer Operations
Jonathan Waltmire, Librarian II, Selma

NOYS: Weeding YS collections...

...is a communal task.

I have inherited the opportunity to coordinate the weeding of our Library’s Children’s and YA collections, there are some changes being made to this process, and I want to give branch staff a heads-up about what the plans are:

1) To use a 3 year weeding schedule based on which branch has been weeded most recently. Basically this means that aside from Central (which gets weeded every year) the plan is to weed each branch once every three years in rotation.

2) To run a circulation report on Children’s and YA collections. This will be sent directly to the branch to help get staff started on pulling older and low circ items.

3) To follow up 1 to 2 months later with a visit to the branch by YS staff to help finish the weeding for that year, and assist in better planning what items will be replaced.

This has to be a collaborative effort, so that we can assist branch staff with information and help, and branch staff can provide vital input on their particular collection, because nobody knows their collections better than they do.

Watch this spot for more general weeding news in the future, and keep an eye out for e-mails from me outlining specific info for your branch in the near future (especially Auberry, Clovis, Kingsburg, Easton, Mendota, Sanger, and of course, Central).

Feel free to contact me with any questions about weeding, or really, about anything else you need to know.

Your Branch Support Specialist – Nancy Wirt

NOYS: Teen Read Week Reviews

While Teen reviews are submitted regularly on ReadWatchListen, the number of book reviews that Teens turned in during the month of October even impressed us!

There were more than 135 book reviews, which can be accessed here.

One of the reasons for such an increase is that during Teen Read Week (Oct 18-24), each book review that a teen submitted resulted in $2.00 being removed from their fines.

Remember that Teens can still review books, movies, music, video games...(whatever they'd like) at any time, and they send those here.

These reviews will be for the pure joy of information exchange, rather than library fine waiving.

NOYS: Teen's Top Ten Books

The voting results are in, and over 11,000 teens voted for this year's top 10 books in YALSA's annual Teen Top Ten event.

Paper Towns by John Green

Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare

Identical by Ellen Hopkins

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Wake by Lisa McMann

Untamed by P.C. and Kristin Cast

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

When you're trying to think of a good book to recommend to your patrons, suggest one of these since they are all “teen-tested and approved”.

NOYS: Tranquility FTW! (For The Win)

As you heard at the ALM, Tranquility led the way in boosting SRP participation this year with an 89% increase, from 44 participants in 2008 to 83 in 2009.
It was close this year - Ivy had an increase of 80%. Let’s hear it for the smaller branches!

Actually the total number of SRP participants dropped 16% from 12,415 in 2008 to 10,377 in 2009. These numbers are probably not accurate though since we only collected statistics online through Summer Reader, and if patrons did not return their registration slips, they were not counted.

Statistics are important, and not just because we'll have to do some guessing when calculating prize numbers next year. From the input we received from branch staff (and everyone involved) we know the SRP had more participants than our statistics show, but it will be more difficult to plan accurately for next year. Due to this issue and through popular demand, we will return to using the more accurate paper registration for next year and we will do our best to calculate how many logs/prizes/etc. we will truly need.

Thank you for your contributions and involvement in this popular program, and Congratulations again to Tranquility!

Have fun at your kick-off party in 2010!

NOYS: Teen Read Week 2009

Teen Read Week starts Sunday, October 18th and goes through Saturday, October 24th. To celebrate teens reading, ReadWatchListen (our teen website) is offering a special deal. Any Fresno County teen who reads a book and writes a review for it during Teen Read Week can get $2 deducted from their fines. Each review is good for $2.

Details can be found on our website here.

Youth Services will take care of posting all reviews and removing fines from library accounts.

What this means for you:

• Please spread the word to teens at your branch and help direct them to the review forms (online and paper—you can print this PDF if necessary).
• You should receive paper review forms in shipment in the next few days. Usually we require review submissions to be in online form but for this week only, we’ll accept the paper forms. Just make sure to send them to us in Youth Services as soon as possible.

Questions? Email or call Connie Urquhart at 488.3205. Thanks, and Happy Teen Read Week!

Fresno State Interns

Roberta Barton, Headquarters

The Public Information Office is fortunate to have two new interns this semester. Thalia Garcia and Alisha Vargas are public relations students helping the library with a variety of projects to earn community service hours and some hands-on promotion experience. Please join me in welcoming these two hard-working young ladies:

At 17 years of age and attending Fresno State University as freshman, there are very few opportunities granted to intern in a field such as PR (Public Relations) however, the Fresno County Library has allowed me the gateway to gain experience for my major in Mass Communications and Journalism, and for this I am utterly grateful. My name is Thalia Garcia and from an early age I have always known that my calling, my passion was writing. I am currently working on my own short novel with high hopes of having it published in the near future. I aspire to pursue a career as a journalist and in due time, become a prominent magazine editor and complete my goal to touch someone’s life with my creations. Although education is the most important priority in my life, I also have many hobbies outside of school which I absolutely enjoy.

Sports have dominated my life from a very young age and to this day I continue to practice them vigorously. From the age of 7 I have played soccer and upon reaching high school, nothing could please me more than to be recognized for my talent by being enlisted on the Varsity soccer team as a freshman. I continued that sport with fervor until my junior year, upon which I received 4 concussions and was forced to terminate my soccer career. Nevertheless, this tragedy allowed me to seek activity in other sports and so I have been enrolled in kickboxing as well as yoga and ballet, for the past two years.

Yet, I can honestly say that books are the most essential “beings” in my life. One can always find a book in my car, my purse, and hundreds in my room. I have created a personal library in my room, as a matter of fact, with many books ranging from different genres such as mysteries, westerns, suspense, and my personal favorites, romances. It is from these novels where I draw my motivation and interning in a library filled with thousands of wonderful adventures brings me sheer enjoyment. I look forward to learning a great deal in my time here at the Library and meeting new wonderful people who could further teach me and most importantly, inspire me to achieve my goals and reach my dreams.

My name is Alisha Vargas and I am an intern from CSU-Fresno. I am majoring in mass communications, with an option in public relations and may add a minor or certificate. I transferred from Fresno City as a business major and found a great home in public relations, which has offered a lot of much-needed career guidance.

Two of my passions are music and books. I learned to read at an early age and have been soaking up any book I can get my hands on ever since. I also love to attend live shows and my dream is to be a personal band manager (and/or promoter) in the music business.

This semester is proving to be a busy one, including being a full-time student, volunteering at the Fresno County library, as well as working as an intern with the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and stepping on-board as a member of a student-run public relations firm on campus. It has been a whirlwind experience and I have been enjoying every moment of it.

I would like to thank the library and Roberta Barton for making me feel welcome and giving me the opportunity to gain some wonderful work experience.

Promotional Calendar Ideas

Roberta Barton, Headquarters

The library promotional calendar has been reformatted and will be reposted to the Intranet. In the meantime, here are some suggested promotional opportunities for the remainder of 2009:

National Authors' Day - November 1
Grand Opening of New Orange Cove Library - November 7
TBLB Open House - November 7
Opening of Berlin Wall - November 9
Veterans' Day - November 11
America Recycles Day - November 15

November is also Diabetes Month and American Indian Heritage Month

Hmong New Year - December 26 through January 2, 2010

December is also a great time to highlight our annual Gingerbread House programs and all the winter holiday celebrations plus topics like stress management and cooking/party planning.

Professional Library Collection Has Moved

Camille Turner, Woodward Park

The Professional Library collection that has been located on the second floor of Central is being integrated into the regular collection.

Today library staff has access to professional issues, trends, discussions, etc., through a variety of internet resources. We have library blogs and online training, full text periodicals and more.

When the Fresno County Library Professional Library was created it was the main source of professional development resources.

The majority of the Professional collection has been available to the general public through Valley cat, besides library staff, but it has had low circulation. These materials will be incorporated into the Central collection and therefore also be browsed and perhaps enjoy greater use.

The Professional library currently spends much of its budget on professional periodicals that are routed. Many of these are now online in full text with very developed websites. I include a few of the links below. Accessing them is much faster than being on a list for routed print copy. If you want to remove yourself from a routing list please email Gaoneng Lee at Central who handles the routing of Central magazines.

In the next months we will be evaluating all the titles purchased by Professional Library funds to see if we can reduce the purchase of paper subscriptions and spend more resources on electronic sources.

Read the current issue of Library Journal, School Library Journal and Booklist on their websites:

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/

http://www.libraryjournal.com/

http://www.booklistonline.com/