TBLC News

The Florida Library Association and the Public Library Association are sponsoring a workshop — “Politics and Networking” — in the Certified Public Librarian Administrator series in Orlando on November 13 and 14, 2007. ”Politics and Networking” will be presented by June Garcia and Sandra Nelson.

The two-day program will provide working librarians with the skills and knowledge they need to understand their local political environment and to develop and implement effective action plans. The program is interactive and includes a variety of group exercises based on a case study about a medium-sized county library with multiple branches.

Click here for more information or to register for “Politics and Networking.”

Florida State Parks offer free admission in September when you show your library card or a library book, or with the donation of a new or gently used family-appropriate book.

Click here for more information.

The Association of College and Research Libraries, Florida Chapter (FACRL) 2007 fall program is Reinventing Outreach: The New Frontier. The program will be held at Edison College, Fort Myers, on October 26, 2007.

Click here for more information, including a registration form.

Information and an application form for three graduate student scholarships are also available on the website. If you know graduate students who are interested in academic libraries, please forward the page location to them.

On Sunday, August 18, Ask a Librarian intern Louis answered a question from a gentleman who needed genealogy books about Ohio. Louis guided the patron, who typed slowly due to a stroke, to some resources in his local library that could help him prepare to teach a class on the subject.

This might seem like a typical day and a typical question for Ask a Librarian — but it was so much more than typical. It was the 100,000th question answered through Ask a Librarian!

This is quite a landmark for the service. Since July 28, 2003, Ask a Librarian’s usage has been steadily growing. Of the 100,000 questions that we have answered, over 65,000 have been live chat sessions and over 38,000 have taken place in the past 10 months.

Congrats to everyone involved in making Ask a Librarian a success. Give yourself a high five!

Many libraries are faced with staff shortages in their cataloging departments, due to budget cuts or the scarcity of trained catalogers.

We offer several options to help you with your cataloging needs. Click here for more information about our cataloging services.

You’re invited!

Monday, Sept. 24, 2007
9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Crowne Plaza
10221 Princess Palm Ave.
Tampa, FL 33610
$25/person (includes breakfast and lunch)

Does your patron want something you don’t have? You may soon have hundreds of new ways to obtain it for him. Join us to discuss the exciting future of interlibrary loans, which includes getting materials for our patrons quickly and by any means necessary, and delivering those materials to our patrons in a way that is most convenient for them.

This could mean ordering a DVD from Netflix and having it mailed directly to the patron’s house, or purchasing a book from Amazon.com and giving the patron the option of keeping it or offering it to circulation.

To stay relevant in a world where our patrons can get anything they want with the click of a mouse, we must consider going drastically above and beyond traditional interlibrary loans to get them what they want.

Click here to register for this event.

Tampa Bay Library Consortium
2007 Annual Meeting
Friday, Nov. 2, 2007
9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Crowne Plaza
10221 Princess Palm Ave.
Tampa, FL 33610
$30/person (includes lunch)

In 1908, Henry Ford did something that would change the world — he made automobiles available to the masses. Although he did not invent the automobile, he made it affordable to average Americans, thus allowing people to better connect to other people and other parts of the country.

By making books, children’s programs, government services and technology available to the masses, libraries are doing the same thing 100 years later. Join us at our Annual Meeting to find out what we’ve done to change the world together over the past year.

We are excited to announce that David Lee King will be this year’s featured keynote speaker. David is a frequent speaker on Web 2.0/Library 2.0 topics, library Web sites and emerging digital technology. He is the digital branch and services manager at the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library in Kansas.

Click here to register for our Annual Meeting.

Congratulations to this year’s Sunshine State Library Leadership Institute participants, who graduated on August 3, 2007.

The Institute is one of several strategies developed to cultivate and enhance the leadership skills of Florida’s library staff.

Congratulations to the following TBLC members who graduated from the Institute:

Paul Alford, Citrus County
Ellen Cannon, TBLC
Diane Cary, Citrus County
Kevin Griffith, Pasco County
Kresta Harris, Okeechobee County
Judy Mullen, Manatee County
Euem Osmera, Largo
Patricia Pettijohn, USF St. Petersburg
Melissa Shimkus, Tampa-Hillsborough

Thank you to the following TBLC members who participated as mentors:

Carol Ann Borchert, USF Tampa
Ava Ehde, Manatee County
Susan Oliver, Tampa-Hillsborough
Charlie Parker, TBLC
Derrie Perez, USF Tampa

Many folks met Florida author James O. Born at the FLA Conference in April. James was awarded the Florida Book Awards Gold Medal for Popular Fiction for Escape Clause in March. 

He is very popular in the Florida literary community and on the Friends book talk and book festival circuit.

Click here for more information about James O. Born or to schedule him to speak at your event.

Click here for more information about the Florida Book Awards.

Sign up by August 10 to receive “early bird” registration rates: $210 for SOLINET members; $260 for non-members.

Increase the efficiency of your technical services operation.

“Evaluating Technical Services” – taking place on Friday, August 31, at USF in St. Petersburg – covers all technical services, including acquisitions, cataloging and physical processing. You will learn to measure productivity; determine unit costs; and evaluate work-flow options, staffing and outsourcing. Please bring a calculator to the class.

Click here for more information or to register for this workshop.