From the Director…

Library Director’s Report - November 2007 

A group of representatives from City Departments that directly interface with youth (Library, Police and Parks, Recreation and Community Services) have been meeting on a monthly basis, under the direction of the Deputy City Manager, since March 2007. The purpose of the “Youth Agenda” meeting came from comments by a City Council member after last year’s budget hearings. The Council member felt that residents see the City providing youth services, not an individual department, and so we should have one City youth “agenda” instead of separate and possibly duplicate programs from various departments. In addition, we learned that many of the Youth Agenda participants were also being asked to be involved in a number of other “youth focused” groups and meetings including:

• City Manager and Police Chief Gang Intervention Program
• Bridge to a Better Community Planning Committee and Events
• Redwood City 2020 Grant for Police Support at Hoover and Kennedy
• John Gardner Center Youth Archive

We agreed a better understanding on how all these pieces worked together would be useful and whether these various efforts are tied together and if so how. In recommending the asset based approach (included in Board packet), we understand specific funding sources may require different language, but we believe that asset building needs to be the underlying philosophy for City sponsored programs. Recommendations include:

• Ask that each City Department endorse the “Youth Assets” as a common language or framework for our work with youth. This represents a paradigm shift in thinking toward support for healthy assets vs. fixing a problem, raising a test score or keeping kids out of jail.
• Develop a common set of demographic information about the youth in our community from existing reports to inform the City Council, Boards and Commissions and department staff.
• Develop a joint report to Council on the Youth Assets approach and ask for their endorsement of the concept and our Committee.

This initiative reflects very positively on the Library, as we continue to collaborate to better help our youth and families succeed.

Community Partners

• Our “Campaign for the Redwood Shores Opening Day Collection” is advancing quickly with year-end momentum. Within two-weeks of the successful November 3rd “Neighborhood Blitz” 39 new gifts were received for the library, totaling nearly $10,000. With the total now at $340,000 we have $160,000 to go in the last push for completion of the Campaign. We are very thankful for our community partners who have graciously provided $50,000 for our Fall Match Program: Wells Fargo Bank; Max Keech Family; Lyngso Family; Peter & Paula Uccelli Foundation; San Mateo Credit Union; Rosanne, Julia, and Lydia Foust; and Lawyers for the Library. Gift matching is available for personal contributions up to $1,000 until 12/31/07 or as long as the match money lasts.  For more information, please go to www.rclfdn.org
• With the Library’s help, the Redwood City School District Libraries received an annual ongoing $10,000 donation for books.
• Families with pre-school age children from Taft School and Hoover School are visiting the Fair Oaks Library. This is part of an excellent collaboration and partnership with the Fair Oaks Library and the San Mateo County Library Family Literacy Coordinator.
• The Fair Oaks Library hosted three health workshops in Spanish in partnership with El Concilio de San Mateo – Nuestro Canto de Salud. The one hour health workshops were held on November 13, 20 and 27, providing health information to families with children ages 0-18.
• Maria Diaz will set up meetings with the coordinators of the after school programs at the schools in the Fair Oaks Service area to explore collaborative opportunities.
• Maria Diaz has also met Cristina Marquez from Garfield School to discuss new partnership and programs to increase membership, circulation and visitors to the Fair Oaks Library. 
• February 13, 2008, has been set as the time to celebrate Traveling Storytimes’ 100,000 listener, and to honor the many volunteers that have made such an achievement possible. Jan had articles published in Parenting on the Peninsula and The Bookmark, in hopes of attracting additional volunteers. The holiday book give away is underway with over 600 books already distributed to the volunteers.
• The library’s “mobile bookstore” hit the streets once more, to celebrate the Hometown Holidays festival with our fellow community members. The Friends of the Library donated their time and efforts to sell books donated by community members in support of the library, and the Archives Committee offered for sale copies of our newly published, definitive book about the history of our great community, Redwood City: A Hometown History. (Also on sale at the library and Amazon.com – a great gift!)

 Scott Bauer will be the new Deputy Director of Marin County Library. This is a very good career step for Scott, and reflects well on Redwood City. He has been instrumental in our successes and we wish him all the best.

Carla Nolasco has been appointed as a regular part-time Library Assistant at the Fair Oaks Library. Carla has a vast amount of customer service experience and knowledge of the Redwood City community; she is also a Redwood City resident. She has worked as a long-term Casual City employee for the Library since February 1997.

Construction of the Redwood Shores Library is approximately 45% complete. Library staff is working on various aspects of the project. This month staff met to review the preliminary sign package and the preliminary furniture package. Staff is also working on various IT issues, the Interpretive Center and library materials acquisitions. Construction progress can be viewed by webcam accessed through www.rcpl.info

PLS began testing some network traffic shaping algorithms to try and prioritize self-checks and other crucial traffic on the network. Slow speeds have not only resulted in poor customer service, but faulty communication between our checkout units and the database. This is just the start of that effort, so there’s not much success to report. A plan to retool the network (as opposed to fixes to existing) has been approved. This will hopefully create the bandwidth needed for current and future traffic.

Sarah, Roz and Maria visited Sequoia High School, set up a table, and like a college campus (eg: credit cards), signed up 61 teens for library cards. They also talked with hundreds of teens about the new remodel in the teen area, teen programming, the databases, teen literature, and volunteering. Menlo-Atherton and Woodside High Schools have expressed interest in a library card registration drive at their schools sometime next year. These drives will be held regularly on the school campuses.

The library’s MySpace page now has 133 friends, and at least one of those friends is a library teen! 

Jacky created a paper version of the Children’s Program evaluation form that will give us feedback on how our programs are meeting the expectations of our library patrons.

It’s great the library holds regular meetings, open to the public. This is the sort of programming that is great for the library: content is done by others, with our contribution, space and audience. We host the monthly Peninsula Writer’s Bloc for readings from participants, as well as opportunities to learn more about the craft of writing and getting published. We also host the Society of Children’s Writers and Illustrators.

Building Community:

Old Bridge library unites generations
Home News Tribune Online 11/26/07

http://www.thnt.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071126/999999999/711260424  

OLD BRIDGE — You’re never too old to rock out.

Just ask the 10 Old Bridge seniors who took up Guitar Hero III as part of the Old Bridge Library’s “Senior Spaces” program on Nov. 8.

Seniors, alongside teenage volunteers, tested their mettle in the ubiquitous air-guitar video game and various other games available for the Nintendo Wii gaming system as the first step in the library’s plan to make seniors more technologically proficient and to include them in what Allan Kleiman, assistant director of the Old Bridge Public Library, called the inevitable redesign of libraries.

“We want to get them to feel they are part of the 21st century library and not left out,” Kleiman said.

Kleiman said libraries have undergone enormous technological changes in the past decade, citing Internet databases, more electronic media access and, of all things, video-game stations.

Kleiman said gaming in libraries is becoming more and more common but using the video game to slowly introduce modern technology to seniors is a relatively new idea.

“This is a lot less frightening to play with than learning to use a computer,” he said.

Kleiman said seniors should be able to snap a photo with a digital camera or surf the Internet or use the various other technologies surrounding them. The program, he hopes, will provide the catalyst for further learning and inclusion among that community.

“We really felt this would be a way we could get seniors to get excited using new technology,” Kleiman said.

With the influx of technology available to more recent generations libraries are moving beyond books, using alternate means to get people through the doors. Though it may seem counterintuitive, using video games to bring in younger people to the library may increase the amount of books being checked out, according to Kleiman.

“If you can’t get anyone in the library you can’t get them to borrow a book,” Kleiman said.

The program bridges gaps between the ages as well, Kleiman said, allowing teenagers well versed in the ways of the Wii to teach the seniors. The two groups will find a common denominator in competition over the video games. Kleiman said the age segregation that is often found in libraries breaks down when young and old are united by the desire to win.

Kleiman said, though the seniors are undoubtedly learning from the program, they are not the only students in the room. The teenagers learn a bit about life from the seniors.

“It gives them a whole sense of what growing older can mean,” Kleiman said, challenging the stereotype of the elderly in nursing homes.

Kleiman said libraries have been losing out to the giant booksellers in recent years. But he is hopeful that some progressive ideas combined with a library’s natural assets will bring people back to libraries.

“We think we are more competitive in many ways,” Kleiman said, “because we are still free.”

The Wii program will be held again sometime during the school’s holiday break and will continue twice a month. The library owns two Wii stations and can accommodate eight people at a time. Kleiman said more stations could be added in time.

That does not mean the library is going the way of the video arcade. Kleiman said the foundation of the traditional library is still intact but the video games for seniors help “make them feel relevant to what people are doing.”