New Jersey State Library

September 2005 LDB Monthly Report -  Updates on:

 Farewell| Awards | Grants Information | New Jersey Knowledge Initiative | Statewide Marketing  Youth Services | Marketing and Outreach |
 New Jersey Digital Highway | Partners |Conferences and Workshops |
 Library Laws of NJ| Per Capita State Aid | Statistics for NJ Public Libraries

Farewell to Susan Briant, LDB Consultant
The LDB wishes Susan Briant a fond farewell as she takes on her new position as Library Director at Burlington County College.

Susan?s official last day coincided with the final day of this year?s New Jersey Library Trustee Institute of which she had been the lead in its inception and development. Susan had been the driving force in promoting trustee education; serving as a visionary and leading the initial efforts in partnership with the NJLTA and State Library staff, Peggy Cadigan and Janice Holt.

Susan also served as the liaison to NJLTA over the past three years. Trustee education was a passion with Susan. She said ?it was a privilege to work with NJLTA and to be paid to work with trustees, a group that I love that contributes so much toward moving our libraries ahead.? She especially enjoyed visiting library boards on the road to work with them on customized trustee training.

She was responsible for overseeing a $500,000 grant that was awarded to the State Library by the Institute of Museum and Library Services to conduct a recruitment campaign in conjunction with Rutgers School of Communication, Library and Information Sciences and the Central Jersey Regional Library Cooperative. This grant allowed ten urban library staff to attend Thomas Edison State College to work on their bachelors' degrees; nine other staff to attend Rutgers to get their masters degree in library science and one staff member to begin work on a Ph.D. at Rutgers. She also spent much time in preparing the IMLS Recruitment grant for the interim and future grant administrators. We wish her best of luck!

Awards: New York Times Librarian of the Year Award

Kathleen Moeller-Peiffer, Deputy Director of the Library Development Bureau, represented the New Jersey State Library on the selection committee held at the Times office in New York City on September 21. Four public librarians from New Jersey were chosen for this honor, along with colleagues from across the United States. The awards ceremony will be held at the Times on November 16.

Grants information
Gates Foundation Grant Program

PALINET conducted 12 programs entitled ?The Instructional Librarian: Getting Your Patrons Online with Effective Instructional Design? throughout the state this month as part of the Gates Training Grant program. Over 100 public library staff attended these workshops.  

Reaching LDB?s objective to complete the implementation of the Gates Training Grant, the final Training Grant program was held on September 13. ?Poppies, Flying Monkeys and Good Witches: The Future of Libraries? was presented to an audience of over 100 public library staff by Stephen Abram, Vice President for Innovation at SIRSIDynix. http://www.njstatelib.org/LDB/Gates/index.php

 kpeiffer@njstatelib.org

NJ Knowledge Initiative

Susan Kaplan met with state business leaders from the NJ Commission on Science & Technology, Economic Development Authority, Business Incubator Managers? Network, and the Small Business Development Centers.  Susan promoted NJKI at the Greater Princeton Chamber of Commerce Business Networking Expo and an Innovation Roundtable held by Congressmen Holt and Menendez.  Susan and Stacey Bleistein conducted NJKI Demo Day at the Technology Center of New Jersey incubator.

Susan consulted to the State Library of Connecticut and the Delaware Academy of Medicine on strategy for acquiring statewide database funding. njki.org. skaplan@njstatelib.org

Statewide Marketing

NJSL Youth Consultant Bonnie Kunzel and NJSL Marketing and Outreach Specialist Nancy Dowd met with YA Librarians to discuss a new teen-centered approach to the Super Librarian campaign.  The plan is to publish a comic book that will include the winning back story entry as well as a story involving the Super Librarian and a male counterpart.  The projected audience is young teens. The script has been written by Library Director David Lisa, West Long Branch Public Library and Manny Rosca, Somerset County Library. Once the final script has been approved artists from Parker and Parker will begin the drawings. The script is geared for readers grade five and older. http://www.superlibrarian.org/

Contact: ndowd@njstatelib.org

Youth Services

Empowering Teens
NJSL Youth Consultant Bonnie Kunzel attended the Empowering Teens program at Ocean County Library, Toms River Branch. The program sponsored by the OCL Young Adult Department featured a keynote speaker and workshops that focused on teen issues. The Editor of Voice of Youth Advocates Journal (VOYA) was there, as well as a representative of New York Library Association. The workshop which was generated by the teen input had a capacity filled audience comprised of about 150 teens and adults.

Summer Reading Wrap Up
NJSL Youth Consultant Bonnie Kunzel attended the joint Summer Reading wrap up and committee meeting (2005, 2006, 2007) at NJLBH, including a Pizza lunch as a thank you to the hard-working members of these committees. April Judge, the President of NJLA, emphasized its on-going support of Statewide Summer  Reading. 
bkunzel@njstatelib.org

Marketing and Outreach

NJKI Branding
As the NJKI enters its next stage, a marketing plan outlining the initial goals has been presented to the NJKI committee and designs have been initiated for branding and promotional campaigns.

LDB staff members met with the NJKI committee to finalize marketing strategies for the implementation and promotion of NJKI.  The plan?s major objectives are to register and train eligible businesses and the staffs at academic and public libraries; raise awareness of NJKI in the academic community, with public library customers and to the general public.

NJSL Marketing and Outreach Specialist Nancy Dowd designed the branding package for NJKI that includes templates for the letterhead, PowerPoint slides and boilerplates to be used on email correspondence.  In addition, initial designs for promotional materials have been created.

NJSL Web Site
NJSL Marketing and Outreach Specialist Nancy Dowd met with NJSL Webmaster Ben Weaver to go over redesign ideas for the main page of NJSL?s website and LDB?s web presence. Ben will begin to work on creating new pages and expects to launch the new site by December.

SHHH...Your Image is Showing: Hollywood Looks at Librarians

Nancy Dowd and Susan Kaplan of the LDB, joined Regional Directors Connie Paul, CJRLC, and Cheryl O?Conner, INFOLINK RLC, at the East Brunswick Public Library to present speaker Jan LaBeause who gave a presentation about the role of libraries and librarians in the movies. A guided discussion exploring ideas for the direction of future marketing campaigns took place after Jan?s presentation. Special guest, Long Branch Public Library Director David Lisa, was on hand as one of the co-authors of the script for the Super Librarian Comic Book. ndowd@njstatelib.org

NJ Digital Highway
State Library Digitization Grants ? Susan Kaplan and Kathi Peiffer completed pre-contract negotiations. Three grants were awarded to Atlantic County Library, Jersey City Public Library, and Paterson Public Library, to digitize collections on immigration for the Digital Highway. A training workshop was conducted for grant recipients by Rutgers University Libraries staff.  The newly reorganized Outreach Workgroup met to plan promotion of the NJDH to cultural heritage collection owners and user audiences. http://www.njdigitalhighway.org/ skaplan@njstatelib.org

Partners Library Appreciation  Days
As families were busy with last minute back to school shopping this September, many still found the time to stop in at Barnes and Noble stores to show their support for libraries during Library Appreciation Days. The event held September 9 and 10 at all New Jersey Barnes and Noble stores, highlighted New Jersey libraries and raised over $8,000 toward next year?s Summer Reading Program. The New Jersey State Library, the New Jersey Library Association, and Barnes & Noble teamed up for this ground breaking event. It was the first time the bookstores had ever sponsored a statewide fundraising event to support libraries. Barnes and Nobles in Connecticut and Massachusetts are looking to model the program with their state libraries.  Post event media releases are being distributed including templates for local libraries to distribute to their local newspapers.  

bkunzel@njstatelib.org ndowd@njstatelib.org

Conferences and Workshops

NJ Library Trustee  Institute
The NJ Library Trustee Institute was an overwhelming success with 224 trustees, county library commissioners and directors attending.

New this year was a revised edition of the New Jersey Public Libraries: A Manual for Trustees which was published and distributed at the Institute The new edition contains significant revisions and new material. This includes updated and expanded text in all chapters, as well as practical information that is often sought that has been added to the appendix.  The new manual is 132 pages whereas the 2002 edition had 78 pages.

The manual was edited by Susan Briant, Chairperson of a subcommittee of the New Jersey Library Trustee Association, which contributed content, including members Linda Seiler, Gail Dysleski, Dan Harmatz, Patricia Hannon, and Patricia Tumulty.  Janice Holt rendered invaluable assistance in formatting the document for publication.

The manual and a DVD of two core classes offered at the Institute will be distributed to the state?s 308 public library systems. The DVD is designed to foster easy access to the basic information needed to meet the responsibilities of trusteeship. The DVD features two sessions from the conference ?Library Law? and ?Library Finance and State Aid? given by Patricia Tumulty, Exec. Director of NJLA and Victoria Rosch, the NJ State Aid Coordinator and Law consultant. The second session was given by noted civil liberties lawyer and Past President of the California Library Trustee Association, Mary Minow, on developing policies that are legally enforceable. pcadigan@njstatelib.org

Exploring the Leadership Journey 

As an alumni of the New Jersey Academy of Library Leadership program, Kathleen Moeller-Peiffer was invited to attend the reunion program entitled ?Exploring the Leadership Journey? on September 19-21 with nationally renowned facilitator Maureen Sullivan.

NJSL Youth Consultant Bonnie Kunzel was a Presenter at the NJLA Children?s Services Section (CSS) Leadership workshop. Her topic was the role that CSS plays in State Library Programs, in particular the annual Youth Services Forum workshop.  Leaders from NJLA, including Pat Tumulty and April Judge, as well as chairs of various CSS committees joined me at the podium.  kpeiffer@njstatelib.org

Library Laws of NJ
On September 19, 2005, Pat Tumulty of NJLA, Diane Koye and Victoria Rosch of the State Library met with Marc Pfeiffer and Joe Valenti of the Department of Community Affairs to discuss the use of competitive contracting (N.J.S.A. 40A:11-4.1 through 4.5) rather than the public bidding process for the purchase of online integrated library systems.  The Department of Community Affairs recommends that public libraries use competitive contracting in lieu of public bidding or no bid contracts. vrosch@njstatelib.org

Statistics for NJ Public Libraries
The statistical table is being put in the proper format for posting to the NJSL Webpage.  Comparison tables are being created so that various NJSL publications may be updated with 2004 statistics. 

The annual survey is being revised to facilitate the gathering of statistical data for the National Center for Education Statistics.  Norma Blake, State Librarian, has requested the addition of a question regarding the number of active library cards. vrosch@njstatelib.org