Monday, November 30, 2015

ALA Scholarship Giving Tuesday

Tuesday, December 1, 2015 is Giving Tuesday. Make a gift to the ALA Scholarship Program on Tuesday and use the hashtag #GivingTuesday or $LibrariesTransform to let others know you have given and encourage them to do likewise. Let's help our fellow South Dakotans go to library school and transform the lives of other South Dakotans.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

ALA Launches New E-Rate Website

ALA has launched a new website on the Library E-Rate. While the content will be expanded over the years to come, the website is live and ready for you to see. Go to http://libraryerate.com/ to access the new website.

The aim of the new website is to help libraries get E-Rate funding. The site currently has news about the E-Rate,  contact information for each state and territory, a way for individuals/libraries to submit content to the site, contact information for the site managers,  a short glossary, and some very brief information on it.

The content definitely needs to be expanded. If you have information on this topic, this could be a good way to contribute to the larger community of librarians - submit your knowledge to the site.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

ALA Launches Public Awareness Campaign - Libraries Transform


On October 29, 2015, ALA will launch its newest public awareness campaign themed Libraries Transform. Several resources are available to libraries who want to use this campaign to help their public become more aware of them.

“The goal of the Libraries Transform campaign is to change the perception that ‘libraries are just quiet places to do research, find a book, and read’ to a shared understanding of libraries as dynamic centers for learning in the digital age. Libraries of all kinds foster individual opportunity that ultimately drives the success of our communities and our nation.” (quoted from the press release linked below)

Visit the Libraries Transform campaign website.

Use the press release for the campaign.

Graphics for use on your websites and publications can be found in the Libraries Transform Toolkit.

Hi,

My name is Elizabeth Fox and I am your representative to ALA. I will be serving in this capacity from 2015 to 2018. I plan to use this blog to update you on what is going on in the ALA Council. While I won't overwhelm your e-mail boxes with the e-mails from that group, I will try to give you a weekly overview of discussions. This is a very active list but can usually be summarized quickly. For instance, this week, the most e-mails have been about when a state's conference is and most state representatives responded to the list with when their 2016 conference was. For those in the know, however, that information was already gathered by ALA staff and you can find information on most states' conferences here: http://www.ala.org/conferencesevents/planning-calendar.

One other think of importance was shared over this list this week - the launching of a new public relations campaign by ALA called Libraries Transform. There is a whole post on this issue.

During ALA Annual and Midwinter conferences, I will try to update the blog daily with any news or decisions from that day.

If you ever have any questions about what is going on or what ALA can do for you, please feel free to contact me.