This is the Press Release or this project. I will post more details for folks interested in starting one. But really, the best instructions for starting a seed library come from Richmond Grows. They have instructions, videos, and everything you need to put yours together.
Just as one seed can produce many seeds, one idea can change many lives. Free public libraries were revolutionary in their time because they provided access to books and knowledge that had not previously been available to a large segment of the population. A free seed lending library can also provide people with a chance to transform their lives and communities by providing access to fresh, healthy food that may not otherwise be available.
What is a Seed Library?
A seed library is a lot like a traditional library in a number of ways. Patrons of the seed library need to sign up, learn how to “check-out” seeds, and, of course, the library is free! The big difference is that instead of checking out books or DVDs like a traditional library, patrons can check out seeds to grow in their gardens at home. While, we don’t expect anyone to return the seeds to the library, we do hope that the residents of East Palo Alto learn to grow and share their fresh fruits and vegetables.
How Did it Start?
The East Palo Alto Seed Library began as an idea spurred by the Richmond Grows Seed Library at the Richmond Public Library. You can check this library out at www.richmondgrows.org. The EPA Library partnered with a great local non-profit called Collective Roots to bring a similar idea to the residents of EPA.
Who is Our Great Partner? Collective Roots is a local non-profit that “seeks to educate and engage youth and communities in food system change through sustainable programs that impact health, education, and the environment.” This group is also responsible for the East Palo Alto Farmer’s Market that is held every Saturday from 2-5pm in front of the EPA YMCA. They also work with youth and adults to design and sustain organic gardens on school and community sites that are linked with kindergarten through 12th grade curriculum provided by Collective Roots.
The East Palo Alto Seed Library will be open to everyone starting April 22nd. It will provide, in addition to seeds, education about growing healthy and sustainable foods and gardens. The Seed Library is open to all residents of East Palo Alto, with no charge. It is maintained by EPA Library staff, Collective Roots, volunteers, and supported by donations.
So I’m not sure how many people know about this, but I hope that every librarian does. I’m talking about national library unconference day on May 22, 2012. This is your chance in you state, or region, or county, or library system, or just library, to hold your own unconference. What’s an unconference you ask? Well… I’ll let Allen McGinley and JP Porcaro explain it for me.
Personally, I love unconferences for a whole lot of reasons and there is talk of putting one together in my area (the San Francisco Bay Area) on the same day so I’m pretty stoked because some of the best experiences that I have had in librarianship have been at unconferences. For example, I met some amazing people, I gave my first professional “presentation,” I got the courage to talk to directors and high level administrators as equals, I learned about the programs and services being offered at other libraries, and I learned what kinds of ideas other professionals had about the state of librarianship and its future in the United States.
So this is our chance to have an excuse to #makeithappen in our locations. JP and Allen are basically calling for unconferences to happen all over the country on the same day. This will be a day of learning, sharing, and growing for anyone and everyone participating.
For even more information on the Unconference you can visit the 8bitlibrary website. If you’re a librarian and you’re not reading the 8bitlibrary blog, what are you doing on the internet?
It’s time for librarians to get out of the echo-chamber of librarianship and get some good words out to the people. So I’m proposing an award (my own personal money) of $250 for the best library-related article to be published in a non-library magazine or journal. Yes, that’s right… My own personal money!! That’s how important this is to me!
There are thousands of amazing writers in our profession who write their own blogs and write for our professional magazines and journals, but rarely (or never) do I see an article written for the public in a major national magazine about how libraries help society in some great way. I don’t think there has ever been a time when such articles should be appearing amidst the news of library closures, resource cutting, and layoffs. Its time that we got the word out about libraries to as many people as possible!!
It seems to me that there are hundreds of topics for articles that could be written that would be applicable to the content of a major magazine. Off of the top of my head I’m thinking
-Saving Businesses Money (or starting a business) with Library Resources
– Forbes
– Entrepreneur
– Fortune
-Business Week
-How someone learned about their cultural identity at the library
– Ebony
– Latina
– Out!
-Pet Care information
-Dogs
-Cats
-Bark!
But this is only scratching the surface of the possibilities. I could keep going but I think you get the idea. If you want to participate and win $250 for your article published in a non-library journal or magazine, here are the criteria;
-You must be in some way related to the library profession, a library vendor, a patron, a friend of a patron, or at least heard of the idea of libraries at one point in your life.
-It must be a pro-library article speaking positively about the benefits of libraries in some aspect of society and addressing the need for folks to get up and go to the library for some reason or another.
-The article must be printed between February 15 2011, and the first day of the ALA Midwinter Meeting on January 20th 2012
-It must be published in a non-library related magazine or journal with a national (United States) or international circulation. More points will be given to an article in a magazine with the largest circulation, and you will receive bonus points for a feature article.
-You must submit, your name, the title, and date of publication (for verification) by emailing us or commenting below.
The articles will be judged by the members of the Think Tank at the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting in Dallas Texas in 2012. The winner will be announced January 24th 2012.
If you want to help us up the ante for prize money let us know by commenting below or sending us a message. Also, any money raised through our Café Press store will go towards added prizes and awards and other library advocacy projects as well so feel free to shop away! http://www.cafepress.com/libraryadvocate
I read a great article about businesses starting their own libraries of business books in the office and it spurned a thought that I wanted to share with anyone in a community with a large number of businesses. It’s pretty simple and I’m not sure it requires an entire blog post dedicated to it, but I need to write something here anyway and I want to write this idea down before I forget it. Basically the idea is circulating business book bins. (Self-explanatory! That might be all you need to read here. But if you want more, please continue)
So, you know how libraries circulate those subject specific boxes for schools when the school is doing a big research topic on something like reptiles? Well… What if we did the same thing, but for local businesses? These bins, or boxes, or bags, would be filled with books and resources for businesses big and small to circulate to employees. Each bin could have a different subject in it such as marketing, leadership, management, etc… In fact, we could even have bins for folks who are starting up their own businesses that could be filled with books about start-ups that could include things like NOLO Guides and books on business plans and models. *Thus the library could be the source for renewed entrepreneurship in America, eventually saving the American Way and Dream, the American economy, and in fact, America itself!!
Anyway, I think it would work something like this. The library would put together these various bins and send letters to local businesses advertising this new service listing the various business topics. Each bin would have a collection of books on a specific topic, but only the bin would need to be barcoded because they’re checking out that subject collection in total. There would be a list of materials with a checklist included in the bin to ensure they all get returned. The business would call the library and request a specific topic bin and the library could drop it off. I would love to have the business determine the length of the checkout (which leads to another blog post on check-out lengths later) so they could ensure that they have enough time to have each of their employees read the material. This would be important because businesses of different sizes can have any number of employees and it would take differing amounts of time to circulate the materials throughout the business. At the pre-determined due-date the library would pick up the bin of books. And that’s it. Super easy.
Of course, we might have to make someone from the business come to the library to get the bin instead of going there. I understand those kinds of time constraints. But! I think that, by going to the business, we have the opportunity for a new kind of outreach like we do in schools where we can have a stronger presence in their organization. When we go to the business we can do a small presentation to the staff on other resources that the library has to help them with their jobs. This would almost be exactly the same thing as a school visit but for adults!
Ok… Here’s the part where you tell me what you think… And go!
*Alright, maybe I get a little carried away. But I still believe that libraries are one of the most important institutions in the United States and do actually have the power to vastly improve the state of the country.
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When I attended the Eureka! Institute we gave a presentation at the end about innovative ideas in libraries. Our group had a whole bunch of them and I presented them. The response was “it seems like your trying to save the world.” I kept my mouth shut, but what I thought was “Well… Yeah, we are!” I mean, I am obviously biased, but the intense amount of good that a library does is why I got into librarianship in the first place. Anyway, the reason I’m writing this is that I have once again found that libraries are one of the only institutions that can save the world.
I was watching a Ted presentation by Tim Jackson called Tim Jackson’s Economic Reality Check. While I totally agree with so much of what he says and am so excited to throw away my stuff and move aboard my boat for a couple months (Henry David Thoreau) I am more impressed with his statements at the end of his presentation. These statements make it perfectly clear that libraries, once again, are going to be the savior of humanity. But only if librarians allow them to be.
Basically, it comes down to people’s ability to achieve a new kind of fulfillment beyond material goods. We need to begin to not only provide the information to allow people to fulfill the needs in their life, but we also need to provide the materials they need. After all, what good is a book if you don’t have the resources to learn from them? I’m suggesting that these materials are our collections beyond books. Things like seeds, guitars, tools, video games, and maybe even augmented reality. But, as a great man once said, “You don’t have to take my word for it.”
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In case you haven’t heard (read) me mention it on Twitter or Facebook I’m putting together a collection of circulating guitars for my library. If anyone is interested, here is some background on this project, what I’m planning, and how we’re moving forward.
History
While working at Lincoln Public Library my director and I had a discussion about various innovative collections we could start at the library. We had a great space and some good ideas but we weren’t sure how to implement them. Some of our ideas included video games, tools, and other musical instruments. The biggest barrier to us starting this collection was that we just simply didn’t have time. We were running a 40,000 square foot joint use building with a huge circulation number, a large amount of acquisition and cataloguing work, and just about everything else that comes with not only a brand new building, but a new staff and a new library system. Did I mention there were only 2 full time staff members? Anyway… Those are the reasons that Lincoln Public Library doesn’t have a guitar collection.
The good news is that East Palo Alto Library in the San Mateo County Library system where I now work will have a collection of circulating guitars. It was all made possible by my involvement in the Eureka! Program that is allowing me to apply for a five thousand dollar LSTA grant. This grant will be the seed money to start my collection. What follows is the VERY rough draft of some of the information that I compiled for the grant.
Basic description of the project
The East Palo Alto Library will create a collection of guitars as well as offer two 8-week beginning guitar group lesson programs to include both those individuals who already own guitars and those who have checked-out the EPA guitars. There will also be 4-6 one time programs throughout the year that are focused on music. These will include performances, movies, artist visits, and game nights (Rock Band).
Background
The project was identified as a need due to the lack of music programs for youth in the East Palo Alto community. Music classes are no longer offered at local schools and there are no local businesses that offer music lessons or sell musical instruments. The economic status of a large percentage of East Palo Alto residents makes it difficult to gain access to expensive music lessons as well as the instruments themselves even if such businesses did exist within the community.
However, this community has a long and rich history with music as well as a cultural identity in music. East Palo Alto is home to one of the largest populations of Pacific Islanders in the continental United States and Polynesian music has played a significant role in the culture of East Palo Alto with performances by local groups at churches and various community gatherings. There is also a significant Spanish speaking population that performs various forms of Spanish music. The African American Population in East Palo Alto has had a significant effect on the music since the early 1950’s when this population became the most prominent. Each of these stylings of music has led to a blended genre of music that is being performed locally by such bands as the Vintage Music Collection and the Hip Hop Orchestra. (Two groups brought to my attention by Sereptha Strong who is one of my librarians named)
These are not the only groups in East Palo Alto. In fact, there have been a number of self-taught musical groups that have arisen from within the community. The most prominent of some of these groups are primarily rap and hip hop groups such as Totally Insane, Sean T, S.I.C, Mac & AK, The Youngen, Chunk, Bigg Rigg, Band-Aide, Scoot Dogg, Ad Kapone, and Mac-10.
Many families gather to play instruments that have been handed down from generation to generation, and there are some residents who offer their backyards to local performers as a stage. There are also few homemade musical venues such as the House of Bigger Girls and some churches allow musical performances.
Moreover, music has been cited as a way for youth to express themselves in a positive and creative way. There have been numerous studies that have shown that music can act as a deterrent to violence. This, coupled with the understanding that EPA was the murder and violent crime capital of the United States throughout the 90s shows that there is an inherent need for a musical outlet.
Anticipated outputs and outcomes
For the Community
Patrons who check-out guitars and participate in the 8-week group music lessons should have a basic understanding of tuning, parts of a guitar, major and minor chords, a few chord progressions, a number of strumming and picking patterns, a number of scales, and few basic songs.
Many other larger community benefits of music have been identified however, the measurements of such benefits can be difficult to quantify. A list of the potential benefits to the community with supporting documentation can be found at;
Some of the outcomes listed from various studies include
Improved reading comprehension
improved math grades
Improved standardized test scores
Improved social Skills
Many of these outcomes are difficult to measure, and in no way am I making the argument that this program alone will have the ability to accomplish all of these things in a short 8 week program. However, this program could be a small contributing factor in the growth and improvement of our community.
For the Library
Increased Circulation
Increased level of programs and services
Increased number of partnerships with EPA organizations
Some identified community partners
We have identified a number of organizations that have expressed interest in partnering with the Library to provide these programs. There are a few local bands/artists who would like to volunteer to teach group lessons. Other organizations who have expressed interest include
Sassy
JobTrain
YMCA
Ravenswood school district
Stanford
Budgeting
This is the part that I’m most excited about right now. Just the fact that I’m thinking about the budget because I’ve made it this far gets me pretty excited so here is how the money will break down.
The majority of the grant funding will be used to purchase guitars and supplies. We would prefer to find ways to have the guitars donated to the program. However, guitars may need to be purchased. Guitar starter packs from Guitar Center typically range from $150-250 depending on quality. I would like to begin the collection with 15 guitars and spend approximately $3,750 of the grant money on these guitars. That means I can spend about $250 on each guitar. I wanted to make sure that this was even possible and that I could even get a halfway decent guitar for this price so I walked across the street from my house to Guitar Center on Sunday (Guitar Center’s close proximity to my living space has not had a beneficial effect on my finances BTW) and started to ask them some questions about what kinds of discounts I could get if I bought 15ish guitars with a starter pack from them. I don’t want to say what the discount is, but the unofficial offer was very significant and might allow me to do even more. However, since the offer was unofficial I’m going to keep my $250 estimate and hopefully wind up with more money in the end to offer more classes or more learning materials.
Happily playing guitar badly in my front yard in Santa CruzNext I need to buy some of the supplies that I need to display the collection and to keep the collection going. These are just basic necessities like extra strings, picks, straps, and other general maintenance supplies. I think I can get enough for the first year with around $300. But then I still need to purchase a way to display the guitars and I think that I can get wall mounts (before the discount that I’m going to ask for) for around $20 each so I need about $300 for that. So now I’m up to about $4,350
What I have left over is about $650 that I’m going to use to refresh our music learning collection. I want to purchase books, dvds, cds, magazines, etc… that will help people learn on their new instruments. I should also mention that the starter packs come with an intro to guitar DVD and I think that I will keep that DVD with packs when the patrons check out the guitars.
The last purchase that the library will be making will be the cost of the instructors for the program. I don’t want to take this money out of the grant money because it is an ongoing cost. So I’m planning on paying a guitar instructor about $30 per hour for the group lessons and I have already found some teachers who are willing to do it for that price. Even more exciting, I’ve found some teachers who have offered to do it for free! However, I’m wary of these offers because I’ve my previous experiences with flighty volunteers and I don’t want the students to miss out because the guitar instructor is a flake. So I’m budgeting $480 for two one hour, eight week group lesson sessions. I’ll let you know how that goes.
Fines and Fees
Just so you know, I’m totally against fines and fees. However, we do need to be able to maintain our strings and picks and we do need to repair any damages to our guitars, and I need to ensure that we get these guitars back. So, depending on what kind of price I can get on all of these things, I will be charging some kind of fine/fee structure that is yet to be decided.
While I don’t have the grant approved yet, I am very excited about even the possibility of having a funding source for this collection. If, in the end my grant is not awarded to me, I at least have the foundation for writing more grants! Not matter what happens with the grant, I’m pretty sure I can get this off the ground in a number of ways.
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Blue-Ray formatted discs are cool and many of the patrons in our libraries are asking for them. But it’s my opinion that there are quite a few problems with creating a blue ray collection in your Library. To explain why, I came up with seven reasons not to purchase Blue-Ray format discs in libraries.
Compatibility
1) Blue-ray players are backwards compatible with DVDs, but DVD players will not play blue-rays.
Patron Investment
2) If you invest in blue-ray discs, the investment for the patron is that they need to have a blue-ray player to access your collection. Also, to really gain a value in quality for a blue-ray player, a person must also purchase a Hi-Definition television. I don’t think there is yet a critical mass of patrons with both a Blue-Ray player and a Hi-Def television to necessitate a Blue-Ray collection. However, as DVDs, players, and televisions have become fairly ubiquitous there typically is no new investment needed for the patron by only providing a DVD format.
Added Value
3) Blue-ray DVDs don’t really add anything to the value of the information contained in the item. For example, a documentary on Sharks is still the same documentary in Blue-Ray as it is in the original DVD format. In other words the quality of the information doesn’t improve with the increased number of pixels.
Exclusivity
4) There is yet to be a significant number of films that are only provided in the Blue-ray format. Typically, if it’s available in Blue-ray, it’s also available in DVD and the DVDs can be played on a patron’s Blue-ray player.
Longevity
5) What is the Blue-Ray format longevity? I’m not sure, but it seems to me that we are going to pass over Blue-Ray fairly quickly and we are fast moving towards movies on demand via computer downloads and cable networks. (I can’t remember the last time I purchased a physical copy of a movie in any format) In these cases, an even higher quality film can be provided digitally as the amount of information is not limited to the space available on a Disc nor would a person have to worry about scratches or other damages to the disc.
Cost
6) The cost of a Blue-Ray disc is still much higher than the cost of a DVD.
Durability
7) Blue-Ray discs don’t solve the fundamental problem with discs and that is that discs scratch, warp, crack, get dirty and otherwise become unreadable with the severe treatment of them from our patrons. This means that replacement and maintenance costs will be dramatically increased with the new format.
So, if it were my decision (luckily, it’s not my decision in my current position) I would hold off on purchasing Blue-Ray DVDs unless you are in an area with a patron demographic that has the investment capital to purchase the resources necessitating blue-ray format movies (player and television), or the Blue-ray format price comes down and a critical mass of people starting using the format exclusively as happened with the switch from VHS to DVD, or movies become available only in the Blue-Ray format. Except for the “cool” factor I don’t see much added value for the library with the inclusion of such a costly collection. Of course, I could be wrong. What do you think?
Just as one seed can produce many seeds, one idea can change many lives. Free public libraries were revolutionary in their time because they provided access to books and knowledge that had not previously been available to a large segment of the population. A free seed lending library can also provide people with a chance to transform their lives and communities by providing access to fresh, healthy food that may not otherwise be available.
Collective Roots is a local non-profit that “seeks to educate and engage youth and communities in food system change through sustainable programs that impact health, education, and the environment.” This group is also responsible for the East Palo Alto Farmer’s Market that is held every Saturday from 2-5pm in front of the EPA YMCA. They also work with youth and adults to design and sustain organic gardens on school and community sites that are linked with kindergarten through 12th grade curriculum provided by Collective Roots.
It’s time for librarians to get out of the echo-chamber of librarianship and get some good words out to the people. So I’m proposing an award (my own personal money) of $250 for the best library-related article to be published in a non-library magazine or journal. Yes, that’s right… My own personal money!! That’s how important this is to me!
If you want to help us up the ante for prize money let us know by commenting below or sending us a message. Also, any money raised through our Café Press store will go towards added prizes and awards and other library advocacy projects as well so feel free to shop away! 
I read a great article about businesses starting their own libraries of business books in the office and it spurned a thought that I wanted to share with anyone in a community with a large number of businesses. It’s pretty simple and I’m not sure it requires an entire blog post dedicated to it, but I need to write something here anyway and I want to write this idea down before I forget it. Basically the idea is circulating business book bins. (Self-explanatory! That might be all you need to read here. But if you want more, please continue)
Anyway, I think it would work something like this. The library would put together these various bins and send letters to local businesses advertising this new service listing the various business topics. Each bin would have a collection of books on a specific topic, but only the bin would need to be barcoded because they’re checking out that subject collection in total. There would be a list of materials with a checklist included in the bin to ensure they all get returned. The business would call the library and request a specific topic bin and the library could drop it off. I would love to have the business determine the length of the checkout (which leads to another blog post on check-out lengths later) so they could ensure that they have enough time to have each of their employees read the material. This would be important because businesses of different sizes can have any number of employees and it would take differing amounts of time to circulate the materials throughout the business. At the pre-determined due-date the library would pick up the bin of books. And that’s it. Super easy. 
When I attended the 
PC Sweeney 