Congratulations, Hayward and Presque Isle • Summer Reading Incentives • Emerging Library Technology • Dealing with Angry Customers • Young Librarians Make Headlines • NWLS Board of Trustees Meeting • Updates to Merlin • Useful URLs • Reflection

July 21 NWLS Board of Trustees Meeting, 10:00 a.m., NWLS

July 26 Merlin Consortium Meeting, 10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m., NWLS

August 17 Too Many Teen Books, Too Little Time!, 10:00 a.m. - 2:30 p.m., NWLS

Summer 2007 UW-Madison SLIS Continuing Education Courses in Madison (If you have questions please contact Anna Palmer, ahpalmer@wisc.edu or 608-263-4452. Visit the School of Library and Information Studies for course descriptions and registration information. Continuing Education Courses in Madison:

• July 14-25 Travel Opportunity-Librarians' Tour to Scotland, Tour Director: Jane Pearlmutter
• August 13-17 Summer Camp by the Lake: Cataloging, Instructor: Debra Shapiro
• August 20-24 Puppets in the Library, Instructor: Susan Santner

Online Graduate Credit Courses June 18 - August 12: Cataloging and Classification, Collection Management, Digital Libraries

Online Skills Courses: In cooperation with a national network of educational institutions, we offer online courses on a variety of technical topics and a few non-technical topics. While the courses do not have a library focus, they may be useful to anyone who needs to develop these skills.

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Congratulations, Hayward and Presque Isle
From Jim Trojanowski, NWLS Director

June saw the Hayward residents celebrate the opening of the new Sherman and Ruth Weiss Community Library while Presque Isle dedicated the newly expanded Presque Isle Community Library.

Hayward has long anticipated a new library to replace its 1904 Carnegie building. For more than six years Library Director Molly Lank-Jones, the steering committee, and other tireless volunteers met weekly or more often to plan the new facility and raise the funds necessary to build it. While fundraising took time, momentum began to build when a few key donations were announced. A $500,000 contribution from the Ruth, Larry, and Amy Weiss family got the ball rolling. The Northwest Regional Planning Commission secured a $400,000 matching grant from the Wisconsin Department of Commerce, and Sawyer County provided $250,000 by purchasing vacant lots from the library and leasing them back at $1 per year.

Molly Lank-Jones said the best part of the June 2 opening celebration occurred when a 16-year old girl in a wheelchair became the first patron to enter the new library. The girl had never been able to use the Carnegie building because of accessibility problems. For coverage of the opening of the Weiss Community Library visit the Sawyer County Record online.

In addition to being accessible to those with disabilities, the Weiss Library offers eleven computers for public use, a spacious children’s area, and meeting space available for any group that needs it. A butterfly garden makes an attractive addition and a walking trail through the surrounding landscape is planned for the future.

Weiss Library staff enjoy the more spacious quarters they have in the new library. At the Carnegie library, three desks were crammed into a room scarcely large enough for one. The staff also notes that this past month has been extraordinarily busy, providing ample evidence that the Hayward area loves its new library.

Work on a library expansion in Presque Isle moved quickly when the town board agreed to pay for the “bricks and mortar” portion of the project. In return, the library board pledged to raise money for any necessary new furnishings, equipment, and other amenities it needed.

Formerly the Irma Stein Memorial Library, the expanded facility will be known as the Presque Isle Community Library. The library board made this decision in order to create a greater connection between the library and the community. To recognize Irma Stein’s commitment to Presque Isle, the children’s room will be named after her.

One nice new feature of the Presque Isle Community Library is a tutoring room with two computers located in its own space so that instruction may take place without disturbing other patrons. There are seven other public access computers, including one workstation that meets ADA accessibility guidelines, in addition to those in the tutoring room. Comfortable new chairs located in alcoves filled with natural light offer patrons ideal places to relax with a good book. A walking path through the attractive community garden located outside the library is planned.

Library Director Pam Eschenbach is pleased to have storage space for the first time. In the past, those supplies that didn’t share space in her modest office had to be stored in the bathroom. In the future the library board plans to add an elevator so that the library can expand into the full basement that was included as part of the construction.

Both libraries continue to raise funds to continue the work they are doing. To contribute, contact:

Weiss Community Library
10788 State Hwy 77 West, PO Box 917
Hayward, WI 54843
(715)634-5257

Presque Isle Community Library
PO Box 115
Presque Isle, WI 54557
(715)686-7613

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Summer Reading Incentives

In "Great Opening Lines to Hook Young Readers" (NPR: Morning Edition, June 25, 2007) Nancy Pearl recommends the following list of books for piquing a child's interest in reading during the summer months: Tanglewreck • Each Little Bird That Sings • Wemberly Worried • Ragweed • Stormbreaker • Feed • Millicent Min, Girl Genius • The Teacher's Funeral • Voyage of the Dawn Treader

If you're a fan of Harry Potter, Scolastic recommends a list of fantasy books and series that will satisfy your taste for all things magical!

Rhonda Puntney, Lakeshores Library System, compiled a list of websites related to the Wisconsin Summer Library theme Get A Clue @ Your Library. The list includes links to vintage mystery books, mystery reading programs, interactive mystery games, and more.

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Emerging Library Technology

Are you frequently being asked about computers, technology, firewalls, hubs, routers, podcasts, screencasts, blogs, digital photography, Internet security, keyboard shortcuts, dvd rippers, mp3 burning, DRM stripping, PDAs, Bluetooth devices, googling, wikis, pedias, viruses, phishing, pharming, rss, tag clouds and clustering, third-party cookies, YouTube, Del.icio.us, Flickr, digg, facebooks, MySpace, Technorati, widgets, pixels, and plain old databases? Kathryn Greenhill shares "20 reasons why learning emerging technologies is part of every librarian’s job" in her July 6 post for Librarians that Matter.

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Dealing with Angry Customers
From Sound Money Tips, June 26th, 2007

Sound Money Tips offers practical advice for dealing with angry customers:

• Don’t take the criticism personally.
• Listen to the client.
• Treat the customer as you would want to be treated.
• Deal with the person and then with the problem.
• Remember that stellar customer service can be the means for retaining a client instead of losing one, so how you deal with your unhappy customers is crucial.

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Young Librarians Make Headlines

On July 7th the front page of the Fashion and Style section of the New York Times featured a "Hipper Crowd of Shushers," the emerging Generation X librarian. On the following Monday the article was the most frequently e-mailed by NYTimes.com readers, and the fifth most frequently blogged.

The New York Sun highlighted librarians in a July 5th article, "For New-Look Librarians, Head to Brooklyn." The trendy neighborhoods of Williamsburg attract a hip, young librarian crowd known as the Desk Set with a lively social agenda that challenges the traditional librarian image.

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Northern Waters Library Service Board of Trustees Meeting
July 21, 2007, 10:00 a.m., NWLS Headquarters, Ashland

Agenda
1. Call to order / Roll Call
2. Guest Comments
3. Minutes of the May 19, 2007 Board of Trustees Meeting
4. May and June 2007 NWLS Expenditures
5. June 30, 2007 Financial Statement and Budget Report
6. Resolution to insure NWLS property with the Local Government Property Insurance Fund
7. 2008 County Appropriation Requests
8. 2008 LSTA Grant Applications
9. NWLS Position Descriptions
10. Personnel Handbook revisions
      a. Overtime and Comp Time
      b. Holidays
      c. Military Leave
11. Discussion of NWLS Building Mortgage
12. 2008 Budget Discussion
13. Director’s Report
14. Other Business

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Updates to Merlin
From Michael Sheehan, NWLS

Libraries editing patron records will now see the municipality field labeled "LOCGOV" has been relabeled to a more distinguishable name of TOWNSHIP.

Catalogers using the GuiCat z39.50 or MilCat Remote databases will notice some updates. A couple of library servers were not connecting (like St. Paul and Minneapolis) and they should be good for searching now. The InMich site has become the MELCAT site and should connect now too. I also added a new Wisconsin Innovative site: Arrowhead Library System. I dropped a few other sites that frequently had connection problems or other search difficulties.

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National Gallery of Art For Kids

NGAkids Art Zone offers an array of interactive online art activities suitable for children of all ages. Visit a sculpture garden, play hide and seek with art or learn about all the paintings that are housed at the museum.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Explore and Learn section of the New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art website describes artists, offers new ways to look at art, and explores art from different cultures.

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I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.

- Georgia O'Keeffe

Contact NWLS for subscription services or to submit an article for publication: email Marsha at newsletter@nwls.lib.wi.us or call 715-682-2365.

NWLS · 3200 E. Lake Shore Dr. · Ashland, Wisconsin 54806 · Telephone: 715.682.2365

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