[TL-Directors] State Library Update-Please Read

[MaryKay Dahlgreen]

Hello all-
We have been pretty busy as the State Library for the last 6 months and I wanted to let you know about some things that have occurred and some things that are coming up.

Probably most important to us is that the 2015 Legislative Session will be getting underway on February 2nd. The legislators will be sworn in on Monday January 12th and then spend the next several weeks in training and organizing. We will be making our budget presentation before the General Government Subcommittee of the Joint Ways and Means committee. We don't know the schedule yet but will be ready to go in mid-February. In addition to our 2015-2017 budget the Governor, at our request,  has introduced legislation to make changes to the Ready to Read Grant program. The bill number is HB2479 and changes the name from Ready to Read to Reading for Success, increases the ages served from 0 to 14 to 0 to 17, and allows libraries to provide out of school time activities for school age children in addition to early literacy and summer reading. Katie Anderson, our youth services consultant, brought together a group of stakeholders in early 2014 to develop the changes. She also spent some time on the road this summer introducing the concepts across the state. She will be doing a presentation at the OLA conference about the changes that will occur if the legislation passes. I will be in touch about this on a regular basis and welcome questions.

The State Library is continuing to phase out Oregon Center for the Book activities. We still haven't found a new home for it and are working with the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress.  The Oregon Poetry Collection has moved to the University of Oregon. The Oregon Poetry Association, State Library, and University of Oregon are hopeful that the collection will get more use in an academic setting where professors can integrate it into their curriculum and students can use it for assignments. The Oregon Poetry Collection will still be available statewide via interlibrary loan and the Oregon Library Passport Program.
The Oregon Center for the Book's partnership with Literary Arts to promote the Oregon Book Awards in public libraries has also changed. The State Library will still communicate Oregon Book Award related information to the library community on behalf of Literary Art, but will no longer distribute finalists' titles to select libraries. Literary Arts currently plans to continue providing copies of finalists' titles to select libraries, but will likely make changes to that program.
This is the last year the Oregon Center for the Book will run Letters About Literature, the national reading and writing contest for youth in 4th through 12th grade. I am having discussions with several organizations to gauge their interest in running this contest.

As you may have read in the January Letter to Libraries Online,<http://www.oregon.gov/osl/LTLO/LTLOJan2015/Jan2015LTLO.html> we are having a materials offering at the State Library on January 21st. The Willamette Valley Genealogical Society (WVGS) has been housing selected genealogical resources at the Genealogical Resources Center (GRC) at the Oregon State Library (OSL) through a partnership that began in 1987.  These materials were purchased and acquired by WVGS.  They are WVGS materials and will be moved to the WVGS new location which is expected to be the Salem Public Library. The partnership between the State Library and WVGS has ended, although the State Library will store the WVGS materials until May 2015. Genealogy materials added to the Oregon State Library collection prior to 1987 that meet established collection development guidelines will remain in the State Library collection. Materials that are housed at OSL but belong to other organizations will not be removed from the collection. Materials that do not meet the mission of the Collections of the Oregon State Library will be weeded from the collection, which is standard practice with library materials.  Weeded items will follow the OSL collection disposal process and stipulations in the Memorandum of Understanding between the Oregon State Library and the Willamette Valley Genealogical Society.  Disposition of these genealogy materials is being coordinated with WVGS and the genealogical community in Oregon.  Materials are being offered to genealogy organizations and other libraries.  If you have questions about the material offering process please contact Kate McGann at kate.e.mcgann at state.or.us<mailto:kate.e.mcgann at state.or.us>.

We have been working with the consulting firm, Coraggio Group, since August of 2014 to develop a strategic plan that will take us through the 2015-2017 biennium. We have almost completed that work and I am creating a publication that we can share with you. I am very excited about the work that has been done by both the State Library Board of Trustees and the staff of the State Library. The work we have done in the last several months has been based on all the input and work the library community and other stakeholders have done in the last two years. We have updated our vision and mission, created core values, and strategic imperatives. The strategic imperatives we will be working on are: Focus on the Customer, Build Awareness of the State Library, Build on Staff Strengths, and Enhance Partnerships. I will send out a link when we get the publication together.

The Oregon library community has been incredibly supportive of the State Library over the years and I can't thank you enough for your support, your interest, and your ideas. I am very excited as we continue to create an Oregon State Library for the 21st century.

Please feel free to contact me with questions, concerns, or if you just want to chat.

MaryKay

MaryKay Dahlgreen
Oregon State Librarian
503-378-4367
marykay.dahlgreen at state.or.us
http://oregon.gov/osl
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