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<H1><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><A name=Top></A>Letter To
Libraries Online</FONT></H1>
<P><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">An Electronic Newsletter from
the Oregon State Library.......Volume 19, Issue 7, July
2009</FONT></P></DIV></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><BR>
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<DIV align=center><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><B><A
name=Board></A>Library Board News</B></FONT></DIV></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<P align=center><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">STATE LIBRARY BOARD
APPROVES MOVING FORWARD WITH DATABASE LICENSE</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">At their meeting in
Milton-Freewater on June 19th, the State Library Board accepted the
recommendation of the Library Services and Technology Act Advisory Council that
negotiations proceed with Gale/Cengage for the next general periodicals
statewide database license. Despite concerns raised by some in the library
community, the Board voted to accept the results of the procurement process that
was led by the State Procurement Office with assistance from the Statewide
Database Licensing Advisory Council. In other business the Board invited
organizations that submitted 21 LSTA grant proposals for 2010 to submit full
applications by the August deadline. The 21 proposals for first and second year
grants totaled over $1.1 million. The Board also approved a plan to spend
$100,000 in donations to Talking Book and Braille Services in 2009-10 on a
variety of projects to enhance and promote the service. Included is a plan to
spend $22,500 to promote the new digital talking books. <BR></FONT></P>
<P align=center><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><BR>STATE LIBRARY
BUDGET AND SCHOOL LIBRARY BILL PASS IN THE LEGISLATURE <BR></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">In the final days of the 2009
Legislative Assembly, the State Library's budget for 2009-11 passed easily in
the House and Senate. The vote in the House was unanimous, and in the Senate
only three legislators opposed the bill. The bill is a 0.5% increase to the
current biennial budget. It funds the Ready to Read Grant program at 95 cents
per child per year, down from $1 per child in this biennium. One vacant position
was eliminated in Talking Book and Braille Services. Funds were added to fund
2.5 FTE in Library Development with state funds instead of LSTA funds, to comply
with a directive from the Institute of Museum and Library Services that the
state fund more of the administrative costs of the LSTA program. Another
important bill endorsed by the State Library Board was HB 2586. It passed the
House unanimously on June 26th and passed unanimously in the Senate on the last
day of the session. This bill will require all Oregon school districts to plan
for a strong school library program and will also make school libraries eligible
for grants to improve student achievement from the Oregon Department of
Education.</FONT></P>
<P align=center><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><BR></FONT><FONT
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">BOARD ELECTS NEW OFFICERS FOR
2009-10</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">At their June 19th Board meeting,
the State Library Board elected Sue Burkholder of Eugene as the new Board Chair.
Burkholder is a retired librarian. She served for many years as the director of
the library at Southern Oregon University. She will take over the Chair's
position from M. Yvonne Williams who retired from the State Library Board at the
end of June, having served two terms. Burkholder was recently appointed to her
second term on the Board by Governor Kulongoski. The Board also elected Richard
Turner of Portland to serve as Vice-Chair of the Board. Turner has been a member
of the Board since 2005. He works at the Oregon Commission for the Blind and is
an active user of Talking Book and Braille Services.</FONT></P>
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<DIV align=center><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><B><A
name=OSLNews></A>State Library News</B></FONT></DIV></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<P align=center><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">TALKING BOOK AND
BRAILLE SERVICES CELEBRATES 40 YEARS AT THE OREGON STATE LIBRARY</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">July 1, 2009 marks the 40th
anniversary of Talking Book and Braille Services providing service to libraries
and citizens of Oregon through the Oregon State Library. In 1969, Talking Books
moved from the Multnomah County Library in Portland to the Oregon State
Library’s Church Street Annex in Salem. Talking Book and Braille Services has
seen a number of changes in the last forty years, especially in the area of
technology. Since coming to the State Library, talking books have been available
on recorded discs, 4-track cassettes, and finally digital flash-drive cartridges
later this year. As TBABS unveils the new digital players and books, we look
forward to continuing our partnerships with libraries around the state in
providing talking book and Braille service to eligible Oregonians. </FONT><FONT
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><BR></FONT></P>
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<DIV align=center><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><B><A
name=OtherNews></A>Other Library News</B></FONT></DIV></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<P align=center><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">EOU GETS FUNDING FOR
PIERCE LIBRARY IMPROVEMENT</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">In the waning days of the
Legislative Session, Eastern Oregon University was successful in getting $8
million in funding for improvements to the Pierce Library. The Library, which
was built in the 1950's, is the only library in the Oregon University System
that has not seen major improvements in recent years. EOU has been trying for
several legislative sessions to get support for an improvement project. The
Pierce Library is named for former Governor Walter Pierce and for his wife,
Cornelia Marvin Pierce, the first Oregon State Librarian.</FONT><BR></P>
<P><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><BR></FONT></P>
<P align=center><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">UO LIBRARIES GETS
MAJOR NEH GRANT FOR DIGITAL NEWSPAPER PROJECT</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">On June 19th, the National
Endowment for the Humanities announced that the University of Oregon Libraries
will receive a $349,042 grant for their Oregon Digital Newspaper Project. The
Project has already received an LSTA grant from the State Library and another
grant from the Oregon Heritage Commission. The Project's goal is to make the
history of Oregon accessible to citizens by creating an online historic
newspaper collection. Newspapers will be digitized from the microfilm masters at
the UO, selected from the years 1860 to 1922. The grant to UO Libraries was one
of only seven grants made by the NEH this year as part of it's National Digital
Newspaper Program. The Library of Congress is also a partner in the Program. The
newspapers digitized by UO will eventually be added to a national collection,
the <I><A href="http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/">Chronicling America</A></I>
website, which recently added its millionth page of
content.<BR><BR><BR></FONT></P>
<P align=center><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">VISIT A GREAT PAST
LSTA GRANT PROJECT - UNIVERSITY OF OREGON / PERCENT FOR ART STATEWIDE DIGITAL
COLLECTION</FONT></P>
<P align=left><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Since the late 1970s,
the State of Oregon has required that state-funded building projects with
construction budgets over $100,000 include funding for site-specific art. The
University of Oregon Libraries teamed with the Oregon Arts Commission to create
a digital repository of images and related documentation of the art and its
settings. </FONT><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The <A
href="http://boundless.uoregon.edu/digcol/oac/index.html">site</A> offers
browsing by artist, subject, project locations, and award year, as well as
searching by keyword and controlled vocabulary. It also includes a map of
projects across the state. If you are going to be vacationing in the state, take
a look at the site and then visit some great public art.<BR></FONT></P>
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<DIV align=center><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><A
name=PS></A><B>P.S. (From the State
Librarian)</B></FONT></DIV></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<P><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><I>In honor of Oregon’s
Sesquicentennial, I continue to devote my column to brief sketches of early
Oregon libraries. The beginnings of library service in 19th Oregon is
interesting and deserves to be better known and appreciated by people who work
in libraries today.</I></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The Multnomah Circulating Library,
located in Oregon City, was the first community subscription library in the
Oregon country. It was created to serve one of the first communities established
in the Oregon country, sometime around 1840. William H. Gray, who was a former
member of the Whitman Mission, and who would go on to write the first history of
Oregon, was the organizer of this library, located in his home. He describes the
founding of the library as follows:</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">“One hundred shares were taken at
five dollars a share; three hundred volumes of old books [were] collected and
placed in this institution … [and] one hundred dollars were sent to New York for
new books which arrived the following year.”</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">In an interesting footnote, Gray
reported that representatives of the Methodist Mission founded by Jason Lee
“seemed anxious to keep from the library a certain class of light reading, which
they appeared tenacious about.” </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">What is interesting about this
library is the fact that it was founded so early in the American settlement of
Oregon, when there were only a few hundred settlers in the Willamette Valley.
Maybe this was the reason that the library apparently struggled to sustain
itself, and there is no record of it after 1849. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Subscription libraries were still
the common way of establishing library service before about the middle of the
19th century, following the model established by Benjamin Franklin and his
famous Library Company of Philadelphia in the 18th century. Subscription
libraries had two major shortcomings. Most were hard to maintain financially,
and none of them provided free books for all. They only served those who could
afford a subscription.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">It wasn’t until 1854, with the
founding of the Boston Public Library, that a new model of tax-supported
libraries operated by local governments, and serving everyone, would begin to
take hold in the Northeast and spread across the country. The story of the
Multnomah Circulating Library is not untypical in Oregon, as most of the 19th
century subscription libraries struggled to survive, and many failed or were
able to limp along before being taken over by local governments in Oregon
beginning after 1901. – Jim Scheppke</FONT></P>
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<DIV align=center><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><B><A
name=Contacts></A>Contacts at the Oregon State
Library</B></FONT></DIV></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<P><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Technical Assistance:
503-932-1004.<BR><BR>Library Development: 503-378-2525, <A
href="mailto:marykay.dahlgreen@state.or.us">MaryKay Dahlgreen</A>, <A
href="mailto:jennifer.maurer@state.or.us">Jennifer Maurer</A>, <A
href="mailto:darci.hanning@state.or.us">Darci Hanning</A>, <A
href="mailto:ann.reed@state.or.us">Ann Reed</A>, <A
href="mailto:mary.l.mayberry@state.or.us">Mary Mayberry</A>, <A
href="mailto:katie.anderson@state.or.us">Katie Anderson</A>.<BR><BR>Talking Book
and Braille Services: 503-378-5389, <A
href="mailto:susan.b.westin@state.or.us">Susan Westin</A>.<BR><BR>Government
Research and Electronic Services: 503-378-5030, <A
href="mailto:robert.hulshof-schmidt@state.or.us">Robert
Hulshof-Schmidt</A>.<BR><BR>State Librarian: 503-378-4367, <A
href="mailto:jim.b.scheppke@state.or.us">Jim Scheppke</A>.<BR><BR>LTLO Editor:
503-378-2464, <A href="mailto:april.m.baker@state.or.us">April
Baker</A>.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><I>Letter to Libraries Online</I>
is published monthly by the Oregon State Library. Editorial office: LTLO, Oregon
State Library, 250 Winter St. NE, Salem, Oregon 97301-3950, 503-378-2464,
editor: <A href="mailto:april.m.baker@state.or.us">April Baker</A></FONT></P>
<P><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><I>Letter to Libraries Online</I>
is available free of charge and is available only in electronic form on the
publications page at the Oregon State Library's homepage: <A
href="http://www.oregon.gov/OSL">http://www.oregon.gov/OSL</A>. Opinions
expressed in the articles are those of the authors and not necessarily those of
the Oregon State Library. News items or articles should be sent to <A
href="mailto:april.m.baker@state.or.us">April Baker</A>, or mailed to LTLO,
Oregon State Library, 250 Winter St. NE, Salem, Oregon 97301-3950.</FONT></P>
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