Last week I attended the Maryland Library Association annual conference in Ocean City.

At this conference, after two years of preliminary activities, the Blue Crab committee that I was on reached it’s final destination; the Blue Crab author talk conference session and presenting the award plaque to the author of the award winning book. It was our turn to invite the fiction authors and Wong Herbert Yee (Mouse and Mole series, Fireman Small series and many others) graciously accepted our invitation and traveled to Ocean City from Detroit, Michigan to receive the award.

Besides my Blue Crab duties, I heard Phyllis Reynolds Naylor receive the Maryland Author Award and give a beautiful and moving speech. She and I both live in Gaithersburg and I think I’ve seen her in the grocery store.

In the general session, Paul Holdengraber told about his amazing, dynamic program series called Live from NYPL in which he interviews a high profile public person or invites one person to interview another with very interesting results. He’s had some amazing match-ups. He aims to give the ‘talent’ a chance to do something different from what they usually do; make it interesting for them and an interesting interaction will follow.

He’s a lover of obituaries and the essay form and mentioned an interesting/odd book I’ve recently read(listened to) called, How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard, which of course we all do all the time to some extent.

His recommendations for programming are to know your distinct community, who they are, what they want, start a collection of customer emails right now and use (sparingly) to announce upcoming events, have one or two big stars at the beginning of a series. Find an artist in residence – one way to give your events an afterlife. Partnering is essential – we can’t do big things alone.
(“Digression is the sunshine of communication’)

Emerging Technologies Librarians – Three staff with this title have been hired in the last year at the Cook Library of Towson University. They presented strategies for launching a successful blog. Their blog, librarytechtalk.wordpress.com was started to acquaint the Cook Library staff with new technologies and how they can be used in the library. They have opened their blog to outside readers, so you can go to the above website to subscribe.

Among their recommendations when starting a blog – make it engaging, interesting, and relevant, fill a need (instruct, inform, educate or entertain), define the scope, know your audience, market, and evaluate.

The Heart of Maryland Libraries Quilt is beautiful! The MCPL square shows the word ‘welcome’ is many languages similar to what you see on the glass entrance to Rockville library. Great job, Carol L., Ginger W., Beth I. and Anne G. Overall the quilt is stunning. It will travel to some upcoming events, visit the contributing libraries and then be on display at MLA headquarters in Baltimore.

MARYLAND LEARNING LIBRARIES 3.0, 2007-2008

In Learning Libraries 3.0. I worked on a project with a team of MCPL colleagues from both Circulation and Information for an entire a year. The year began with a two-day workshop to learn the 5 principles of Learning Libraries: Shared Vision, Personal Mastery, Team Learning, Systems Thinking, and Mental Models. Here is a brief description of each one (go to www.learninglibraries3.pbwiki.com for more information):

• Shared Vision -- a shared sense of purpose and group commitment
• Personal Mastery -- using one's skills, knowlege and talents or taking responsibility to master the needed skills and talents to support the mission of the library
• Team Learnng -- group of people who are personally committed to work together as a team to accomplish a goal
• Systems Thinking -- Libraries are a system that have many functions and these functions are all interconnected. Changing one function will cause change in another. We have to realize that our decisions and actions will affect each of us in the system.
• Mental Models -- Perceptions or beliefs that we have about the world that affect our decisions and actions

These principles provided us with the necessary tools and skills to develop, promote and implement a year-long project that would improve services to library customers.

Below is a summary of the Project:

The Montgomery Team Project
Carol Legaretta, Project Sponsor
Joe Tucker (Team Leader), Rosemary York, Nancy Chiu Sillcox, Mary Crim, and Catherine Garland

The Mission
Montgomery County has a very diverse population and its libraries serve many new residents with limited English proficiency. We felt that we would serve our recent arrivals better if basic information on education, health and welfare were in one location, accessible on our library website. The translation of our library website and the creation of links to additional resources were seen as a way to accomplish this goal. If this effort proved successful, we would move forward with translations and links in other languages.

The Process
We decided that we would first test the effectiveness of the translation with our Spanish-speaking customers. We looked into several different state/county library systems that serve large Spanish-speaking populations to see how their websites were designed, what information was included and how accurate and effective the Spanish translations were. We met with our stakeholders to map out a strategy. After a couple of meetings with our stakeholders, we decided that the scope of our project was a bit ambitious and that we should concentrate on translating the web page only. We began to look into different translation software programs. And finally, we conducted an exhaustive search for project funding.

The Results
After a few months passed, we discovered that a Spanish translation of the library website, virtually identical in every respect to the English version, had been completed. Furthermore, the translation program that was used was more accurate than previous programs. And while it’s still too early to gauge the effectiveness of the translated website, we expect this tool will play an integral role in promoting greater awareness and inclusiveness among the county’s non-English-speaking residents.

Learning Library Principle
Through trial and error, our team realized that we were experiencing the principle of Team Learning. As we moved forward with our project, we learned who our stakeholders were, what areas of the project we needed help with and how to go about resolving such issues. In the end, we were able to achieve our desired goals by learning, as a team, and discovering the ins and outs of our library system.

LL3.0 included 15 Other County Teams: Allegany, Baltimore City, Enoch Pratt, Calvert, Caroline, Carroll, Charles, Eastern Shore, Frederick, Hartford, Prince Georges, St. Mary's, Southern Maryland Regional, Washington, and Wicomico. In November 2008, we all met to present our projects. The projects covered:

Teen Services
Services for English Language Learners
Outreach and Marketing
Customer Service Philosophy
Strategic Plan Communications
Intranets
Risk-Takers' Network
Interdepartmental Teamwork

Maryland Learning Libraries project, 2007-08 is sponsored by the Maryland State Department of Education, Division of Library Development & Services (DLDS)