Digitized children's books

The Library of Congress has digitzed 50 older (1915 and earlier) children's books in their Rare Book and Special Collections Reading Room. Check it out at

http://www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook/digitalcoll/digitalcoll-children.html

Found via Librarian in Black

Back from SCLA

I spent the last few days in Columbia at the SCLA annual conference. It is great to connect with fellow librarians who are making great strides in the library profession and are willing to share how they did it with others.

The Resource Sharing Interest Group is looking at a number of ways to regenerate and connect interlibrary loan and resource sharing staff across South Carolina. Our first initiative will be a survey sent to all resource sharing staff across the state. What we hope to accomplish is to create a community for sharing tips and tricks, and to provide help to each other when needed.

So watch your snail mail and e-mail - your survey will be available soon!

Applying Tech Trek 2.0 to real life

Over the last year or two I have been compiling a list of items in OCLC that have "Charleston County Library" listed next to them - but that CCPL does not own. I've been putting my findings into a spreadsheet on my hard drive, but this week's Tech Trek quest has inspired me to try to create a file in an online application. It was surprisingly easy to upload, and took less than a minute to do so in spite of the size of the file.

I will continue to add to this file as we reject requests to lend items that we no longer own. I am also comparing our collection decade by decade with the catalog as I have time - working on 1921-1930 at this time.

If you're interested, take a look - over 2,400 items listed.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pMy4FPsw9OU7HQSKtjqnmLA&hl=en

Random statistics

Carrie Volk of Wofford has generated a brochure for our Resource Sharing Interest Group of SCLA. Her fast facts inside the brochure inspired me to do some quick calculations:

In FY 2006 (July 2005-June 2006), public libraries in South Carolina borrowed 37,472 items. CCPL borrowed 5,095 items, or 13.6% of items borrowed (1st in SC).

In FY 2006, public libraries in South Carolina loaned 20,164 items. CCPL loaned 1,491 items, or 7.4% of items loaned (5th in SC).

Silent library

The library is eerily silent tonight - the only sound is the click click click of computer keyboards. No kids wandering the stacks, no one asking for copier change, very very quiet.

If you saw me right now at the reference desk, you wouldn't think we have increased interlibrary loan services over 35% since 2001. We may not look busy at this moment, but go back to the ILL desk and watch the requests roll in from our branches and departments - and from patrons via e-mail.

The pursuit of knowledge connects us all - I'm glad to have an opportunity to share (and be shared with, too)!