Final Thanks
By Staff -- Library Journal, 03/15/2006
Library Journal would like to say a hearty THANK YOU to all the generous vendors and library partners that offered their time and money to help libraries and their users cope with and recover from disaster. Below is a partial listing of vendors about which we've heard.
Absolute Backorder Service offered free replacements through December 2007 to all libraries that lost serial back volumes owing to Hurricane Katrina.
Alibris created a matching program for replacement books donated to the Texas Library Association.
BBC Audiobooks America offered a free box of audiobooks to help reestablish collections and a replenishment order coupon good for a 50 percent discount on unlimited materials. It also donated $1000 to the ALA Hurricane Katrina Library Relief Fund.
Brodart donated $5000 to help start off the ALA Hurricane Katrina Library Relief Fund.
Copyright Clearance Center donated $10,000 to the ALA Hurricane Katrina Library Relief Fund.
CQ Press offered to replace all CQ Press books and journals lost in the storm and to help identify and replace lost items for libraries that have lost their records.
CSA and its parent company CambridgeInformation Group extended the subscriptions of affected libraries and donated $15,000 to the ALA Hurricane Katrina Library Relief Fund. CSA also pledged to work with ALA to establish a fund to rebuild library infrastructure in the Gulf Coast.
DEMCO offered a disaster relief discount on new orders, matched employee donations to the relief effort, and donated one percent of all sales in the month of October to the ALA Hurricane Katrina Library Relief Fund.
EBSCO provided free access to its medical databases for all hospitals and academics in Louisiana and Mississippi through March 31, 2006; donated 30 computers to Louisiana State Library and 15 computers to the state of Mississippi; and contacted publishers to make subscription provisions for customers affected by the hurricanes. It also matched employee contributions 2 to 1.
Enslow Publishers offered $50,000 worth of nonfiction books for students and young adults to libraries affected by Katrina and Rita.
Foundation Center extended free six-month subscriptions to The Foundation Directory Online to nonprofit organizations in the affected region.
IBM donated 20 IBM PCs and three Young Explorer KidSmart systems to the shelter library established by East Baton Rouge Parish Library. (See the profile of Ann Curtis for more details, p. 27.)
Innovative Interfaces, Inc., ILS supplier for the LSU Health Sciences Library, Shreveport, hosted the library's catalog and circulation control system on its servers in the weeks following the hurricanes.
JanWay offered “Katrina Relief” gel bracelets to raise funds for the recovery effort of Gulf Coast libraries, donating half the price to the ALA Hurricane Katrina Library Relief Fund.
LexisNexis donated 30 percent of the proceeds generated from its fall large order discount program to a “hurricane relief credit fund” for libraries impacted by the hurricane.
Library of America offered free 100-volume sets of authoritative editions of major American authors to affected libraries.
Marshall Cavendish donated more than 100 cartons of illustrated children's books for children in shelters in Baton Rouge and Monroe, LA, and contributed books for children's departments of public libraries along the Mississippi Gulf Coast through the University of Southern Mississippi School of Library & Information Science's “10,000 Books” relief effort.
OCLC offered to match total employee donations up to $10,000 to help library staff and their families and gave its employees the option to turn unused vacation time into charitable contributions to aid Hurricane Katrina victims.
Oxford University Press extended online access for affected subscribers to its electronic products for one extra year.
Polaris offered replacement routers for those damaged by flood waters; provided Wireless Access Manager to help libraries deal with a sudden influx of laptop users involved with the recovery efforts; and sent books to the Texas Library Association disaster relief book drive.
ProQuest Company provided $1 million in Voyager Learning's reading and math instructional materials for children affected by Hurricane Katrina; helped build the shelter library in Baton Rouge; offered its newspaper databases free of charge to the Houston Public Library and Harris County libraries; and donated $5000 to the ALA Hurricane Katrina Library Relief Fund.
Random House Children's Books donated 250,000 copies of its titles to First Book, the organization distributing reading materials to kids in the hardest-hit area, and contributed more than 100,000 books to Feed the Children for the distribution of books to shelters and housing residencies.
Scholastic donated books and classroom materials to schools assisting displaced students.
SirsiDynix offered emergency hosting services for libraries in five states, free consulting services to affected libraries to assist in their recovery, donated PCs and Internet capabilities, and set up webinars on disaster recovery.
Sleeping Bear Press pledged to donate $1 of the proceeds from every copy of Anita Prieto's new book, B Is for Bookworm, to the ALA Hurricane Katrina Library Relief Fund.
Swets Information Services donated $1500 to the ALA Hurricane Katrina Library Relief Fund.
TechSoup Stock invited affected libraries to email their “urgent needs for technology that TechSoup Stock can provide.”
Thomas Klise/Crimson Multimedia offered a discount on all CD-ROM, DVD, and processing orders for libraries rebuilding damaged or lost multimedia collections.
Thomson Gale provided numerous computers to the Louisiana State Library in Baton Rouge to aid in the filing of FEMA applications, missing-persons searches and other vital needs, free databases to affected schools and libraries, and a 50 percent discount on titles lost in the disaster. It also matched employee contributions 2 to 1.
Thomson West provided free Westlaw passwords for displaced legal firms and pledged to replace CD-ROM and print collections destroyed by the disaster free of charge.
3M donated $925,000 worth of eBranch Library Workstations (25 units) to selected libraries in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Its employees also raised $1.5 million in cash.
H.W. Wilson pledged to replace Wilson titles lost because of Hurricane Katrina and donated $50,000 to the ALA Hurricane Katrina Library Relief Fund.
Wolters Kluwer Legal group, which includes Aspen Publishers, CCH, Loislaw, and KLI product families, pledged to help replace collections of its products at affected libraries.
Xrefer set up a web page to facilitate credit card donations to the Louisiana Library Relief Disaster Fund.
