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In an unusual partnership called “Borrow Anywhere, Return Anywhere,” every public, college, and university library in Nova Scotia, Canada, will lend all their materials for free to any library cardholder in the province.

Notably, all academic libraries in the province are publicly funded. According to Nova Scotia Department of Education spokesman Dan Harrison, the province also underwrites 71 percent of public library spending, except in Halifax, the largest city, where the province supports 51 percent of expenditures. Only Alberta has launched a similar program.

While libraries around the state of Pennsylvania have been hampered by a 20 percent cut in state support, the Reading Public Library (RPL) has lost not just state funds but the city's $450,000, leading to the plan to close of all three branches and discontinue the bookmobile. The main library will remain open.

RPL still has significant county support, but those cuts should result in an overall decline in funding from $2.7 million to $2 million, or some 26 percent. The closures, planned for the end of the year, have generated much local concern.

The Special Libraries Association (dba SLA), some six years into an effort to move away from the term special libraries, has responded to its Alignment Project research by proposing a name change to the Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals, or ASKPro.

Members will vote in a special online referendum from November 16 to December 9. SLA studies show that “executives who make hiring decisions and allocate budget dollars do not understand what [the name SLA] means,” wrote SLA president Gloria Zamora. “This disconnect endangers the jobs of our members, and we are determined to act.”

In the United States, federal stimulus funds for libraries focus especially on the expansion of broadband access, not library construction, but in Canada, the federal government will contribute up to $18.3 million to the planned Halifax Central Library. The province of Nova Scotia will provide $13 million and the Halifax Regional Municipality $23.7 million, reaching the $55 million CDN ($52.7 million USD) price tag.

The library would go from 38,000 square feet to 108,740 square feet, with many more computers and meeting rooms. Also, the federal government will contribute $3 million CDN (about $2.92 million USD) to help expand and improve the Toronto Reference Library.

After county commissioners asked the board of the financially strapped Gwinnett County Public Library, Lawrenceville, GA, to reconsider turning three branches—including a three-year-old one beloved by Dacula residents—into computer labs, the board reversed itself.

Instead, all 15 branches will offer full service but in reduced hours, a plan first proposed by the board member representing Dacula but rejected in September. In August, the board had voted to close the Dacula branch to provide staffing for the new Hamilton Mill Library (scheduled to open early next year), an action that drew a huge response.

Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley recently helped unveil YOUmedia, an innovative 21st-century learning space for high school students located at the Chicago Public Library's Harold Washington Library Center. The project draws on work by cultural anthropologist Mizuko Ito and others at the Living and Learning with Digital Media project.

YOUmedia visitors can find a place to read, do homework, hang out with friends, play games, or spend time on popular sites such as Facebook and MySpace. There's a recording studio and opportunity to take free digital media workshops.

It's been unclear for months whether the downtown Cedar Rapids Public Library (CRPL), IA, devastated by flooding in June 2008, would be reconstructed at the same site or move to a new location. Given the uncertainty, the library board chose to defer a planned November vote on an increase in the library levy.

Now the Federal Emergency Management Agency has determined that the city must choose a new site. That would bring about $4 million more in federal funds, on top of some $22 million expected. Said CRPL assistant director Tamara Glise, “All of us are extremely relieved and excited.”

An erroneous report in New York University's student newspaper claimed that the entire 5.1 million volumes in campus libraries would be digitized, courtesy of the government of Abu Dhabi, for use in NYU's planned Abu Dhabi campus in the Persian Gulf.

NYU Library dean Carol Mandel told LJ that “our plan, pending more approvals, is to do some significant selected appropriate digitization projects.”

Richardson Public Library (RPL), TX, located in a city of 100,000 that shares a border with Dallas, ended free reciprocal borrowing with the Dallas Public Library, effective October 1, given the significant crowding in the library caused by Dallas residents.

RPL also has reduced its participation in the TexShare program, which enables borrowing among participating libraries, and now allows only one item to be taken out at a time by those from TexShare institutions.

At the opening session October 18 of the 155th Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Membership Meeting in Washington, DC, leaders from the largest research institutions in North America considered the future of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), at risk of attrition because of space and staffing demands.

A report from Ithaka S+R suggests an effort to move away from print while improving discoverability of existing collections.

A new mass-market paperback titled In the Middle of the Night: The Shocking True Story of a Family Killed in Cold Blood (True Crime Library: St. Martin's) offers an accused murderer's account of graphic killings in Cheshire, CT, apparently violating a gag order. The town library has been criticized for buying it and opening up old wounds.

In support of the library's purchase, Hartford Courant [CT] columnist Rick Green called the Jefferson County Public Library (JCPL), Lakewood, CO, which has a branch in Columbine, near the site of the 1999 high school massacre, and found the library has a collection on the Columbine attack. Green quoted JCPL's Ann Cress: “A library has a role in maintaining the history of the community.”

Supporters of Darlene Miller, the ousted director of the Castleton Public Library (CPL), NY, are trying to get her reinstated, citing major recognition of the library—a runner-up as LJ's Best Small Library in America in 2008—and a questionable process behind her dismissal.

Their efforts have attracted much attention in the local media and support from politicians, as documented on the Save the Castleton Library! site (saveourlibrary.wordpress.com). The rural village of 1600 is less than ten miles from the state capital, Albany. (See Feedback, p. 10.)

University of California–Berkeley (UCB) library administrators won't have to deal with any more protest actions this year over reduced library schedules, after a group of “Berkeley parents”—their children are UCB students and alumni—have donated a total of $80,000 to restore hours. Students, along with some staffers and faculty, occupied the George and Mary Foster Anthropology Library for 24 hours last month to protest Saturday closures of smaller libraries.

Ernest Greene, a 2009 graduate of the University of South Carolina School of Library and Information Science, Columbia, turned his downtime into a career.

Recording music in his parents' house, the pop musician/songwriter known as Washed Out launched his career on MySpace and saw his second gig ever reviewed in the New York Times.

Now he's putting the job search aside to tour. “However, I still look forward to a long career as a librarian,” he told LJ. For the full interview, go to bit.ly/4njCMa.

Webinar

2.0

Change

Green

Community Center

Customer

Libraryland

Source: Joe Schallan, via Publib, for the first five; last two contributed by other Publibbers

21%

The New York Public Library's expected decline in fundraising in 2009, to $130 million

Source: Chronicle of Philanthropy

Going Green Texas

Join LJ on December 11 at Dallas Public Library for a seminar on sustainable design in tough economic times, covering building, renovation, and operations. If you are considering a new capital project, in the fundraising or prebond stage or early in the construction process, sign up at libraryjournal.com/goinggreenDallas.

Paraprofessional of the Year

Library Journal will honor one support staffer with its 11th annual Paraprofessional of the Year Award in LJ 3/1/10. Learn more and submit your nominations at bit.ly/4e00Ax. Postmark deadline: January 19, 2010.