Community Liaison Contact:
Carol Van Baalen
LOCAL NEWS
Woodmont’s
Library Garden Planting was a huge success! The sun shone on Planting
Day, April 21, and about 75 children and parents participated in the
planting. Now the
tiny plants—radishes, lettuce, and peas-- are popping up in the 4 x 10
foot garden plot on the north end of the library property.
The
next program in the season of events is a Library Garden Craft Night,
scheduled for May 29, at 7pm. The next planting party will be on
Saturday, June 2. Come take a
look at the garden! A special thanks to the Woodmont Friends, who are
sponsoring the garden programs.
May Program Highlights
Travel as a Volunteer,
a Rick Steves travel program, Saturday, May 5, 1pm, at the Kent Library. For adults.
Cycling the Americas Project,
in celebration of Bike Month, Sunday, May
6, at 2pm at the Des Moines Library. A brother/sister duo share their
experiences biking from California to Uruguay. For adults.
Developing the Author Within with writer/poet Janet Wong, Saturday, May
12, 2pm, at the Kent Library. For teens.
Caspar Babypants Concert, Friday, May 18, 10:30am at the Kent Library.
For children and parents.
Rick Steves Italy, from Milan to Rome, Sunday, May 20, 2pm at the Des
Moines Library. For adults.
Charlie Hope Music Concert, Tuesday, May 22, 7pm at the Woodmont Library.
For children and parents.
Introduction to Genealogy with Claudia Breland, Thursday, May 31, 6:30pm
at the Woodmont Library. For adults.
For
a complete list of programs at the Des Moines, Kent and Woodmont
libraries, please open the attachments with this newsletter, or click on
this link:
http://www.kcls.org/programs/
Meetings
The
Des Moines/Woodmont Library Advisory Board met Thursday, May 3, 1:30pm
at the Des Moines Library. The meeting included a meet-and-greet time
with the library staff.
Carmen Scott, member of the Des Moines City Council, also attended the
meeting and provided the board with an update on council news.
Tony
Wilson, library board president, attended the Washington Library
Association annual conference in Tulalip on April 19 and 20.
SYSTEM HIGHLIGHTS
OPERATIONS
Each
night, there are up to 1,000 young people in the Seattle area who have
no place to sleep. Many have fled abusive homes, been kicked out,
or cannot be kept by their families. Two years ago, Councilmember Kathy
Lambert asked if KCLS would be interested in participating in a
national program called
“Safe Place” which helps connect young people in crisis with emergency shelter and counseling. Participating organizations display
Safe Place window clings indicating the facility is a safe haven
where youth can go to seek assistance and wait for help to arrive. Youth
find out about the program through school and community outreach. Safe
Place is run by Youth Care in partnership
with King County Metro, Auburn Youth Resources and Friends of Youth and
is currently offered in 40 states. KCLS will be joining other community
partners as a Safe Place to help ensure youth in crisis are connected
with the people and resources they need.
KCLS is gaining recognition as an important agency in its efforts to improve
school readiness and early literacy. Library2Go is now
visiting over 40 percent of all registered home day care centers in its
service area. Starting in May, staff will offer more activities geared
toward improving preschoolers’ reading readiness.
This effort is in addition to the “Let’s Read” project that KCLS is
launching in partnership with the Community Center for Education Results
(CCER) to encourage summer reading among low income families.
Workflow analysis
of KCLS’ collections
management operations will be completed in time for KCLS’ new Evergreen
developer, Catalyst, to begin work on key software improvements in the
areas of selection and order, and cataloging and processing. Catalyst
will spend the next ten weeks using an agile
software development process, involving sprints of rapid development
and user feedback. During this initial engagement, KCLS will assess
whether Catalyst’s development process is efficient and effective, and
if so, retain the firm to develop further software
enhancements of KCLS’ catalog.
Circulation
increased 2% System-wide
in March and increased 3% year-to-date compared to the prior year.
Circulation of eBooks increased 124% for the month. Holds placed
increased a healthy 5%, indicating that both print and eBooks
collections are in high demand.
As reported at last month’s Board meeting, KCLS’ news
Social Media team has already generated significant social
networking traffic. In the first half of April, Twitter re-tweets
increased from 80 to 95 and Facebook ‘Likes’ were more than four times
higher than the entire month of March. Social media analytics
will be captured and reported in the monthly Dashboard soon.
The
Civil War book discussions and related programs including Fiddle
Tunes of the Civil War, Civil War Quilts, The Civil War in Cinema, and
The Civil War in Washington Territory held at libraries throughout the
System have been very well received. Each
discussion was led by Dr. Lorraine McConaghy from the Museum of History
and Industry. More Civil War programs are scheduled for the remainder
of April and May.
GOVERNMENT RELATIONS
Last month, the
Renton City Council voted to relocate the Renton Library, but has
since decided to put a measure on the August 7 ballot to allow citizens
to weigh in on the issue. The City has already issued construction
bonds, purchased a site and incurred several
hundred thousand dollars of design costs. At the April City Council
meeting, KCLS expressed a number of concerns with the current site,
including reservations about the City’s ability to get necessary permits
to renovate the building over the Cedar River.
KCLS also questioned the City’s estimated costs to renovate the
existing building, which are not in line with costs KCLS has incurred
for its own recently renovated libraries. KCLS has anticipated that the
new Renton and Renton Highlands Libraries will be
substantially completed by 2014 and will continue to move forward with
the design process.
Initial election returns as of April 19 show that the measure to annex the
City of Enumclaw to KCLS is ahead by only 14 votes with 36% of
the votes counted. If the measure passes, KCLS will assume
responsibility for library operations in June.
The ballot measure by the
City of Bothell to annex a portion of unincorporated Snohomish
County is failing by 63%. The City was making a second attempt at
annexation after the first measure failed in November. The annexation
would have generated up to $1.5 million additional
revenue to KCLS.
As anticipated, the
Burien City Council voted in favor of placing annexation of
unincorporated North Highline on the November ballot. The KCLS Board of
Trustees voted to postpone capital improvements in the North Highline
service area until the annexation issue is resolved.
In the meantime, KCLS is focused on negotiations with the City of Tukwila for the Tukwila Library project.
OTHER
KCLS was named 2012
Organization of the Year at the Municipal League Civic Awards dinner on April 5.
More than 200 people gathered to acknowledge award recipients,
including King County Executive Dow Constantine (James R. Ellis
Leadership Award), Bellevue City Councilmember Grant Degginger (Public
Official of the Year) and Senators Steve Litzow and Ed
Murray (Warren G. Magnuson Memorial Award.) Bill Ptacek and KCLS Board
of Trustees President Jim Wigfall accepted the award for KCLS.
As mentioned last month, KCLS’
Take time to READ presentation was well received by those in
attendance at the Public Library Association Conference in Philadelphia.
The Independence Public Library in Kansas, named 2012 Best Small
Library in the United States, will launch its own book
cover walking tour and KCLS expects to hear that more libraries will be
adopting elements of the program as well. As the saying goes, imitation
is the highest form of flattery.
View all at
http://www.kcls.org/bond/or
sign up here
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Upcoming Dates
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