The Association of NH Library Friends (ANHLF) held a revival meeting in November and now has a set of interim officers who are working to bring this group back to being a support and sharing mechanism for NH Friends of the Library groups statewide. Their new website is http://www.anhlf.org and a listserv will be forthcoming shortly. Please advise your local Friends!
On Wednesday 15 December 2004 from 10am - Noon at the Hooksett PL, there will be a demonstration of the "Bibliostat Connect" system, which can give you access to many NH and national library statistics resources, and makes it easy to compile comparative reports. This is a companion program to the Bibliostat Collect product that NHSL used this year to collect your public library statistics online.
The NHSL does not have the money ($16,000. per year) to buy access to this resource product for all of the public libraries as we would like to, and as many wealthier states do. Bibliostat will, however, sell single library access to this data goldmine, and we want you to know just what is available, so that you can decide whether this is something that you want to purchase. Their price is a sliding scale, starting at $300. per year for libraries serving under 25,000 population. The Seacoast Co-op has asked about the possibility of Co-op pricing, and we have asked Bibliostat about this, and hope to hear on the 15th.
The Bibliostat Representative, Trevor Allred, will be traveling to NH from Utah to provide this information session, and the Hooksett Public Library has graciously agreed to host the session in their Gates Computer lab.
If you would like to see more about Bibliostat Connect before the 15th, see what the New York State Library has to say about it at: http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/libdev/libs/biblcnct.htm (note: Bibliostat is the product, Informata is the company, a part of Baker & Taylor)
If you are interested in attending, please e-mail me (tladd@library.state.nh.us) so that we may know how many of you to expect.
New Hampshire now has a new statewide book award. Sponsored by NHLA, the award will recognize the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction titles geared to teens. School and public librarians around the state are accepting nominations from teens in grades 9-12. In the spring, a group of librarians who have spent time reading the nominated books will come up with a list of 13 titles that teens will vote on the following spring. We are open to suggestions for the name of this award. For more information or to receive nomination forms, contact Ann Hoey at ahoey@library.state.nh.us
An interesting study has just been released with information on the taxpayer Return on Investment in Florida's Public Libraries. The measurement of Return on Investment (ROI) has long been used in the for-profit sector, but this study used a variety of data collection and analysis methods to study Public Libraries. The study examined several approaches to considering returns on public library availability and use and found they ALL show substantial returns exceeding taxpayer investment. The summary concluded that Florida public library benefit to cost ratios are impressive. The entire study is available online at http://dlis.dos.state.fl.us/bld/roi/FinalReport.cfm.
