Raising Money for Kenya Libraries, Digitizing Photo Collections, and Let's See What Exciting Things Happened at the Midwinter Meeting in Philadelphia!

Here I am again with another interesting look at American Libraries. The March issue had many different and interesting articles covering lifelong learning, additional information of library related events throughout the world, plus a report on the ALA Midwinter Meeting that took place in Philadelphia. While my goal was to tell you about one interesting article each month, I found that in this issue there were just too many interesting things just to pick one! So since a couple of the interesting information found in this issue a rather small, I decided to highlight the many articles I found interesting. Enjoy!

One of the first things to catch my eye in this month’s issue was a one page article about two 16 year old high school juniors from Tampa, Florida who raise money for libraries in Kenya. The article is “Girls Raise Cash for Kenya” and appears on page 28. Believing in Gandhi’s words “We must become the chance we want to see in the world”, these two teenagers, Danielle Rodriguez and Megan Adams, started Literacy Leads to Hope, which is a fundraising initiative that supports the American Friends of Kenya (AFK) organization. Their goal has been to raise enough money to build and set up a library in Thika. So far they have raised $40,000 from a benefit fundraiser and $35,000 from a Canadian Baptist church towards their $120,000 goal that they hope to raise, which is the estimated cost of construction. There are already desks, books, a computer, and shelves that are waiting in storage fort he building. Not only have they raised money for their cause, but they have met the mayor of Tampa, who declared “Literacy Leads to Hope Day” on November 13 in the city. They are also continuing their fundraising by reaching out to schools by trying to raise money through t-shirt sales and sales of Tumaini (Swahili for “hope”) dolls that the girls created themselves. The money they raise and will raise goes to the American Friends of Kenya organization, earmarked for the library. For more information, visit their website at www.literacyleadstohope.com.

Looking at the technology news in the library world, the Library of Congress is teaming up with Flickr “to broaden public access to the 14 million photographs and other visual items in LC’s collections” (30). The project will begin with 3,000 photos that will be posted in an area called The Commons (www.flickr.com/commons) that will contains photos from the library’s most popular collections, the George Grantham Bain Collection and Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information. Only images, which have no copyright restrictions know to exist, will be included in this project. There are hopes that the public will enhance the collections utility by helping with key caption information for the many photos that are missing this information.

The next interesting article I read called “Story Quilt: Poems of a Place.” It talks about the town of Galway, New York and the social history project of the Galway Public Library. The Galway Public Library received a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts, which was administered through the Saratoga County Arts Council. With this grant and many volunteers, they gathered a collection of poems and little stories “comprising the symbolic quilt of the town’s collective history” (51). They collected poems that people wrote, or material to create a poem, dealing with the past through the present of the town. Instead of relegating these poems to paper or being archived somewhere, they decided to have the poems performed “for the entire community to share and celebrate” (51). After the first year was a success, they applied for a second grant to continue collected poems and stories to add to the collection, ending up with close to 300 poems by the end of 2006. Eventually by 2007 they published a book containing 122 of the poems and artwork from local artists called Story Quilt: Poems of a Place. The whole community got behind the project and showed its support by funding the publication of the book themselves through contributions from individuals, businesses, organizations in Galway. By doing this, they were able to allow all the proceeds from the sale of the books to be put back into the library’s arts and literary programming fund.

Last, but not least, there was a whole section of information about the events and presentations the occurred at the Midwinter Meeting that was held in Philadelphia in January. In addition to all the information and brief overviews of the main events from the meeting, there is also information about the candidates for ALA President in 2009. Each of the candidates had a page to tell about their experience and what they pledge to do if elected. There is also an article where each candidate answers questions from the different people in the audience. Voting began March 17, so if you are an ALA member take this opportunity to vote.

Well that is all for this month’s American Libraries. If you are an ALA member, you can access the magazine for free through the website.