Tri-County Career Center(TCCC) is a Junior/Senior High School located in Nelsonville Ohio that offers 18 career programs to juniors and seniors from various high schools located in following counties:  Athens, Hocking and Perry.  The TCCC Library is one of SERLS’ newest Enhanced Member.  Welcome!  I am very excited at working with library director Stacy Simonyi.  She is a very talented librarian and her library reflects that fact!  The library for this school is not far from the main entrance and is flanked by floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides, which are always filled with great diplays which are changed quite often!   The library is neat, clean and arranged in a very ”cool” and appealing manner for both teens and faculty.  The books are displayed in face-forward style on the shelves, making the very easy to find and eye-catching to students.  Slat wall units also allow for a lot of great display space.  On these slat walls you find displays of new books and even some required book reports created by students and the book they reviewed (nice touch!).  On top of one of the bookshelves you will find folded book designs.  Circulation has exponentially increased and to-date this year, has already beaten the total for last school year!  Stacy is hosting book discussions for both students and faculty which take place in the middle of each nine week period.  I enjoyed watching the students come in and ask questions, return books and utilize the library.  I asked Stacy what is the biggest challenge of being the Library Media Specialist at TCCC, and her answer came quick and with a smile “TIME!”.  We need to remember that many public school librarians run everything in the library and are the only staff member and may or may not have student assistance!  (Next time you see a public school librarian or library aide, give them a pat on the back!)  Stacy, I thank you for allotting some of your busy time for my visit!

Hint for the slideshow below.  Click once on top of slideshow to activate controls.  You then can mouseover a picture to reveal caption and to pause it from its sliding motion.

Ohio Christian University (formerly named Circleville Bible College) is a small college in Circleville that dates back to 1948 and offers over 20 different programs, including traditional undergraduate, adult and online degree completion programs.   Maxwell Librarynot only serves the 600 students that attend the college, but is also open to the public as well.  Director David Tipton has been a spearhead for growth of the library.  Not only has the collection quadrupled in the last five years, but so has the circulation and the amount of reference questions (which I have to say has an impressive database tracking system fondly nicknamed “The RAT”, which, if I remember correctly, stands for Reference Answer Tracking.)   David and I started Kent State’s MLIS program at the same time (okay, I will admit that David finished the program before me!) and I have appreciated his friendship and his continual insightful ideas!  It was nice to finally get to visit the Maxwell library-it is very beautiful, spacious and nicely arranged!  Even though the semester had just ended, I was able to meet most of his multi-talented staff and thoroughly enjoyed meeting them.  The Maxwell Library is a recent recipient of an LSTA Minigrant to upgrade their ILS so they can become an Ohio Link member.  (WAY TO GO!!)

I am going to brag that David showed me the archive room (not open to the public); it is filled with wonderful and well preserved college documents as well as historical books and a bible collection that was donated to the library.  I could spend a day in their just looking at the shelves let alone perusing the titles!  There is also a environmentally controlled display of the Bishop’s Bible (1585) and a Luther Bible (1729).  Not only does the Maxwell Library house the collection and archives, but also contains state-of-the-art classrooms and faculty offices.

Please stop by and visit David and his staff at the Maxwell Library (and don’t forget to ask David to show you some of his wonderful photographs!).  I don’t have as many pictures of the library that I wanted, my camera battery went dead (maybe David will add some to the blog for us!)  Thanks for the tour David!

On a extremely cold Tuesday I headed my car toward Circleville to visit the Pickaway County District Public Library(PCDPL), whose director, James Guenther is also the President of the Board of Trustees for SERLS.  The main library moved to their current location about five years ago.  The building they now reside in was formerly a department store.  The results of the remodel are just spectacular!  When you walk into the library, you will find a contemporary industrial look softened with wood accents, beautiful murals and custom designed furniture and art (check out the handmade donor wall plaque that looks like a stained glass window in the slide show).  The library is very open and you are lead through it by an angular pathway.  Signs, which resemble street signs, are very visible and define the different areas of the library.  This children’s section of the library is in its own space off from the main area.  A beautiful hand-painted mural guides you down the path that leads you to this wonderful space that boasts a wonderful collection, small tables, a carpeted storytime “rotunda” and even a family bathroom (okay, this may not excite some of you, but as a Mom of three, I appreciate this feature greatly!)  This library has been helped along the way with generous financial support from community members as well as local industry.  This has greatly helped the library to provide a wide variety of services that include normal library services as well as enhanced services such as  homebound delivery and storytime on wheels, not to mention a top-notch staff!  Plan a trip to visit this library- it is well worth the trip!!

If you want a warm and inviting atmosphere (especially on a cold and rainy day like this day was), stop by the J.A. Davis Library, which serves Rio Grande Community College and the University of Rio Grande.  This library is spacious and lovely, filled with beautiful wood accents that give the aura of an “old world” library.  The library has three floors and the view from the upper floors is quite beautiful, even on a rainy winter day.  The ground floor houses the director, Dave Mauer’s office,  student computers, technical services (in which Technical Services Specialist Greg was hard at work cataloging materials and Betty Jean, Acquisitions Specialist, who is retiring this month, was wrapping up her last few days at the library), compact storage, bound periodicals and some quiet rooms for audio/visual viewing.  On the main floor you will find the circulation desk with Deb and Gretchen ready to help with a smile, government documents (I am sorry that I wasn’t able to meet Amy Miller who is the Documents Specialist) microfilms, reference, and the reference desk featuring reference librarians Tim and Amy ready to help students.  The top floor holds the rest of the book collection.  Davis Library houses and impressive collection of over 100,000 titles.   Wireless access is available throughout the library for students and seating is abundant.  The ground floor has very unique library carrels which allow students plenty of elbow room to spread out a laptop and papers.

Dave, I really appreciate the time you took out of your busy schedule to give me a tour (did I mention I visited on the last day of classes for the semester?)  I am VERY impressed with this library!  It is beautiful, well organized, notable in size and your staff is top notch! 

Check out my slide show for a few pictures of the library, but if you really want to see some better pictures of how it looks, go to the library web site and check out their virtual tour.

Yesterday I made the lovely drive to the Ohio river town of Pomeroy to visit the main branch of the Meigs County District Public Library (MCDPL).  MCDPL has four locations and the main branch is located right across the river (there is a great view from the newer section of the library).  Kristi, thank you so much for spending a lot of time talking library talk and giving me a tour of your library and introducing me to everyone.  You and your staff really made me feel at home.

The library building itself was originally a bank with an addition built after it was converted to a library.  It has been modified beautifully- everything is neat and easily accessible and has been cleverly adjusted from its prior use (the video room was a sun room!- I will let the reader’s guess how the former vault area is utilized ).  Chairs and tables are placed nicely throughout the library to provide reading nooks.  On the upper level you will find the circulation desk, the collection, the genealogy area and patron computers.  On the lower level is an impressive area with several meeting rooms, a state of the art computer lab, a kitchen and even a separate entrance to help the meeting room traffic flow.  Staff and a volunteer were busy getting ready for one of the big annual family craft nights- the decorating of Gingerbread Houses (thank you to Emily for providing pictures of this event and game night to include this blog).  100 houses were pre-assembled for decorating.  About eighty people attended and 50 houses were decorated (the bad weather forecast made attendance lower than normal).

The Racine branch held the first Game night last Friday, November 30 from 4-6.  It was a huge success!  31 kids took turns playing at two stations Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution.  The Friends of the Library provided pizza.  Judging from the pictures alone, the kids had a great time.  Game events are becoming a popular program at public libraries.  (If your library has hosted a gaming event, please post a comment on this blog and tell us about it!)

If you are in Pomeroy, stop by the library- you can’t miss it.  Just drive down 33 and look for the new beautiful sign with its electronic billboard!

I visited the Nelsonville branch of the Athens County Public Library (ACPL) on the Monday before Thanksgiving.  Although one of the library renovations gave this library a sleek modern look on the outside, the white wooden rockers on the main entrance portico make you feel like you are visiting a favorite and welcoming relative.  This feeling continued on as I was greeted by staff behind the beautiful circulation desk and welcomed by director Lauren Miller.  Lauren is a sweet and dynamic lady, working hard to make her library system a great place to be.  ACPL took on a new look and name in August of this year.  I love their new logo!  Isn’t it a great spin on the traditional library sign?

Their web site also received a new look.  It is very sleek (great job Owen!) and easy to use.  Each branch has their own tab.  Check it out at www.myacpl.org

If you don’t know, ACPL gave libraries in the US a grand leap into the world of open source software.  When researching for a new integrated library system, they decided to hire a programmer to update the open-source software Koha to make it compatible with Marc records.  This innovation has provided ACPL with a cutting edge catalog.  They just upgraded to a newer version of Koha and the search feature is very enhanced.  The results list are very “amazon-like”.

Well, I am digressing into technology, which is easy for me to do!  Back to my visit.  Lauren gave me the full tour!  The Nelsonville branch is well organized in all areas (both patron and staff).  There was a visiting school when I was there and branch manager Sandy McConnel and staff were busy with lively and bright second graders.  About a year ago, the moved their children’s department to the front of the building where kids can enjoy the bright light and check out all of the activity going on outside. 

Thank Lauren and staff for a great tour and fun visit!  Please stop by and visit them sometime!