WebJunction

I'm Suzanne Reymer, a statewide technology consultant with the Montana State Library Billings Office. I'll be attending the training next week along with Maggie Meredith my colleague from Helena.

One nice thing about coming from Montana is that you never have to defend your right to participate in anything rural. I work primarily with libraries in south central and south eastern Montana. To give you an idea of what rural means in Montana terms, one of the counties I work with, Garfield county, has a population of 1,218 in an area of 4,668 sq. mi. (slightly smaller than the state of Connecticut). This gives a population density of .3 per sq. mi. To top it off, Garfield county is continuing to lose population - down 4.8% since 2000. Not only is it difficult to sustain public access computing under these circumstances, it's difficult to sustain any kind of library services. If the public library should fail in Jordan (the county seat), the nearest town with a library is Circle, 67 miles away. And McCone county's not in any better shape.

Of course, in the western part of the state we have problems with rapid growth and the difficulties of libraries serving growing and changing communities.

I think we really need to start thinking outside the box in terms of library services. That takes creativity and collaboration. That's why I'm looking forward to the institute in Seattle and our summer RLS workshop in Montana. I hope we can create real and virtual communities that can help inspire and support our remote and isolated colleagues.

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Suzanne Reymer
Statewide Technology Librarian
Montana State Library
c/o Parmly Billings Library
510 N. Broadway
Billings, MT 59101
Email: sreymer@mtlib.org
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Hi my name is Tom Sommer. I am a Librarian at the Oro Valley Public Library in Oro Valley, AZ. I have worked with the Arizona State Libraries and Equal Access in the past. I am very excited to be apart of this important project. The Oro Valley Public Library just had there grand re-opening and it was a big hit. The Teen Advisory Board that I assembled a few years ago helped the Architects and Interior Designers create the new Teen Zone. The teens had a lot of fun helping create the new Teen Zone. The teens provided ideas for the carpet, paint, and a/v in this new space.

See everyone in Seattle!

Tom

Hello:

My name is Cindi Hickey and I will be the coordinator (and a trainer) for the RLS project in Kansas. I will be working with Brenda Hough, our official trainer.

I work with the Kansas State Library on special continuing education projects. Another project we will be launching soon is the Kansas WebJunction Community Partner project.

I am looking forward to the training and to learning more about WebJunction.

See all you Round 2ers in Seattle!

Cindi Hickey
Representing the State Library of Kansas
1020 SW Washburn Ave.
Topeka, KS 66604
785-235-1383
chickey@kslib.info

My name is Jane Schoen. I am the Director of the Bridgeview Public Library in Bridgeview, IL. I am participating in a Sustainibility workshop and part of the deal is to register on Webjunction. So I am. I will be back to explore more at a future date.

We are a group of Southern Illinois Librarians and we are participating in the Rural Library Sustainability Project in Mt Vernon, Illinois. We have enjoyed meeting and sharing ideas today and we appreciate the Gates Foundation holding this meeting
for us to participate in.
We will be using Webjunction in the future.

Greetings!

Nick Moga here. I'm the technology consultant for the Charles P. Jones Memorial Library in Covington, VA. I attended the Sustainability seminar today in Roanoke, Virginia. Great work by Kendra Morgan of the Library of VA.

Our library is a single location with about 20PCs. 6 of them are the original Gates PCs upgraded to Windows 2000. We are in the process of replacing these PCs with a different Foundation application. I'll be setting up the new Windows XP PCs and looking for any support I can get on this board!

happy reading!

My name is Brenda Hickman and I'm the Director of Gassaway Public Library in Gassaway, WV. We are a rural area. Our town has a population of about 1300. I've only been director for 4 years so I can't really give any good advice but thought I would acquaint myself with the program and see what good advice I can get to begin the Rural Library Sustainability Project.

Hi my name is Sherry Bright and I'm the director at the Buchanan County Public Library in Grundy Virginia. I attended the Sustainability workshop in Roanoke. Great workshop. I hope to take advantage of several ideas discussed there.

Hello all. I am Pam Warden, Supervisor over the Mingo County Public Libraries. We have 4 libraries that are located at Delbarton (which is the main library in Mingo County), Kermit, Matewan and Gilbert. I not only am over the libraries but I also drive our county bookmobile. We mostly serve the outlying grade schools. We also pick up a Christian School, along with some headstart groups.

We only have one person employeed at each of the libraries and we have a part-time worker which serves all the libraries. When I first was employeed with the library system, we had 3 full time employees at the main library and a part-time worker. Each of the branches had their own part-time employee as well. I have been employeed with the library system for the past 22 years and I have been supervisor for the past 20 years.

While attending the meeting at the Stonewall Jackson Lake Resort, I realized one thing and that is we all are having funding problems. We all know the importance of the libraries in each of our communities, but if we don't find a better way of funding the libraries, then I am afraid we are going to be in bad shape. And the sad part about this is, your patrons either won't or don't realize what might happen to the libraries in their communities if we don't come up with the money to operate them on.

Well, sorry for babbling on. Just wanted to say it was a wonderful meeting that I attended, met some wonderful people and we all have one common goal and that is to improve the services of each of our libraries. Catch you guys on the flip side.

Welcome to WebJunction, Dharani Kumar P!

We are so glad you have found this spot on the Internet, especially if it can be of some help to you and the rural libraries in your region. Did you know that there are 11 other registered WebJunction members from Karnataka state? And many more from other parts of India. I had not been aware of the number of members we have from outside of the US and Canada until I looked at the Member Directory, sorting by State/Province. This is very exciting to me.

To get acquainted with the Rural Library Sustainability program, a good place to start is the [url http://webjunction.org/do/Navigation?category=498 ]main section[/url] of articles and events. Get more info about the RLS project from the [url http://webjunction.org/do/DisplayContent?id=13290 ]Project Continuum[/url] and the [url http://webjunction.org/do/DisplayContent?id=11135 ]Project Evaluation Plan[/url].

But really, I'd like to hear more about you, to know what similarities and differences you face in the rural libraries in your region. I'm so glad you took the first step toward an exchange of views by posting here in the forum.

In addition, I'd like to do a bit of housekeeping so we don't lose the thread of the conversation here. I hope you don't mind If I consolidate your four posts into one.