WebJunction

Well, the staff for this first round of the RLS project is all in place. It looks like it's going to be a great round. We have eight states participating in Round One: Alabama, Alaska, Illinois, New Mexico, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Virginia, and West Virginia. This will be a great place to meet and introduce ourselves prior to us getting together next month in Santa Fe.

I am really looking forward to working with all of you over the next several months, and I'm really excited about this project. The notion of getting out and focusing some attention on the small, rural library that so often gets neglected and feels alone is just so empowering. I know there are some great things going on out there, and it will be nice to have a national program to help capture some of those best practices, and bring them back to WebJunction where we can all benefit from them.

I know many of us have been on conference calls together, but let's start using this space to get to know eachother a bit more. Please introduce yourself, trainers and coordinators, and let us know a bit more about your "hopes and dreams".

Hello from Oklahoma! I am the Project Coordinator for Oklahoma. Ginny Dietrich is the trainer. We both work for the Oklahoma Department of Libraries in the Office of Library Development. I am a regional consultant and work with 35 municipal libraries and 2 library systems. I am also working on my PhD in Library Science. I worked for a large library system before coming to the state library and knew nothing about rural libraries. Learning about rural libraries is very fulfilling and I am continually impressed with how much these librarians do with so little money and support.

I am excited about Web Junction and have told many of my libraries about it. In fact, the library director of the Perry Public Library in Perry, Oklahoma, has used Tech Atlas quite a bit. Danielle Shreve has become so proficient with it that she was asked by Tech Atlas to attend their conference in Monterey, California, in October--not just to attend but to participate by presenting a pre-conference. This is a great opportunity for her and she can't say enough good things about Tech Atlas. This is just one example of how Web Junction will help libraries reach out to each other.

I'm looking forward to Santa Fe and to meeting everyone and learning as much as I can! See you in September!
--Linda Gens

John and Linda, Welcome!! Thanks for introducing yourselves....it's great to have you on board. We are going to have a great, productive time down in Santa Fe.

Please keep any questions, comments, suggestions, etc., coming...

Great to have you on board, Pam.

Have a great Monday, everyone!!

Hi. My name is Rebecca Van Der Meer and I am from Charleston, WV. I am the Continuing Education Consultant with the West Virginia Library Commission. I spend most of my time developing and coordinating seminars for the public library staff around the state. I try to provide two major sessions during the year with numerous smaller training projects. This year I will be coordinating our 2nd Trustees Institute and our 4th Services Stratigies. The trustee institute will be a 2 day program with all instruction geared to assist trustees. The Service Strategies is a group of 4 three-hour seminars that will be presented repeatedly around the state.

I am very active with our state library association and really look forward to meeting all of you in Santa Fe.

Rebecca Van Der Meer
vandermr@wvlc.lib.wv.us
304-558-3978 Ext. 2011

Good morning!

My name is Nina Malyshev. I am the coordinator for
Alaska. I am also the Head of Library Development for the
State Library. I have been involved with the Gates grant
programs from the beginning. I am really looking forward to
this grant that will focus on the needs of rural libraries,
which seem be almost bottomless.

Every public library in Alaska except our "big" three
(Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau) is considered rural
by the definition proposed--so I get to work with almost
everyone, which is an ideal situation from my point of view.

I am looking forward to meeting all of you in Santa Fe.

Nina

Hello, everyone--

I am Sue Sheriff, a trainer with the Alaska State Library. I've been with the State Library for 4 years as part of the Library Development team. I work with public and school libraries and helped implement our first Gates grant.

Nina has described the situation in our state pretty well, but I'll just add that we are particularly happy about working on the sustainability project because we have seen a great improvement in our connections with community libraries around the state and their services to their clientele thanks to the original grant. In a state where most libraries are not on the road system, this is a huge step forward for our small and medium-sized libraries.

This is great...the more I hear from all of you, the more excited I get about meeting in a few weeks. I think our time in NM will be very fun and productive.

Just a reminder to you all: Please let me know by this Friday if you require any special dietary arrangements for our meals together, and/or any other special accommodations.

Have a great day.

Hi everyone! I am Cassandra Osterloh, CE Coordinator with the New Mexico State Library. I have been here since the end of January. Aside from coordinating trainings throughout the state for public libraries (and many of the times teaching them, too) I also provide consulting services for 13 of our 90+ public and tribal libraries.

New Mexico is a community partner state with WJ, so I often provide and post content to WJNM and am in the middle of providing trainings to any library staff interested in learning what WJ is and how to use it.

I look forward to seeing you all here in NM. Have a great day!

Wow! I am so excited to see you all online... both Jim and I are really looking forward to meeting you in person in just over a week!

If you have any questions - please send them our way. We are going to have ample opportunity to get to know each other and talk about how everything is going to go over the next couple of months... but I would love to hear about any thoughts, concerns, ideas that you have as you have them...

New Mexico... here we come!

Michelle