Oregon Competitive LSTA Grants Funded in 2009

Deschutes Public Library District
Library Linx: Bringing the Public Library to Schools
Grant:    09-01-1p               Grant Award:    $66,410
The Library Linx project is a collaboration to link students of all ages and public school teachers with the collection of the Deschutes Public Library District.  Library Linx allows students and teachers to go on-line and check out books and other materials and have them delivered to and picked up by courier at their school.  This grant expands participating sites from 3 to 10, with a final goal of 30 sites by the end of the  second year of the grant.  DPLD aims to  expand the program to all 44 public schools in the County.  To participate in the program, schools must provide space for a computer hooked to DPLD automation system, a regularly scheduled and paid Media manager for each school, a courier from a central drop-off point to each school, paid training time for DPLD procedures, and spend at least half the national median expenditure for library materials per pupil ($10 for ES, $8.50 for MS and HS)

Hermiston Public Library
Ready, Set, Zoom  Year 2
Grant:    09-03-1p               Grant Award:    $28,080
The library is in year 2 of  implementing an early childhood literacy program (ages birth to five) that targets preschool age children who live primarily in the area’s public/lower-income, housing communities.  Partnering with the Umatilla County Housing Authority, the library uses volunteers to  provide outreach services to five of the Authority’s housing complexes in the Hermiston vicinity.   With direction and oversight from the program coordinator, volunteers are conducting storytimes for preschool age children and providing early literacy training to help parents continue early literacy training in the home.    During the second year of the program staffing will move to a 100 % volunteer operation with oversight  by the library Volunteer Coordinator.  The outreach librarian will also produce lesson plans and parental training materials for a second year of storytimes and complete storytime kits to be maintained at the housing facilities.

Multnomah County Library
Families Reading Together/Familias Leyendo Juntas Year 2
Grant:    09-04-3p               Grant Award:    $58,130
The multi-layered goal of Families Reading Together/Familias Leyendo Juntas is to build parenting, critical thinking and literacy skills; improve family communication; and promote reading and story sharing in the home.  Family engagement matters for all children in the early years regardless of social, cultural, or ethnic group. Children whose parents read and talk with them more and are emotionally responsive have more developed cognitive and motor competencies. This project will reach a target audience (families with children ages 2-11) that is typically not engaged in formal book sharing activities, allowing us to address adult literacy through one of the ways that most motivates many parents: by improving their literacy in order to help their children academically.  With the help of a bilingual project coordinator, staff will be trained in the Motheread Inc. curriculum and offer 32 parent training sessions using multicultural children's books.

Multnomah County Library
Kaboom! (Knowledgeable & Active Boomers): Harnessing the Energy and Engagement of Older Adults at the Library
Grant:    09-05-1p               Grant Award:    $66,233
The goal of Kaboom! (Knowledgeable & Active Boomers) is to challenge the assumptions, the language, and the way in which the Multnomah County Library organizes adult and senior library services.  The project will find new and engaging methods to address an emerging “third life” phase. Inspired by partnerships with the Libraries for the Future’s Lifelong Access Initiative, Life by Design NW (a coalition of nine key community organizations in Portland), and Multnomah County’s Vital Aging Taskforce, Kaboom! will provide new ideas and help inform the creation of a distinct specialty within adult services, focusing on active, engaged older adults during this two-year library demonstration project.

Oregon Association of School Libraries
Oregon Battle of the Books, Year 3
Grant:    09-06-3s                Grant Award:    $75,500
The Oregon Battle of the Books (OBOB) Committee of the Oregon Association of School Libraries (OASL)  continues the statewide initiative to involve greater numbers of students in the OBOB program and improve literacy opportunities for students.  In year three, the program is expanded from divisions for elementary and middle school to include a new division for grades 9-12.  Children read books on a list, then compete in teams to answer trivia questions about the books.  This program builds reading skills, increases excitement about reading, and promotes literacy and teamwork skills.

Oregon Historical Society
The Oregon Tribes Project Year 2
Grant:    09-07-6o               Grant Award:    $40,500
The Oregon Tribes Project will utilize native voices, traditions, art forms, historic artifacts, and photographs to produce traveling exhibits, educational materials, and public programs to educate Oregonians about the state’s contemporary tribes.

Oregon Institute of Technology
Crater Lake National Park Digital Research Collection Year 2
Grant:    09-08-5a               Grant Award:    $92,579
Researchers and educators need access to information to understand, preserve and interpret the natural and cultural resources of Crater Lake National Park.  An impressive amount of research exists on Crater Lake National Park, but much of this is inaccessible because it was not widely disseminated and in many cases exists only in park employee offices. This project will create, collaboratively with Crater Lake National Park, a digital research collection of park-related scientific and historical/cultural materials for use by researchers, educators and others.  The Crater Lake National Park Digital Research Collection (CLDRC) will be available to all via the Internet.

Pendleton Public Library
The Door is Open
Grant:    09-09-2m              Grant Award:    $66,310
The Door is Open project will bring the resources of Pendleton Public, Blue Mountain Community College and Pendleton High School libraries together to develop information literacy lessons and reinforce them with learning activities that will be available for all students, but targeted to Pendleton's at-risk teen population. By keying lessons and activities to this underserved group, the libraries will address a serious community issue and at the same time create  higher visibility for the important life-skills training resources available to all teens through library services. We intend to have a product and service outline that may be used in other communities lacking library and information literacy coursework at the middle and high school level.

Sage Library System
Test and Implement an Open Source Integrated Library System
Grant:    09-02-5m              Grant Award:    $80,365
This project is to test and implement an Open Source Integrated Library System for the Sage Library System.  The Integrated Library System (ILS) is the software that is used to run all aspects of the shared Sage Library catalog, including the public interface, circulation system, acquisitions and cataloging system.   Traditional ILS software is expensive, and includes an annual maintenance cost, which for Sage makes up the largest proportion of the annual budget.  In contrast, Open Source ILS software is free - most of the associated costs are personnel costs for the software set up and maintenance.  Significant savings from switching to an Open Source ILS have been exhibited by other library systems, most notably the State of Georgia.  The complete project will involve selecting an Open Source System, purchasing appropriate hardware on which to run the system, using a contractor to install a test system for a subset of Sage Libraries, assessing and evaluating this trial system, developing a long range business plan to ensure sustainability of the system, and finally, implementing the selected system throughout all Sage Libraries.

Salem Public Library
Librarians for the Future, Year 3
Grant:    09-10-4p               Grant Award:    $38,000
Salem Public Library will continue a pilot project, Librarians for the Future. Started in 2007, the program’s goal is to motivate college-aged students who speak languages other than English and/or students from ethnically diverse backgrounds, such as Hispanic or Latino, African-American, American Indian, and Asian, to consider a career in library work.  Librarians for the Future establishes college internships that offer orientation, training, and hands-on experience at the library during the early years of college when students are solidifying their career goals. Interns will implement projects that meet the needs of diverse populations and increase library use by diverse population.  The project hopes that 25% of participants will pursue library-related work and/or an MLS.

University of Oregon Libraries
Oregon Digital Newspaper Project
Grant:    09-12-5a               Grant Award:    $79,883
The Oregon Digital Newspaper Project will make the history of Oregon accessible to its citizens through the creation of an online historic Oregon newspaper collection. This funding will cover the initial staffing for two years in conjunction with pending Oregon Legislative funds for one-time start-up costs and digitization of 200,000 of historic newspaper pages (approx. 30 years of 16 rural weekly titles).   An online newspaper archive will provide a window into the life of local Oregon communities a century or more ago.  It will be freely available to anyone who can access the Internet from their home, their business, their school or their library. The project leverages the Oregon Newspaper Program microfilm collection and expertise at the University of Oregon.

Wasco County Library Service District
Wasco County Outreach Project
Grant:    09-11-1p               Grant Award:    $58,330
Many rural residents in the sparsely populated, outlying areas of Wasco County face obstacles of transportation to the library through distance, capacity, or high gas prices.   The goal of this project is to implement an effective outreach service to provide both library materials and programming to underserved adults and children living in geographically isolated areas of Wasco County.  This underserved group also includes populations living in town without easy access to transportation. The outreach serivce will be developed through meetings with community agencies providing service to target populations.  It will provide library materials on a biweekly basis to both children and adults with at least 10 stops in isolated communities, and  provide story hour programs promoting early literacy to 100 participants including those in day care centers, individual children, and their families.  Activities include purchasing a fuel efficient van with cargo space, developing methods for teaching parents and day care providers about early literacy, acquiring books, and assembling activity kits.

Western Oregon University Library
Cooperative Library Instruction Project
Grant:    09-13-2a               Grant Award:    $89,450
The project goal is the creation of a framework for ongoing cooperative creation of information literacy tutorials. The grant will permit the accomplishment of three objectives. First, it will result in the establishment of an administrative framework for providing cooperative development and maintenance of tutorials and for continuance of the cooperative through the Orbis Cascade Alliance. Second, it will create an initial set of standards for the use of technology in an ongoing cooperative for the production of the shared information literacy tutorials. Third, it will produce an initial set of open source information literacy tutorials that can be used by any library or media center.

Corvallis-Benton County Public Library for Oregon Digital Library Consortium
Opening Day E-Book Collection for ODLC
Grant:    09-14-2p             Grant Award:    $100,000
At the Dec. 4, 2009 meeting, the OSL Board approved a grant for $100,000 to purchase an opening day collection of e-books for the Oregon Digital Licensing Cooperative. An additional $50,000 was appropriated by the OSL Board in August 2010.

Oregon State University
Oregon Digital Library Project - Digitizing Center Pilot Project
Grant:    09-15-1a             Grant Award:    $14,999
In a special end-of-year appropriation, the Oregon State University Library will augment grant 10-09-5a "Oregon Digital Library Project" by training and working with two historical societies in a pilot to demonstrate what a digitizing center can do in training and production.

Josephine Community Libraries, Inc.
Josephine Community Libraries Feasibility Study
Grant:    09-16-1p             Grant Award:    $27,200
A letter of March, 2010 requested funds from the Oregon State Library Board for the purpose of funding a feasibility study. To determine the viability of a Library Special District in Josephine County, Oregon law requires a feasibility study to be conducted first.

Eastern Oregon University for Sage Library System
Sage Open Source Transition
Grant:   09-17-5m             Grant Award:    $23,000
The Oregon State Library Board of Trustees awarded $23,000 requested by EOU in a letter from March 2010 on behalf of the Sage Library System. The award was made at the 4/23/10 Board meeting. The project will enable Sage to cover unforseen costs in a transition to an open source ILS. This project is related to 09-02-5m.