On November 14, Scott and I visited the Hoodland Library. It is in a small space, but it is bright, cheery and well organized, as it was when we “inherited” it from the County. The Hoodland Women’s Club is making progress in fund raising towards the new facility that will house the library. They were just awarded $350,000 from the Meyer Memorial Trust, and are waiting to hear about other grants.

On our way back, we dropped in at the Vista Apartments to visit our outreach program there. Katie Murphy and Susan Winsinger were working with the kids on stories for a ‘zine (defined as:  An inexpensively produced, self-published “magazine”) that they are putting together. Their stories and pictures will be printed and each contributor will receive a copy. We may even have one in the library.

Monica and I are both taking part in the Ford Institute Leadership Program. As part of it, we attended the Conference of Communities in Eugene on 11/16-18. Three other cohorts from around the state were also present. We met a lot of great people, heard some interesting speakers and had a great time. Our cohort met again Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 in Welches. At that meeting we developed our ideas for a community project. It will be announced soon!

Several LINCC librarians were invited to sit in on an English class at Clackamas Community College. The students had all visited libraries and bookstores and were reporting back to the class. It was interesting to hear about their observations. I was not really surprised but somewhat disappointed to learn that none of these students were aware of our online resources. One of my major goals is to get the word out in our community about our digital books and reference materials.

Two new art shows premiered at the library this month. We have historical photographs of Sandy High School’s first graduating class (3 students) in 1914, to a picture of the beautiful new campus on Bell Street and many pictures showing the years in between.

We also have beautiful hooked rugs on display, in honor of Timberline Lodge’s 75th Anniversary. The twelve burlap and wool hand hooked “Timberline Collection” rugs graced rooms at Timberline. These contemporary rugs, made “in the spirit of” the originals, were created for the 40th, 50th and 60th anniversaries of the Lodge.

The Rose City Hot Club entertained a large group of First Friday attendees on the 5th. They played acoustic swing music that was very popular with the crowd.

Our literacy program at the Vista apartments kicked off this month. Monica Smith, Katie Murphy and Susan Winsinger are working with the kids to create a ‘Zine — a self published magazine.

We weren’t able to offer our pirate program last year in our temporary library site, but this year the pirates (volunteers Judy Evans, Ric Sward and Marcia Warren) were back! We had 8 treasure hunts with 224 kids participating, all 6th grade students at Cedar Ridge. They learn how to seek out and find treasure at the library.

In conjunction with our hooked rug exhibit, we had guests Sarah Munro (historian of Timberline Lodge) and Curator Linny Adamson present a program reviewing the early history of the Lodge, from its design and construction, to its modern state.  There was also a volunteer who demonstrated the craft of hooking rugs.

Monica Smith and I attended a “Lead the Change” discussion at the Seattle Public Library on Oct. 30. This was excellent training for us as we look to ways to enhance Sandy by providing excellent library services.

Monica Smith and I are taking part in the Ford Institute Leadership Program. We have met twice, and will meet with the group monthly for the next few months. We are working with a great group of people who are interested in serving the community. This class will culminate in a group project that will bring benefit to our extended community, from Boring to Government Camp.

During September, we focused on digital information and how to promote these services to our patrons. Kathy and Monica have developed classes in using our catalog and databases, but the most popular classes have been on how to use electronic devices, such as Kindles and iPads, to access and download our digital material. We use a third party vendor, Overdrive, to manage our digital collection. There are many different formats, devices, the usage rights vary, our patrons often feel overwhelmed with it all. We are offering classes and hands-on training to make the use of digital materials less confusing for patrons.

On September 12, the library staff met to develop our procedures for checking out laptops for use within the library. The Friends of Sandy Library purchased 12 laptops for us with the electronic equipment purchased for our community room. We use those laptops for classes, and they double our number of internet stations. They can be used at designated places in the library where they can be anchored in place.

The Sandy Women’s club offered a Silver Tea to the public in our meeting room on September 22. It was a lovely celebration in honor of the 100 year anniversary of the group. The Women’s Club was instrumental in the formation of the library in 1934, and in our acquisition of the current building in 1989. They had many scrap books and pictures of the earlier days of the club and of the library. See the pictures below.

Our very popular Summer Reading Program ended in August. Monica reports that over 30% of the children who started with the program were “finishers”. We had more finishers than last year and anything above 25% is considered good.

Library outreach to children, summer reading programs and early literacy training for parents and childcare providers are the three best practices defined by the state library. Sandy library made the list of “Best Practices Libraries” because of our Vista Program, Summer Reading Program, and the projects Monica did as part of the Reading for Healthy Families.

We’ve been perfecting our laptop check out procedures and are just about ready to begin that program. The Friends of Sandy Library provided funding for us to furnish our community room, including 13 laptops to use for presentations and for classes.  When we learned that RFID (Radio frequency Identification) is probably not an option in the near future, we had to figure out other methods to secure the laptops. Those details have been worked out and soon those laptops will also be available for use by library patrons within the building. The library will double its capacity for access to the internet without having to give up room for “wired” stations. The laptops can be used in the library anywhere there is an anchor point.

In response to a request from a community member, we added JAWS to one of our laptops. This is a text-to-speech program designed for use by people with a vision impairment. We will schedule the use of this laptop along with our study room so that the audio can be heard by the user without disturbing other patrons.

We were very busy in July with library programs. Monica organized and delivered two Summer Reading programs each week, one in Sandy, one in Hoodland. The performers included mad scientists, musicians, magicians and dogs. Each performer emphasized the program goals — to get kids reading throughout the summer, and the kids have a great time.

The library staff has been trying something new. The Sandy and Hoodland staff have been swapping jobs.  Every employee is getting experience working in both libraries. It has been fun and educational!

On July 6th, we took a slightly different turn with our First Friday offering. We invited three authors, Kathryn Hurd, Scott Lazenby, and Nancy Osa, to come and read from their work. We had a great turnout. We held a door prize drawing for copies of each of the authors’ books.

For the entire month we promoted The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. This book was chosen for our annual “Let’s Talk About It @ your Library” community read program. We sold copies of the book at the library for $2.00, and on July 25th held a community discussion. In addition to the discussion of the book, Monica highlighted examples of other young adult novels in the dystopian genre.

Monica, Susan Winsinger and I manned a table at the Family Fun Festival on July 28th. We were able to promote the library programs, and disseminate information about our wonderful online resources: reference databases and downloadable material.

During July our meeting room was used 16 times, and our study room was used 21 times.

The following is a quick summary or our statistics for last fiscal year.

Our First Friday offering for June proved to be very popular. Mary Flower performed to an appreciative audience. The Friends of Sandy Library are also having book sales and we have been offering a children’s craft activity during our First Friday programs. Along with the coffee and desserts, the library is the place to be — or at least the place to stop by — on First Fridays.

The library closed on June 20th for all-day staff training. Chief Yamashita taught us about the implications of HB 4016 and our responsibility as mandatory reporters. We also had a lot of hands-on time to practice downloading e-books and audiobooks to various devices.

A really stunning art show was hung on June 10th. The art was created by SPLASH,  a group of Willamette Valley artists. The art is inspired by the book Mink River by local author Brian Doyle. This show will remain at the library through the summer.

Dorothy Smith, longtime volunteer at the library retired for the second time on June 27. She volunteered for a period of 11 years and left to spend time with her husband. After his death, she returned to volunteer for another 5 years. We’ll miss Dorothy’s fine work, but we’ll still see her, as she is an avid reader and a very frequent library user.

Monica Smith worked with Judd Mills to present a classics program to children in 4th and 5th grades in the Oregon Trail District. They chose  Hamlet since this is the play that was performed at Sandy’s Shakespeare In The Park. It was a huge success. The kids absolutely loved it! They did a total of 30 programs at all of the schools. Monica did 6 library tours for classes from Sandy Grade and Cedar Ridge. The kids and teachers of all of the classes expressed their appreciation and all were really impressed with the new library. Summer Reading programs began in June with Cinda Tilgner and Snailpeople, both fantastic musical performers. In total, we have 456 kids signed up for the summer reading programs at both libraries.

Mary Flower was our First Friday performer on May 4th. Her blues and ragtime guitar and vocals were very popular. Once again Katie Murphy coordinated the entertainment and refreshments for the enjoyment of all.

We held a “garage sale” in the former Radio Shack space where we have been storing library materials. I had also posted the furnishings on Craigslist, and on the city’s Facebook page.  I was very disappointed in the turnout. I’ve decided that as beautiful as they are, custom made double sided bookcases are not in high demand. Many people commented that if they were single sided, they would have bought some. We do have a connection with a library that is starting up in Aloha, and are hoping that they will be interested in buying some (or all) of the shelving units.

Chris Wilhelmi, Monica Smith, Susie Jenkins and myself are all taking part in the University of Sandy Management “lite” class offered by Professor Dr. Scott Lazenby. It will be an interesting 2 years.

The Downtown Parking Advisory Committee (DPAC) held an open house in the library’s meeting room on May 30. I was not able to attend, but by all reports, our meeting room proved to be a great venue for this, the first public meeting held there.

On April 4th the library hosted Good Morning Sandy. It was our first “official” event in the new meeting room. The attendance was amazing, and everyone was very impressed with the building.

Two days later we participated in First Friday, offering live music by members of the Pagan Jug Band, along with library services and dessert. Our concerts have grown in popularity and we welcome all to attend these “not-so-typical-for-a-library” events.

The Friends of the Library caught First Friday Fever and offered a used book sale in the new community room during our First Friday concert. The sale continued all day Saturday. This time the focus was on non-fiction, and they hope to continue to offer sales during future First Fridays. These sales are in lieu of the Giant Book Sale which they have offered for many years during Mt. Festival.

I attended a meeting of the Sandy Women’s Club in April. This group has been in existence for 100 years! They created the Sandy Library in the 1930s. For many years they would celebrate the anniversary of the library’s beginnings with a silver tea, but they haven’t done that in many years.

To commemorate the organization’s 100th anniversary, they have asked if they can hold a silver tea in the library’s new meeting room. It will be open to the public, and is planned for Saturday, September 22nd.

On April 25 – 27, Monica Smith and I attended the Oregon Library Association conference in Bend. We both had a great time, agreeing that this was the best conference we’d been to. In addition to the informative sessions that we attended, we both had opportunities to get to know Kwang Kye, the new Network Manager for the LINCC (Libraries in Clackamas County) consortium.

We started our move out of the First American Title building on February 20. The library staff worked very hard and very efficiently getting us moved. I’m very impressed with the dedication and perseverance displayed by the entire staff. Nevertheless, by the February 28^th we knew that we couldn’t get the library up and running by March 5^th, which was our target date. We sent out notices and emails to let folks know that we had to postpone our opening till March 7^th.

Kathy Draine and Chris Wilhelmi deserve special recognition for “above and beyond the call of duty” work that they did in organizing the move. It was difficult to plan how to recombine items from two different locations and keep them in order, not to mention how
to keep the interlibrary loan processes from bogging down while we were closed.

Our opening day was incredibly busy. Like moving into a new house, we were still struggling with finding places to put things and then looking for where we put them. The chart attached shows how significant the increase was over the circulation on the same day the past two years. We were above 200 circulations each hour, whereas we are usually under 100 per hour. I take this to be an indication of how our community loves the library.

On March 9^th I conducted our first official tour with a group from the Senior Center. They were happy to see the improvements and had many interesting questions.

The Grand Opening on March 10^th was an extremely successful event. We had approximately 400 attending! We did run out of food, but we had live music by a harpist, and the Friends of Sandy Library provided door prizes for the drawings that occurred throughout the evening.

On March 23 we had to have the front doors replaced. This was a planned fix. On the 23^rd I also met with the new Director of the Library Network office, Kwang Kye. After a year and a half without one, it is such a relief to finally have a manager in the Network office.

By the time February rolled around, we had been preparing for our move back to the library for many months. Thanks to Kathy Draine and Chris Wilhelmi for their excellent organizational planning, we were ready to roll on Feb. 21.

But before that happened, Alex Farnham came to reinstall the glass mobile in the skylight, and we had new shelving installed in the adult area.

On Tuesday morning, the entire staff met for breakfast and a meeting to discuss moving plans. By 10:00 we were loading up book carts. The move was very demanding, but it would have been much worse without the excellent planning that had been done, and the fact that we did not have to move and reset as many book cases since we bought new ones. We still have bookcases to deal with at the former Radio Shack. We are considering selling them.

Once again the library staff were all dedicated and hard working throughout. We had several volunteers helping as well. On Feb. 29 we were completely out of the First American Title building, but we realized that we could not be ready to open to the public by March 5^th as we had planned. We put out notices and a mass email was sent out to library patrons that our new opening date would be March 7^th.

We received a total of $7200 in donations specifically for the Children’s Forest.