Libraries will engage and educate their customers, using statewide licensed databases and other electronic resources, to make informed decisions about the myriad of environmental issues confronting us all on a daily basis. Grantees will promote access to statewide licensed resources, update their websites, develop collections, collaborate with faculty, staff, students and/or community members, and plan training sessions, programs and activities to improve their students' ability to locate, analyze, evaluate and apply information ethically from a variety of sources and media to support research and learning.
In the fall of 2007, the MBLC received a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in partnership with Webjunction.org to promote outreach to Spanish speakers. Eleven Spanish Language Outreach (SLO) workshops were presented statewide to improve the attitudes, knowledge and skills of local library staff about outreach to Spanish-speaking residents; to increase partnerships among libraries and community organizations serving Spanish-speakers, and increase awareness in the Hispanic/Latino community about local library services and public access computing. This grant is open to libraries who participated in the SLO workshops. Funds may be used for materials, programs and services, but libraries should demonstrate how they will include input from community representatives in the development of their workplan and projects.
The Academic Library Incentive Grant is offered to encourage academic regional library members to complete and submit long-range plans to the MBLC to identify priorities, strengths and weaknesses, and to become eligible for LSTA grant opportunities. This grant will be awarded to academic libraries with MBLC approved long-range plans to carry out a specific goal and objective identified in the institution’s long range plan, which meets the identified needs of the library’s users, and is within the LSTA purposes. The program may address at least one of the many unique challenges that academic libraries face, such as: rethinking organizational structure; collaboration within library departments, across campus, and in the community; scholarly communication; advocacy; instruction; collections, and access.
The latest census reveals a dramatic rise in the state’s immigrant population. Seventeen percent of our workforce is now immigrants--up from roughly nine percent in 1980. Although there are approximately forty active library-based literacy programs in the Commonwealth which offer services for English language learners, many other libraries do not have the staff or resources to offer a complete English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) program. This program offers informal English conversation programs, supervised by library staff but conducted by trained volunteers.
The documentary heritage of Massachusetts is essentially intact from its founding. Repositories throughout the Commonwealth house irreplaceable collections of books and private and public documents that serve as a rich resource for researchers involved in local, state, regional, national and international studies. Through this digital imaging project, Massachusetts libraries will have support to participate with a growing number of academic and research libraries in making our national memory available to all. Priority will be given to projects proposing to scan materials of local, state, regional or national importance that contribute to an understanding of our historic and cultural heritage. Moreover, the original documents can then be preserved and stored in secure, environmentally-controlled storage for those who actually need access to them in person for their research.
Mother Goose on the Loose is an early childhood literacy program for babies, young children and their caregivers pioneered at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore. The program evolved from a library nursery rhyme program into a 30-minute structured program based on the learning theories of educator Barbara Cass-Beggs. This innovative, emergent literacy program builds on the most recent findings in brain research--studies show that children learn best through routine and repetition in a nurturing atmosphere, affecting their preparation for reading and writing. MGOL is appropriate for children from birth to age five and their parents/caregivers. Youth services staff will work with parents in a highly structured program which teaches them to use a variety of musical activities including rhymes, songs, finger plays, puppets, musical instruments and colored scarves. Patterns of music (fast/slow, high/low, loud/soft) and phonemic awareness are taught to the very youngest children. The program promotes appropriate responses to verbal cues, as well as fostering motor coordination and speech development.
The purpose of this program is to offset a portion of the costs for maintaining and upgrading telecommunications- and server-related hardware and software for the nine automated resource sharing networks in Massachusetts. Activities covered include: replacing aging core telecommunications hardware for network central sites and remote library locations to prevent telecommunications failures for mission-critical library operations; upgrading member capacity; increasing security; maximizing bandwidth efficiency; allowing new wireless services to be deployed within the library; and replacing aging system servers or adding to server capacity where network growth/load warrants. Types of equipment to be purchased include central site routers including backbone routers, remote site routers and switches, DSUs, firewalls, VPN (virtual private network) equipment, packet prioritization, compression equipment or related equipment.
This mini-grant program provides funds to purchase books (in both print and audio format) to be available through the public and school libraries for extended check-out, in order to promote community-wide discussion of a shared title over a period of weeks. Libraries will develop public relations strategies, provide reader's advisory support tools and book-related links to promote the project on the library's webpage. Readers will receive and be asked to wear an "On the Same Page" button during the weeks when book discussions take place, to demonstrate participation in the project and to promote spontaneous conversations. This program will promote a culture of reading, and encourage closer ties among community members through the shared experience of reading and discussing the same book.
This category is offered to allow librarians to satisfy needs that are not now being met by current programs. The Open program allows applicants to apply new methods to solve and build programs, and to carry out their library's mission and plan. The projects must meet the needs of a specific target audience. The grant also allows applicants to adopt programs that have been offered in the past or have proven models, such as Early Childhood, Homework Centers, Connecting Cultures, and Health and Science Reference. Finally, the Open Projects offers libraries an opportunity to exercise maximum creativity to implement unique services in a flexible and collaborative grant-making environment. It encourages creative program development and rewards those librarians willing to engage in a higher level of effort and to take those risks.
Libraries will contract with an outside consultant to conduct a preservation survey of their collections and buildings. The purpose is to determine individual item conservation requirements and needs for proper storage, care and handling. The survey will result in a description of the problems observed and recommendations on how to rectify them and how to proceed to develop a long-range preservation plan to extend the life of their holdings. Each library will then develop an action program based on the survey's recommendations that will address these issues.
While the library community has spent the past decade or longer wrestling with issues of new technology, many traditional services, such as reader's advisory services, have gone by the board. Moreover, many library staffs do not feel confident in their abilities to match a person with the right book. While new databases such as "Novelist" and "What Do I Read Next?" are now available, many staffs have not received training in their use, nor do they feel secure in their ability to help a patron use these new electronic tools. This project will provide funds for training staff in the use of electronic and print reader's advisory tools. It will enable libraries to purchase popular reading collections in multiple formats. To enhance staff members' ability to match the appropriate book with the reader, libraries receiving funding will be requested to study a selected genre during the course of the project year.
School libraries or school districts that have completed a school library long-range plan will carry out one or more of the objectives in their approved Long-Range Plan. This is directed towards implementing activities outlined in their plan, and although the programs vary in focus, they will all include a component of cooperation with a local public library.
Across Massachusetts eager and hopeful teens enter the library each afternoon, looking for a place to be with their friends, to relax and work on homework. They may also be seeking a place to expand their world, volunteer in the community, and pursue new projects. The need for programs and services for middle school and senior high school age students is apparent. The average school day ends between two and three in the afternoon and almost every teenager in America must find somewhere to go and something to do after school. At-risk, underserved youth need programs that intervene before these adolescents get into trouble. The purpose of this LSTA program is to help public libraries develop innovative programs and strategies to serve their "tweens and teens.".
The purpose of this grant program is to continue to provide for the cost of ongoing membership at the levels anticipated under the Small Libraries in Networks program for libraries that affiliated with a network through the program in FY2002 and FY2003. This grant offering does not support the cost of new libraries joining networks or existing members increasing their level of membership.