On July 6, 2021, the Cambridge Public Library opened its brand new Hive Makerspace on the lower level of the Main Library. The library says, “The mission of The Hive is to provide free, hands-on STEAM learning opportunities to the Cambridge community, resources for personal projects, and to serve as a hub for skill sharing and creative collaboration.”
Read more about the Hive on the Cambridge Public Library website.
By Michelle Eberle, Consultant at the Massachusetts Library System
The Massachusetts Library System and Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners are excited to share that we are collaborating on National Voter Registration Day (NVRD) for a second year. We encourage your library to participate, too! Read on for the official announcement and invitation from the Assistant Director for State Advocacy for the American Library Association (ALA). Libraries can partner by hosting a virtual or in-person event for National Voter Registration Day, or publicizing NVRD social media copy and graphics. National Voter Registration Day provides an excellent toolkit for organizations to support your voter engagement efforts. Please use the link below to register to help ALA track how many libraries partner for NVRD. We hope that your library will take part in this important collaboration.
Official Invitation from ALA
I’m pleased to announce that ALA is once again a premier partner of National Voter Registration Day (NVRD), to be celebrated this year on September 28.
In recent years, hundreds of libraries across the country have participated in NVRD and registered thousands of voters for local, state, and national elections. We invite you to join us again this year by registering here: https://bit.ly/ALANVRD.
By signing up, you’ll receive free resources and training opportunities to help you prepare. For academic libraries, NVRD offers the opportunity to connect with Campus Takeover, a student mobilizing effort that provides specialized resources and activities for college campuses.
Library workers are leaders in civic engagement. If you are registering voters or doing other types of voter engagement in the coming months, let ALA know! Please tag us on social media: @LibraryPolicy and #LibrariesEngageVoters.
Register for NVRD today: https://bit.ly/ALANVRD.
Thank you.
Megan Cusick
Megan Murray Cusick, MLIS
Assistant Director, State Advocacy
Public Policy & Advocacy | American Library Association
EBSCO Information Services selected its four 2021 EBSCO Solar Grant Winners.
Hazel Park District Library in Hazel Park, Michigan; Medford Public Library in Medford; College of Menominee Nation in Keshena, Wisconsin; and the Virgin Islands Montessori School in St, Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, will each receive an EBSCO Solar Grant to pay for the installation of a solar array. The grants offset the cost of installing solar panels and allow the libraries to reduce their electricity expenditures.
Ramses Escobedo probably wouldn’t call himself a hero. But during the pandemic, he was asked to act in some heroic ways. Escobedo, a bilingual Spanish-English librarian, manages a branch of the San Francisco Public Library. For more than a year, however, Escobedo hasn’t been lending out books. Instead, he’s worked with a Covid-19 contact tracer team for San Francisco’s Department of Public Health.
Students from several Cape Cod schools are now able to access OverDrive digital materials from nearby public libraries using their student IDs. CLAMS libraries in Brewster, Eastham, Orleans, Truro and Wellfleet are partnering with the Nauset School System, Mashpee Library is partnering with the Mashpee Schools, Falmouth Public Library is partnering with Falmouth High School, and the seven Barnstable libraries—Centerville, Cotuit, Hyannis, Marstons Mills, Osterville, Sturgis and Whelden Memorial—are partnering with Barnstable High School. Dennis and Yarmouth libraries will soon partner with schools that offer OverDrive in the Dennis/Yarmouth District. Using their school credentials directly through OverDrive’s SORA app, students can check out and request titles from the entire CLAMS digital collection and will have priority access to their partnering libraries’ OverDrive Advantage collection. They can also get out-of-network materials through the LEA Project.
Lynn Weeks, Library Media Specialist, Mashpee Middle/High School welcomes the initiative:
“We are so excited we were given the opportunity to partner with Mashpee Public Library and offer our students access to additional eBook titles. Removing the barrier of a public library card and allowing students to access the public library digital collection in the Sora platform using their school log-on information has enabled us to meet needs we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to meet with all of the limitations of this current year. We hope that this introduction to public library resources will serve as a bridge to students becoming lifelong library users and lead to students obtaining their own public library cards.”
Kathleen Mahoney, Mashpee Public Library Director said:
“Partnering with the Mashpee Public Schools to provide students with instant access to our OverDrive collections allowed the Library to support both the educational needs of the students, and encourage reading for pleasure during the past year of at home and hybrid learning models. Our goal is to increase access and accessibility to all patrons and this initiative allows us to do outreach to a typically underserved population. We are now collaborating with staff at the school who have asked us to work with them to provide full-service CLAMS library cards to their students. This partnership could not have generated a more successful outcome for everyone involved!”
The CLAMS shared digital eBook collection has over 40,000 unique titles and over 3,000 eMagazines available free of charge. Through the statewide LEA initiative, CLAMS library users have access to over 350,000 titles statewide.
CLAMS (Cape Libraries Automated Materials Sharing) is one of eight public library networks in Massachusetts that provides the library catalog, technology support, the ability to borrow from neighboring libraries, circulation, patron registration, Internet access and other critical services. CLAMS serves 35 libraries (38 locations) on Cape Cod and the Islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. More about CLAMS is available at info.clamsnet.org.
The American Library Association (ALA) recently announced the recipients of the Libraries Transforming Communities (LTC): Focus on Small and Rural Libraries grant. Nine Massachusetts libraries were included in the second round of grantees.
The libraries include:
| Belding Memorial Library | Ashfield |
| Field Memorial Library | Conway |
| Millbury Public Library | Millbury |
| Sargent Memorial Library | Boxborough |
| Dighton Public Library | Dighton |
| Town of Southborough | Southborough |
| Scituate Town Library | Scituate |
| Elizabeth Taber Library | Marion |
| Whelden Memorial Library | West Barnstable |
Participating libraries receive training in how to lead conversations through an ALA e-course on basic facilitation skills; host at least one conversation (in-person or virtual) with community members on a chosen topic; and receive $3,000 to support community engagement efforts. Grant funds may cover a range of expenses, including staff time and collections and technology purchases.
You can read more about the project in this press release.
By Andrea Bunker, Library Building Specialist at the MBLC
Have you ever wondered if you’re allowed to advocate for your public library’s building project as a public employee, trustee, foundation member, or friend of the library? In what capacity? To what extent?
Have you been kept awake at night pondering whether fundraising for a ballot campaign about a library building project is treated the same as fundraising for the actual construction of the library building?
Are you contemplating using the library’s staff copier to print out “Say yes to our library!” leaflets?
If the answer is yes, then tune into Building Literacy’s newest episode, “Campaign Finance Law and Advocacy”, and get answers to these frequently asked questions and more in this conversation with the Office of Campaign and Political Finance’s Communications and Education Director, Jason Tait. We also consult the State Ethics Commission’s Advisory 11-1 on Public Employee Political Activity from March 2011, which remains the most current on the subject. While Jason describes in detail the work of OCPF, it is important to note that the State Ethics Commission in Massachusetts may have differing opinions on the general activities we discuss. We recommend you contact both agencies (or the equivalent in your State if you reside outside of Massachusetts) with specific questions or scenarios, because even the best intentions could be seen as violations in the eyes of the law.
As always, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for future episode topics, please email me at Andrea.Bunker@mass.gov.
By James Lonergan, MBLC Director
The Build America’s Libraries Act, which was introduced in the U.S. Senate in January by Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), and introduced in the House earlier this month by Representatives Andy Levin (D-MI) and Don Young (R-AK), would provide $5 billion to fund upgrades to the nation’s library infrastructure to address challenges such as natural disasters, COVID-19, broadband capacity, environmental hazards, and accessibility barriers. Eligible uses of the funding include conducting facilities condition assessments, needs assessments, and master planning; financing new library facilities; or making capital improvements to existing library facilities, including buildings, grounds, and bookmobiles.
Funding would be distributed through the Institute of Museum and Library Services to state library agencies (including the MBLC), which would then award grants on a competitive basis to libraries in each state. Funding would be prioritized to libraries in communities with underserved populations, such as high-poverty areas. Eligible facilities under the Build America’s Libraries Act include public libraries, tribal libraries, and state libraries that provide service directly to the general public.
While we don’t know if this bill will pass, either separately or as part of a larger infrastructure bill, or how much we might receive in Massachusetts, we have recently held preliminary discussions at the MBLC about how we might potentially use funds from the Build America’s Libraries Act if it becomes law.
In alignment with our new strategic plan—which includes equity as a core principle–we have discussed using Build America’s Libraries Act funds for single-purpose projects including for HVAC upgrades, ADA access, and broadband/technology, and would focus on our most underserved and disadvantaged communities in the Commonwealth.
Massachusetts is one of 15 states with a library construction program. Given these are one-time funds and we are prohibited from using these funds to supplant our current Massachusetts Public Library Construction Program funding, we want to be careful not to jeopardize the strong support and funding we currently have for public library construction and renovation in the Commonwealth.
For further information on the Build America’s Libraries Act from ALA, please visit: http://www.ala.org/advocacy/buildlibraries.
By Andrea Bunker, Library Building Specialist at the MBLC
Communication is an integral part of connecting with others. For something we all do every day (although it may be a little different these days,) there is both an art and a science to making it effective. Our Advocacy Stories series on Building Literacy resumes with a conversation about communication, messaging, and marketing with the MBLC’s own Celeste Bruno, our Communications Director, and Matthew Perry, our Communications Specialist. While we focus on library building projects in this podcast, the tips and tricks shared are transferable and scalable to all aspects of the mission of libraries and beyond.
From all of our projects, we know that the work of advocacy cannot be done by one person alone. Celeste and Matt discuss how to identify and cultivate allies in this work, how to create an identity, how to draft a communications plan, how to craft clear and consistent messaging, and how to address misinformation. It is never too early to begin this work, even if your project is a twinkle of an idea at this stage. Librarians, trustees, friends groups, foundation members, and library building project stakeholders will want to listen to this informative episode.
As always, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for future episode topics, please email me at Andrea.Bunker@mass.gov.
By Andrea Bunker, Library Building Specialist at the MBLC
Taxes: one of the known inevitables in life, and in Massachusetts, a subject with a complicated and storied past. Therefore, it is no surprise that advocates of public library building projects often must address whether or not capital improvements will cause an increase in property taxes for residents. For this episode of Building Literacy, we went to the experts on municipal finance and taxation: The Department of Revenue’s Division of Local Services (DLS). With both regulatory and educational functions, the DLS not only provides oversight but also educational opportunities for municipal finance officials. Their Senior Deputy Commissioner, Sean Cronin, converses with us about the basics and what every municipal official, library building project stakeholder, and resident should know.
This episode is more Massachusetts-focused than many of our others, due in part to the local tax landscape defined by Proposition 2 ½, a property tax reform initiative passed by the voters in 1980. Mr. Cronin discusses the tools and mechanisms available to municipalities within the parameters of Prop 2 ½, such as overrides, debt exclusions, bonding, and stabilization funds. In addition to the basics, we touch upon capital plans and forecasting, even amidst a pandemic. Throughout, he also offers resources that are available through the DLS website: www.mass.gov/DLS.
So, if you think taxes are a dry subject (with the exception of the Boston Tea Party,) you may want to check out this episode! As always, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for future episode topics, please email me at Andrea.Bunker@mass.gov.
