Ohio Library News

P. Losinski

Losinski Elected Chair of ULC Executive Board

October 7, 2008 (Chicago) — The Urban Libraries Council (ULC) has elected Patrick Losinski, Executive Director of the Columbus (OH) Metropolitan Library, Chair of the ULC Executive Board.  As Chair, he will lead ULC’s 16-member board, its primary decision-making body, from June 2008 through June 2009.  Representing both ULC members and major stakeholders of North America’s major public libraries, the board sets direction and guides ULC’s programs and its development.

Mr. Losinski has led Columbus Metropolitan Library, a 21 branch library district that serves just over 800,000 Franklin County residents, since 2002.  He’s been an active member of the ULC’s board since 2005, most recently as part of the board’s executive committee in the role of Vice-Chair.   Mr. Losinski has played a key role in shaping ULC programs that expand member access to fresh practices and forward-looking ideas.

“Pat is widely respected in our industry – especially within the urban library community – for his leadership and his embrace of innovative methods for moving libraries forward,”   said ULC President Martín Gómez.  “We’ve seen the impact of this in his three years on the board.  He’s thoughtful, strategic and cares deeply about the work of ULC and how it enhances the works of its members.  I’m excited to see the results we generate with Pat in this new role.”

The ULC is a membership organization of 190 of North America’s premier metropolitan public library systems and related library consultants and suppliers.   ULC is respected for its research about issues facing urban libraries; its cultivation of innovations in library services to cities; and for its programs that help libraries to remain competitive and agile in fast-changing environments.

About the Urban Libraries Council
For more than 30 years the Urban Libraries Council (ULC) has worked to strengthen public libraries as an essential part of urban life.  A membership organization of North America�s premier public library systems and the corporations that serve them, ULC serves as a forum for sharing best practices resulting from targeted research, education and forecasting.  ULC’s programs are acclaimed for inspiring new organizational models that invigorate urban libraries and enrich the areas surrounding them.  ULC is headquartered in Chicago.  For more information, visit the group on the Web at www.urbanlibraries.org.

Media contact:  Beth Dempsey, 248.349.7810 or beth@bethdempsey.com

The Ida Rupp Public Library in Port Clinton celebrated 100 years of service last month.

Congratulations!

Happy 100!

The Alliance Review shares a nice story about their oral history project.

Stark County returns to national Top 10 ranking. Medina County, for population, stays in Top 5

By Marilyn Miller Beacon Journal staff writer, Thursday, Oct 09, 2008

Several Akron-Canton area libraries earned high marks in a recent national ranking.

The Stark County District Library in Canton, which serves a population of 250,000 people, is ranked ninth on the annual Hennen’s American Public Library Ratings (HAPLR). Stark also made the Top 10 list in 2006 and 2001.

The latest rankings are based on statistics from 2005. HAPLR has been ranking libraries since 1999.

In the population category of 100,000 people, the Medina County District Library ranked fifth. It has consistently ranked in the top five since 2000.

The North Canton Public Library ranked first and Wadsworth Public Library ranked fourth in the 25,000-population category. North Canton was also first in 2006 and placed in the previous four years in the smaller population category.

Twinsburg has also been consistent in the 10,000-population size. It ranked first this time around and has ranked in the top four every year since 1999. Orrville ranked fifth in the population category of 10,000 people.

The highest national rankings included three Ohio libraries with a population of 500,000 — the Columbus Metropolitan Library ranked first; the Cuyahoga County Public Library, second; and the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library, 10th.

The HAPLR rating is based primarily on circulation, staffing, materials, reference service and funding levels.

The data for creating the ratings are collected annually from nearly 9,000 public libraries nationwide through the Federal-State Cooperative System.

For a complete list, go to http://www.haplr-index.com.

By JIM MAURER, Findlay Courier Staff Writer

FOSTORIA — Lorraine Atwood knew at an early age what she wanted to do.

In high school, she worked as a page, the person who shelves materials, which began her interest in libraries that has lasted to this day.

Atwood was hired as director of Kaubisch Memorial Public Library earlier this month and brings 23 years of experience to Fostoria. She replaces Jeff Winkle, who took the same position at the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library.

While her career has been centered in eastern Ohio, Atwood said she applied for the vacant Fostoria position because her husband, Thomas, had been hired as dean of libraries at Bowling Green State University about a year ago. She was most recently director of Hubbard Public Library in the Youngstown area.

She was employed at the Hubbard library for 17 years. She worked at the Newton Falls library from 1985-1991.

Atwood received a master’s degree in library science from Kent State University in 1984 and graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Youngstown State University in 1983.

She met her husband in a Shakespeare class while both were undergraduates.

When asks what she likes about the job, she quickly responded “everything,” and added, “you do something different every day. You never get bored.” There is an attraction with books, too.

“It’s a wonderful profession,” she said.

Some believe libraries are on the decline because of the rise of the Internet as a source of information.

Not so, says Atwood.

“You can find information (on the Internet), but you don’t know if it’s accurate,” she said. “We encourage use of embedded sites.”

People are the reason libraries are so important, she said. Currently, about 12,000 people visit Kaubisch every month.

Libraries will be needed, she said, “because there is someone there to guide you to find that information.”

Atwood said she was particularly impressed with Fostoria’s genealogy collection.

She has worked at five different libraries during her career and said Fostoria has “the best local history department I’ve seen.”

The library provides a variety of other public services, including high-speed Internet access, an inter-library loan system for materials, as well as notary and fax services for a nominal fee.

There are about 85,000 books, 5,000 CDs and DVDs, magazines and newspapers.

“We are a good value,” she said. “When the economy starts to slow down, library use picks up.”

For those studying for a general education development test, there is a computer database to help with math, reading and writing. And if patrons are seeking employment, there are classes on using computers and resume writing.

The board of trustees approved a five-year plan last year. As part of the long-range plan, Atwood wants to develop more adult programs and provide community outreach to schools.

Away from the library, she and her husband like to walk the trails in area parks and “have become (Bowling Green State University) football fans,” she said.

The couple have two sons, Thomas is an assistant professor at Carlson Library at University of Toledo. John has a master’s degree in botany and works at Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis.

“Flexible Fred,” the haunting resident of the Delaware County Law Library, gets one last look outside before he’s banished from the windows.

DELAWARE, Ohio — This summer, he was the baseball-cap-wearing pawn in a battle between Cleveland Indians and Cincinnati Reds fans. Last Halloween, he was festooned in pirate gear and brandished a sword.

Those were good times for Flexible Fred. But these days, the 5-foot-tall, 200-bone plastic skeleton slumps on his roller stand in a corner of the Delaware County Law Library. Taped to his clavicle is a sign that reads: “We have had a neighbor complain that Flexible Fred is scaring her children. Please do NOT put him near any windows.”

Purchased two years ago, the German-made skeleton is used by local lawyers, often for research in injury lawsuits or during depositions. In his off-hours, Flexible Fred has become a playmate for lawyers and clerks who haunt the law library, librarian Judith Maxwell said.

“People who work hard, play hard,” Maxwell said this week. “He’s had hats and scarves draped on him. He wears Buckeye necklaces and Mardi Gras beads. He’s been posed everywhere in the building.”

The building is the county’s former jail and sheriff’s residence, built in 1878 at the northeast corner of N. Franklin Street and W. Central Avenue. With bars on the back windows, a weathered red-brick-and-sandstone exterior and a towering three-story turret, the old jail has become a regular stop on annual tours of haunted Delaware structures. And for a while, Flexible Fred added to the spooky ambience, peering out each day from behind a second-floor window beneath the turret.

But the neighbor who recently objected “was the first one to complain to me,” Maxwell said, declining to identify the woman. “I felt so bad.” So the skeleton has been removed from public view.

It’s not an uncommon reaction, said Dr. Todd R. Olson, president-elect of the American Association of Clinical Anatomists and a professor of anatomy at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

For many people, a skeleton either is or represents “the visible remains of a human being,” Olson said. “It raises interesting issues.”

Not helping the cause is the sometimes lurid history of skeleton manufacturing. Until the late 1980s, most of the skeletons used in medical schools, doctors’ offices and even high-school science classrooms were of human origin and came from monsoon victims in India, he said.

“They became very, very profitable businesses,” Olson said. “In an effort to increase profits, they started harvesting people off the streets of Calcutta.”

Once the media exposed these crimes, the Indian government shut down the skeleton industry. Since then, production has shifted to Russia, central Europe and now China. And, Olson added, the sale of plastic skeletons has increased in the past decade.

Maxwell said that Flexible Fred’s retirement from public life, while sad, has at least inspired greater depths of humor from the library’s living denizens.

“One of the lawyers was saying they should file a writ of habeas corpus to get him out of his holding cell,” Maxwell said. “But another lawyer said, ‘Yeah, except he doesn’t have a corpus.’  ”

100 congratulations on your birthday and renovation!