Public Library Service Grant Reports

2007 Update on Library Service Grant Activities 

2007 Annual Report (PDF Format)

Introduction to the Report from The Library and the Community blog

In 2007 Red Deer Public Library continued its focus on Community Development and Technology, thanks to the second year of funding from the Library Service Grant (LSG), a funding program of the Libraries Branch of Alberta Municipal Affairs and Housing.  This page will document some of the activities, programs and services made possible by $135,000 in funding that RDPL received from the grant in 2007.

Program attendance increased at RDPL in 2007, thanks mainly to the new program staff hired with LSG funding.  The number of programs at the Library went up from 727 in 2006 to 1,068 in 2007, a 47% increase.  Program attendance increased more than 10%, from 24,096 to 26,572.  Many of these programs targetted market segments, such as seniors, teens, persons with disabilities, the aboriginal community, persons with low literacy skills, low-income families, New Canadians and a wide variety of ethnic communities in Red Deer.

One of the Library's most successful target-market programs is artsparks, an arts activity program targetting the community of persons with developmental disabilities (PDD), their families and support workers.  The artsparks program began in 2006 with funding from the PDD Central Alberta Community Board, but when grant funding ran out in June 2007, we were able to continue the program to the end of the year thanks to LSG funds.  Continuity of program support is critical in keeping up momentum in a particular community, while sustainable funding continues to be our major concern.  In the fall of 2007, RDPL received a new grant from the PDD Board to undertake a regional Road Trip in Central Alberta.  This project, new core funding for artsparks for 2008 from PDD Central, and the 2008 regional project undertaken with funding from the Public Library Development Initiative, would not have been possible if the artsparks team had disbanded in June 2007.

Community Development theory is the basis for all of the program work undertaken at RDPL with LSG funding.  The Library Director is documenting RDPL's CD processes in his blog "The Library and the Community."  Many of the 2007 programs are documented in this blog: the development of new multi-lingual movie collections;  Earthdance 2007, which the Library supported; diversity celebrations at the Library; and many other projects, programs and services.  In October 2007, the Director presented The Library 2.0 Process Toolkit at the Internet Librarian Conference in Monterey, California.  This presentation explained the Community Development processes used at RDPL to engage our community in the virtual realm as well as the Real World.

Two other conference presentations on Community Development themes were made possible by LSG funding.  Glynis Wilson-Boultbee, Community Development Consultant and Tatiana Polaikevitch, Community Development Librarian presented at the Beyond Boundaries Conference on September 23, 2007 in Edmonton. Their session was called "Library Programming for Your Community" and introduced the audience to diverse programs and services that Red Deer Public Library has developed through taking a strong leadership role in the community.  Their presentation is available online, at the Digital Red Deer website.  Earlier in the year, Tatiana, Glynis, and Adult Services Librarian Cynthia Belanger presented "Library Leadership in Community Development: A Route to Marketing, Collection Development, and Program Expansion" at the Alberta Library Conference in Jasper.

Thanks to the Library Service Grant, what began as a Library Outreach program has morphed into a more interactive suite of programs and services based on Community Development principles: social justice, participation, equality, learning and cooperation.

Technology support was an important part of our LSG funding plan.  Among the 2007 projects made possible by support from the Library Service Grant were:

• Website development using Drupal, an open source content management system 
• Upgrades to the Library's wireless network - the Telebyte Wireless Service is a high-speed, robust open network, available at both the Downtown and Dawe branches
• Upgrades to the Snell Auditorium's theatrical capabilities (audio, video, lighting)
• LCD flat-panel information screens throughout the Library
• Server, network and workstation upgrades
• Public access computing upgrades

Website development followed the Library's Community Development programming.  New websites created in 2007 include:

• Election Forum 2007 - www.electionforum.ca - an interactive online forum to engage and inform voters and candidates for Mayor, Council and School Boards in the October 15, 2007 Municipal Elections
• Artsparks main website - www.artsparks.org - supporting the Library's arts programming targetting the PDD community
• Artsparks intranet - staff.artsparks.org

During 2007 there were significant upgrades to the entire suite of Library-supported websites, including:

• The main Library website - www.rdpl.org
• Digital Red Deer - www.digitalreddeer.ca -  a digital repository created in 2006 with support from APLEN
• Villa-Lobos Website - www.villalobos.ca - the Internet's most-visited resource on Brazil's great composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959)
• The Library intranets - staff.rdpl.org and board.rdpl.org - providing secure interaction amongst staff members, and Library Board members

The Election Forum 2007 was a major success.  Building on the success of the 2004 Election Forum, the Library's site became the centre for community discussions about the October 15, 2007 Municipal Elections.  The new site was much more interactive, making use of Web 2.0 tools, and taking advantage of new web skills and interests of voters and candidates alike.  Each candidate for Mayor, Councilor, and both Catholic and Public School Board was offered a blog on the site; most took advantage of this new feature.  As well, the site featured input from community members expert in certain fields.  The key to the site's success, though, was the involvement of many ordinary citizens who were able to comment online, providing feedback to candidates, raising important issues, and exchanging views with candidates and other citizens.  The project's final statistics showed how important this project was for the development of digital democracy in Red Deer. 

2006 Update on Library Service Grant Activities

NEW: New blog on The Library and the Community

In 2006 the Libraries Section of the Provincial Government (then Alberta Community Development, now Alberta Municipal Affairs & Housing) announced that $20 million would be made available to Alberta's public libraries for enhanced service. The Public Library Service Grant of 2006, the first half of this new funding, provided Red Deer Public Library with $135,000 in 2006, and will provide another $135,000 in 2007. This page will describe our plans for spending this money, and will document the impact of the resulting enhanced programs and services in our community. It will be updated regularly over the next 18 months, as the grant money is spent.

The Blueprint

The grant was very well timed for RDPL. Late in 2005, the Library Board approved an updated Marketing Plan for the period 2005-08. Click here for the PDF version of this plan. This plan became the blueprint for RDPL's plan for enhanced programs and services made possible by the Public Library Service Grant. It will allow the Library to immediately address opportunities and to deal with community issues. Strategies The Public Library Service Grant provides project funding for enhanced programs and services rather than for capital development. Since each project comes with a pre-determined end-date, we need to avoid providing unsustainably high levels of enhanced service which would have to be shut down at the end of the grant period. Thus our planning focussed on developing capacity in our organization, using the grant to leverage other funding sources, and testing new approaches and methodologies. "Serial grant writing" is certainly a component of diversifying our funding mix, but it is really only part of a long-term strategy to develop sustainable sources of funding over and above the municipal tax levy (which provides 70% of the Library's revenues). Since the Public Library Service Grant was not available until the spring of 2006, and there were further delays to allow for planning and recruitment of new staff, our plan stretches over two years from mid-2006 to mid-2008.

Immediate Results: 2006

One of the first projects funded by the Grant was an attempt to deal with issues caused by Alberta's overheated labour market. The Management Team worked with Human Resources Consultant Susan Delaney to develop a Competencies Framework to give the Library new strategies to attract, select and retrain excellent employees.

A Competencies Framework

• Sets out generic abilities that cross individual work roles and reflect the organization’s values and culture
• Is defined as: “An ability reflected in an individual’s behavior”
• Includes specific set of ‘traits’, ‘abilities’, or ‘qualities’ consistently sought in employees by leadership Is aligned with organizational values and business need
• Integrates and binds together the elements of an organization’s HR strategy
• Provides Human Resources best practices, with a 10+ year history

The first test of our best-practice based recruitment model came with the hiring of project staff funded by the Public Library Service Grant in the summer of 2006. The clear result of this combination of theory and practice: ten excellent new staff members were hired into project and permanent positions in the last half of 2006 from a larger pool of excellent candidates. This project has certainly enhanced our capacity to provide enhanced library services and programs in the future through a new Human Resources framework that is integrated with our organizational values, mission and mandate.

New Programs

The Grant funding allowed the Library to hire an Outreach Librarian (Tatiana Poliakevitch) and new program support staff in the Adult and Teen areas of the Library, and at the Dawe Branch. The results were immediate: following the recruitment of the new staff in mid-2006, we saw a 40.3% increase in the number of programs over 2005 (518 to 727) and a 27.0% increase in program attendance (18,975 to 24,096). This is the most striking of the 2006 statistics, which shows a strategic shift (outlined in the Marketing Plan) to targeted marketing of programs for underserved communities.

As outlined in our Marketing Plan, the new focus of programming at RDPL is on specific target markets that have been underserved in the past. The initial targets for Tatiana's new programming include:

• Seniors
• New Canadians
• The Aboriginal Community
• Persons with Disabilities

Planning support for programming for seniors involved a survey of RDPL's senior customers, followed by the creation of a Senior's Advisory Group, whose mandate is to "...advise the library on making the library facilities, collection, programs and services better suited for the information needs of people who are 55 and over.” Among the most successful early outreach programs targetting the Senior demographic has been one-on-one computer tutoring. With an average of ten sessions per month since October 2005, this is the most intensive kind of computer/Internet training available to our customers, in the fastest growing demographic in the online world. Other very successful programs for seniors include knitting and craft programs. Senior's outreach programming will benefit from partnerships with organizations in the community. The first such projects undertaken in this area by Tatiana will be with The Golden Circle and Bethany Collegeside at Red Deer College.

In the area of programming for New Canadians, funds from the Public Library Service Grant has helped RDPL create a whole range of programs and services for our more diverse community. These new programs and services are planned in part by a Diversity Team made up of staff members from each Department of the Library, with support from the Central Alberta Refugee Effort (CARE). Examples of products in this area are multilingual brochures and web pages (for the Computer Lending Program en español and in Mandarin), online and printed booklists, as well as a variety of programs targetting ethnic and multicultural communities in Red Deer (picture, left). An English Conversational Club is one of the first outreach programs supported by the Public Library Service Grant.

New partnerships are also the keynote for service to the aboriginal community. Tatiana's first Michif Language workshop, a result of close collaboration between Métis Local Council #84 and the library was a big success. One outcome of this project was a display of new books and art prints. Another was a printed bibliography of materials on Métis culture. Now, all the new materials along with the old ones can be found in the Library catalogue under the uniform title “Métis Collection” making it very easy to locate all these materials in the library. This project has combined collection development with the creation of new programs, displays and services.

RDPL's new programs targeting persons with disabilities has benefitted from the artsparks program, supported by a grant from the Persons with Developmental Disabilities Central Community Board. Besides proving a range of new arts programs for the PDD community (comprising persons with developmental disabilities, their families and support workers), this project will provide support for materials written in plain language, for an audit and survey of accessibility within the Library, for professional development for library and partner organization staff members, for free library cards for dependent adults with a disability, and for a broad range of new partnerships in the community. Outreach programming supported by the Public Library Service Grant has easily extended its reach into the PDD community thanks to the artsparks infrastructure and partnerships. For example, Tatiana has provided Adult Story Times at the Hub, a downtown drop-in centre for the PDD community. Having artsparks and outreach services operating at the same time provides excellent synergy (as, for example, in this resource), extending the range of our reach into the community.

Highlights of future programming supported by the Public Library Service Grant will be included on this page as it is updated. Current Library programs are listed here. Current outreach programs (February 2007) include the Craft Circle (co-sponsored with the Métis Nation of Alberta Association Local council #84), the Drop-In Knitter's Corner, the English Conversational Circle (which also includes an ESL Children's Storytime), One-on-One Computer Instruction for Seniors, and the regular monthly meeting of the Senior's Advisory Council. Note also that the Public Library Service Grant supports in many ways our other programs within the Library and in the community. Some key programs providing service to underserved communities include service to teens in the mezz, the Downtown Rotary Teen Space, and programs of the Family Literacy and Adult Literacy Programs.

Organizational Support

Many of the existing and new programs and services we offer require increased Information Technology (IT) and audio-visual (AV) support. To provide this higher level of support we hired a new IT/AV Technician (Jason Weller). Funds from the Public Library Service Grant as well as APLEN and CFEP allowed us to upgrade the Snell Auditorium with theatrical lighting, sound mixing, wireless microphones. The new setup (shown below) has had a major impact on our performing arts programming, especially the Artsparks project.

One of the first projects undertaken in the enhanced Snell Auditorium was a program with author Patti McIntosh. The author of The Remarkable Maria (pictured below). Patti's program was recorded, and will be featured in future audio and video podcasts on Digital Red Deer, the Library's showcase for New Media. All of the projects on Digital Red Deer benefit from the IT and AV support provided by the Public Library Service Grant.

Another position that provides support to the entire organization is in the area of Volunteer Management. Thanks to the Library Service Grant, we were able to add hours to the schedule of Dorothy Reso-Hickman, the Library's Volunteer Manager. The 10,645 hours provided by volunteers in 2006 represents 5.8 FTE staff. More importantly, volunteers are now more likely to have a positive experience while volunteering at RDPL. Dorothy helps recruit volunteers, placing them in just the right area in the Library. As well, she excels in showing how much we appreciate volunteers. Recent examples of the results of extra volunteer management hours: major scholarship awards to two RDPL "star" teen volunteers announced in February 2007.

Library Marketing and Branding

Another area supported by Public Library Service Grant funding relates to library marketing and branding. This has certainly taken place on the web, with a major investment in the Library's website. Results of this investment are obvious, and very positive. Website visits grew by 72.8% from 2005 to 2006 (from 214,736 to 371,150). Web visitors access more pages and stay longer than they did in the past, and they return more often. In many ways, www.rdpl.org has become the third branch of Red Deer Public Library. Our two physical branches have also experienced more visits (up 1.8% from 595,110 in 2005 to 605,827 in 2006). Support for physical wayfinding has been improved by new signage (supported by CFEP as well as the Public Library Service Grant). As well, our new signs help provide a consistent "look and feel" for the Library.

The Future

As we move into the second year of the project later this spring, we have big plans to expand our first outreach programs, our online upgrade and our IT, AV and Volunteer Management support. As well, we are looking to a new model for outreach programming based on taking programs into the community: pushing our services outside of the "Library" while at the same time we draw new customers into our facilities. Watch this page for more information - coming soon!

For more information on RDPL's Public Library Service Grant projects, please contact Dean Frey, Director, at  dfrey [at] rdpl [dot] org. For information on Outreach Programming at RDPL, contact Tatiana Poliakevitch at tpoliakevitch [at] rdpl [dot] org.

Updated March 2, 2007.