Spelling Bee Approaches

From the deeply creative and productive, Matthew L, I am reminded that it's time for an important ritual:


Spelling Bee Monday!

Fifth Anniversary Competition!

Not About The Buildings' biggest event of the entire year is less than a week away. Yes, folks, it's once again time to revisit your childhood glories (or traumas) at the Not About The Buildings Spelling Bee, held once again at AS220 (115 Empire Street). This year marks the fifth anniversary of the bee, so we think it's going to be a big one!

It costs $8 to spell but it's free to watch, so bring a cheering section. Signups start at 8:30 and once again we are limiting the number of spellers to 36. There are no advance signups, so you'll need to be punctual if you'd like to spell. Once the spellers are all signed in and lined up, the bee should start at 9.

As always, you are also encouraged to support the folks on stage (and your own interests) by betting on the winner. There are fabulous prizes in store for those who gamble on the winning speller. Funds from Monday night go directly towards supporting Not About The Buildings for the rest of the year, so the more money we make, the more programming we can do. And since Not About The Buildings will be turning five in July, we'd like this year to be bigger and better than ever.

Prizes this year have been generously provided by the likes of the Providence Athenaeum, Tiny Showcase, Craftland, and more!

Little Rhode Island Ranks 5th (Tied With Kansas, apparently)

In the midst of some searches for Gene Debs and Rhode Island, I found a sweet ranking for Rhode Island.

Although not in first place, we are very well ranked for Library Visits.

Education Statistics > Public Libraries > Library Visits per Capita (most recent) by state
VIEW DATA: Totals
Definition Source Printable version
Bar Graph Map Correlations

Showing latest available data.
Rank States Amount
# 1 Ohio: 6.9
# 2 Colorado: 6.3
= 3 Indiana: 6.1
= 3 Connecticut: 6.1
= 5 Kansas: 5.9
= 5 Rhode Island: 5.9
# 7 Wyoming: 5.8
# 8 Wisconsin: 5.7

South Dakota, New York and Illinois are all ranked 9th !


I am not familiar with this site, and rarely concerned with rankings (except in matters of baseball), but I Love Libraries, and think that library visits are a good thing.

How exactly a visit is defined, and how reputable these numbers are, I have no idea.

The Providence Community Library has a facebook page, and there is no requirement that you live in Providence or any part of RI for you to "like" it.

The Library Reform Group link is below.

Alas, the Providence Public Library is not handing over the buildings to the Providence Community Library, nor is it making vital repairs.

When buildings are closed due to heat ( no air conditioning ), falling roof, et al., our library visits per capita decrease.

Perhaps the RI Nonviolence Institute will mediate this conflict.

Hurray for the Providence Community Library!

Independence has reached the nine neighborhood branches of Providence, Rhode Island.

Two days ago, Providence Community Library was officially launched with rainstorms and parties, and many celebrations.


The Providence Public Library (PPL) is now solely responsible for the Main (downtown) building and all of its contents, and oddly, still owns most of the buildings.

Not long ago, they (the PPL) proposed eliminating 5 of the branches...

I am enormously grateful to the many, many people who have worked diligently and creatively to maintain all of the neighborhood services.

Not About the Buildings (Library) News

Save The Date! And The Other Date! And One More Date After That!

(This just appeared in my email)

Not About The Buildings has had a pretty quiet spring, but that's because we're about to have a very, very busy summer!

First off, we're doing a new photo project. It's still a big secret, but you'll want to keep the next Gallery Night (June 18th) free and be ready for some excitement downtown.

(Okay, so we're not so good with keeping secrets: We're returning to our roots and photographing readers! If you're not shy about your reading habits, this weekend is your last chance to take part. It's short notice, yes, but the surprise will be worth it when you see the final results. If you're intrigued and going to be in Providence this weekend, reply to this e-mail for some secret advance details.)

Secondly, we're looking for serious readers of all ages to help us take part in something else we're doing this summer in conjunction with another book-oriented organization in the city. We're not divulging all the details until the first day of summer (June 21st), but if you read a lot and want to help a good cause, reply to this e-mail. (Sorry for being so mysterious! Really!)

Finally--and this one's no secret--it's Bee Season! On June 22nd at AS220, it's the third annual Not About The Buildings Spelling Bee. Compete against the city's top smartypantses for fame and glory and the chance to win fabulous prizes. Or if you're shy you can come cheer and watch other people win fabulous prizes. Judges this year include reigning Bee Queen Maureen Reddy and Providence Kickball League Umperor JP Reader. And did we mention that the prizes are fabulous? The action starts at 9pm and you'll want to be very punctual--a little early, even--if you want to spell. (It's $5 to spell but free to watch.)

Befriend Your Branch

For the first time ever, all nine neighborhood branches of the Providence Public Library have friends groups. If you want to help your local branch, just ask at the desk and the librarians will be able to put you in touch with the organizers for your neighborhood.

Want To Be A Library Director?

On July 1, management of all nine neighborhood branches will be handed over to the non-profit Providence Community Library. The PCL is currently seeking a director; the deadline for applications is June 1, and they hope to have someone installed in the position by the time the transition goes into effect. Click here for more details.


Other Happenings Around Town

This Friday is the opening of The Book Show at 5 Traverse (5 Traverse St.)
This exhibition reception kicks off a month-long book release party for two limited edition artist books: 1) The Diary Project by Jessica Deane Rosner In 1986, this artist's diary disappeared; 14 years later a stranger returned it to her and she embarked on a project to transform each of the 72 pages into a new drawing. Here, for the first time, all 72 drawings are reproduced in a full-color, hard-bound book. This is a signed, limited edition of 50 books, each comes with a sealed envelope containing a secret original drawing by the artist. The original set of drawings, as well as hand-embellished fine reproductions, will also be available.2) Monday Morning, Going to Work by Will Schaff. At last, three new drawn stories appear in this 92-page, color, cloth-bound book. A limited edition of five books will be available with a unique, frame-able full-color drawings as a book-cover. The original drawings and fine reproductions of individual sequences will also be available. The show also investigates the State of the Object in Rhode Island, with original work by 20 artists who un-simplify the word "Book." Finally,Brent Legault of Ada Books is curating a wall of books he loves. Check out the Not About The Buildings blog very soon for a review of the show.

Next Friday evening is the Photo Lottery at AS220. It's the biggest fundraiser for the Paul Krot Community Darkroom: 150 photos by 150 photographers (including Mona Kuhn, Henry Horenstein and Danny Lyon), available for just $100 each. Buy tickets while you still can by going to the website.

And June 1 marks the opening of A Fragile Memory: Turn of the Century Glass Negatives from Providence Public Library's Special Collections Department. That's on view Monday, 6/1 through Saturday, 6/27, at Providence Public Library's Special Collections Exhibition Hall, 150 Empire Street in downtown Providence. Over one thousand glass plate negatives have long lain forgotten in the Special Collections of the Providence Public Library. Now a select handful of them will be hand printed and revealed to the public eye, possibly for the very first time. The project was conceived and curated by Agata Michalowska and was brought to bear through a close collaboration with local photographers working out of the AS220 Paul Krot Community Darkrooms. During the opening reception, James DaMico and Richard Ring will lend their expertise to help us further imagine the stories these photographs quietly suggest. DaMico, the Rhode Island Historical Society's Graphics Archivist, will talk about the technical development of photography with his presentation "Glass plate negatives: A Look at a 19th Century Photographic Innovation". DaMico will also discuss how Rhode Island photographers, both amateur and professional, were making use of the glass plate technology. Richard Ring, Providence's Special Collections Librarian, will offer us an informed historical perspective on the city at the dawn of the twentieth century with his presentation, "The Beehive of Industry: Providence in the Late Victorian Era, 1890-1910".

Based in Providence, Rhode Island, Not About The Buildings is an organization that creatively seeks to build local communities of readers and writers.

notaboutthebuildings
246 Rankin Avenue
Providence, Rhode Island
02908

Not About The Bloggings

Washington Park Library ReOpening Party

This blog has been rather grim lately. Here's something to celebrate:

Washington Park Community Celebrates Opening of Neighborhood Library

Join us at 6 p.m. on Thursday, March 26, to celebrate the opening of Washington Park Neighborhood Library, which has been closed for the past three years.

Community members will present the Washington Park library with books donated at last year's Read In and saved for the reopening of the facility, they will introduce Providence Community Library (which has pledged to keep all the neighborhood libraries open), and they will encourage patrons to join a new Washington Park Friends of the Library group to protect and support their local library.

Music and refreshments will be provided.

Sponsored by Open Table of Christ Church.

And here's a cheerful email from Patricia:

Dear library advocates,

We are delighted to report that Library Friends groups are forming all over the city! While Smith Hill, Mount Pleasant, Rochambeau and Wanskuck have active and long-standing Library Friends groups, the other neighborhood libraries do not currently have such groups.

Friends of the Library serve three important purposes:

* They support their neighborhood library--They hold bake and book sales and bazaars to raise money for library books and equipment, they volunteer to work on specific projects designated by the library staff, and they sponsor programs designed to contribute to the cultural life of the neighborhood.
* They protect their neighborhood library. Their strong neighborhood presence and authority to speak on behalf of neighborhood patrons gives the Friends groups added clout when campaigning for library legislation or appropriations. In the darkest days, when PPL has attempted to reduce staff and/or close neighborhood libraries in years past (and this year), the Library Friends groups write letters in protest to PPL trustees and to City officials, organize petition drives, and participate in rallies.
* They help to govern the library system. Assuming that the City decides that Providence Community Library is the best steward of the neighborhood library system, PCL has proposed a system of governance whereby representatives from all neighborhood libraries participate in policy decision-making as part of the PCL's board of trustees. We anticipate that these representatives will be selected by the neighborhood Friends groups.

Knight Memorial has already held an organizational meeting to establish a Friends group and is planning a second meeting soon.

Meanwhile, both Fox Point and South Providence have scheduled organizational meetings for March 31. Those interested in joining the Fox Point Friends of the Library should meet in their neighborhood library that Tuesday night at 6:30 p.m. South Providence's meeting is scheduled for 7:00 p.m. on the same night. http://friendsofsouthprovidencelibrary.wordpress.com/

Olneyville is holding an organizational meeting on the following night--April 1--at 6:30 p.m. Meet at the Olneyville Library.



Library Developments

Washington Park is reopening next Monday, March 23. Open Table of Christ will be conducting a Friends Sign-Up next week, and we hope to be able to announce an organizational meeting at Washington Park by early in April. If you live in the Washington Park area and would like to join a Friends Group there, please send me an email.

Providence Community Library is continuing to have productive meetings with the Mayor's staff. We feel encouraged by these sessions, but the Mayor still has not firmly committed himself to PCL. We have another meeting scheduled in about 10 days, and we are hoping for a decision soon after this meeting is held.

Patricia

Sign a Petition! Support The Providence Community Library

Providence Community Library Petition

For more information about recent community meetings, visit the Library Reform Group blog

Thank You, Providence Journal Editorial Writer(s)!

This editorial which I learned about thanks to Karen McAninch (hope I spelled that correctly) and facebook, is remarkably positive.

It's title is "A Library Lifeline?" and below is its first paragraph.

An intriguing idea has arisen that would put the Providence Public Library’s nine branches into the hands of a newly created nonprofit, leaving the PPL (also a nonprofit) in charge of the central branch — its heart and soul — on Empire Street.

By my lights the Providence Public Library is an atypical nonprofit by virtue of its endowment, its opacity and its history of unresponsiveness to the communities it serves.

The editorial is not the one I would have written, but it is part of the dialogue and presents questions.

Thank You, editorial writer or writers! Thank you also for publishing this on a weekday and not a Saturday...

Exercise the "Escape Clause": Build a Community Library in Providence, Rhode Island

Marcus Mitchell: No need to close any library branches

Providence Journal
01:00 AM EST on Thursday, January 15, 2009

MARCUS MITCHELL

FOR THE LAST TWO decades, the citizens of Providence have endured a series of threats by the Providence Public Library to close one or more of its nine neighborhood libraries. Last year the PPL announced that the library system was no longer financially sustainable. Its board set up a “Sustainability Committee” mandated to find a creative solution to the library’s persistent deficit problems — to develop a plan to provide meaningful, substantive library services for patrons throughout the city in a different, more economical form.

Unfortunately, the plan that was approved by the PPL Board on Dec. 18 is neither creative nor economical. After all the time and energy that the trustees have expended on resolving the PPL’s long-term problems, the library has ended up with its usual answer to solving its money woes: Close branches. The PPL is planning to “sustain” its library system by closing five branches, leaving the people of Providence with only the central branch and four neighborhood branches, starting this July. (See “New library plan would close 5 branches,” news, Dec. 19.) The library’s solution is neither necessary nor acceptable.

We urge the city to refuse to provide the present level of library funding to the PPL to support greatly reduced library services after June 30.

Concerned that as early as next summer the PPL might not provide Providence residents throughout the city with full access to library services, the Library Reform Group established by concerned citizens incorporated a new nonprofit organization, the Providence Community Library, which is prepared to raise funds for and operate a nine-branch library system that will continue to provide Providence neighborhood patrons with at least the level of library services and programs they now receive. We call upon the city to dissolve its failed alliance with the PPL and enter into partnership with the Providence Community Library.

How can we claim to be able to run all nine branches when the PPL says it can’t be done? Our budget is based on the real costs of running the nine branches, not a budget based upon inflated costs, as has long characterized PPL projected budgets. Our branch system would hire fewer administrators rather than maintain the current top-heavy PPL administration. We would hire capable administrators and pay them salaries comparable with those of public library directors around America, rather than continue the PPL’s practice of paying exorbitant wages to an ineffectual administration that has lost the confidence of the public. Our branch system would engage in robust fundraising. Not being burdened with the PPL’s troubled history that has alienated both the donor community and library users, we expect, even in these troubled financial times, that we could successfully engage in fundraising that would allow us to expand neighborhood library services beyond the current level within the next two or three years.

Most important, the Providence Community Library would be governed by a board that puts the patrons first. Our board would include representatives of all nine library branches, some publicly appointed members, and some members elected by the board itself. No longer would policy for our city libraries be determined by people living in Barrington and South County!

We call upon the city to exercise the “escape clause” in the Library Agreement and end its relationship with PPL. It is time for a branch library system that will be truly a Providence Community Library! The people of Providence deserve a better library service and they can have it if the city breaks with its tradition of supporting the PPL and supports a community library organization instead.

Marcus Mitchell is president of Providence Community Library.

Thank You, Patricia Raub and the P.C.L. Movement

A few days late, but here's more about the Providence Community Library and the press conference on Monday, January 5...

Dear library advocates,

The press conference on Monday went very well. People from over two dozen community organizations were on hand to listen and speak, and NINE City Councilors participated. Here is a slide show on the press conference: http://media.umb.edu/pclpressconf/

The ProJo covered the conference in Tuesday's paper (see below), and the story was picked up by the Los Angles Times book blog, Jacket Copy: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/01/providence-libr.html (Thanks to Matthew Lawrence for bringing this to our attention.)

Here is the text of the article in the Providence Journal:

Group says it can cut costs at Providence library branches and maintain quality
01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, January 6, 2009
By Philip MarceloJournal Staff Writer



PROVIDENCE -- A new nonprofit organization that is proposing to take over the city's nine neighborhood library branches says that it can save more than $2 million and still offer the same services and the same number of union jobs as under the current leadership.

Providence Community Library treasurer Ellen Schwartz said at a news conference in City Hall yesterday that the organization is proposing a $4.8-million operating budget for fiscal 2010.

"Our budget cuts administrative costs and waste out of the library budget," said Schwartz. "It also calls for dramatic, aggressive fundraising."

The nine branches currently represent $7.5 million of a total $9.7-million operating budget, according to Robert Taylor, vice president of the board of trustees of the Providence Public Library, the private nonprofit organization that runs the city libraries.

The PPL, last month, proposed closing the Fox Point, Smith Hill, Olneyville, Wanskuck and Washington Park branches, but keeping open the downtown central library and the Mount Pleasant, South Providence, Rochambeau and Knight Memorial branches.

The Providence Community Library, which does not seek to take over the central library on Empire Street, will submit its alternative budget and organizational plan to Mayor David N. Cicilline on Friday.

Cicilline, who has already said he opposes closing any library branch, says the city will look at "all possible options" for the future management of the branches, and that his administration was still scheduled to meet with PPL board members at the end of the month about their proposal.
"For 100 years, the city and the PPL have had a very strong partnership," he said yesterday. "Before even considering dissolving that partnership, we would have to be really certain that we examine how we may be able to strengthen and preserve it."

He declined to say whether he considered the PCL a viable alternative: "It's premature. There is a lot more work that needs to go into this."

Under an agreement reached in November, the city has the option of accepting the PPL's plan; seek to take over the branch libraries itself; assign their stewardship to another entity; or choose to maintain the current library system intact for one year and cover any deficits incurred.

Any decision would be effective July 1, the start of the next fiscal year, but the city needs to notify the PPL by March 1 if it intends to fund the library system as is for another year, according to the agreement.

Ultimately, said Cicilline, that decision rests with the City Council, which appears to be largely in favor of a branch system under the new nonprofit PCL.

"There are nine [councilors] here" in attendance and in support of the plan, Councilman Nicholas Narducci observed at yesterday's news conference. "We already have the majority we need to do what we have to do."

Council President Peter S. Mancini, who was not in attendance yesterday, said he was "very encouraged" by the PCL's proposal.
"Historically, I've felt that the PPL did not want to deal with the branch libraries, that they have not done much fundraising for the past four or five years, and are not willing to spend their endowment on the branches," he said.

The PCL proposes a board of trustees of up to 25 members, with representatives from all nine branches, the United Service and Allied Workers of Rhode Island (the union for library employees), neighborhood groups and delegates from the mayor's office and the City Council.

The board members would be limited to six consecutive years of service. Marcus Mitchell, a local entrepreneur who runs a business strategy consulting firm and is a member of the Friends of the Rochambeau Branch Library, a nonprofit entity, will serve as the first board chairman.

Next year's budget calls for $3.5 million from the city, which currently allocates $3.4 million to the PPL, $750,000 from the state, and $500,000 to be raised in donations and grants, according to Schwartz, the organization's treasurer.

The proposed budget would keep the same 50 union workers employed at the branches at their contractual salaries, as well as eight nonunion, administrative staff. Meanwhile, the PPL is proceeding with the next steps in enacting its proposal, which involves greater detail on how the PPL might turn over the five branch libraries to the city for use as community learning centers, according to Taylor, of the board of trustees.

PPL spokeswoman Tonia Mason declined yesterday to comment on the specifics of the PCL's alternate proposal, which she said had not been made available to the PPL.

"We don't know that the new organization has the infrastructure capable of administering the branch system, including business, human resources, building management and professional librarians," Mason said in an e-mail. "As with any new organization, we would be concerned that it has the financial ability to steward the library for future generations."

pmarcelo@projo.com

I have not looked at the slide show, but if you see any woman in a bright red coat clapping emphatically, well that's me. I was impressed with the presence of Bill Simons, President of the Board of Trustees of the infamous PPL. He stood quietly and listened to many speakers berate the Board... Miguel Luna thanked him publicly for his support. He has not been President of the Board (or I think even on the Board) for that long, perhaps if he'd been on hand sooner, this Tension would not have Escalated to the point of Schism...

A Library Is Announced: http://ProvidenceCommunityLibrary.org/index.html

The press conference at City Hall was splendid. I am just too sleepy-headed to contrive anything other than cliches and misspellings. And this blog has seen a lot of posts the last few days...

( thank you, democommie, Dex and Tom Kalinowski!!! )

Here's the link:
http://providencecommunitylibrary.org/index.html