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Cheery Friday Greetings and Happy Pride Month! (Subtitled, "Where is the month of June going so quickly?")
As always, there are several items.
Advocacy. We are on the home stretch! Yesterday I forwarded the New York Library Associationās advocacy request, namely to write to your assembly members to ask them to support the Freedom to Read Act and the Open Shelves Act. The Senate passed them, and we need the Assembly to do the same. We hear that though the legislative session was due to conclude yesterday, the Assembly is going to stay on for a few days to tie up some outstanding itemsāletās have the passing of theseāand also support for the Office of Cultural Educationābe among them. Click here for an editable letter to the Assembly for the Acts (one letter, two Acts) and click here to support Cultural Ed (note that this one also includes senators).
In that so much of the library materials contested are by or about BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ people and communities (noting that of course there is intersectionality therein!), supporting those Acts is also advocating for BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ people and communities, and the inherent human right (see Commissioner Rosa's April 2024 decision) for everyone to see themselves reflected in the materials and programming within our libraries and cultural institutions. THANK YOU!
Bibliographic & Referral Center (BARC). You may have read in the May 16 edition that we have been trying to determine what to do with BARC, which for nearly 60 years has served as a last resort interlibrary loan for the region, and since the 80's has also updated the local holdings records in the union list of serials. As a reminder, Tompkins Cortland Community College (TC3) can continue BARC through mid-August and we received zero responses to our RFP.
While SCRLC does not have the capacity to offer it as it has been for the past several years, we expect to have the capacity to handle research and medical requests.
Why try to keep BARC going? Although our stated purpose in the charter is pretty broad, "to serve its members by improving reference and research library services, and to promote interlibrary cooperation in the use of such resources" (Charter Ā§2), Interlibrary Loan is one of the categories that we must address in our Plan of Service. We haven't received the instructions for the 2026-2031 Plan of Service, but for the current one, the instructions state, "indicate how the system coordinates and facilitates Interlibrary Loan and expected changes or improvements to the process."
More importantly, the reason to keep BARC is that some of our members' users need it. There is a community need.
Yesterday, we had a great discussion about BARC at the Resource Sharing Advisory Committee and there were some additional suggestions offered. The Board will make a final decision on how to proceed at their July 24 meeting. Please feel free to email me any thoughts or suggestions that you have.
In the meantime, a huge thank you to the staff at TC3 for their great service over these last many years!
SCRLCās Membership Survey. Thank you to everyone who participated in our recent membership survey. Responses were down from the last time we attempted this, at 79, but there were some useful insights. We learned that this newsletter and the communications that you receive from us are helpful, and we could do a better job of keeping you informed. We also found that there was some confusion as to how some library services are received, i.e., what might be coming from your library vs. SCRLC.
Results will be posted within the Plan of Service documents, and we will address various insights, components, and areas of confusion in upcoming editions of the News. A heartfelt Thank You! to all who participated!
Books are Good Medicine. Last weekend, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole ending up with a new-to-me podcast, Books are Good Medicine, hosted by Allison Waukau and Odia Wood-Krueger. The podcasts cover some aspect of literature and K-12 education. Check out their episodes on Class Room Essentials: Native American books every high school library should have, Native American books every middle school library should have, and Native American books every elementary school library should have. I found their most recent episode on cultural fire and environment impact very useful for thinking about sustainability, and would say that their podcasts reach beyond the K-12 classroom.
Yours in partnership,
Mary-Carol
Mary-Carol Lindbloom
Executive Director
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