Author Archives: Jennifer Koerber

Reminder – Please Share Your Snapshots!

A quick reminder: please submit the data you collected about your library on Snapshot Day (or your estimates/averages) through our Snapshot Day Survey by the end of the day today, April 20th! The Snapshot Day committee will be collating this information for our presentation about Snapshot Day at MLA in May.

Also, you can keep adding Patron Quotes and uploading images to the Snapshot Day Flickr group through next week.

Visit the Share page for all the ways you can share your day in the life Snapshots. Enjoy!

2012 Snapshot Day success

Good morning, all! Thanks again for a magnificent Massachusetts Library Snapshot Day. As of last count, we had 186 libraries across the state registered and (hopefully) capturing the day in the life of their organization. You can see a full list of participating libraries and take a look at where they are on a map.

If you participated, remember to add your photos in Flickr to the Massachusetts Library Snapshot Day group and tag them with snapmass12 so they can be part of the slideshow above. For help with tagging, please visit the SnapMass Help page and follow the links from there.

Finally, please fill out the Snapshot Day Survey before April 20th, and submit as many great Patron Quotes as you have.

Thanks again, all, and happy spring!

Snapshot Day 2012 – SnapMass12

Good morning! I hope you’re all having an excellent Snapshot Day as part of SnapMass12. A few links to help you along:

For a reminder on what to track on Snapshot Day, read through the Capture and Share pages.

When you upload your photos to Flickr, please tag them with:

snapmass12 – so we can find your images quickly
Your Library’s Name
Your Library’s Town
Your Library Network (MBLN, NOBLE, CWMARS, etc.)
Photo release on file – if you have a photo release form for everyone in the picture
Other words to describe what’s in the photo

After uploading and tagging, make sure to add them to the Massachusetts Snapshot Day Flickr group as well.

Check out last year’s Flickr Tips & Tricks post for ideas on ‘doing Flickr right.’

Visit the SnapMass Help page for links to useful sites and FAQs.

Remember to submit your snapshot data and any great quotes from patrons before April 20th to be included in the official tally. We’ll be presenting our numbers at MLA and posting them here by the beginning of May.

Thanks again, everyone, and hope you’re having a lovely National Library Week!

And first Flickr images are up…

Thanks to the libraries celebrating their Snapshot Days yesterday and today, the first images are up in the MA Snapshot Day Flickr group. Visit the Flickr group or look at images tagged with snapmass12 to see everything uploaded so far.

Winners of the Fastest Upload on the Block awards go to:

Danvers Library, Danvers
Forbes Library, Northampton
Salem Public Library, Salem
Oliver Wendell Holmes Library, Phillips Academy, Andover
Peabody Institute Library (Danvers or Peabody? – please add your town to your Flickr profile)

As an inspiration, here’s a fantastic example of how to do SnapMass right. Perfectly titled, described, and tagged. And a great shot…to boot. Thanks, Salem PL!

The Surveys are Here!

Welcome to National Library Week! It’s time to celebrate all we do and capture those days in the life of Massachusetts libraries.

We’ve added one last update to the SnapMass site: the surveys to let you submit your snapshot data and any good patron quotes you collect on Snapshot Day. Take a look at both of these so you’ll know what to look out for on your Snapshot Day.

For a reminder about what sorts of things to track, visit the Capture page on this site.

If you have any questions, leave a comment below or contact Snapshot Day Committee chair Nancy Rea at nbrea01@gmail.com.

Have fun, and huzzah for libraries!

A Blast from the Past – Using Video to Promote Snapshot Day

As I was adding to our ever-growing list of libraries participating in SnapMass2012, I discovered a video gem from the Westborough High School Library. Last year, the Westborough High School’s Lobby Observer – a video news program presented by students – interviewed librarian Anita Cellucci about Snapshot Day. She’s got it back up on the library’s What’s New @ the Library page again for this year.

Library Snapshot Day from Lobby Observer on Vimeo.

Using a video-ready camera and free & easy-to-use social media tools, a quick video promo is only a few hours in the making. If you can, use local students or volunteers with the right gear to help you out.

With that, have a great weekend everyone!

One week until SnapMass 2012!

We’re in the home stretch, and here are a few reminders and places to find help with managing your photos.

I know you’re all ready to take photos, but please try to also collect a few simple statistics during SnapMass12. You can see all the details on the Capture page, but the basics are:

# of patrons / door count
average 1-day circulation / exact circulation on your Snapshot Day
program attendance (special Snapshot Day programs & regular programs)
use of library-provided computers by patrons (# of sessions / # of people; does not include laptops)
community use of library space (meetings, displays, student groups, programs, etc.)
any special highlights or nifty things that happened that day

Remember, if you can’t collect stats on your Snapshot Day, pick a typical day and track the information just that one day.

Flickr Tips

On the SnapMass Help page, you’ll find links to Flickr help sections and ‘getting started’ pages, as well as posts from last year’s Snapshot Day blog on using Flickr to capture a day in the life of your library. Especially useful are Elizabeth Thomsen’s Last-Minute Flickr Tips.

Meanwhile, make life easier for yourself – don’t upload every photo you take during Snapshot Day. Pick out the shots that show your library at its best, that capture the personality and feel of your library and your community. Those are truly your Snapshots. Feel free to try uploading a photo or two to Flickr (if you’ve never done it) before Snapshot Day. Tag them, then add them to the Group and voila! You’re off and running.

Lastly, the most important thing about uploading images to Flickr for SnapMass is tagging them. Use the tags below; the ones in italics should be typed in exactly as is.

snapmass12 – that’s how we can find your Snapshot Day pictures!
Your Library’s Name
Your Library’s Town
Your Library Network (MBLN, NOBLE, CWMARS, etc.)
Photo release on file – if you have a photo release form for everyone in the picture
Any other descriptive tags you want: program titles, important people in the photo, special things featured in the photo (artwork, statues, library treasures), anything else you can think of

Thanks again for participating (and if you haven’t registered yet, there’s still plenty of time!), and look for a few more posts between now and the 12th. Enjoy!

Planning & Preparing – Haverhill Public Library

A guest post from Alissa Lauzon, Head of Youth Services, Haverhill Public Library

Want a chance to show your community what a day is like in the life of your library? Participate in Library Snapshot Day!

The Haverhill Public Library will be participating in Library Snapshot Day on April 12th and, rather than planning specific special events for the day, we are focusing on the daily life of our library to show our patrons what a “typical” day is like here. Staff members will be going around the library (photo releases in hand) taking pictures of what other staff are doing as part of their jobs and how library patrons are using our library.

We’ll be documenting children using our AWE Early Literacy Station, playing with our puppet theater, reading with mom or dad, and attending story time; we’ll capture adults using the computers and having captivating discussions over the newspaper in our reading room; and teens engaged in activities in the Teen Zone or hard at work on homework. Everyday aspects of our jobs such as handling delivery and shelving books will be documented with statistics and visually so that our patrons, taxpayers, and elected officials can see just what we do here at the Library.

Some of my favorite photos from last year were those of our patrons using the library, especially the children: the young boy holding his first library card and just beaming, the little girl sitting on the floor surrounded by books trying to decide which ones she wanted to take home. Those types of pictures are easily worth a thousand words and, coupled with statistics about usage from one day, present a strong message about the importance of Library to the community.

I’ll be ready on April 12th with my camera and photo releases to document just how important the library is to my community. Will you?

First Look at 2012 Participating Libraries!

A quick update for this morning: the list and map of libraries participating SnapMass 2012 are now online. See if your institution, or someone nearby, is taking the time to showcase a day in the life of their library.

List of 2012 Participating Libraries, by town

Map of 2012 Participating Libraries

There’s still plenty of time to register and be a part of this statewide celebration of everything libraries do. Hope to see you online in April!

The impact of Library Snapshot Day

A guest post from Keiley McGregor, Simmons GSLIS ’13, ALASC Event Coordinator.

Last year’s Library Snapshot Day showcased the relevance of libraries to their communities and, by extension, reaffirmed librarianship as an integral profession worth recognizing and pursuing. Working toward a degree in this field earns many discouraging reactions, from “So…you want to work in a library?” to “Do you just get to read books all day?” The worst of these questions – “Will libraries even be necessary in the future what with today’s technology?” – set librarian and student teeth to grinding. Snapshot Day provides a resounding “Now more than ever!” rebuttal to this skepticism and doubt.

The first Snapshot Day photo album on the Simmons ALASC Facebook page reveals that libraries and archives house both books and technological media. Most importantly, whether characterized by its fine architecture or the children’s artwork plastering the walls, whether located overseas or represented by cubicles, the most valuable asset of any library is its staff. People often overlook the roles of librarians and other library employees because they perform such essential functions. We support the pursuit of knowledge from kindergarten through higher education; we preserve cultural heritage (French Library of Boston); we lay the research groundwork for our larger institutions (Christian Science Monitor Research Library); we provide a home for special interests to grow (America’s Test Kitchen Library). Libraries and archives welcome diversity of resources and users. Librarians, archivists, staff and volunteers help to bring the two together in order to meet information needs.

So…yeah, I do want to work in a library.

Here’s to Library Snapshot Day in 2012 unveiling the rest of the iceberg! Rest assured that library and information science students here at Simmons will be participating with enthusiasm! For those who take the time to snap and upload photos: thank you. For those who take the time to look at them: enjoy – we are here for you.