Chapel Hill Library

Chapel Hill won't charge Orange County residents library fee

CHAPEL HILL -- Orange County residents who live outside of Chapel Hill won't be charged a fee to use the town's library -- at least not this year.

In a 7-2 vote, the Town Council opted Tuesday to accept a $93,000 increase in county funding and continue to talk to county officials about funding levels instead of imposing a $60 a year card fee on Orange County families who live outside of town limits.

The increase in funding would raise the county's annual share of the town's more than $2.2 million operating costs to $343,000. The county has contributed roughly $250,000 a year toward the library's operating expenses each year for the past decade.

Council members Laurin Easthom and Matt Czajkowski voted against accepting the money, complaining that the appropriation is too little and comes with unwanted strings attached.

At issue for Easthom in particular is a provision in the county's resolution, which she understood to link the money to an "interoperability" agreement she thinks will eventually cost the town more money.

Such an agreement might, for example, require funding for a truck to transport books between the town's library and the county's library in Hillsborough and an upgrade in computer systems to link library operations.

"I don't know what interoperability means to Chapel Hill when it comes to unforeseen costs," Easthom said.

But council members who supported accepting county funding said the provision only set the stage for further discussions about interoperability.

"By accepting this agreement, it's not saying we're going to accept an interoperability agreement that's going to cost the town more money," said Councilman Jim Ward.

Councilman Gene Pease, who along with Councilwoman Sally Greene were appointed by the council more than a year ago to meet with county officials to discuss the funding impasse, said county officials made it clear that the county would cover additional costs.

In addition, Pease, who formerly favored charging non-residents a fee, said he was won over by the county's good faith effort to increase the level of funding for the town's library.

He said the county's offer is far more money than the town would have collected by charging a card fee.

UNC CHAPEL HILL LIBRARY IS PRESENTED WITH INNOVATION AWARD | LISWire

UNC CHAPEL HILL LIBRARY IS PRESENTED WITH INNOVATION AWARD

The Academic Division of the Special Libraries Association is pleased to present the University Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with the 2011 Springshare Innovation in Academic Libraries Award. This award is granted to a library which creates a new program or service which demonstrates an innovative approach to academic librarianship. The Division presented the award during the Academic Library Division Business Meeting at the Special Libraries Association (SLA) Annual Conference in Philadelphia, PA.

Chad Haefele and Emily King, two staff members at the University Library at UNC Chapel Hill, led campus development of an interactive game called “Should Brandon and Nicole Get Engaged?” or ShBANGE. In this “alternate reality game,” actors staged a mock wedding proposal in a high-traffic area on campus. Many students saw this live or watched the YouTube video ( http://www.youtube.com/user/ShBANGE ) and followed a URL to participate in a learning-based online game. This game included a variety of seventeen puzzles for the students to complete, which helped them learn about a wide variety of topics in their academic curriculum. Additional puzzles were provided to the students using social networking tools and other media. The Academic Division of the Special Libraries Association found Chapel Hill’s use of alternative gaming, technology, social networking, collaboration and communication to be a worthwhile and successful way to engage students on campus and help them build “information literacy” competencies, such as: locating and analyzing information, understanding different information formats, and using technology to both study the interaction of ideas and to create documents/images and use them in differing contexts. The SLA Academic Division felt that this “reality game” was forward-thinking in terms of creating an interactive format encouraging student participation while teaching the students essential skills for locating, understanding and utilizing information in today’s society.

In recognition for this outstanding achievement, the University Library of UNC Chapel Hill will receive $500, donated by Springshare ( http://www.springshare.com/ ).

Library literature & information science

Staffing the library website

Sounds of the South, a report and selected papers from a Conference on the Collecting and Collections of Southern Traditional Music held in Chapel Hill, April 6-8, 1989, to celebrate the opening of the Southern Folklife Collection with the John Edwards Memorial Collection in the Manuscripts Department of the Academic Affairs Library, University of North Carolina

Encyclopedia of library and information science

Library literature