Join your colleagues from this System and those around the state for a local Illinois Library Day on Friday, April 16.  This year rather than meeting in Springfield to visit legislators at the Capitol, the Illinois Library Association is inviting library representatives from across the state to pay a visit to their legislators’ home offices to bring the critical message of support for library issues.  This is a good opportunity to share with legislators the services that libraries provide to their communities and to bring the message of support for library issues.  Snapshot data gathered will be very useful in delivering this message.

The week of April 5,  Judy Rake and other library advocates will be scheduling  appointments with legislators for the 16th in their local  offices.   She will post those appointments so that library staff people will know when to visit their respective legislators.

Questions, comments, or committed volunteers to assist with the event are asked to contact Judy Rake at  judyr@lcls.org

Grant Amount: $5,000

Contact: Dale Lipschultz at dale@americandream.org.

Deadline: 28 February 2010

Application: http://www.americandreamtoolkit.org/2010app/index.php

The American Library Association (ALA) received a $750,000 two year grant from the Dollar General Literacy Foundation to continue “The American Dream Starts @ your library”.  This new round of funding will help 70 public libraries in Dollar General communities expand their literacy services for adult English language learners.

To be eligible, the applicant institution must be a public library or a public library with a bookmobile providing literacy services for adult English language learners, and must be within 20 miles of a Dollar General Store, distribution center, or corporate office. Each funded library receives a onetime $5,000 grant.

Applications for funding are being accepted online through Sunday, February 28, 2010. Selected applicants will be notified in April, 2010.  To learn more about the American Dream Starts @ your library, the minis grants and to apply online, please visit www.americandreamtoolkit.org.

East St. Louis Community College Learning Resource Center operates under a very unique model in the community college world. The college center provides a space and resources for students to attend classes in a variety of programs from Southwestern Illinois College, Kaskaskia College, Shawnee Community College, and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville; however they offer no courses of their own. There is no other community college operating under this model in Illinois and possibly in the country. The Learning Resource Center is in the unique position of supporting all of these students in addition to the Head Start preschool program and a charter school—it’s a very busy campus with a wide swath of information needs. However, the Learning Resource Center has been able to excel in this challenging environment.

The campus in its current form opened in 2000 as part of the Southern Illinois Collegiate Common Market, though the location has been a college since 1969. The Learning Resource Center itself underwent major renovations in the early part of the 2000s and reopened in August 2003. With the renovation, the space is much more inviting and welcoming to students and features a computer lab with both PCs and Macs.

One of the most unique items on display at the Learning Resource Center is a collection of African masks on loan from the SIUE Art Gallery. These items were featured in the Art and Architecture grant project.  Additionally, the Learning Resource Center has a special collection of about 3,000 volumes specifically by black authors and an archival collection of specific journals that are important in the African-American community, such as Ebony, Jet, and Drumvoices Revue.

Please be sure to stop in and visit the library; they are open from 8AM-9PM Monday through Thursday and 8AM-3PM Fridays each week when classes are in session. Between semesters, they are open 8AM-4:30PM Monday through Thursday and 8AM-3PM Fridays.