New California Council for the Humanities Teen Program

Califa is happy to be partnering with the California Council for the Humanities again on their new program How I See It: Teens Document Their World Through Digital Media. The program has already been piloted by several libraries, who shared their experiences at the CLA conference. Erica Cuyogan of Santa Monica Public Library and Sue Struthers and Alicia Doktor of Riverside Public Library spoke about the projects they and colleagues in Fresno and Yuba City conducted last fall. Teens at each library researched and documented aspects of youth culture (social networking, music, spoken word and “rebellious art”) and created public programs that shared their research and engaged community members and peers in discussions.

Califa and CCH’s next teen-focused project in libraries is How I See It: My Place, which, with the generous support of the State Library, will provide resources, training, equipment and small grants for programs next summer and fall (2008). An application will be available on the CCH website from December 10 through January 17, 2008; decisions will be announced by March 1.

For more information, visit the CCH website at http://www.calhum.org/programs/HISI_libraries_myPlace.htm, or contact Senior Programs Manager Felicia Kelley at fkelley@calhum.org.

November Product Offers and Deadlines

We have several products, and offer deadlines to make you aware of:

Checkpoint: For several years members have received a discount on Checkpoint security services, but we also have great pricing on their Universal Self Service stations. These stations allow patrons to check out books and media, unlock media from cases, pay fines, and more from one station.

OCLC Language Sets: We did a bulk buy of the language sets back in the Spring, and it was incredibly popular. We are again aggregating orders until mid-January.

AWE Early Literacy Stations: Another bulk buy that is always popular - we are again aggregating orders for the early literacy stations, until November 23.

Booklist.com: We will be aggregating orders for the online book review service from Booklist until November 15. We have scheduled a webinar for those of you who are interested in learning more about the service for November 8 at 10am.

MOTOR (Mentioned on Television or Radio): If you are renewing your MOTOR subscription, you have until November 15 to get it in to us.

For more details on these, and our other offers, please go to the Products and Vendors page of the Califa website, or email califa@califa.org.

Vendor Webinars in November

Even though we're starting to get ready for the holidays, we'll still be hosting a few vendor webinars this month. They are:

November 8, 10am: Booklist.com - a standard for book reviews is now online, and discounted to Califa members.
November 8, 1pm: Peek-a-Book - these kiosks for children's areas are exceptionally cool - it will read part of a book to the child, and then the child can check it out to get the rest of the story.
November 16, 10am: Editorial Oceano - Spanish-language databases covering general information as well as health and reference information for students from grade school to university.

To RSVP for any of these webinars, please email hteysko@califa.org.

New Califa Vendor: PayPal

Califa is pleased to announce that it now can offer members a discount to PayPal’s e-commerce service for paying library fines and other charges on-line. Califa can set up a PayFlow-Pro account that can integrate with local ILS systems. We have successfully modeled the set-up with Peninsula Library System and San Francisco Public Library.

The discount is 40% less than retail for set-up and the monthly fee (includes the first 1,0000 transactions). Additionally, the charge for each additional transaction is 9.5 cents versus the usual 10 cents retail. To set up your account, contact malaniz@califa.org

Editorial Oceano Review Team Forming

We are working on putting together several new teams to review new products. We have done reviews in the past, and they are always well-received. The first new team we are forming will review the Spanish-language Editorial Oceano databases. So we are looking for librarians who speak Spanish, or deal with many Spanish-speaking patrons, and would be interested in evaluating these new databases. We will provide you with trial information and a template to use for your review. If you are interested in being part of this team, please email hteysko@califa.org.

CLA Recap

Like most California librarians, we're getting back to work after a fun and busy weekend at CLA. If you were there, we hope you stopped by our booth and said hello.

We were "bubbling over" with Halloween festiveness - our bubble machine, and small halloween character bubbles were a hit. As always, we loved being part of the Statewide Projects area, which InfoPeople so wonderfully decorated. We spoke to several new potential vendors, too, so hopefully we'll have some new discounts in the new year.

Bokomaten in Action!

Califa is now happy to be representing BokoMaten (Go Library!) in California. BokoMaten/Go Library! is a very cool kiosk that holds hundreds of books and interacts directly with your ILS. So you can put it in a train station, shopping mall, or anywhere you want to interact with your patrons, and they can check books out using their library card, and RETURN them to the kiosk as well.

Check it out here:



And the inside is viewable here:

Two new products - Editorial Oceano and LibraryThing

We've just signed agreements with LibraryThing for Libraries and Editorial Oceano, a Spanish-language database company. Pricing is on the Califa site. Trials are available for Oceano. For both of these vendors, special pricing runs through the end of the year - with Oceano we are aggregating orders to get a tiered discount. Hopefully we'll get the largest number needed to get to the highest threshold and get 40% discounts for everyone. For LibraryThing, the pricing is effective until December 31, but you can place your order any time.

As always, email califa@califa.org if you have any questions.

October Newsletter now Online

The October issue of the Califa newsletter is now on the Califa site. Five new member offers (including LibraryThing, Motion Picture Licensing - for those who have Movie Nights at the Library, Booklist.com, Editorial Oceano and Peek-a-Books). Check it out in the "Documents" section of the Califa site. If you forget your login and password, email califa at califa dot org

Cheers!