GREENER PASTURES

Thursday, April 19th, I participated in the Wausau area session of the DPI's Greener Pastures seminar, coordinated by Wisconsin Valley Library Service. This is "The Wisconsin Rural Library Sustainability Project."

The project is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The program is coordinated through WebJunction. The session was conducted by John DeBacher and Bob Bocher of DPI.

This program was one of the series of identical programs that John and Bob have been doing all around the state of Wisconsin. It was very well done. Library Directors I talked to were very pleased with the content of the session. The format gave them a plan to work on areas needing improvement in their libraries and a means to communicate their progress as well as view the progress of others in the program.

Smaller libraries in rural areas frequently do not have the resources that larger systems have to draw upon. They need to know every trick in the book to accomplish their mission. This session defintely helps in that regard.

In case you missed it ....... the last session in the series will be given as part of the pre-conference agenda at WAPL. So go early. If you hadn't planned on attending WAPL, this should tip the scales to make you decide to go for the entire show.