Date: October 7, 2005
To: Greta Chapman, Director
From: Ed Hughes, Technical Services Supervisor
Re: Summary of Staff
Book Reviews Written for the
In June 2005, we approached Deb Holland of the Rapid City Journal about the idea of library staff writing book reviews for the Journal. Shortly thereafter, Deb provided us with nine books to review. Seven of these have been reviewed by library staff, and the reviews have been published. Reviews generally appear every other week in the Sunday edition. Deb has since provided us with another seven titles and has promised more.
Our goals in writing reviews are:
o Use the reviews to generate library programming
o Inform the community about recent books published by local authors and/or books about the community
o Let the community know that we own these books
o Create a heightened awareness of the library in the news media
o Give as many staff as possible opportunities to write for publication
All of these goals have been accomplished to some degree. The two areas we continue to work on are:
o Design programming that will take place simultaneously with the appearance of the review
o Broaden the number of staff writers to include as many of the staff as possible