Summer Reading Winners!

We are pleased to announce the list of winners from our Summer Reading Program!

The following children won $25 gift certificates to the Imagination Station toy store. Congratulations and great job reading!

Jacob Cunningham, Bigfork
Arron Davis, Columbia Falls
Marianna Jouppe, Kalispell



In the Teen Program, the following participants won the grand prizes. Hooray! Good work and thanks for joining Summer Reading Program!

iPod Touch (2)
Casey Shea, Columbia Falls
Ashley Jones, Kalispell

Nook eReader
Lauren Christensen, Bigfork

Summer Reading Program Round Up!

This week is our final week of summer reading program events. Kids and teens can still log hours and pick up prizes until the end of the day Saturday. What a great summer! Scroll down to see pictures from our adventures; highlights included reading stories from a Nook ereader, making sand paintings and yarn paintings, designing t-shirts in the teen program, enjoying our wonderful Park Side volunteers, and eating a celebratory snack of foods from around the world.

Special thanks to Park Side Federal Credit Union and the Friends of Flathead County Library for generously funding our program. We also received support from Kalispell Parks and Rec and Norm's News. Thank you so much!

Best Picture Books of 2011 . . . so far

We recently stumbled across this very lovely list of best picture books of 2011 . . . so far. As the new Youth Services Librarian and the staff person newly in charge of picture book ordering, I am ever so VERY excited about picture books. And I am happy to tell you that FCLS has every single one of these fabulous books on order, on the shelf, or checked out and in some lucky child's hands. Visit our website and click on Library Catalog to place a hold.

Stay tuned this week for a Summer Reading Program photo round up!

Kalispell Library is "Bewitching"

Take a virtual tour of the Kalispell Library via "The Librarian Is In" blog. Justine Shaffner highlights public libraries worldwide, and she recently showcased our library.

In addition to raving about the historic building and interior features, she discusses the library branches, the many items available for checkout, programs for children and teens, and the Montana Shared Catalog.

Statistics can tell a story or two.

It's been a long time since I've taken a look at our web site statistics but found a couple of interesting trends popping up since my last peek. Williston, N.D. has cracked the top 10 list of cities visiting FCLS. I was a traveling road construction worker in a former life and spent some pretty boring evenings far from home. It makes me smile to think that those workers, who are driving across the state, are picking up some books to read or movies to watch while they are away from their families. Perhaps, a good audio book makes the long commute a little easier for them.

The other interesting trend is the amount of mobile devices that are accessing our web site. It comes as no surprise, as we have logged the most downloaded audio and ebooks throughout the state in the past few months. This data helps spark ideas on how to make a better experience while visiting our site on a mobile device.

In case you're a nerd like me- here is the order of mobile devices that have accessed our site.
- iPad
- Android
- iPhone/iPod
- Blackberry
- Windows

Megan Glidden Recieves Scholarship

Megan Glidden has been awarded a scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in library and information science through the University of North Texas’s distance program. She will begin classes this fall with other students from the Rocky Mountain region. Glidden’s $14,400 scholarship will go toward the cost of tuition at the University of North Texas’s College of Information. She will attend most classes online and will also travel to meet with her cohort twice during the two-year program for in-person orientation and instruction.

After graduation, as part of the scholarship requirements, Glidden will work for at least two years as a professional librarian in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, or South Dakota. She also will continue her membership in the Montana Library Association and attend the annual conference. Glidden currently works at both the Columbia Falls Branch Library and in the Children’s Department at the Main Library in Kalispell. She is enthusiastic about helping our communities with literacy and learning, and is excited to explore the variety of experiences available as a librarian. When asked about specific career goals, Glidden answered, “Someday I would love to manage a branch library, which would allow me to do a little bit of everything.”

Glidden’s scholarship award is the result of an application she made in April 2010 to the SWIM Regional Collaborative Library Education Project, which is designed to increase the number of professional librarians working in the SWIM (South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana) region. At that time, she was selected by the SWIM Advisory Council as an alternate to receive a scholarship and was placed on a waiting list. The SWIM project received additional funding this month, which made it possible for Glidden to receive the scholarship. SWIM is funded through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ Laura Bush 21^st Century Librarian Program.

Grand Prize winners for session 1

We drew our winners for the session 1 Summer Reading Program grand prizes in the Children's Department!

The following readers each won $25 to the Imagination Station.

Layne Potts-Wood of Kalispell
Eric Bott of Columbia Falls
Reid Barrows of Bigfork

Congratulations, and great job to all who have participated so far. Look for more winners during the week of August 22nd, which is when we will also draw our teen winners.