I wanted to point to this great post about ILEAD U from Alicia Hammond, the Corporate and Small Business Liaison Librarian at the Schaumburg Township Library, IL.
I have been given an incredible opportunity as a librarian. Earlier this year, I was accepted in the ILEAD U (Illinois Libraries Explore, Apply and Discover: The 21st Century Technology Tools Institute). This program is operated by the Illinois State Library and funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. And it is really cool! Basically there are two things going on with this program. They bring a bunch of librarians together to form groups and create projects that utilize technology to support and engage the community. But the underlying goal is even better. While creating this project is great, the real reason we are doing this is to get used to being bold and putting new, awesome, fun projects into practice. This isn’t the kind of program where failure is going to get you into trouble. (Not that we want to fail!) But we are allowed to dream big and then go for it.
Read the rest of the post on her blog Librarian Unafraid.
This year State Libraries from all over the country have sent representatives to discover whether they want to try and bring it back, some seem enthusiastic and others worried about funding (staff hours, etc.) . I would recommend putting a little pressure on your state library to bring this to your area, a grant is being written at this very moment.
You can learn more about Alicia’s ILEAD U team’s Library Events Mobile App project soon on Facebook at facebook.com/MyLibMobileApp (the page doesn’t seem to be up yet). You can learn about the other groups at http://il.webjunction.org/ileadu-teams-y2.
TTW Contributor: Mick Jacobsen