Geaux Library Project, links and news

The Geaux Library Project [see blog here] has been making great strides providing relief assistance to Katrina victims and the displaced all over the South. They are looking for volunteers, mostly onsite but some remotely. Got some library geek skills that you’d like to use to do some good? Here is the call for volunteers that went out to listservs. Rochelle has been ably follwing this project and others since the diaster, keep tabs on her that bitch Katrina category for more updates.

Libraries change lives right here, right now

Marylaine Block has a more personal look at how librarians in areas affected by Katrina are helping people get their lives back.

Sandra Fernandez, Public Relations Manager for [Houston Public Library], says that they’ve been operating an impromptu “branch” library on site at the convention center since Saturday, September 3. She says, “We have Library staff there, as well as volunteers. We don’t have a circulating library at that location. The materials are all either donated recently for that library or provided by the Friends of the Houston Public Library — which means that when something is “checked out” at that library, they can keep the materials. We have (as of yesterday) approximately 16 computers there, with internet access, games and reading materials for all ages. We are holding storytimes throughout the day as well. The GRB [convention center] is just a mile or two from the Central Library, and we are offering temporary library cards to all evacuees which then can then be used at all library locations.”