By Michele Farley, Children’s Services Consultant, Prof. Development Office
The State Library recently created a series of ten thematic storytime kits for use by Indiana libraries. Each kit contains books, manipulatives, music CDs and an activity guide – just about everything you need to present a preschool storytime (or two) at your library.
Activity guides suggest how to use kit materials – songs, fingerplays, felt board sets, puppets, craft ideas, and more – to incorporate each of the six early literacy skills from the Every Child Ready to Read @ Your Library program into your storytime. Storytime kit themes include Pets, Music, Community Helpers, Rhythm and Rhyme, Alphabet, Colors, Numbers, Nursery Rhymes, Water, and Be Creative (the Summer Reading 2009 theme).
Kits can be checked out for three (3) weeks and will be sent via INfoExpress at no cost to your library. For more information about the kits or to reserve one, please contact Michele Farley at mfarley@library.in.gov or 317-234-5649.
HISTORIC SHEET MUSIC FROM INDIANA NOW FREELY AVAILABLE ONLINE
Information courtesy of Indiana University Media Relations Release
IN Harmony, a collaboration between Indiana University’s Lilly Library, the Indiana State Museum, the Indiana Historical Society, Indiana State Library, and the IU Digital Library Program, has made freely available online more than 10,000 pieces of Indiana-related sheet music. The IN Harmony website gives users access to some of these institutions’ most popular and sought-after materials, as well as images of music and cover art for non-commercial personal use. Beyond the site’s current collection, more than 150,000 additional items from the Lilly Library sheet music collection will be systematically added in an ongoing project.
The IN Harmony collection features sheet music by Indiana composers, lyricists, arrangers, and publishers, as well as sheet music about the state. Drawn primarily from the late-19th and early-20th centuries, the collection includes works by well-known composers such as George M. Cohan, Cole Porter, Al Jolson and Jerome Kern. The Indiana State Library’s contribution to the collection includes approximately 1,600 pieces of sheet music, dating from 1840 through the 1960s, the bulk of which date from 1890 through 1950. The collection includes a wide variety of pieces: “booster” songs promoting a particular city or railroad stop; centennial songs from state, county and city celebrations; religious works, college songs; and songs based on the literary works of well-known authors such as James Whitcomb Riley.
IU’s Digital Library Program led the effort to show how collections of disparate organizations could be described and organized.
“Libraries and museums often have different needs, and this project showed how to cross institutional boundaries to the benefit of not only residents of our own state, but to music-lovers throughout the country and even beyond,” said Patricia Steele, Ruth Lilly Dean of University Libraries.
The three-year project was funded in part by a $343,437 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
DON’T MISS NEW INSPIRE TRAINING WORKSHOPS COMING TO A LIBRARY NEAR YOU. A COMPLETE LISTING OF TRAINING SITES IS AVAILABLE ONLINE.