LSTA Grant Recipients for Fiscal Year 2009

FY2001 | FY2002 | FY2003 | FY2009 | FY2010 | FY2011

System Competitive Grants

North Texas Regional Library System (NTRLS) $59,492
The “Libraries for Literacy” grant will establish literacy instruction programs in all types of north Texas libraries. NTRLS will work with partner organizations to provide training and advice on literacy instruction best practices. This pilot program will begin with three libraries, Alvarado, Saginaw and Seymour. The libraries will coordinate and host literacy instruction classes for their communities. School librarians and academic libraries in each community will promote the programs to potential students and seek volunteers for instructors and may host some classes.

Special Project Grants

Dallas Public Library $75,000
Three Dallas Library branches, Walnut Hill, Grauwyler, and North Oak Hill, will establish Family Literacy programs in their branches. “Leyendo Juntos: Reading Together” will teach English language skills to Spanish-speaking parents and their children. The project has four hours of class time for participants per week, two hours with the families together, and two hours with parents and children in separate classes. Including children in the program makes adult participation easier since some adults cannot come to class without supervision for their children. The program goals are enhanced family literacy and children better prepared to enter school.

Central Texas Library System (CTLS) $44,960
The “Every Child Ready to Read” program will allow fifteen public libraries in Bastrop, Burnet, Hays, and Williamson counties, in partnership with three multi-county Head Start/Even Start agencies serving twenty-eight sites, to increase the school readiness of disadvantaged children by providing early literacy parenting classes to parents and caregivers. Public library staff will learn how to teach parents the six specific early literacy skills that children should know before entering kindergarten. Library staff then offer these parent/caregiver education classes in their communities, targeting disadvantaged families.

Houston Community College Library (HCC) $14,876
The “Open Courseware in Information Literacy” project will develop a series of online information literacy (IL) modules based on the IL curriculum developed by HCC libraries. The HCC IL curriculum is based on the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education and best practices in the field. The online modules will be designed to enable students to apply processes of inquiry and critical thinking in the discovery and use of information for learning, decision-making, and action. Through these modules, students will be prepared to achieve greater success and life-long learning.

North Texas Regional Library System (NTRLS) $74,203
The “Serving Patrons with Special Needs” project goals are to assist library staff in identifying persons with specific special needs in their communities, form local partnerships, and provide information on community services through Service Fairs. NTRLS will research, develop, provide toolkits for creating fairs, and offer training, consulting, and funding assistance to its member libraries to enable them to hold Service Fairs for people with special needs in their communities.

Cooperation Grants

Weatherford Public Library $69,824
This project is designed to increase resource sharing between Parker County libraries (East Parker County, Springtown Public, Weatherford Public, and Azle Public), address the needs of Parker County’s rural population, and coordinate local efforts to ensure maximum effectiveness. The project will migrate East Parker County Library’s and Springtown Public Library’s integrated library systems to the Polaris system, currently shared by Weatherford and Azle Public Libraries. The libraries will also establish a countywide courier service to share materials between the four libraries in Parker County, and purchase Internet and print management software licenses for East Parker and Springtown.

Uvalde County Library System $46,611
El Progreso Memorial, Sabinal Public, and Utopia Memorial Libraries cooperated in 2000 to create a combined catalog and circulation system with reciprocal borrowing for all county residents. This project will purchase and implement an automation system that will allow patrons access to all library resources from the Internet either in their homes, businesses, or in the libraries with simple to use, Google-like searching. Patrons can renew and reserve materials online and receive e-mail notification of overdue materials and reserve books. They will also be able to search the catalog of Southwest Texas Junior College/Sul Ross Rio Grande College and El Progreso Memorial Library/Archives database of regional history, photos, and documents.

Texas A&M University-Commerce $74,060
The “Heirloom: Something Worth Saving, Something Worth Sharing” project will work with local public libraries and the Northeast Texas Library System (NETLS) to support small community libraries in 13 counties, with technology to better serve the information needs of their rural communities. University library staff will provide technology training, digitization support, and ongoing technical assistance to preserve the existing local history collections and make the materials widely available through the Internet.

The University of North Texas $60,403
UNT will partner with Bartlett Activities Center and the Historical Society of Bartlett to microfilm, digitize, and provide free online access to issues of the Bartlett Tribune published between 1902 and 1978. The Bartlett Tribune is a newspaper of regional significance as it documents the agrarian development of the Blackland Prairie area of Texas. The newspapers will be freely accessible over the Internet through the Portal to Texas History, as well as searchable through Texas Heritage Online.

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