Vol. 36, No. 4
December 2006
VOLUNTEER NEWS
Save This Date for Volunteer Luncheon
The date for our Annual Volunteer Recognition is set for Sunday, March 4, 2007. Please mark your calendars and save the day to celebrate the accomplishments and contributions of all AZ Braille & Talking Book Library Volunteers. Our location will be the Lakeview Inn at the Camelback Golf Club in Scottsdale. Individual invitations will be mailed in February to each volunteer. We hope all volunteers can join us that day.
Open House Success
Many thanks go to the 17 volunteers who worked with staff to make our October Open House celebrating our centenarians a great success. Three library patrons who are 100 years or older were present and received special recognition. Volunteers gave tours to 200 library patrons and their family members. Volunteers also gave out information, demonstrated studio recording, demonstrated machine repair, operated our elevator, greeted attendees and distributed tour tickets. The event provided an afternoon of education and celebration for everyone who is a part of AZ Braille and Talking Books.
Machine Repair Workshop -- January 23, 2007
All machine repair volunteers are invited to attend a repair workshop at the AZ Braille and Talking Book Library in Phoenix on Tuesday, January 23, 2007. Staff from the National Library Service in Washington, D.C. will be the presenters. Lunch will be included. Specific details will be sent to all machine repair volunteers. Reserve the date.
If you know of anyone who might be interested in learning machine repair but is not yet a volunteer, please invite them to attend this workshop.
Volunteer of the Quarter
Volunteer of the Quarter Sarah Raum serves as director on Sleeping
with Ghosts.
There are four volunteer positions associated with producing audio books: reader, director, reviewer and home reviewer. Volunteer Sarah Raum is currently the only volunteer who is working in all four jobs. Sarah spends two evenings each week in our Phoenix recording studio. On Tuesday, she reviews and alternates reading and directing with her partner Abigail. On Wednesday, she reviews and then directs with partner Bobbette. Recently, she also began reviewing completed books at home. Sarah says she likes all four jobs and really enjoys how doing each job helps her see ‘how the other half lives.’ She has gained a broad perspective on the whole recording process and feels that strengthens her in each of her jobs. She says that each job has its good and bad points. That understanding developed from first hand experience helps her work effectively in different teams. Now that she is listening to entire books as a home reviewer, she realizes how important it is for the reader’s voice to catch and hold a listener. It’s so important too, she says, for a voice to be a good fit for the material. She enjoys the variety of books she is exposed to in her many studio roles and she feels that it broadens her own interests in different subject matter.
Sarah is our first digital reviewer. Recording of our first digital book is underway in the studio and Sarah expressed an interest in reviewing it. She is comfortable with computers and enjoys learning new things using a computer. Her input in the next few months will be critical in helping our studio manager develop procedures for using the new digital recording technology. Sarah is careful, thoughtful and thorough and patient – a great candidate to sort through the ups and downs associated with implementing new software. She is enthusiastic about what she has seen so far regarding the ease of using the software and the excellent sound quality of the recording.
Like most of our evening volunteers, Sarah comes into the studio after a full day at her job. She is an administrative assistant at the corporate office of Target. Target, as a company, is very committed to promoting volunteerism among its employees. As a member of their Volunteer Council, Sarah is very involved in supporting and participating in a wide range of volunteer projects. A few recent efforts include Red Cross Blood Drives, a walk to raise funds for lymphoma research and Boo at the Zoo. Sarah sees all these opportunities as great experience for employees and a fun way to bring lots of Target employees from different stores together.
Arizona wasn’t a place that Sarah really gave much thought to as a younger person. She grew up and graduated from high school in a small town in Idaho. That was followed by years as a military wife moving to various locations around the country. She then settled for 15 years in Florida. She felt that she wanted a change, a new environment and a friend got her thinking about Arizona. After eight years here this is home. She loves Arizona and doesn’t see herself moving anywhere else. She is close to her two preschool aged grandchildren and enjoys spending as much time with them as she can.
Recently Sarah volunteered for the AZ Braille and Talking Book Library Open House. It gave her the opportunity to meet and talk with many of the people who use the Talking Book Service. She thoroughly enjoys what she is doing in the recording studio but says she really appreciated hearing first hand from readers what the talking books mean in their lives. We at the library are grateful to Sarah for continuing to make a place in her life for talking books.
beginning in the March 2007 issue of Volunteer News.
Group Projects
Medtronic volunteer helps clean and play test talking book
machines.
October was a month when we received extra help from many one time project volunteers. While the majority of the volunteers for the library make a regular weekly commitment, there are some opportunities for group projects. 51 volunteers in three groups accomplished a range of projects that would not have been possible without their help.
Medtronic is a company that makes pacemakers and other medical devices. They have a facility in Tempe and once a year they give all of their employees a day to volunteer for local nonprofit or governmental programs. Fourteen Medtronic volunteers spent Friday, Oct. 27 at the library helping with machine cleaning & testing, shifting books in our basement, reshelving the original Arizona book reels and duplicating books to get them back into circulation.
Volunteers helping with an Eagle Scout Project are surrounded by books.
Thirty one students and adults, under the direction of Boy Scout Craig A, spent Saturday morning, Oct. 28, in our stacks. Craig was completing the requirements to obtain the rank of Eagle Scout. His project involved moving audio books off the compact shelving in the basement and cleaning the shelving. He met with the technical services librarian and the library volunteer manager to work out the details.
Eagle Scout Project Organizer Craig A. and his sister prepare snacks for hungry volunteers.
Craig, who is a 9th grader, had to plan and organize the project, recruit volunteers, coordinate transportation and supervise the volunteers on site. Four hours were allocated but since this was the first time we ever planned to move all the 400,000 shelved cassette books in the basement at one time, we did not have a clear idea how much time the project would actually take. Once the volunteers started moving books two things quickly became apparent; there was a lot more dust and dirt on the shelves than expected and it was not possible to accomplish the entire project in four hours. All the volunteers worked diligently and Craig did a fine job keeping things moving. In the allotted time, they were able to complete about a third of the shelving, which meant they removed and reshelved about 135,000 books! A large part of the lending collection and storage are now cleaner than they have been in many years.
The third group that helped recently came from the 1st Baptist Church in Tempe. The six women volunteers meet in a weekly scripture sharing group. Once a month instead of staying at the church, they volunteer for various community programs. These women stripped labels from cassettes so that the tapes can be reused. This job is on-going but it was a big help to have a group who was able to get through a lot of tapes at one sitting.
Thanks for a big boost to all the volunteers from Medtronic, Craig, his fellow scouts, friends and family members and the ladies from 1st Baptist Church in Tempe. Many hands do make light work.
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” Helen Keller
Machine Supervisor Keeps Machines Moving
Michael Usrey, BTBL Machine Supervisor
Michael Usrey is well suited for the staff position of Machine Services Supervisor. He is patient and a problem solver. He is responsible for about 10,000 talking book machines used throughout Arizona. He has ongoing contact with the National Library Service in Washington, DC, and with most of the public libraries in Arizona. He is assisted by one staff and coordinates the work of the 45 machine repair volunteers who work in five locations.
Michael began learning about talking book machines in 2003 as a volunteer. Friends who are library volunteers told him about the Talking Book Library. Within his first year, the machine clerk position became available and Michael was hired. He was well prepared to handle the section on his own when the previous machine supervisor left due to health issues. He particularly enjoys the increased contact with both patrons and libraries that the supervisor position offers.
Except for a year in Las Vegas, Michael has lived in the Phoenix metro area. He grew up in Avondale, when it was still a small town he says, and graduated from Agua Fria Union High School. His diverse work background includes retail cashier, and several years with Creative Images, a Phoenix Halloween costume business, where he made cream make-up and vampire blood and oversaw others working in that manufacturing process. He spent ten years working for a friend in a two person computer business and learned a lot about computers. He did everything from manning the phone to finding the best prices on computer parts to repairing and rebuilding computers.
Looking at Michael’s workspace, you would say he has a green thumb. He says he just enjoys plants at work because his two cats make it impossible to keep any plants looking nice at home. In his not at work time, he likes scouring local swap meets for ceramics, which he collects sometimes with an eye for value and sometimes just because he likes the way something looks. He also enjoys classic sci-fi movies and is collecting episodes of the old Zena, the Warrior Princess, TV shows. At home he is building a new computer, one that will run VISTA, the soon to be released new Windows operating system.
If you are in the library and want to say hello, Michael is located on the second floor.