By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
While for most the Fourth of July is about spending a day on the beach, at the park, or behind the grill, a select few who love books and education are hoping to bring the local Jewish community inside for a break from the heat this Independence Day. The event, which will kick off the Association of Jewish Libraries’ annual convention, is being held this year for the first time in Seattle.
While the convention itself is like any other affinity trade group’s — sessions that help people to better do their jobs, networking, and opportunities to catch up with colleagues from around the world — the day the meeting planners have opened up to the public is being billed as “The Fourth at the Fairmont” because it will take place at the Spanish Foyer of the Fairmont Olympic Hotel. On hand will be exhibitors of Jewish books and publications as well as activities such as a presentation by the PJ Library, the program that sends Jewish-themed books to small children, music by Temple Beth Am’s house band the KlezKidz, poetry, and local Jewish authors signing their books.
While a few local Jewish librarians have been involved in putting the conference together, they have bigger aims than just three days in July. They want to finally put the Pacific Northwest on the map when it comes to available resources for Jewish librarians and educators.
“I’ve watched, since ‘79, when I really got active in this organization, the difference that the organization made in Los Angeles, which is a sprawling place and has no real cohesiveness,” said Rita Frischer, a librarian who now lives in Seattle. She has taken on an advisory role in planning the conference. “The way that having Jewish libraries worked…with the education council, and working with all the schools enlivened Jewish life.”
But the association isn’t just for Jews.
“There are actually plenty of librarians who work in day schools and other places, or higher institutions, who aren’t Jewish, and they come to these conferences so they can learn about what they’re providing,” said Toby Harris, the librarian at Temple De Hirsch Sinai and co-chair of the Seattle conference.
Some of the chapter members aren’t Jewish, either. Marion Scichilone, branch library manager for the Seattle Public Library’s Northeast and Wallingford branches, joined because “I was just intrigued, interested and felt that this type of professional participation would be great for me personally as well as professionally,” she said. “Especially for the reading interest and use of our branch, I felt that [in] participation in this group and attending the convention there would be synergy.”
The Northeast branch is located across the street from Congregation Beth Shalom and the meeting place for Congregation Eitz Or, as well as within walking distance of three other synagogues.
Scichilone said that as a librarian for a large public system, she can offer many different types of support for smaller institutions while bringing what she learns at events like the AJL convention back to her own staff. At the same time, she has been doing her own learning about Judaism.
“I’m not thinking that [I’m] going to become fluent in Jewish literacy or materials, but it just helps me to be able to put my work as a public librarian in perspective,” she said.
The conference’s keynote speaker, Dr. Joseph Janes, is a luminary in the library scene: The associate professor in the University of Washington’s Information School was the founding director of the Internet Public Library and has written eight books on the relationship between libraries and technology.
Technology is often one of two big challenges — money, of course, being the other — that keeps a collection of books on a shelf from becoming a useful library. Harris said she hopes the nascent local chapter can be useful to provide technological resources its members, particularly smaller libraries in small communities.
“What I think would be really exciting would be to get all our libraries online and to have a centralized place where people can go and see who has which Judaic books, resources and training,” Harris said.
Being the keepers of Jewish resources is important to educating Jewish children and adults about their religion and identity, Frischer believes.
“I think it’s really important that all our children see our commitment to education as extending beyond the secular and showing some dignity within the Jewish framework as well,” Frischer said.
Harris agreed.
“We’re information centers,” she said. “We help vet information. We organize it for you. Everyone doesn’t like researching. I love researching.”
But the chapter growth comes next — first comes the conference. Most of the planning is complete. Book award winners have been notified; the authors are booked — they include Maggie Anton of Rashi’s Daughters fame and Jacqueline Dunbar Greene, who wrote the Jewish addition to the “American Girl” series — and the sessions are scheduled. At this point they’re dotting the i’s, processing registrations, and picking the menu.
“AJL has always been committed to having kosher conferences,” Harris said. “We do want to have meals together, and if we want to do that we’ve got to be kosher.”
Local educators are invited to a one-day session organized in part by the Jewish Education Center that will award teacher certification credit (JTC), stars and/or clock hours. Contact ajlnw@earthlink.net for rates and information.