Winter Newsletter

Happy New Year to you! What an incredible year we’ve had here at the Oregon Talking Book and Braille Library. 2023 was full of big changes, transitions, and transformations. Over the course of a year of limited staff, our small team pushed forward with determination and care. The following notes are just a few shining examples of how our staff performed wonders throughout the year.

Mailyn J. excelled at circulating books to all our patrons, getting new and refurbished machines out to everyone, and delivering outstanding fund development services. Our two incredible Readers Advisors, Andrea C. and Jennifer G., worked tirelessly to set up new patron accounts, fulfill book requests, update profiles, and organized another set of incredible summer and winter reading campaigns.

Our biggest transformation of the year was our voyage to becoming fully staffed. When our former administrative specialist received a promotion to Volunteer Coordinator within the State Library’s Operations Division (thank you for your many years of dedicated work, Joel H.), we dug within our agency and unearthed a hidden talent within the Library Support Division. Max R. eagerly took on the administrative role, bringing with him a background in audio production to expand our recording studio operation from two volunteers to five, developing a training program for new narration volunteers, and upgrading the studio recording environment.

Our staff’s metamorphic year continued when Crystal G. started a new journey with our colleagues in the Government Services Division (thank you for everything Crystal!). We were soon able to create a new Registration Support Specialist role and appoint Lisa J. to the position to process new applications and welcome new users to the library. When our former Student Worker, Jasmine C. graduated from Western Oregon University (thank you Jasmine!), we recruited Sarah O. to continue making day-to-day connections with our patrons, ensuring strength of service in all that we do.

Perhaps our biggest windfall was the addition of a full-time Public Services Librarian position to our team. We are thrilled to welcome aboard Jen R. to our team, who comes to us with significant experience in the library community spanning the West Coast from Seattle, Washington to San Mateo, California. We’re so happy she decided to find out what it’s like here in Oregon! Jen’s experience encompasses a wide breadth of library work, including positions in Virtual Instruction and Teen Services, Children’s Services, Digital Initiatives, Technical Services, Access and Acquisitions, and Senior Librarian. Jen will be working hard on community outreach, patron services, collection development, cataloging new materials, and coordinating the Center for the Book.

Hello, Readers! Our hard-working staff do a lot of work behind the scenes to get materials to your door, but the people you’re probably most familiar with are our Readers’ Advisors (RAs) who help make sure you like what you are getting! The RA Corner is where we share books that we think you’ll enjoy, trends in what patrons are reading, and general gushing about books and authors we love.

STAFF FAVORITES

For this first installment, I asked staff “What are some great books you read in 2023?” Here you’ll find answers from individual staff followed by a handy list of all our favorites broken down by genre.

Jen, Librarian: “The book I could not stop thinking about this year was The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff (DB116370). It’s the story of a girl who’s escaped the harrowing, plague-ridden Jamestown settlement in the winter of 1609. In the beginning, it’s all about the girl’s minute-to-minute survival, but it turns into so much more! It was gripping, deeply philosophical, tender, and ponderous.”

Going forward, we will be “tagging” these books, and any others we are enjoying, in our online catalog. You can see all our favorite books by searching for the subject “Staff Picks” in our online catalog or clicking here: STAFF PICKS.

Without further ado, here’s the full list of our favorite books we read last year. You can place a hold on a title using our online catalog, find these books on BARD, or give us a call and let us know the titles or authors you’d like added to your next cartridge!

Action, Sci-Fi, & Fantasy

DB107945 The Murder of Mr. Wickham (Darcy & Tilney #1) by Claudia Gray

DB075094 Shadow and Bone (Grisha Trilogy #1) by Leigh Bardugo

DB102299 The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

DB116107  Zero Days by Ruth Ware

Fiction

DB104101 / BR23915  Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby

DB102687  West with Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge

DB116370  The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

DB107924 / BR24204  Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

Mystery

DB114201  The Housemaid (Housemaid #1) by Freida McFadden

DB095187  Killing Trail (Timber Creek K-9 #1) by Margaret Mizushima

DB059555  Naked in Death (Eve Dallas #1) by J.D. Robb

DB066731 / BR20557  Still Life (Three Pines #1) by Louise Penny 

Romance

DB113860  Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

DB114959  Georgie, All Along by Kate Clayborn

MOST WANTED: DECEMBER 2023

Here’s where we highlight what you are reading! This is a sampling of patron favorites from December 2023. You can add any of these to your reading queue using our online catalog or contacting Readers Advisors via email or phone. Enjoy!

DB116351  23 ½ Lies by James Patterson
DB116600  Holly by Stephen King
DB116853  Judgment Prey by John Sandford
DB87767 / BRG04247   Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
DB107538  Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
DB116345  None of This is True by Lisa Jewell

DB116896  Obsession by Stuart Woods

DB115529  On Sight & Insight: A Journey into the World of Blindness by John Hull

This past December, Oregon Talking Books welcomed Oregon author, Tina Ontiveros to our library. Regular readers of Staying Connected may recall that Tina is the 2021 Pacific Northwest (PNW) Book Award winning author of the book, rough house: a memoir, a book that was recently added to the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (NLS) catalog.

Recorded and edited here in Oregon in 2023, rough house tells the tale of Tina’s upbringing in a variety of rural logging communities in the Pacific Northwest in the 1980’s. The story begins with a baby Tina coming home to the woods of Headquarters, Idaho; learning to ride a bike in the timber outlets of Packwood and Clallam Bay, Washington; visiting her brother in the harbor of Ketchikan, Alaska; and finally moving south with her family into Oregon’s Camas Valley and The Dalles. It is a dark and deeply poetic glimpse into the many pitfalls of economic strife and domestic abuse, but mostly it is a love letter to her dad, Loyd, a loving and lovable, yet sadly troubled man.

We couldn’t have done it without our narrator for the book, Jennifer M. Imai, who joined the visit with Tina, bringing together the author and the voice for a special meeting and celebration of the completed work. Tina and Jen’s visit included a tour of the library and recording studio, a reception, and a book cover signing. The newly framed cover has been placed in the studio to honor the occasion, starting our decorative book cover wall of fame, highlighting Oregonians narrating books by Oregonians for Oregonians!

During the tour of the studio, we took the opportunity to get Tina into the studio booth and ask her a special question to share with our users:

“What does it mean to you to know that readers with print impairments all across the country are now able to read and enjoy your book?”

Tina had this to share in response:

“The first thing I think of when I hear this question is that I’m just really grateful for the work that you all do. You know, I grew up without access to a lot of things, so creating access and inclusivity is just a really base value for me. Whether you did this with ‘rough house’ or not, I’m just very grateful for the work you’re doing to create access for people.

When I think about it in terms of my own book, I think about every time another person reaches out to me to tell me they’ve read it and what their human emotional reaction was, it feels like a miracle because I think of literature as almost like a physical space that exists outside of physical space and time; a place where people who’ve never met can meet. Until now, there were a lot of people excluded from meeting me in that space, but this creates an avenue or a threshold that more people can cross to meet me in that space, so I think that’s really beautiful and I’m really grateful for it.”