Getworking

We can all get along!

I live in Washington's State's fourth largest city, Vancouver, behind Seattle, Tacoma and Spokane. Yes, we are bigger than Walla-Walla, Yakima, even Enumclaw! We are separated from one of the country's great metropolitan cities; Portland, Oregon (pronounced ORR-ih-gihn) by the mighty Columbia River and the state line. That's all.

So here, very recently, a metro area network has been established. The Portland Area Library System (PORTALS) is "a multitype library consortium committed to meeting the research and educational needs of people in the Portland-Vancouver metro area and beyond through cooperative and creative access to information resources and services."

The PORTALS current members include: Clark College, Fort Vancouver Regional Library, George Fox University, Linfield College, Marylhurst University, Mt. Hood Community College, Multnomah County Library (the big dog 'round heah!), Oregon Health & Science University, Oregon Historical Society, Pacific University, Portland Community College, Portland State University, Reed College, University of Portland, and Washington State University-Vancouver. Not bad company, I assure you.

PORTALS is bringing these librarians, most of whom work within a half-hour drive of Downtown Portland, together in a variety of ways. One upcoming function is An Afternoon of Book Lust with Nancy Pearl: The Pleasures and Perils of a Life of Reading! Lunch will be followed by a book/action figure signing!

Nancy Pearl is the former director of the Washington Center for the Book at the Seattle Public Library. She now writes and reviews books for local and national publications, and appears regularly on NPR's Morning Edition. She is the author of the Book Lust and Now Read This! series. She is the model for the Librarian Action Figure you may have seen on eBay! It seems to me this is a great function for the metro area, but might not have the pulling power for a state or regional gathering or convention.

But it's not all fun and games. PORTALS provides services to its member libraries including: borrowing agreements, continuing education, cooperative collection development and disaster planning. Workshops are planned for: Digital & Preservation Services, Consumer Health Classes for Public Libraries and Copyright Law and Content Licensing. Their web pages also have a lot of interesting links "designed for librarians to locate Internet resources related to their profession." That last quote seems a bit wordy, no?

Yes, I think you'll like it, www.portals.org/ or clink on the lick above!