Wednesday, December 4, 2019
Guest Post Written By: Glenna Carter, Librarian, Child Care Information Center, Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, Division of Early Care and Education
It is well known that Wisconsin’s resource sharing system serves public and academic libraries, K-12 schools and technical colleges, but it also serves state agencies that support a multitude of state services. One of these agencies is the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families (DCF). Childcare providers all over Wisconsin look to DCF for guidance.
Many providers learned about Interlibrary Loan (ILL) from the Child Care Information Center (CCIC), a small special library in DCF, Division of Early Care and Education. CCIC is a lending library and information clearinghouse specifically for Wisconsin child care providers and trainers. They encourage providers to take advantage of their local library’s ILL service to conveniently access books and DVDs they could never afford to purchase.
On the flip side of the coin, DCF employees depend upon interlibrary loan for research articles that are not available to them online or on the UW-Madison campus. The federal government encourages states, in addition to universities and think tanks, to conduct and use research to find ways to improve their childcare subsidy programs (Wisconsin Shares), childcare quality rating and improvement systems (YoungStar), and other programs that make a significant positive difference in the lives of children and families. Some of the articles needed by DCF researchers and policymakers are hard to find in full text but, when the CCIC librarian runs out of ideas, the ILL experts at Resources for Libraries and Lifelong Learning always find a way!
Posted by: Christine Barth, Resources for Libraries and Lifelong Learning