The Washington Talking Book & Braille Library (WTBBL) hosted its first Book Club meeting Aug. 26. Due to COVID-19, we held the meeting virtually, and if the overwhelmingly positive response from participants is any indication, we will continue with this format.
The inaugural meeting included patrons from across the state and featured Trial by Fury by local author J.… Read more
While perusing material in response to a research question about Seattle in the 1950s and 1960s, Washington State research librarian Kathryn Devine read A Complete Guide to Non-Tourist Seattle (1962).
Intended as a pocket guide for visitors who wanted to see the “real” Seattle, it’s a very entertaining read.
In the chapter titled “What to… Read more
The Washington State Library has been a member of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) since 1858, when it was the Washington Territorial Library. As an FDLP member, the Washington State Library receives federal government publications in numerous formats, and offers access to these resources and reference assistance.
The FDLP provides free access to U.S. government information. Beginning in 1813, the program was initially headed by the U.S. Secretary of State and… Read more
In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library (WTBBL) held a virtual patron poetry exhibition July 18.
The WTBBL Poetry Exhibition, held via WebEx, included a poetry reading and an awards presentation.
“We’re unable to hold events at the library, so we wanted to have an event that would let people share their creativity in a format that’s accessible to everyone,” said WTBBL Director… Read more
Thanks to past and ongoing digitization efforts at the Washington State Library, Washington Digital Newspapers hosts digital copies of some of the earliest newspapers published in Washington. Through their columns, early territorial editors provided a glimpse of some of the hardships faced by settlers in general, and by publishers in particular in the 1850s. This blog, one of a three part series, covers the challenges publishers… Read more
Archivists realize that no matter how well they think they know their collection, it still holds surprises. The Washington Territorial Court Case Files collection at the Washington State Archives Eastern Regional Branch recently delivered such a surprise.
Image Devrick Barnett, Archives Intern and graduate student at Eastern Washington University, holds the presidential pardon issued by President Rutherford B. Hayes on July 20, 1880,… Read more
Thanks to past and ongoing digitization efforts at the Washington State Library, Washington Digital Newspapers hosts digital copies of some of the earliest newspapers published in Washington. Through their columns, early territorial editors provided a glimpse of some of the hardships faced by settlers in general, and by publishers in particular in the 1850s. This blog, one of a three part series, covers the arrival of newspaper… Read more
Through multiple National Digital Newspaper Program grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities in conjunction with the Library of Congress, the Washington State Library has contributed over 300,000 pages of digitized Washington newspapers to Chronicling America (chroniclingamerica.loc.gov) since 2008.
The contributions from the Washington State Library are part of the over 16 million searchable newspaper pages from 48… Read more
May 18, 1980, a day many Pacific Northwesterners vividly remember, was the infamous day Mount St. Helens erupted and left much of the state in complete darkness. This day was coined “Black Sunday,” and during the following week, nearly 200,000,000 cubic yards of soot and ash were dumped across Washington and covered nearly half the state.[1]
ImageThe City of Yakima was in the direct path of the ash plume. To make matters worse, the… Read more
The “Spanish flu” pandemic that exploded in 1918, near the end of World War I, killed at least 50 million people worldwide—some say twice that. President Trump’s grandfather was among the 675,000 Americans who succumbed to the lethal influenza.
Legacy Washington’s new book, Ahead of the Curve: Washington Women Lead the Way 1919-2020, features a heroic Seattle physician on the front lines of the pandemic.
Dr. Mabel Seagrave lived by the motto of Wellesley College, her… Read more
On April 29th, the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library’s (WTBBL) Director, Danielle Miller; Audio Book Production Supervisor, John Pai; and Assistant Manager, Alycia Ensminger, hosted a webinar, Getting to Know WTBBL’s Audiobook Production… Read more
As we celebrate the centennial of women’s suffrage in the United States, it has become apparent that Washington state has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to voting rights and processes, and others have benefitted from seeing us set the pace and disprove false perceptions.
Over the last few decades, utilization and preference for Vote-By-Mail (VBM) elections has substantially increased to the point where in 2018 general elections across the country, over… Read more
In 1918, while Washingtonians were anxiously awaiting for their boys to come home near the end of WWI, reports were coming over from Europe about soldiers dying from a mysterious Spanish Influenza.
Reports of “la grippe,” the “flu,” and “pneumonia,” the epidemic was caused by a strain of Pfeiffer’s Bacillus, named after the epidemiologist who discovered it in 1892. By mid-September, before the war was over, it had reached the shores of Washington and at least 23 other states.… Read more
On Tuesday and Wednesday, May 5th and 6th, the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library (WTBBL) will be participating in GiveBIG Washington 2020, a 48-hour long online giving campaign that is designed to support Washington state nonprofit organizations. This year, WTBBL’s goal is to raise $… Read more
Troy and Cheryl LaBrum have a passion for giving.
A devout family, they donate often to local churches and missions, but their generosity doesn’t stop there; for years, they have also been donating extensively to the various prison and hospital libraries that make up the Institutional Library Services (ILS) program of the Washington State Library.
Hearing of ILS from a loved one who experienced the benefits firsthand, Troy and Cheryl decided to seek out a way to… Read more
The Washington State Library celebrates National Poetry Month by bringing poetry to the public throughout April. We hope these resources will help you celebrate the joys and solace that can be found in the beauty of the written word.
For Claudia Castro Luna (@wapoetlaureate), Washington State Poet Laureate, providing a voice to a sheltering… Read more
Like many Washingtonians, staff at the Washington State Library are adjusting to working from home. This means that those of us who spend our days working directly with our customers are missing our interactions with them, and wishing we had access to the non-digitized books and newspapers that make our collection so uniquely valuable. In these days of pandemic however, we all have to make do. In our case, we’re still able to respond to most email inquiries — though article requests are on… Read more
AskWA is the Statewide Virtual Reference Cooperative — a team of over 50 academic and public libraries across our state who band together to help provide email and 24/7 chat reference services with the help of a global network of librarians. Never has there been a more relevant time for virtual… Read more
Ruralite Magazine was first published in 1954 with “a spirit of public service and forward-looking sensibility.” But the magazine was not exclusive to Kittitas County as it was published by public utility districts across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, California, Nevada, Montana, and Alaska. Each state had multiple Ruralite versions specific to particular counties or regions, and by 1977, there were about 38 different editions going out to 157,000 households across the Northwest.
It wasn’t that long ago that telephone books played a fairly significant role in our daily lives. Whether you used one as a booster seat at dinner, or you were looking up the number of a neighbor or local business, telephone books were an incredibly handy tool. One could argue that they were the single most… Read more
