The Manitoba Library Association is very pleased to announce that the winners of the 2008 Library Innovation of the Year Award are the Winnipeg Public Library’s Booked teen website, and the Info Long Term Care current awareness service maintained by Laurie Blanchard of the J.W. Crane Memorial Library, Deer Lodge Centre.

BOOKED teen website
Winnipeg Public Library

The Winnipeg Public Library’s new teen website BOOKED was launched on February 25, 2008, with a focus on providing an engaging and relevant online destination for youth that will contribute to increased Library use by teens. The website is an interactive place for teens to contribute their own original content, book reviews, photography, top-10 lists and poll ideas. The project was undertaken in partnership with members of the Library’s Youth Advisory Council consisting of teens recruited from areas throughout Winnipeg. Since the launch on February 25, BOOKED has received visits from 3,340 unique visitors: nearly 1,000 more visits than for all of 2007!


Info Long Term Care Current Awareness Service
Laurie Blanchard, Outreach Librarian, Long Term Care
J. W. Crane Memorial Library, Deer Lodge Centre, University of Manitoba Health Sciences Libraries

The Info Long Term Care current awareness service alerts healthcare professionals working in geriatrics to relevant and useful websites, resources, journal literature, and new books available through the J.W. Crane Memorial Library. The J.W. Crane Memorial Library has been a long-standing provider of information on aging and long-term care, and Laurie Blanchard set out to devise a new way of delivering that information beyond its primary clientele. Through the use of a weblog interface, RSS and social bookmarking tools, Laurie has created a rich and authoritative ‘portal’ with targeted content from evidence-based sources for users around the world seeking information on geriatrics and long-term care. Since its launch in October 2007, Info Long Term Care has received in excess of 4,000 visitors with an average of 90 visits per week.