Multimedia Reporting (Bradford)

A Mobile Library Provides Books for Seniors

Terry Sloan, a 67-year-old Lawrence resident, has been living last six months in the Presbyterian Manor retirement center. Although the retirement community offered him comforts and various beneficial programs, he did not have much to do after the programs ended at 6 p.m.

“I decided to come to the retirement center to have a better life,” Sloan said. “Unfortunately, it gets a bit boring after the dinner. I had nothing more to do.”

Recently, Sloan found out a way to spend his nighttime: books. A special service called Book Van provided an opportunity for Sloan as well as other retired seniors to get easier access to many books available in the Lawrence Public Library. The Book Van is a small van that travels three days a week to seven retirement communities in Lawrence. The Lawrence Public Library has been offering the Book Van service for more than four years.

The Book Van used to be a mobile library that held a larger collection, and the size of the van used to be bigger than the current one. People used to enter the van to select materials. However, the traditional book mobile system had to change because of the reduced budget recently. The Book Van now works as a van that simply conveys books. The employees take a few hundred books on carts in the van. The employees offload and take those books into the senior living centers so that residents can choose from those books.

“We view this service as an important outreach to a special population in our community which is unable in most cases to get to the library,” Bruce Flanders, a director of Lawrence Public Library, said.

The Book Van carries a wide variety of library materials including books, audio books, videos and music CDs. Gregor Brune, Book Van coordinator at the public library, selects the materials for the van based on experience with serving seniors. He also takes requests from seniors in various retirement communities.

The Book Van runs Monday through Wednesday each week. The van stays about an hour at each location to make sure all the seniors on the retirement community can get an access to the books. If anybody does not have a library card, one can be issued at the van as long as the senior provides valid ID card.

According to Brune, about 200 seniors use the Book Van service per week, and the number of people who use the service has been slightly and steadily increasing for the past two years. Brune said that he felt it was worthwhile to provide the Book Van service to seniors.

“I knew most people at the retirement communities didn’t have cars,” Brune said, “I believe our service is the best way to provide library materials to those people.”

The Book Van service is not the only service Lawrence Public Library offers to senior residents. The public library also provides similar service to people who do not live in retirement communities. Home delivery is available every other week for anyone who is unable to come to the library due to illness, disability or limited transportation.

Booktalks are held monthly at various retirement communities. People review a variety of library materials including videos, music and books. The participants do not have to be Lawrence residents.

“I participated in one of the review sessions.” Kathy Manning, a 65-year-old resident at the Presbyterian Manor retirement center, said. “It was an excellent experience for me.”

Although the Lawrence Public Library does not have specific future plan for the senior services, the officials at the library hopes to expand the services including the Book Van sooner or later.

“We are satisfied with the current schedule and number of stops. As new senior living centers spring up in Lawrence, though, we plan to expand the service to include those new centers.” Flanders said.

The Lawrence Humane Society is providing a new society for animals. Click the image above for audio slideshow to learn more about the Humane Society.

Children get a chance to be detectives

The hissing cockroaches were missing from the Bugtown exhibit at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum on June 25. The crime scene was messy because of the traces the thief left. Instead of calling police for the investigation, the museum gave chance to solve the mystery to elementary kids.

The Natural History Museum offered a new summer camp program called Forensic Fun, which allowed children to join the investigation and learn forensic science techniques, to help solve the mystery. More than 10 children, whose age ranged from 8 to 11, participated the summer camp.

“I thought being a detective was scary, but this is actually fun,” Dan Gonzales, 11-year-old participant from Topeka, Kan., said.

Led by an adult investigator, the participants processed the evidence found at the crime scene including hair, fingerprints and an unidentified substance. After the thorough investigation, the participants determined who they thought committed the crime from a list of possible suspects. At the end, the suspect was revealed, and the children received awards for helping the investigation.

According to Teresa MacDonald, director of Natural History Museum, the officials at the museum have been developing new programs based on several factors including popular science topics. The officials have conducted surveys of camp participants about what new programs they would like to see offered in the future. Analyzing the survey data as well as their insights to create fun and interesting activities resulted in the creation of the new summer camp program, Forensic Fun camp.

“Our camps are designed to be engaging, high quality educational opportunities. They have been developed by informal science education professionals to create fast-paced, fun-filled, and content-rich science experiences,” MacDonald said.

According to Jennifer Humphrey, communications director of the Natural History Museum, the main goal of the Forensic Fun camp as well as the other summer camps provided by the museum is to show the positive side of science. Humphrey said the children seemed to enjoy and had positive feelings about science.

“One of the main goals of our summer camp programs is to give children the opportunity to find out how much fun science is,” Humphrey said. “Children are our future generation. We want them to get familiar with advanced science.”

The Natural History Museum has been offering various summer camp programs including Aquatic Biology, Geology Exploration and Dinosaur Detectives. MacDonald says although those camps were successful to offer an opportunity for children to explore the nature, it wasn’t enough to bring children closer to science. By offering the new Forensic Fun camp, MacDonald now feels happy to make children friends with science.

As a result of the successful summer camp, the Natural History Museum will continue to provide the valuable experience to children. Humphrey is optimistic that more positive changes will occur next year. The officials are discussing to expand the playground for the Forensic Fun camp to the outside. This year, it took a place only inside the museum.

“We are very pleased with the success of the Forensic Fun and other summer camps. If resources were available, it would be great to expand the number of camps to explore other science topics,” Humphrey said.

Sometimes, an informal class is better than a formal class. The international students at KU are getting enormous help from the English conversation group. Click on the video below to see what the conversation group is and how it helps international students.

Is it the start of a new era for soccer?

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David Beckham's American debut on July 21 drew a record of 1.5 million viewers to the TV broadcast despite playing for only 13 minutes, according to Nielson Media. The number of viewers could indicate a change of wind for soccer in the United States.

Ironically. the world's most popular sport, soccer, is not the most popular one in the world's biggest sporting nation, the United States. However, the development of soccer popularity is still ongoing by those who care about the abandoned sports.

Gerrit de Boer, president of Lawrence Adult Soccer League, has been devoting his life to increase the popularity of soccer in Lawrence. He organizes the adult league for Lawrence soccer community as well as running the Kaw Valley Soccer Association.
Kaw Valley Soccer Association provides organized soccer for children age 4 to 18 at three different levels. There are 36 members registered in Lawrence Adult Soccer League while more than 50 children play for the Kaw Valley Soccer Association.

"The facilities in town limit the growth of soccer," De Boer said. "But we still try to promote soccer by providing programs for youth and adult soccer players."

De Boer said that the parks and recreation centers in Lawrence didn't provide proper condition and space. The lawn condition and the minimized field-size are the main problem he saw.

De Boer expressed his concern about soccer popularity. He said that the American society is into sports spectaculars, sports statistics, high-scoring games and entertainment during the games.

"If the sport does not provide these elements, the public is turned off. Soccer is a sport that has minimal stoppage times during the games, and does not stimulate any of those factors," De Boer said.

Rebekah Berkeley, who was all-time scoring leader when she played soccer for Free State High School varsity team, agreed that soccer failed to provide what she called the "American elements."

"Soccer is low scoring, so nothing keeps the attention of the viewers. Besides, there is no time for replays, food and discussions," Berkeley said.

The Unique Status of Soccer in the United States

The history of soccer in the United States helps understand why soccer has not been popular. The history is too short to make soccer as the major sports. The professional soccer debuted in 1996 while other major U.S. sports leagues have each existed many decades longer. Major League Soccer only has 13 teams while MLB, NFL and NBA has each more than 20 teams.

"Soccer teams that people can follow are just now developing in the U.S. and they have been around forever in other countries," Berkeley said.

Although the professional soccer has not been popular, it has been popular as pre-teen and youth sports. Soccer is one of the major autumn sports programs for most middle and high schools. In recent decades, soccer is becoming an alternative school sports for football because of economic and safety reason.

"I'd rather see my kids play soccer than football," Margaret Jenkins, a mother of two high school children, said. "Soccer costs less money and provides better protection."

Three high schools in Lawrence all provide soccer as autumn sports. Lawrence High School has three soccer teams: sophomore, junior varsity and varsity team. The varsity team consists of 22 players while sophomore and junior varsity team each has more than 15 players.

The increasing popularity of soccer as teenagers' sports even created a new term in late 1990s: soccer mom. The term is used to represent typical type of mother in a single income family.

Soccer as popular teen sports has another good reason.

"Soccer is quite popular among school children because little equipment is needed to play and because the game itself is fun for all type of players, strong, tall, short, quick, and slow," De Boer said.

Soccer has another unique status in the United States. Women's soccer in the United States is prominent compared to the rest of the world. The U.S. women's national soccer team has won the Women's World Cup three times since the birth of the competition in 1991 and won three Olympic gold medals.

De Boer claimed that the strength of women's soccer team came from the positive image associated with women playing soccer.

"There was no negative image of women playing soccer in the USA as is in the rest of the world. There women have been discouraged from playing soccer because it is considered a men's game," De Boer said.

Bright Future or Another Failure?

The future for soccer in the United States seems optimistic than ever. The arrival of the famous soccer star David Beckham has given hope for many U.S. soccer fans.

"I still can't believe Beckham plays for the MLS now," Jun Park, Lawrence junior, who described himself as "die-hard soccer fan," said. "His right foot will definitely make difference."

Beckham signed a five-year contract with L.A. Galaxy for $250 million, the biggest amount in world soccer. Beckham recently said on USA Today that he hoped to channel the Americans' passion for basketball, football and baseball to the world's biggest sport, soccer. He also said he wanted to kick away the stereotype of soccer, such as boring and dry, to build up a new soccer image.

Some people, however, still doubts about the influence Beckham would bring to the American sports society.

"I think soccer is gaining some popularity for a while now that Beckham is here, but I don't think it will ever be the most popular sport like in other countries," Berkeley said.

Statistics show that the soccer viewership is steadily increasing in the United States. According to the New York Times, the 2006 World Cup final match attracted 16.9 million American viewers even though such number is hard to achieve in afternoon sports event. The viewership is 152 increase from the last world cup in 2002. The number is not far behind compared to the 2006 World Series, 17.1 million, and the 2006 NCAA men's basketball championship game, 17.5 million.

De Boer hopes that arrival of Beckham is just a beginning for the new future for his favorite sport.

"I am very optimistic about the future of soccer in the USA. It will find a major place in the society, perhaps equaling basketball." De Boer said.

click here to see the slide show of Beckham's influence on soccer and what Gerrit de Boer, president of Lawrence Adult Soccer League, thinks about the future for American soccer.