Pt. 1: Statewide Staff Development Coordinators Meeting

When: June 5, 2013; 10am-3pm
Where: Anne Arundel County Public Library, West County

The Maryland Statewide Staff Development Coordinators meeting is held twice a year for the purposes of getting the staff development/training coordinators from all the public and regional libraries across the state in the same room to work on learning projects, hear from statewide agencies with whom we work closely, to share experiences, etc. 

The following are my notes from the Statewide Organizations' reports.

Dennis Nagle from the Division of Library Development and Services reports that they are almost at full staff. They're close to selecting an LSTA Grants Coordinator. DLDS is working diligently on developing a social media presence and the Maryland State Dept. of Education has hired a social media consultant to assist with this endeavor.

Susan Paznekas from the Division of Library Development and Services reported that they've hired a new certification officer - whose name I did not catch but she'll share it out with all the SDCs once he/she gets settled. Also, if you have staff who are getting certified for the first time - or if you have staff who are renewing for the first time (or if you happen to be one of these staff members) through the MSDE website, this PDF shows you how to do this. 

Jay Bansbach from the Maryland State Department of Education reported on Common Core updates and the public library response. I will share his slides and data as soon as I receive it from Nini Beegan. There is a new STEM coordinator - George Newberry. MSDE is in the process of hiring a 2nd STEM Coordinator. There is a big push, under the common core initiative, for schools to really push library database usage - and more importantly, to get students to identify databases as portals to "sources of evidence."

Nini Beegan from the Division of Library Development Services reported that she is waiting to here back from MEEC (I forget what this stands for) regarding SkillSoft pricing. She'll know more by the end of June. It's possible we may have to go to a seat-based license to accommodate the budget. She also reported that there is a new space on the MERLIN website where we can share and access recordings of webinars that we've created in Blackboard Collaborate or other archived online trainings from other sources. Nini assembled a team of three SDCs will will be reviewing and revising the MERLIN website to make it more user friendly in order to increase its usage by the SDCs and statewide staff in general.

Margaret Carty, the Executive Director of the Maryland Library Association shared very encouraging statistics from the annual conference (i.e. close to 700 attendees!) and she announced that several of the conference programs were recorded and are being made available for folks to watch via the MLA website. *NOTE* You must watch the videos in Internet Explorer. *ANOTHER NOTE* Yes, the videos have been approved for CEUs - but always talk with your staff development coordinator first! Right now there are only 3 or 4 videos available but check back frequently as new videos are always being added!

Helen Blumburg from the State Library Resource Center in Baltimore, reports that SLRC is underway with its 5 year renovation plan. The twice-per-month webinars will continue and have been very well attended. The next SLRC conference will be October 16. The SLRC website will also be getting renovated. 

Gail Griffith reports that the next Library Associate Training Institute will be from August 28 - Dec. 13. The new class of LATIs will receive onboarding information later this week/early next week. They've scheduled LATI Learn How To Learn Online classes which will be open to everyone if there is space after the LATI students register. The dates to mark on your calendars are July 23 and July 25 - 10am and 2pm.