WMRL Learning Journal Blog

MD eBook Summit review

2011-12-04T13:16:00.002-05:00

Sue Vazakas from JHU posted this review of the eBook summit on their learning journal blog. And if you wish to practice your twitter searching, search for the hashtag #mdebook Thanks

2011-11-17T14:14:00.002-05:00

Staying Safe with Rosanne Torpey

Rosanne Torpey was an excellent presenter and I found her program very useful for circulation.
We need to be proactive before reactive. This helped me to recognize everyday stressors and to take a deep breath in stressful situations.
Know when to speak and when to listen. (Biggy for me so my husband tells me)
Demonstrate appropriate response if a person has weapons.
I recommended Rosanne to my daughter to give to her supervisor for a workshop.

What's New in Young Adult Literature and How to Use it in Your Program

2011-11-07T10:28:00.003-05:00

On Wednesday Nov. 2 Lesley Mason and I attended the What's New in Young Adult Literature and How to Use it in Your Program. These wonderful seminars are sponsored by the Bureau of Education and Research (BER) and some of you have perhaps attended one at some point. Patti Tjomsland was the speaker - she's one of the best for middle and high school. She knows the material well and goes through new books of all kinds and subjects, Award Winners, Promoting Books, Reading, and Discussions, Activities for Any Novel, and Internet Resources. There are copies of many of them displayed around the room. There is always a handbook of these books with many others listed. I put the handbook in the Professional Collection available for checkout. This one has not yet been processed but there are some earlier ones in the collection. The next seminar info - which I think will be elementary books and will be done by Peggy Sharpe who is also excellent- I will send the info to you. Contact me if more information is needed.

2011-11-03T09:32:00.002-04:00

I attended the October 24, 2011 workshop on "Staying safe in a changing work environment" presented by Rosanne Torpey at the LaVale Library. She gave an incredible amount of information to the attendees but the 3 hour workshop passed quickly because of her sense of humor and background stories. Some of the things that impressed me the most from the workshop included the idea that we all need to look at other perspectives on the same problem to help re-frame it into an opportunity by finding another angle - "don't stop at the first "right" answer". It was also eye opening to have the 5 stages of the aggressive cycle explained, from the triggering stage where you have an opportunity to defuse the situation through the crisis stage where you cannot talk/reason with the individual all the way to the post-crisis stage where the individual is calm and can again be reasoned with. Rosanne also emphasized how important nonverbal cues are in de-escalating or defusing possible unsafe confrontations from the way you stand to the look on your face.

Staying Safe with Rosanne Torpey

2011-11-01T23:43:00.002-04:00

When I signed up for this workshop (Staying Safe in a Changing Work Environment, Oct. 25 in Clear Spring), I thought this was going to be just another self-defense, working with/around the emotionally or substance unbalanced. Just checking off more CEU's. I was totally WRONG. It was not "just another" workshop; this was one of the most rewarding trainings I have attended, and I would urge anyone who has not participated in one of Ms. Torpey's presentations to jump on the next opportunity that presents itself. Yes, we did learn to recognize impending crisis situations, and techniques and approaches to de-escalate them. The main difference was the clarity with which the material was presented and the sense of empowerment to trust one's individual abilities, creativity, and approaches when dealing with difficult persons, whether patrons or co-workers. Quite invigorating. Woohoo!

Polaris Users Group Conference Pt1

2011-10-26T16:34:00.002-04:00

September 29-October 1st
Carrie P

I had the opportunity at the end of September to attend the Polaris Users Group (PUG) conference in Dallas, TX. Day one was dedicated to Polaris Staff updating the 300 or so attendees on new bits and pieces that are in development for future releases. Day two was for presentations from the user group.

General tidbits from Day 1

Polaris is working with Muse Global on a federated search product
Work is underway to make the upgrade process faster and shorter
Receipt footers can be customized at the branch level - so everyone can advertise their own programs on their printed receipts - pretty cool.
The 4.1 mobile PAC will support enriched content (book covers etc.)
In 4.1 we will be able to pick the fields that we want displayed on search results
We will be able to do a checkout limit (if we choose to) on associated items. Example - limit of 5 movies which could be any combination of DVD and Blu-ray discs
The acquisitions module will be able to split the FY - duplicate the current year and roll over the new FY

The 2 most interesting things were:

Regarding RDA - Polaris is waiting to see what happens with efforts to replace marc. It's all well and good to be ready, but until the "container" that is marc is changed, the new data fields won't be as meaningful as they could be...this was good to hear. I've been excited about RDA and Maria keeps telling me that it doesn't make sense with marc, but I needed to hear it again, in a bigger room. ;-)
The system requirements for 4.1 will be the same as for 4.0 (we will likely go live on 4.0 and then do an upgrade to 4.1 within the first 6 months or so). However, version 4.2 which is slated for January 2013, will not work with Windows XP. Another good excuse to upgrade computers!

Staying Safe ina Changing Work Environment

2011-10-26T11:47:00.002-04:00

Presenter: Master Nurse, Rosanne Torpey
Date: 25 October 2011
Location: Clear Spring Library

Summary: Although the "role-playing" scenarios presented in this session were based in our work environment, the library, the content of this fast-moving three hour workshop dealt with staying safe in a changing world.

We learned skills necessary to manage difficult situations; being pro-active, not reactive. Without being cognizant of our response, we can sometimes escalate a problem. We were taught verbal and non-verbal intervention skills to use. We learned the importance of shaking up our old thinking patterns and to see the situation from a different perspective. In summary, we should project to others that we care...great customer service advice.

The workshop ended with our playing a game which visually demonstrated that within our daily tasks, fragile situations may arise in which we may have to use our skills to de-escalate.

I recommend this life skills workshop to all.

Stay safe

2011-10-26T09:10:00.002-04:00

Several things that I thought were helpful- 1. aggressive cycle and when you can talk to a person, 2. appropriate body language 3. applying techniques outside the workplace. It is hard to be kind when facing a threatening situation, but planning ahead and staying calm are essential. Now HOW DO YOU STAY CALM and not take things personally. That's what I need to practice!
No matter where the situation, we do not know what the other person has been going through.Usually problem patrons bring their problems with them and we are sitting targets because we are available and they figure that we have been trained to be nice to them.

Staying Safe in a Changing Work Environment

2011-10-25T18:09:00.004-04:00

I attended the "Staying Safe in a Changing Work Environment on October 24th at the LaVale Branch in Allegany County. I found the speaker to be very informative and interesting. She gave us examples of day to day stressors that might crop up and affect the safety of the workplace. She explained how and when to talk and when not to talk when a patron is in the aggressive cycle. She gave us great tips on how to be in the safe negotiated zone - how to stand and have good eye contact, no staring or glaring. Overall, this was a very important workshop for people working in customer service. I highly recommend it!

Staying safe workshop

2011-10-25T16:22:00.004-04:00

I attended the "Staying Safe in a changing work environment" workshop at Clear Spring library today. I found the instructor to be very informative as well as entertaining. We were taught about various behaviors that could be caused by everyday stressors and how to effectively defuse the situation before it became a crisis. I found the information given to be helpful for me not only at work, but in my everyday life.

Pop!Tech 2011 (part one)

2011-10-25T10:51:00.007-04:00

Before I start gushing about my experience at Pop!Tech last week, I think it might be best to let you know about the Pop!Tech website and if you have time, I'd like to encourage you to spend some time viewing some of the videos of the presentations.

Don't have time to spend on the website? That's fine, too! Here's a brief blub about what Pop!Tech is: Pop!Tech (the organization) is "...a community of innovators working together to expand the edge of change." Then logic tells us at the Pop!Tech conference is a gathering of about 500 curious minds who all come together in Camden, Maine to expose themselves to the brilliant ideas and work and progress the aforementioned innovators are creating and to get a peek at what the edge of change actually looks like.

You can view all of the videos from the conference on the Pop!Tech site so, I'm not going to go into specifics about each of the presenters but I will share with you my top ten a-ha moments. This post will have five and then I'll have another five in my next post.

A-Ha #10: If the world is re-balancing, so too are libraries and our balance - our scale - has more than two pans. In fact, it probably looks more like a mobile with at least four arms: the library itself, the users, the funders, and the technology.

A-Ha #9: Poverty is not due to a lack of resources but to a lack of distribution. What does this mean for the info-poor and/or the illiterate (and when I say illiterate I mean it in other ways besides being able to read and write, like being computer/technologically literate)? As libraries are we really doing the best we can with disseminating information - within and without? Might this become an even bigger role for libraries in the future? I predict that yes, we will need to work harder and more creatively with distributing information in the future - staying with the most main-stream ways will not be sufficient because if the info-poor had access to those avenues then they wouldn't be info-poor in the first place, would they?

A-Ha #8: We need to start considering how we can reverse the journey our library ancestors first set out on so many years ago. I believe their primary objective is no longer the primary objective of libraries today. The world they were living in is not the same world we are living in today. Libraries mean something different now than they did a couple hundred years ago. Just because we're a part of a long wagon train doesn't mean we can't steer our own horse in a different direction.

A-Ha #7: I believe a strong library future is one where the consumer/client/patron is at the center of the library both as a provider and receiver of library goods and services. Think of the idea of crowd sourcing standard library-staff functions like shelving, cataloging, teaching classes and web design. Think about it - when you go to a book store, Barnes and Noble, whatever, and you see a book out of place or a DVD out of place on the shelf, do you just leave it there or do you put it where it will most likely be found - in its proper place? I put it in the right place. Imagine if our library patrons experience the same feeling when they were browsing our collections.

A-Ha #6: We need to harmonize our usage policies across all types of libraries. What this means is that all libraries, no matter what kind (academic, public, school, etc), share the same vision of utilization among all customers/clients/patrons. If I can check out a library book at library A for 30 days then I know I can check out a library book at library B for 30 days also. If I can renew an item 2 times at library B then I know I can renew an item 2 times at library A and library C. Does that make sense?

Stay tuned...bigger and better a-ha!s to come later in the week.

Cyberbullying Workshop

2011-10-24T07:21:00.002-04:00

For the most part, the information given in this workshop has already been covered by previous talks. Much of it centered around facebook and its privacy settings which were relatively new that day. However, given the rate facebook changes its settings the information would only be relevant for a brief amount of time. Again, facebook and its settings was something I was already familiar with. I did like how she suggested when talking to teens using terms such as "digital world vs physical world" as opposed to "virtual world vs real world." Also given were some good resources. My favorite is athinline.org. This is MTVs a thin line campaign site that gives knowledge, empowers the teen and helps them identify and stop digital abuse.

Giving a Fish a Bath

2011-10-06T14:17:00.002-04:00

I found Heather Higgins presentation "Giving a Fish a Bath" rally interesting. It sure gave me a better insight into how the young adult brains works (or don't work). I am now looking forward to my 2 youngest grandchildren reaching the ripe old age of 25 and having developed frontal lobes. I made sure that I told my daughter about this program. She now knows there is hope for the future. Adults often wonder why intelligent teens make such bizzare or bad decisions, and now we have an explantation. It is interesting that even though the teenage brain is not wired the same as adults the same things can have a relaxing and calming effect on them. A nice walk, music, etc. Being a teen is very difficult and now I have a tool that helps me to better understand them.

Giving a Fish a Bath

2011-10-06T10:06:00.000-04:00

“Why you telling me this?” was the first words out of my 12 year olds mouth! Just like Heather Higgins said a teenager would react-“What’s it got to do with me?” The evening after attending the "Giving a Fish a Bath" workshop, I briefly shared with my three teenage sons the topic of the teen brain. Upon hearing the overview of the adolescent brain, and without hesitation, all three boys immediately agreed that they now have an excellent excuse for their sometimes wacky behavior! Being informed with information like this helps us as individuals, as families, as volunteers in the schools, and as assistants working in public places as well as other situations. Understanding why a teen behaves as she does helps us to support her at home, at school, and at the library. My group found The Survival Game to be challenging-it was difficult to come up with good decisions and solutions as adults. How hard it must be to do so with a confused adolescent brain. I think I could use a whole morning of working through the challenging scenarios that teens may experience. Coming up with socially acceptable responses and reactions is difficult to do without losing face.

Cyber Bullying

2011-10-05T17:58:00.002-04:00

I learned that any information put on the Internet is never truly deleted. To let teens know that if you put something on line when you a mad and change your mind later, that you may not be able to delete it completely. To let them know not to give information like address, phone. What you do today, may not be what you want seen in five to ten years from now.

cyber Bullying

2011-10-05T15:19:00.001-04:00

Giving a Fish a Bath

2011-10-05T11:56:00.004-04:00

I do so love the title, don't you, lol...engaging, passionate presentation by Heather Higgins at the Clear Spring Branch - neuroscience is offering a fresh perspective on why teens are not reaching adulthood with the mindset & skills for success. Some info learned: the old way of thinking was that little brains grew into big brains. New way of thinking: brains have predictable periods of high vulnerability (0-5 and 12-18)and are very vulnerable to stress. I also learned that less sleep means less "encoding" the ability to remember and turn short term memory into long term. (I think that affects Moms too!)I thought it was interesting too that teens for the most part can not read a person's emotions like we adults can and did you know that video games give feedback every 3 seconds? Instant gratification - no wonder my boys love them!

Understanding why a teen behaves as he does, goes a long way into supporting & serving them in a library setting (and living with them!)

Giving a Fish a Bath

2011-10-04T15:24:00.002-04:00

I attended the "Giving a Fish a Bath" workshop at the WMTIG meeting on Sept. 12. and learned some interesting facts about the teenage brain and why teens act the way they do. It was interesting to learn that adolescence lasts much longer now than it did half a century ago, mostly due to the environment and changes in technology. The presenter, Heather Higgins, told us that the brain, on average, isn't finished developing until age 24. Since I am 25, I found it quite astounding that I didn't completely mature until just last year! I also learned that teens often act with knee-jerk reactions because their brain isn't developed enough to think about logical, thoughtful reactions to situations. Instead they react with emotion and that's why they seem so moody. This was quite a lesson for me and I hope I am able to use the information in 20 years when I have teenagers of my own.

Giving a Fish a Bath

2011-10-04T15:08:00.003-04:00

I attended the September TIG meeting at Cool Springs and came away with new knowledge about the teenage brain. The speaker, Heather Higgins from the Upside Down Organization, was very informative, and presented the material in a way I could understand easily. The topic was fascinating. I wish I had known how the teenage mind works when my four children were teenagers. She explained to us about the brain chemicals that are released by stress, cortisol and adrenalin, and gave us various way to reduce these chemicals. Now when I start to feel stressed, I take a walk in the sunshine or listen to some relaxing music. These simple things can help everyone!
I hope I can take some of her ideas and use them in dealing with teens who come into my library and at least understand the teens' behavior better. Their frontal lobes won't be done developing until the teens reach their mid twenties. The teenage brain does not work like a miniature adult brain!

Cyber Bullying

2011-10-02T18:53:00.002-04:00

I attended the Cyber Bullying class led by Liz Sundermann. The first thing we learned is that for teens, the physical world vs. the digital world is the same thing. We also learned that once you post information online, you can't take it back. Even if you delete the information from a site, you have little control over older versions that may exist on other's computers and circulate online. Many examples of things not to do were given. Think before you post.

Giving a Fish a Bath

2011-09-30T12:57:00.002-04:00

This workshop, presented 9/12/11 by Heather Higgins from the Upside Down Organization, was very engaging and informative. While I had attended a lecture on brain development several years ago, it was interesting to see how knowledge of brain developed has increased. I'm not really surprised that the length of Adolescence is increasing- starting earlier and lasting longer. Hopefully, I am better prepared to work with the teens in my community. Now, I just need to figure-out how to get them to the library!

Cyber-bullying

2011-09-29T19:03:00.002-04:00

I attended the workshop on Cyber-bullying by Liz Sundermann, teen specialist at Enoch Pratt. I found the workshop very interesting. She gave links for both teens and librarians on several topics having to do with cyberbullying. We discussed quite a few scenarios involving teens and cyberbulling. I passed on to my teen the safety measures she mentioned. Such as NEVER share your password or post your phone number or address. I feel better able to discuss the topic with our teen patrons.

You Can Judge A Book By Its Cover

2011-09-29T13:44:00.007-04:00

This is the second time I have attended this workshop. Back in the fall of 2007, when I was taking LATI, Mr. Gannon presented this workshop at a branch in Baltimore County. When I saw that he was going to present it again, I signed up immediately. I found it to be both
informative and entertaining. "Reading is fundamental" states Mr. Gannon. Key points to ask customers when doing reader's advisory are: What was the last good book you read? and What did you like about it? Mr. Gannon demonstrated how to look at a book cover and determine the type of genre. For example, he could tell whether the book is a cozy or hard-boiled mystery.
We divided into three groups and completed exercises to help reinforce the key points of his presentation. It was a great workshop!

Cyber-bullying

2011-09-28T13:45:00.002-04:00

I attended the cyber-bullying workshop on 22September 2011 given by Liz Sundermann, Teen Specialist of Pratt and SLRC. A lot is heard in the media about the toll cyber-bullying is taking on many age groups in our population. There were instances discussed from pre-teens to adults. A town was referenced where gossip was rampant on a site for local concerns and information. This was taken from a NY Times article. On the Today Show this morning was a story how residents were impacted by malicious gossip posted on the site. It was interesting to have such timely connections.
The workshop is enhanced by the participants' own experiences.

You Can Judge a Book by its Cover

2011-09-28T10:14:00.002-04:00

What a great workshop - Mr. Gannon was so funny and clever, the time seemed to pass too quickly. I learned several valuable tips in providing reader's advisory: 1. As a librarian, you must read and try different genres to provide good reader's advisory to your patrons, and you should use the reader's advisory resources you have on hand, mainly other staff members who are familiar with genres which you do not read. 2. Prepare yourself for reader's advisory by reading professional journals, like "Booklist", "Kirkus", "Library Journal", and "Publisher's Weekly". Mr. Gannon also recommended checking out "Entertainment Weekly" and "People Magazine", for their book reviews. Since they are popular magazines, many people read the reviews and request the books. 3. Always ask - what did you read last and most importantly, why did you like it? 4. Never believe the customer! Their information is not always accurate. Mr. Gannon also reviewed different genre book covers with us,so that we could look for clues about the content of the books to help us with our recommendations. In addition, he provided an article about Nonfiction Reader's Advisory which I think will be helpful. I would like to attend another workshop with Mr. Gannon as the trainer - maybe a nonfiction reader's advisory? He provided the information in such a delightful way in this workshop, it will be easy to remember.

You Can Judge a Book By Its Cover

2011-09-27T13:34:00.002-04:00

I attended the workshop You Can Judge a Book By Its Cover presented by Michael Gannon and was rewarded with new skills and entertained to boot! He taught us some tips to help us help patrons find books to read. There is no way a librarian can read every book in the library (despite what some patrons may think). We learned how to advise patrons to find books when the genre is one we may not be familiar with.
The first question to ask a patron is 'What did you read lately that you liked, and what did you like about it?' From there the patron can be advised on other books that may have a similar theme, characters or settings. If we don't ask the right questions, it will be harder to assist a patron in finding a match. Of course, since we are a library and not a bookstore, patrons can take home many books for free! No risk to them!
Mr. Gannon showed us how to look at a book cover and determine what genre it might be. He went over romances, mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, and general fiction. I learned the subtle differences that a genre may have to distinguish between cozy and graphic subjects.
I enjoyed the slide show that was presented. I wonder why our library doesn't carry the book that he talked about called 'The Nympho Librarian'! Mr Gannon used humor and let us interact with scenarios he constructed to help us learn how to help patrons find books to read. He is a great presenter and I was glad to have attended this workshop.

You Can Judge a Book By Its Cover

2011-09-27T09:29:00.002-04:00

Yesterday afternoon, Michael Gannon from Prince Georges County Library, presented a fun and informative program called You can Judge a Book by Its Cover. Mr. Gannon began the program by saying something that I thought was really great: "If reference is the science of librarianship, reader's advisory is the art."

The workshop provided tips for helping library patrons to find a good book to read when we find ourselves out of our element. For instance, we might like to read science fiction, but Gannon pointed out that by using the cover art and clues on the jacket, we can recommend books that our customers will like.

Additionally, four key points were mentioned:
1. Reading is fundamental--read one of what you don't usually read for familiarity
2. Read professional reviews
3. Ask the customer, "What is the last good book you read and why did you like it?"
4. Realize that customers will get it wrong, so be prepared to read between the lines when details are provided.

Overall, what made the workshop delightful was Mr. Gannon himself, whose sense of humor peppered the presentation to leave us energized and informed.

Can Judge a Book by its Cover

2011-09-27T09:25:00.002-04:00

Michael Gannon's workshop on How to Judge a book by its cover was wonderful. He gave this presentation at a LATI workshop and I loved it then. He had us laughing and the time just flew by. He wanted us to remember 4 rules when helping a patron with readers advisory.
1. Reading is Fundamental- ( you have to read some of the books- don't try to fake it)
2. Professional Reading - ( Look in BookList and Kirkus Reviews for write ups- also become familiar with the book reviews in People and Entertainment Weekly- these are the books patrons will be asking about)
3. 64,000 Question- What was the last good book you read and why did you like it?- ( Simple question but it will tell you what kind of books they like)
4. Never believe the customer or patron- ( they will never remember the title or author right and you will have to become part detective to come to the correct answer.)
We also learned many hints as to what a cover can tell you- Nuns are always cozy mysteries and blood and bones on cover will most certainly be a gruesome thriller.
I never realized how much information could be obtained by just looking closer at the cover. Wonderful workshop and I hightly recommend this to anyone - pure learning enjoyment!

You can judge a book by its cover

2011-09-27T08:58:00.005-04:00

I attended Michael Gannon's workshop on Reader's advisory yesterday afternoon at the LaVale Library. First, this is the most fun I have ever had at a workshop! Michael has the 10 of us laughing for the entire 2 hours. This was the first time that I realized how many clues you can actually get from the cover of a book. He told us what to look for on the cover to get an idea of the genre of the book. For example, bloody knives will be hard core mysteries. Michael also suggested that we read outside our comfort zone occasionally so we can have an understanding of what a romance or science fiction book is all about. He also suggested we remember to ask 2 important questions when a customer asks for our help in finding a book: "What is the last book that you read?" and "What did you like about it?". I think the thing that I will remember most, as simple as it sounds in hindsight, is - popular, bestselling authors, the ones that the customer refers to when they say "I've read everything", have their names on the cover in larger letters than the title of the book. Aha!

Giving a Fish a Bath: the Untold Story of the Adolescent Mind

2011-09-23T16:00:00.000-04:00

This was a very enjoyable and engaging training session. It was fascinating to learn how the brain develops throughout adolescence so that we can better understand and serve our adolescent patrons.

The highlights of this presentation were the ideas that adolescence is lasting longer as far as brain development is concerned (as late as age 25) and that this period in life is one of two high periods of vulnerability to the brain—the other period being from birth to age five.

Hormones and brain development changes are proliferating during the teen years and it is the responsibility of adults to guide teenagers toward healthy means of satisfying their needs. For example, exercise, music, and positive social connections are much healthier ways of increasing serotonin and dopamine than using illegal drugs.

The following strategies were offered as methods for guiding teens toward healthy behaviors: teach teens about their unique brains, understand that their behavior should not be taken personally—it’s just adolescence, help teens discover sense and meaning in the behaviors you would like for them to use, adopt the language of the brain, teach empathy and build strong communication skills, give teens opportunities to practice real-world skills (how to avoid peer pressure, etc.), and remind teens to remember the fundamentals—exercise, nutrition, sleep, and coping skills.

Cyber-bullying workshop

2011-09-22T15:18:00.003-04:00

I attended the cyber-bullying workshop today. One of my favorite things I learned was to use the terms "virtual world" and "physical world" instead of "real world". Teens tend to tune you out when you try to talk to them about the real world, since they are convinced you, as an adult, have no idea what goes on in the real world. We received information about facebook privacy settings and resources for texting safety tips. It was helpful to someone like me who has 2 teens of my own.

The Truth About Social Learning

2011-09-14T14:08:00.005-04:00

I just attended a one hour webinar on the truth about social learning presented by Jane Bozarth, Ph.D., (@JaneBozarth on Twitter) and provided by the Training Magazine Network. They do great things for free and would encourage you to set up a free account so you can take advantage of their resources too.

Here are the 3 most poignant take-aways:

Most learning happens socially; we just don't realize it until it's not there.
What this means is that those informal water-cooler chats, those discussions you have in the car on the long rides on I-68 and I-70, and those beer- or wine-fueled happy hour talks you enjoy with your colleagues is where the majority of learning occurs. Why is this? Because it's natural. It's organic. It's human nature. But too often, or so some may have the impression, these types of social conversations are frowned upon as a waste of company time. According to the research (references to follow), these conversations are extremely valuable to the growth and social health of the library/business/school/etc and its talent (meaning us -the employees).

If we force social learning, it'll stop or it'll go under the radar.
So, you read this post and you do some research on your own and you think, wow! Everyone should be doing this especially Colleague X who doesn't talk to anyone. Stop right there. Forcing someone to engage in social learning endeavors (i.e. mandatory water cooler chats) will not have the desired effect. Basically, if folks aren't already talking, chances aren't they aren't ever going to. This rings true with the opposite situation - you notice one day what great ideas come from a long drive home from a meeting and so you decide to make every Thursday afternoon Go-For-An-Idea-Ride time and you force your staff or colleagues into taking mandated hour-long drives in the hopes of mimicking that one experience you had. Ain't gonna happen. Moral of the story: let it be, let it become, and don't impose any structure onto it.

Social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc) are just tools that help take the social learning to a bigger level.
Just because you have a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc account and you have 5,000 friends, 3,000 followers, and 7,654 connections, it doesn't mean you're learning socially. It's not how big your social media network is, it's how you use it and how regularly you use it. How often have you posted a problem to your social media networks to get your friends to help you out? Have you used social media to help answer a patron's reference question when you were struggling? I used Facebook on Monday to find a new home for my dog and I did it in a matter of minutes. Minutes. You've heard of out-sourcing, right? Now start thinking about crowd-sourcing. I like to think of the idea of using social media to enhance social learning as the notion of crowd-sourced problem solving, or crowd-sourced perspective getting.

References for today's webinar can be found at: http://www.delicious.com/jbo27712/SocLrnTruth

Microsoft Word

2011-09-06T14:54:00.002-04:00

This was an excellent introduction to the new microsoft word. Not only was there a fairly straight run through of the software but the instructor gave us many tips and tricks to make it easier to use. Probably the most important take away was the binder with all the lessons. This will be very useful when navigating this program.

Introduction to MS Word 2010 Parts 1&2

2011-09-02T16:24:00.003-04:00

I have been introduced to a new meaning for ribbon; not the same as a ribbon in the old typewriters! Also I have learned what a show/hide is and how useful it is when composing a composition. MS Word 2010 is a great help for undergraduates and post-graduates when completing assignments that require written responses, or for anyone writing a letter, resume, etc. From this class I have learned skills that will be useful to assist patrons in fine tuning documents/compositions if they request my help.

Microsoft basics

2011-08-30T14:00:00.002-04:00

I took the two classes on Microsoft basics. I have been using Microsoft 7 and 10 for sometime. I was self-taught and thought the class may introduce some features of which I was unaware. This proved to be the case. I also learned alternative ways of doing things has proven easier and more direct. The instructor was knowledgable and easy to follow. I highly recommend this class.

Microsoft 1 & 2

2011-08-26T11:00:00.002-04:00

Great class! I really learned a good deal of information at the class. I do not have Microsoft on my home computer, but found that I can use the same functions learned in the class. I have a word pad on my personal computer.
It was good to learn how to set the tabs, it used to drive me nuts trying to set them. We also learned a number of ways to copy & paste. And those function keys, they actually do have a function! Anyway, I would highly recommend this class for anyone who is either a newby or experienced with Microsoft Word.

Handheld Librarian Online Conference

2011-08-09T08:49:00.002-04:00

On July 27th and 28th I attended the Handheld Librarian Online Conference. Contrary to popular belief, this conference did not encourage hand-holding at all but rather it focused on handheld (aka mobile) technologies and how we can be using them to our libraries' advantages.

The first interesting workshop I attended was called, Reading Tectonics with Katie Dunneback and she presented a well-rounded overview of the impact ebooks have had on publishing as well as on libraries. Here are some juicy tidbits:

Who reads ebooks = reverse bell curve. This means you either don't read them at all or you read them all the time. There is little middle ground right now.
There's been a tremendous rise in self-published titles. Does this put a new spin on being able to judge a book by its publisher?
Learning how to work with ebooks is a two-pronged staff: one one prong we have the technology side and on the other prong we have the customer service side. My two cents: essentially all staff need to be trainers themselves in order to provide good customer service when working with these technologies. They need to be able to tailor their help with each customer because each one is going to be coming to them with different levels of experience and comfort. Having one "this is how we do it" spiel for ebooks is not going to be good enough.

Another session I attended that was noteworth was, Getting the most out of your 140 characters; essentially this was all about working efficiently and effectively with Twitter. I have to say, it rekindled my Twitter interest. I had taken a hiatus there for a while but after attending this session I had some new things to try out. Here are some more juicy tidbits:

Become a student of Twitter. If you want to see how it works and how it works well and who uses it well you gotta study, study, study.
Follow more people than you think you should. I'm not sure I'm sold on the value of this yet but then again, maybe I'm following the wrong people.
Follow locally. For example, I did a search on Hagerstown and have started following a few more people and businesses who are from the area. I've since added folks and businesses from Allegany county and Garrett county too!
Follow celebrities. I'm not sure I'm sold on the value of this either because there are few celebs I'm even interested in but, the presenter says you can learn from them on how to craft good tweets. Yes, there is an art to effective tweeting!
Participate in hashtag trends like A Day in the Life of a Librarian #libday7

If you're on twitter feel free to follow me and I'll return the favor. You can find me under jzamostny.

MLS semester #1

2011-08-08T14:42:00.004-04:00

Things I learned my first semester of online MLS classes at Clarion University of Pennsylvania - Fall, 2010:

Do not start with Classification and Cataloging!

Don't get too discouraged after you struggle through learning about DDS and LCC to find out it's all being replaced by a new system - RDA.

Text books are still very expensive and if you're lucky, you may find some used ones. Now you can also sell them back to the book store or online.

Get support from current class mates, work mates who have also attended MLS classes and join the SIG group. (These resources become invaluable when you do your paper on Mary B!)

Join professional associations like MLA and ALA. They offer great resources and affordable reduced student rates.

Be kind to yourself and don't forget about your family.

Do your best and accept that perfection is an illusion!

Digipalooza report

2011-08-03T15:03:00.002-04:00

Digipalooza is the bi-annual ebook conference hosted by Overdrive. This year it was in Cleveland, Ohio. A lot of time was spent showing us how to market ebooks and make them more popular with our patrons. ACLS ebooks come from the Maryland digital library consortium and a WMRL advantage program. For titles we get from the consortium, anyone in Maryland can place a hold and get it. For Advantage titles, only users from Washington, Allegany and Garrett counties can access those.

Overdrive will roll out their WIN program in the next 6 months. Overdrive WIN catalog is a universal ebook catalog. Overdrive’s goal is to make libraries the connecting point for all ebook content.

You can opt-in or opt-out of Overdrive WIN. If you opt-in, you can choose to have it search all available ebook titles or just your own or some middle of the road. If a patron want it now (WIN) they can purchase the ebook from an affiliate link off WIN then library gets a cut. WIN is a series of updates.

The biggest part is Downloading Overdrive/Library content to the Amazon Kindle.

· All current books are kindle compatible

· All Kindle apps are also supported

· Will benefit from whisper net sync technology

· No extra logins

· Checkout takes patron to amazon site after title selection on library/overdrive site

· Overdrive has Increased capacity for simultaneous access on overdrive website

Completely new help resource center with sharable links

Other improvements coming with WIN

Patron driven acquisitions –“Recommend to library”
Enhanced searching
Bisac subject heading
Market place skins
Format consolidation -buy once and have it in multiple formats
Multiple cart support -drag and drop
Advantage reporting
Advanced download standing order plans
Use Smart list to order
Innovation in browsing
Format options. –“Format Wizard” coming soon
Kindle library lending
Ebooks samples rolling out now
Improved user interface and accessibility
Quick search
new Help site www.overdrive.com/learningcenter

Patron Driven Acquisitions – “Recommend to Library”
Can automatically create lists of patron recommendations or can automatically purchase after set number of patron requests for a title. The Library sets budget.

Format Consolidation- we buy the eBook and our patrons can get it in the format they want it in. JV thinks they will do on the fly conversion for patrons. (no more buying a epub and a pdf version, we buy 1 copy and it gets converted for partons)

It shaping up to be a busy fall so my advice is get comfortable with overdrive and downloading content asap.

In September, the Kindle support starts and in October Pottermore comes out.

Marketing as a Team Sport

2011-08-01T09:32:00.003-04:00

In late June and early July five WASH staff members attended an Infopeople four week, on- line course on marketing called "Marketing as a Team Sport". While the title concerned marketing much of the focus was on customer service. It was recommended to compare Starbucks customer service philosophy to our library's customer service principals and policies. Starbucks has a written philosophy and a "green apron book" carried by all staff that has standards for customer service. These standards include; surprise and delight, embrace resistance, everything matters and make it your own (which includes coffee lore and wisdom and customer care). These empower employees to provide customers "an uplifting experience that enriches peoples' daily lives." I think we do this in our libraries but it is not always made so clear. We were encouraged to write a customer service philosophy and have customer service principals as well as policies and procedures to ensure that all staff knew the customer service expectations of our library. Also included were modules on turning customers into champions (this emphasized the power of word of mouth marketing: womm), mobilizing your team and the importance of branding). Gave our staff a lot of food for thought and a way to proceed in our customer service training. Libraries to look at include West Palm Beach Florida, Queens Public and the Edmonton Public Library in Canada.

Drupal - The next BIG thing!

2011-07-26T12:50:00.006-04:00

So what is Drupal, you say? Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world. In "non-geek speak" that means - "it's a tool that we use to build websites"!

Last week I attended a class in Front End Development of Drupal as well as Capital Camp DC, which was a conference with about 275+ techies who learned all things Drupal!

3 things I learned:
- Drupal has some of the coolest websites out there and it's fairly simple to use. Here are some of the sites across the world, including many of our government websites: http://drupal.org/success-stories | http://www.whitehouse.gov | http://www.capitalcamp.org
- The White House uses the American public to help with its site as "contributors"! It's about "open-government" and Drupal is an "open-source" product where everyone contributes to the product.
- Because Drupal has a large community of contributing developers, the content continues to get robust with each module. Anytime the module needs to be fixed, many developers help to fix it so that it will work for everyone. A great example of how everyone contributes to the success of the product. It doesn't belong to any one person, it belongs to all of us.

1 thing I squared away:
- Drupal is the way to go for a Content Management Systems. I've always been kind of scared of open-source because you have to rely on documentation from other developers. But after attending the conference, I realized that everyone is willing to help. It's not about one person, it's about the overall success of Drupal. I connected with a few people and all of them are ready to dive in and help me to make it happen. Yay!!

Things I need to work on:
- Getting Drupal 7 installed and working on our server. I currently have Drupal 6 running on our server, but it's always been something that I struggled figuring out. Turns out that's what they fixed in 7 so now the new version is easy, peazy! Or so, that's what it looks like. They demo'd putting a site up for a Book store in 20 minutes with images, a checkout and navigation.

I can do this, I really can do this! :)

ALA New Orleans

2011-07-16T10:40:00.003-04:00

ALA 2011, held in New Orleans, Louisiana, was a pretty exciting event in my career as a librarian. Not only did I get to eat some really amazing food (I see that food seems to be a popular topic when it comes to discussing this year's ALA), but I got to meet smart, funny, interesting, innovative library people from all around the world. By "library people", I mean people who work for libraries, sell things to libraries, design things for libraries, or just plain love libraries. Not everyone there was a librarian, but everyone had something to share about the libraries of the future. Because I haven't totally had enough time to process my experience in a full write-up, I'll just dish out some quick observations:

I met Nancy Pearl!!! Nancy Pearl, people!!! She's like the rockstar of library world!!! I met her first at her book signing, though sadly I did not win her autographed copy of Book Lust to Go. I met her a second time when she facilitated the session I attended called "Libraries and Bookstores: Strange Bedfellows" where library and bookstore leaders discussed joint partnerships in several communities that have benefited both industries.
Librarians can go anywhere and do anything! I met a lot of really great librarians who work in some truly unexpected places; from a librarian who worked for Sears.com (her job was to make up those handy dandy categories that you use for finding items when you're shopping online) to a Canadian librarian who traveled around with rural Native tribes studying how local library services are utilized by tribal populations. There really are opportunities for librarians in every industry.
It's true, I do not like crawfish.
Library technology is a very exciting industry, similar in many ways to designing things for space or time travel. The technology, the machinery, and the innovation that takes place make our jobs easier and sleeker, but also helps us to remain relevant in people's daily lives by addressing their technological and social needs. From book vending machines (think Redbox with books) to mobile access libraries to machines that turn pages for you to chairs that look like they are straight out of the Death Star, library technology is full of the wild and wonderful. Even my husband was amazed by some of the high-tech stuff when he was wandering around the exhibit hall on his own.
Bourbon Street smells terrible, but not terrible enough to keep the crowds away.
How many times have patrons made comments about how difficult it is to find things because we don't organize our shelves like Barnes & Noble? There is a new way of cataloging called the C3 system that combines the best of bookstore classification systems with a more updated version of call numbers that make it faster and easier for patrons and staff to find items on their shelves. The Markham Public Library in Canada has debuted the system to great success and the patrons seem happy too. Hearing about innovations like these definitely makes you stop to think about how many systems are being used today that are really obsolete.
The social media wave is definitely washing over libraries everywhere. Most of the Q & A sessions were conducted via Twitter!! Librarians discussed the pros and cons of staff marketing via Facebook and MySpace. Sessions presenters always included links to where to where they could be found online. The conversations almost always continued after every session, not only in the rooms or in the hallways, but online! Everyone was tweeting! The ALA tag #ALA11 was even briefly trending on Twitter. That's what happens when you put 11,000 librarians in a building together and let them use smart phones!
Food will never taste as good again...

I did and saw (and ate) so much, that this little synopsis barely does my experiences justice, but I can definitely say that being in the company of so many enthusiastic and innovative library people makes me very optimistic and excited for the future of our profession. I would like to thank everyone in the Allegany County Library System who made it possible for me to have this opportunity including the administration and my coworkers and substitutes who covered my shifts, as well as Western Maryland Regional Library for funding staff development opportunities like this one. If any of you ever get the chance, it truly is something worth experiencing.

Big & Easy Learning in NOLA (ALA)

2011-06-30T13:01:00.003-04:00

I attended the Annual Conference of the American Library Association in New Orleans (6/23-6/27) and aside from learning about the *best* places to eat in the Big Easy I also learned the following lessons:

1. If you're given a 2hr slot to present a program be sure to fill that 2hr slot. I attended a program that was supposed to be on the unmined potential of ebooks but the presenter only had 20 minutes worth of material. She would have liked for the remainder of the time to be spent on walking folks through the installation process of a freely available ebook-creator software but no one was told to bring laptops so, we left at 8:22AM only to hunt down a more fulfilling program. The ebook creator wasn't all that great and I know of better ones so, I'm not even going to mention it here.

2. There's no such thing as over-communicating. Not to be confused with TMI (too much information) which can be a cause for concern in any work environment, communicating broadly and in a timely manner (to the point of repeating to some degree) can be a good thing and a sign of a healthy team. One way to practice good over communication skills is to have daily 10 minute huddles (or 5 minutes of genius as they are sometimes called). Do these at a set time every day with whoever is available and do it standing up. What to share during these huddles - whatever you got going on that day or recap what happened the previous day. Just share, share, share. Be sure to jot down some notes and post them in a central location for everyone to see - esp. if they weren't able to attend the huddle.

3. Venting, although cathartic, is not productive. Be a good listener but help the ventee to move forward with a solution. Or if you're the person venting try to be aware of the fact that you are venting and ask a colleague for help with solving the solution if you feel stuck. You don't have to go it alone.

4. When delivering a conference program accept in advance that there will be plugged and unplugged learners. The challenge is catering to them both!

5. Information literacy instructors in academic libraries and public trainers in public libraries are two birds of a feather that have been disguising themselves to look different from each other. They need to join forces instead of drawing their lines deeper in the sand. I'm working on putting together a conference program on this very topic. We'll see how it goes. If you're interested in co-presenting with me just give me a shout!

6. Can't afford to bring a big name presenter physically to your library? Try to convince them to Skype their presentation. Be sure to set up a room on your end that has a reliable and high speed internet connection and a web cam so that the presenter can see the attendees when they ask questions.

7. We should strive to humbitious (humbly ambitious).

8. Have writer's block or a brainstorming block? Start throwing out your worst ideas ever and it'll get the wheels turning again, not to mention some great ideas!

Getting the Library Job You Want! Secrets from Library Leaders

2011-05-23T14:09:00.000-04:00

Getting the Library Job You Want! Secrets from Library Leaders
Sponsored by: Student Interest Group (SIG) and MLA
MLA/DLA Annual Conference
Friday, May 6, 2011
Written by: Amanda Bena, Allegany County Library System

This year at the annual Maryland Library Association/Delware Library Association conference in Ocean City, Maryland, the Student Interest Group sponsored a session "Getting the Library Job You Want! Secrets from Library Leaders" featuring a panel of experts in a Q & A style format to get some answers about the hiring process for students and library school graduates. Darrell Batson, Director of the Frederick County Public Libraries; Dr. Lucy Holman, Director of the Langsdale Library at the University of Baltimore; and Terri Schell, Senior Administrator in Human Resources at the Harford County Public Library all provided a broad range of expertise and advice for those of us searching for that perfect library position.

Because our panelists came from a variety of libraries and backgrounds, what they had to say was rich in detail and perspective. Much of the advice is also applicable to those working outside the realm of librarianship with general tips for crafting resumes and strategies for interviewing well. Some common themes started appearing early on in the discussion which might be helpful to summarize here. If you're interested in a question by question summary, please visit the Student Interest Group page on the MLA website here: http://www.mdlib.org/divisions/sig/default.asp and click on "Program Notes".

Experience is key. Get it however you can. Whether it's an internship, an externship, volunteerism, or actual paid employment, experience is what will get you in the door and prove to employers that you can do the job.
Craft your story. MLS's are a dime a dozen these days, so while it's important to acknowledge that you do indeed have the professional training necessary to perform the duties, it's just as important to focus on the skills, experiences, and specializations that make you unique. Employers want to know who you are, so make sure that your story is clearly visible on your application materials.
Bring something to the table. Employers want to know what you can do for their organization, so be prepared to showcase your special skills and unique abilities with specific examples of how you can be of value to them. Were you a teacher in a past life? Took a summer marketing seminar? Use those experiences to offer a perspective or a specialty that they may not have even known they wanted.
Embrace change. It's not secret that the role of the librarian is drastically different from what it was twenty years ago. New generations of librarians are making leaps and bounds into areas often thought to be outside the realm of librarianship. Employers are looking for candidates who can adapt in a fast-paced and constantly changing arena. Yet, adaptation is not just about surviving, it's also about thriving, especially in times of economic uncertainty. Show your willingness to innovate and create. Demonstrate your initiative and resolve. Be open. Be flexible.
Use common sense. Whether it's knowing when not to answer the phone, or understanding that the refreshments are for everyone, not just you, use your head and remain professional in all situations, whether in person or not. The real interview process begins with the first contact between you and the organization, so treat everyone with respect and put your best face forward at all times.
Be honest. Remember, you'll have to work with these people every day, so it won't take long for them to figure out that you don't actually speak fluent Finnish, or that you aren't really interested in young adult services. Use what you have to showcase your best self, but don't embellish with experiences or attributes that you don't have.
Find the right fit. The organization wants you to be happy just as much as you do, so do your research before applying to make sure that it's the kind of place where you can see yourself growing professionally. Check out their website. Read their mission statement. If it's not the right organizational culture, acknowledge that and move on. You don't want to begin a new job fighting against the cultural current. There are many different types of libraries and many different types of organizational cultures out there. You'll know when you find the right one.
The 3 T's: tailor, transfer, and translate. Tailor your resume and cover letter to reflect the values and mission of the organization to which you're applying. Read the job ad carefully and make your own skill-set transfer to the specific job. Translate your experiences and activities, even if they are outside the library realm, to reflect the your value as an employee and your commitment to the profession.
Choose early and choose wisely. As a library school student, it is imperative that you consider your professional goals early. Choose your coursework based on what kind of librarian you want to be and what kind of library you want to work for. Follow that path, as it's built to support you and your goals. Don't try to hope that you fit in anywhere.
Experience is experience is experience. Use what you have and what you know. Even if your current repertoire of experience seems unrelated to the library profession, chances are it's not. Make it work for you. Libraries are constantly changing and the demands of the profession often require skill-sets not found in library school programs. Outside experience is valuable, gives you a different perspective, and makes you more interesting to an organization if you can relate it to the profession.
Remain relevant. Show you commitment to the profession by keeping up with library trends, joining professional organizations, attending trainings and workshops, and getting involved in projects. Use current terminology. Stay up to date on emerging technologies, even if you don't use them, read up on them. Know what's going on.
Be passionate! Love what you do. If you are excited about the job and the possibilities of working in an organization, that passion will translate into your interview. Employers are looking for candidates who are excited about the future of libraries, so let your passion show.

Naomi's MLA Conference Notes

2011-05-12T13:17:00.000-04:00

MLA Conference I had a good two days - attending and looking and participating in sessions. Some notes on my favorite sessions: The Library of the Future:The Indispendsable Library - we saw photos of contemporary libraries, shared innovated policies and practices that can help your library demonstrate its value to your funders and community members. DLDS State Update - This presentation includes information about the Library Services and Technology Act and new iniatives, Information on the County Capital Grant Program, and Information about the Maryland Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. Legislative Update: Get Educated on Library Legislation and Issues - Be an informed advocate! Attendees left with a greater understanding of legislation and issues impacting libraries and the advocacy needs of libraries. The TIG (Teen Interest Group) Meeting was a 'look back" at the history of, and discussion about the future. There were other sights and sounds that were interesting to me.

My Adventures at MLA!

2011-05-11T09:47:00.005-04:00

It was my first adventure to the MLA Conference in Ocean City. This year’s theme was “Heaven in 2011”. The weather was wonderful, so it was a bit heavenly! Lol! :)

3 Things I learned :

You can make something from anything! – Session “Just the Facts” – the title had absolutely nothing that would make you think that we would be making crafts, but that’s what we did. We made a book from 2 sheets of scrapbooking paper and a rubber band! It looked pretty fancy and yet so simple. Yes, it was the highlight for me because aside from LOVING code, I’m a crafty kind of person so I love to be creative. Let’s just say that this little project may end up being an innovative addition to a gift one day!

PowerPoint really is for everyone! – Session “PowerPoint doesn’t have to suck” – I think the best thing that I learned is that Flickr is a great resource for “Creative Commons” images. The search feature on Flickr makes it easy to find great images.

A site called “Lifehacker” really is a good site! – Session “Keep it Simple Stupid” – this was a great session with a lot of great sites for virtually every need.

1 thing I squared away:

Most of what we do here at libraries is because of the creative thinking and resolve that so many have that allows us to do more with less. We all have budget constraints, staffing issues, etc., but we manage to do the best that we can with what we have. There are a ton of “free” resources available and we make the best of what we can get our hands on. Coming from a corporate environment where I was used to buying everything, I realize that just as much can be done, if not more, by using “open source” products. There are really a lot of great developers out there who are more than willing to share their knowledge for a small fee. It’s amazing to see all of the library websites and catalog systems that have implemented “open source” products to build great things!

Things I need to work on:

Finding and utilizing more “open source” resources. There are tons out there, but now with the resources that I picked up from MLA, I’ll be able to research what’s out there. Lifehacker has a wealth of information. WOW! It’s like a playground where I say “ooohhh, ahhhh” just reading through some of the neat stuff out there. Best “bookmark” that I’ve done in a while!

My first adventure at MLA was a great experience. Definitely worth the trip and the bonus weather was the icing on the cake! Can't wait for MLA 2012!

SLRC Conference April 6, 2011

2011-04-15T12:30:00.003-04:00

I attended the welcomes, keynote speaker and good snack times and a session about Programming in the Library. But the best parts for me were: The Teen Reader's Advisory presentation by that staff and the on-screen book covers. Liz Sundermann was up-to-date and thorough with comments and discussion. There was audience participation. The other excellent session for me was the Storytelling For Non-Storytellers session. There was a focus on traditional storytelling techniques as well as techniques using flannel boards, cut and tell, draw and tell, and the use of props. I also spent time in the Children's and in the Teen areas. There's always something new to see and things to ask about. I wish that more staff would take advantage of these in-service opportunities. We do offer them rides, etc. but maybe we should do more. Almost all activities are at a distance for Western Maryland staffs so I know that it is difficult - and the weather always has to be considered.

2011-03-31T10:22:00.003-04:00

Jeff Ridgeway and I attended one day of the three day 2011 SoMIRAC (State of Maryland International Reading Association Council) Conference on March 30. This is probably the best conference of any that I attend. Remember that the school systems have Reading Teachers as well as all of the other staffs who would be interested and participate in it - so it is a large conference. We attended sessions that include "You Mean a Real Person Wrote That?'' Itwas about bringing authors to your workplace. The Keynote Speaker, Dr. Danny Brassell, talked bout "Waking Up Your Lazy Readers." He was excellent and the info would apply to public libraries as well as to schools. We also heard the Featured Author, Jay Asher, talk about his fiction book "Thirteen Reasons Why." (good for about 12 - 18 year olds.) He has other books in process. The Featured Speaker for afternoon was Sneed Collard, 111. Every one of his books is fantastic in text and pictures. He was great and we left on a "high." Other time was spent at the many vender booths and interaction with persons we know. The Swan Meadow School in Garrett County was able to get him for a visit to their (Amish/Mennonite) school. I notified the public libraries early on about taking some of their groups to hear him.

Developing Online Patron Tutorials

2011-03-30T14:43:00.012-04:00

I attended this webinar because I thought I could create some quick tutorials on how to use Whilbr. It is a quirky program and we've created lots of work arounds. I think it needs a how to search tutorial, how to use zoomify etc.

The program suggested a number of software solutions from relatively cheap - Snagit - to wondrous - Captivate.

I realized that since I would be creating small tutorials, the question of hosting doesn't apply, but for a e-Learning package like Captivate then that question would need to be considered. What was also discussed was sticking with software families - a screen capture software program written by the same company as your video producer. And I know I should look at San Francisco Public Library's process for creating their tutorials.

...

Unrelated, somewhat. I now understand why Julie has a small white board by her desk. Who needs Captivate when you have a white board, some artistic talent and a camera?

CIL: 23 Things and Counting

2011-03-25T09:18:00.004-04:00

Staff Member: Julie Zamostny
Event: Computers in Libraries
Location: Washington, DC
Date: March 23, 2011

Program Description: When the Kansas library community participated in a statewide 23 Things program in 2010, it opened up a new way to look at learning virtually, especially for encouraging librarians to continue their learning after the structured program's end. through their Passport to Learning, Braum and Hickey show how to enrich the virtual learning experience. Burns looks at how 23 Things has evolved, its strenghts, its challenges and the "what's next."

Click on the images to view a larger version.

CIL: Avatars & Facebook for Learning

2011-03-25T09:12:00.003-04:00

Staff Member: Julie Zamostny
Event: Computers in Libraries (CIL)
Date: March 23, 2011
Location: Washington, DC

Program description: Hear the experiences of a public library using Second Life and an academic library using Facebook to manage courses and engage learners. Paterek discusses how a public library uses different locations and avatars in 3D simulation to facilitate learning and provides examples of virtual classrooms using PowerPoint presentations, live simulations, chat, computer voice applications, and virtual reality. Czech went to the students at Wayne State University with a Facebook group to manage a Productive Tools course.

Click the images to view a larger version.

Miniature Horses @ Your Library?!

2011-02-24T10:03:00.005-05:00

Training: ADA Update: Revised Regulations for Disability Accommodations for the Public
Date Attended: February 16, 2011
Staff Member: Tracy Carroll
Training Format: Webinar

Some of the newly revised American with Disabilities Act (ADA) regulations take effect on March 14, 2011, and more are in the works. The webinar reviewed the upcoming changes and provided links and material for libraries to review. The notes with links are provided in this document - ADA Update.

3 Things I learned:
- While dogs are the most common service animals for people with disabilities, a miniature horse also qualifies as a service dog! Who knew! Don't be surprised if you see a miniature horse service animal @ your library! Dogs are the only animals recognized by the ADA, but miniature horses must also be recognized as a service animal if the size and weight can be accommodated. Localities may have different laws that recognize other animals, so always check local ordinances to see what qualifies as a service animal.
- The new standard for shelving in "new buildings" is now 48 inches, it was previously 54 inches. That standard goes into effect next year for buildings that are renovated or started after March 15, 2012.
- Didn't know that you couldn't ask the patron the nature of their disability or if the service animal is certified. Service animals don't need to be certified because they can be self-taught by the individual for their needs.

1 Thing I squared away:
- There are several sites that can check websites for compatibility for screen readers and the current resource that I use to check our websites for compatibility is one of the best ones available - WAVE.

Something I need to work on:
- Finding ways to modify "open source" code to make sure it compatible if I use it. Much of the "open source" code (which is free code that web developers post), works great but doesn't always comply with formatting for screen compatibility.

Change Anything: New Science of Personal Success

2011-01-19T15:46:00.004-05:00

Training: Change Anything: New Science of Personal Success [webinar]
Date attended: Jan. 19, 2011 @ 1PM
Staff member: Julie Zamostny
Provided for free by Training Magazine Network
You can watch the recorded webinar by creating a free account!

Visit www.changeanything.com to start creating your own personal success.

Three Things I Learned:

One Thing I Squared Away:

Some Things I Still Need to Investigate and/or Work On:

WOMM

2010-12-20T14:38:00.000-05:00

“Turning Customers into Champions: Marketing as a Team Sport” featured not one, but two, enthusiastic supporters of the WOMM concept. For the uninitiated, that’s Word of Mouth Marketing. The idea is to encourage your staff and patrons to spread the library message by talking to others. Word of mouth is the most effective (and cheapest) way to pass your message along. One study found that WOMM is 10 times more effective than TV ads.

Key points made by the presenters:
The old way of traditional advertising is not as powerful as it used to be.
Getting people to talk about your business favorably is the best way to market
The average person is exposed to 3,000 messages per day and finds it hard to focus on anyone’s message
Word of mouth marketing is spontaneous and intentional (how you surprised and delighted your customer)
Most libraries have strategic plans but not marketing plans
Social Media is word of mouth on steroids
It’s a good idea to develop customer advisory boards (seniors or business people)
Have a good product, but have great customer relations
It’s good to have a plan, and a clear, memorable message

Disney Institute- December 7, 2010

2010-12-17T10:01:00.001-05:00

Disney’s Approach to Leadership Excellence and People Management

When I heard that Baltimore City Community College was sponsoring the Disney Institute at the Baltimore Convention Center, I was excited. The day was full of ideas and perspective that helped me to think about things going on in our organization in different ways.

Disney is known for excellent customer service and innovation, so it was interesting to learn some of their secrets. Anyone who has ever visited a Disney Park knows how courteous and professional their staff is, from those working food areas, to those at the hotels, to those in key management positions. Disney has thought about quality and how to maintain it over the decades. I wanted to hear some tips. After all, libraries are a service organization, all about treating our customers well, helping them find what they need, whether informational or entertainment.

Specifically there were these ideas that I came away with:

• A leader is anyone who influences change, no matter what their position in the organization. (Sounds like Leading From Any Position).

• If you want to be a leader, forget about things, and think about people. A story was told about how Walt visited the park on third shift, where his custodial staff were cleaning late into the night after the park was closed. Walt shows up and treats the men to an orange juice, and chats with them. He would always ask his staff, “how are things going?” He said, “you never know where my next idea will come from”, so he respected the opinions and input he received and sought it out. People must have a personal connection with their leader.

• Seventy percent (70%) of Disney’s customers are return customers. This is a main focal area for them. Repeat customers have the intent to return and the intent to refer, or share their experiences with friends and family. Disney knows that it is critical that the experiences customers have are quality, so that they will return and refer others to them. What is our percent of return business in libraries?

• We judge ourselves by our intentions. Others judge us by our behaviors. Be cognizant that your team is always watching you. Do I exhibit passion and interest for the work we do? One story told to illustrate passion in leadership was about Walt Disney “selling” his animation staff on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Back in the 1930s, no full length animated film had ever been made. Disney gave his animation staff money for dinner, and asked them to return that evening for a meeting. When they returned and gathered, Disney proceeded to act out the story, complete with character impersonations, for 2.5 hours. His staff could see his passion for the project, and came away inspired, so much so that, decades later, one of the animators, then elderly, remembered the experience vividly. The project to make the film took 3 years, and it is believed that it happened because the team believed in it. After all, if they were captivated by Walt Disney for 2.5 hours, they felt they could captivate an audience with the story. (Although the animator said that what ended up on screen wasn’t half as good as what Walt acted out)

• Change and commitment: Change happens for three reasons: A. because you’re desperate, B. to keep up with the Jones’ or C. to stay at the forefront of excellence. The third is Proactive Change, where the organization is re-energized, improves to meet customer needs, and to position it for new growth.

• Have a dream, not a strategic plan

• Do I do the right things? Do I do things right?

• Connect with your team and make sure they connect with each other. “We expect Cast Members to treat each other the way we treat our Guests”

• Disney constantly scopes out what is a hassle for their customers. Taking a look at whether our processes are effective was of great interest to me. I have also recently read an article about “Counting NOs to Get to YES” in Public Libraries magazine (Sept/Oct 2010, pg. 16). The idea there is to keep track with a log of how many times we tell people NO about things. I like this as a possible way to assess our processes. The presenters mentioned that the Disney Fast Pass system was a direct result of examining a process that was not working for their customers—waiting in long lines. So they devised the Fast Pass system as a way for customers to set up a specific window of time where they would get on the ride when they show up for their time.

• There was a lot of talk about culture—values, beliefs that an organization holds that drives our actions and behaviors and influence relationships. Disney says that the organization needs to define/design the culture, else it will be defined for you at the water cooler.

• Disney treats job applicants like guests. After all, they are future employees possibly, but they are potential customers.

• Hire for attitude vs. aptitude

• State non-negotiables up front. i.e. Disney lets people know in an orientation video about their expectations for Culture, Appearance, Schedule, and Transportation. The rules of conduct are presented in a non-threatening way, giving the applicant time to opt out before they even get to the interview process.

• Disney knows exactly how much money they use to train a “cast member”. (They did not divulge this) The presenter said “how much does it cost not to train someone? It is worth the investment to get the right fit. They take their time, and the trainee is identified as such with a button that says “earning my ears”.

• Disney trains for everything: they even have a mock restroom set up where they train custodial staff how to properly clean to their satisfaction. Maybe we should have a formal system of training custodial staff?

• Priorities for Disney Cast Members are: Safety, Courtesy, Show, Efficiency. Safety is their number one priority.

• With all of the stories used during the presentations for the day, I realize I should use more stories to communicate.

McCormick: Building a Performance Improvement Questionnaire

2010-12-08T13:10:00.004-05:00

Staff Name: Julie Zamostny
Training Title: Building a Performance Improvement Questionnaire
Date: December 7, 2010
**Note, click on the photos to view a larger version.

Becoming the Greatest Trainer

2010-11-23T14:04:00.005-05:00

Staff Name: Julie Zamostny
Training Title: Becoming The Greatest Trainer: 7 Strategies For Adding Value And Making A Difference In Turbulent Times [webinar]
Date: November 23, 2010
**Note, click on the photos to view a larger version.

TedX MidAtlantic: What If?

2010-11-08T10:37:00.005-05:00

Staff member: Julie Zamostny
Original event date: November 5, 2010
Original event time: 7:30AM-7:00PM
Speakers: Too many to count but here are some of particular interest:

Storm Cunningham
Steve Case
Saras Sarasvathy
Bill James
Diana Laufenberg
Iyeoka Ivie Okoawo
Otis Rolley

iPad – Apps vs Bookmarks

2010-11-03T10:18:00.000-04:00

I love my iPad, my kids love my iPad. Its pretty darn nifty-keen. But, it is a device for consumption of content, not producing content. I am still fastest at sharing or producing at a desktop or laptop.

When I first bought it all my iPhone apps synced up to it. I tried to use them but they were all sized for the smaller iPhone screen. So I looked for a better way.

Since the apps were created to connect me to web content, I saved all the web addresses as bookmarks on the iPad screen. I figured I could access them via Safari on the web.

I hit the snag that the iPad is seen as a mobile device by most browsers and will therefore show you the mobile version of websites and not the laptop/desktop version. For me this is a snag because functionality and the richness of the website or service is lost in the translation to the mobile layout. The safari mobile browser will display the desktop layout of a website, but stutters and cannot handle the embedded frames or “widgetized” sections of modern websites. For example, you can see Google Reader in the desktop version with the expanded display, but if a post is longer than the current screen, you cannot scroll down to see the bottom of the post with the space bar. Your only option is “next post” or clicking the post title to open in a new window. I had similar issues with Hootsuite on the web. I tried a new browser Atomic Web, which added tabbed display as an enhancement over safari, but pages are still rendered for the mobile device.

The lesson is that when possible, download and use the app for the service to get the maximum functionality (Hootsuite, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Pandora, etc). For Google services, (reader, mail, calendar, youtube) they continue to enhance their mobile versions so I recommend sticking with the bookmarks to their mobile versions. Or the google app that directs you to their optimized mobile versions.

Let me know if you discovered a better way.

TEDx and Libraries: A Perfect Partnership for Community Engagement @ PaLA

2010-10-29T08:38:00.005-04:00

The fabulous librarians of NJ strike again... Peter Bromberg (Assistant Director, Princeton Public), Janie Hermann (Program Coordinator at Princeton Public) and John LeMasney (Manager of Technology Training at Rider University)

TED=Technology, Education, Design. TED talks are described as the talk of your life and TED has become a global classroom of smart people who are changing the world

3 things I learned
1. TEDx is an independently organized TED event
2. TEDx is completely scalable. You can do it with all videos of TED talks or with live speakers and videos - TED requires that TEDx events contain 25% TED talks on video. You can show one video and host a discussion or do a full-day event like NJ did
3. TEDx speakers have to be video-taped and uploaded. No TED speakers are paid. The organization gives out free licenses that don't expire, but you must apply and follow extensive guidelines designed to maintain the spirit and intent of TED.

1 thing I squared away
Yes, indeed TED talks on Leadership would make an excellent topic for a Library Management Division meeting (or a staff day, or department meeting)

Something I need to work on
Start small and integrate into a LMD meeting or a department meeting. Who would I want to work with on a larger event???

60 Gadgets in 60 seconds at PaLA

2010-10-29T08:15:00.002-04:00

This program was exactly what the title promised, there were 60 slides of gadgets in about an hour in a host of categories: home, office, pets, travel, kitchen, etc... Contrary to my expectations, the gadgets were not necessarily applicable to Library Land and no parallels were drawn from the technology that was being highlighted to the future of libraries and customer expectations. Oh well, something to ponder for another day!

Some of the cool things that were highlighted:

Sensource - thermal imaging door counter tracks in and out, data is available wirelessly

Steel series shift - gaming keyboard has interchangeable keysets and even adjusts its shape

Interactive LCD projector turns any surface into a collaborative smart board

scratch and scroll mouse pad

Taxco phone - $70 phone, no contract, all you need is a sim card, has all the bells and whistles

Rescu.me -- text or call me in x minutes - gets you out of sketchy dates or boring meetings

laptop kitchen stand - for viewing recipes in the kitchen without fear of slopping on your keyboard

RDA for Beginners at PaLA

2010-10-29T07:56:00.002-04:00

I was really impressed with the 3 presenters from the PA State Library. They are one of the RDA test libraries and did a very good job of explaining how RDA is different and where the testing process is now.

3 things i learned
1. A good way to explain the biggest difference between RDA and AACR2 is that RDA provides more access to the people who affected the item being cataloged. Instead of just the author and illustrator, for a graphic novel you will also see the series editor, the colorist, the letterer, some other editor whose role I didn't catch -- ah the complex world of comic books! In short, everyone who had influence on the item gets mentioned in the record in a meaningful way.
2. RDA will take more time (see #1) at least at first, but it will definitely make records more search-able
3. testing ends at midnight on December 31, 2010. We may know by ALA annual in New Orleans whether RDA is being adopted.

Building Organizational Resiliency to Stress

2010-10-29T07:36:00.002-04:00

This workshop with Andrew Sanderbeck (who has presented at MLA in the past) was excellent. He is very engaging. He knows libraries. He knows leadership and management and how to play well with others.

3 things I learned
1. Celebrate successes -- if your organization does something good - celebrate it. Dessert is stressed spelled backwards after all...
2. Improve communication -- even when information isn't available (and I thought this was key) be as timely as possible in delivering info and say you don't know when you don't know the answer. Create a sense of trust when it comes to communication. Make it friendly and efficient -- which means fewer emails and more conversations. Andrew's email rule is that if it is more than 2 paragraphs, it isn't appropriate for an email.
3. Talk with staff about issues regarding scheduling and work rules -- everyone needs to have clear expectations -- make those clear and work together on how to 'make it happen'

1 thing I squared away
I've known this, but Andrew make it a quick sound bite -- Get your mind off the problem and onto the solution.

My aha moment or something I need to work on/research
Stress points are the places that we are stuck. This applies to individuals and organizations. Where is the organization stuck? Where am I stuck? A good question to ask when we are stressed by change is, "How will this change benefit you?"

Future-Proofing Your Libraries: Planning to Enable Your Library to Respond to the Needs of Today and Still Remain Relevant in the Future

2010-10-25T15:22:00.004-04:00

This was a program presented by Randy Hudson of Hayes Large Architects

3 Things I Learned:
1. Shopping has colonized the world - patrons want solitude and social interaction in the same place, preferably with food oriented retail opportunities (especially for students and Mom's with fussy hungry children)
2. Library as a place to make things - create things (art and design programs)
3. Touch screens increase usage - what if the library catalog was as easy to use and interactive and VISUAL as the MTO screen at Sheetz?!

1 Thing I Squared Away
Patrons in general and younger users in particular want a good space to work/study/collaborate in and they want self-check but they also want help to be available if it is needed. "alone but not lonely" spaces

Something I need to work on or explore more:
U Penn has video software and equipment for practice interviewing - you can watch yourself and get feedback (from a librarian?)

1 Odd Thing in my notes:
The 70's were bad economically, but great for music. Be a punk rock librarian (loud, cheap, fast, fun and fearless) I don't think that this was an actual learning objective but I think we could work with it

President's Program and Public Library Division Breakfast at PaLA

2010-10-25T15:11:00.002-04:00

The highlight for me of the President's program at PaLA here in Lancaster, was that Margie Stern introduced Brad Rutter Jeopardy champ to us, but she also introduced the audience to him, which I found charming and really smart.

The Public Library Division breakfast gave me a chance to preview Marilyn Johnson, author of This Book is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All! I won't spoil your fun, come to MLA in May and you can hear her for yourself on Thursday evening. :) Best part of that event was having Venditta point out Susan Pannebaker, who is with the Commonwealth Libraries - PA's DLDS. We had a nice conversation even though it turns out she couldn't tell me much about the PALS program except that they help pay for it. ;-)

Thoughts from PaLA: Take one

2010-10-25T14:43:00.003-04:00

I'm in Lancaster, PA at the Pennsylvania Library Association Conference observing and gathering good ideas to bring back to Maryland for MLA where I will have the pleasure of being the conference director in 2012.

Marylanders spotted/chatted-up: John Vendittta, former associate director of WMRL, Bob Baldwin, director of Allegany Community College, and Laura Greenlee who used to work in adult reference and is now at the head librarian in Greencastle.

Conference 101

3 Things I Learned
1. Start on time and proceed as though the room is packed, even if there are only 10 people there
2. PA has a new member reception -- what if we have a non-member reception and use it as a way to recruit new members? I think that might be an idea that is best not thought too hard about...but the idea of not inviting non-members to the party seemed wrong, if non-members can't see why the association is fun and worthwhile, why would they join?
3.Since PA has a much longer conference, every meal is not booked at the hotel and accompanied by a speaker -- they do dine-outs, some with speakers/authors and others with interest groups at area restaurants.

Great side benefit-- Had a chance to talk with Paula Gilbert, their conference chair and hawker of PA illustrator raffle tickets, Rob Lesher, their 1st VP, and Glenn Miller their exec director.

Something that I Squared Away - my AHA! Moment:
PA also does a raffle for vendor prizes, but instead of giving everyone one ticket in their registration packet the way we do in MD, they give tickets to the vendors who can give them out to people who stop and talk to them. It's another way of encouraging interaction with the vendors which is rather brilliant. In MD we collect stamps from the vendors, that can be entered for a prize, but I like the raffle tickets, it's pretty straight forward.

Something I need to learn more about:
PA has something called PALS - Pennsylvania Academy for Leadership Studies - track down the chair of that program, Tina Hertel and see what can be learned and turned into a MLA pre-conference

MASL (Md Assoc of School Librarians) Annual Conference

2010-10-18T13:49:00.003-04:00

I attended the best MASL conference on October 14 and 15 - because I need an on-going connection with the schools and to be knowledgeable of the kinds of activities to which we can make a connection. The theme was " The Future is in Your Hands." Jamie McKenzie, International known Writer/Publisher, Speaker, Trainer, Technology Specialist. After opening with "why do I need a librarian or books?" he launched into what we are doing and how - he went to the Internet and what we are using there and how are we using it and with whom. We can become the experts in choosing really good things by clarifying, thinking, problem solving, redefining what we do and and how well we do it. It is also time to educate key decision makers about our roles. He was very thorough and left us with many challenges.

I think that he would make a good staff training day presenter here at WCFL or at a tri-county day. Naomi Butler

Budget and Finance: A Librarian's Guide to Effective Budgeting: Day One

2010-09-29T16:45:00.002-04:00

When I saw the announcement for this PLA course I knew that it was just what I needed for my own staff development. Even though I had the experience of managing the AskUsNow! Grant budget for several years, and now have had the great learning experience of coordinating the WMRL budget process through two cycles, I knew that it would be very useful to get a better understanding of the types of budgets that are used by organizations and determine how to most effectively relate the budget to the programs offered by the WMRL (especially as we launch into a new strategic planning process). So yesterday I drove up to Saratoga Springs, NY and spent today (Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2010) in the community room at the Saratoga Springs Public Library with instructor Sandra Nelson and a group of about 40 participants ranging from NY, MA, NH, CT, OH, two of us from Maryland, and even one person from Missouri. Most people are library directors or assistant directors, and there are even a few trustees in attendance.

The part of the day that I felt was the most insightful was about the different types of library budgets. There are four types, and each has benefits and drawbacks.

Line Item Budgets (#1) are most commonly used (as at WMRL). Many libraries are required to use line item budgets by their county or other funding agency. They are familiar and in common use and serve as the first step for most other types of budgets. The drawback is that they don’t show you the cost of specific programs and tend to reinforce the status quo, since libraries tend to simply increase or decrease budget lines as funding varies. Stuff tends to collect that may no longer be priorities.

Program Budgets (#2) takes a line item budget a step further and shows you subsets. It informs you about your investment and shows you the relationships among programs since it links the priorities of the strategic plan to the budget. It can show you how expensive a program is that you hadn’t realized had a very high cost (such as having 2 staff take 2 days to create up a bulletin board display). A drawback is that it’s more time consuming since it adds a step. Doing a Program budget may make some staff uncomfortable if they interpret that you don’t trust them, when in fact you really just need to be able to make data-driven decisions. You’ll want to use a Program budget to develop a cost-benefit analysis. It is useful when you are seeking funding for a specific program. Grants are a common example of a Programmatic budget. Most libraries go as far as selective program budgeting.

A Performance Budget (#3) starts with the Program budget, but goes to the next step and prescribes outcomes, which are expected to be achieved. It encourages accountability and forces the library to take the program budget seriously. The lead drawback is that this type of budget can be very time consuming and if the plan isn’t good it can result in something that just doesn’t make sense.

A Zero-Based Budget (#4) is really the complete opposite of a Line Item Budget and starts out with no funds being authorized for anything in particular. Every cent must be justified every budget cycle and every moment of staff time is developed programmatically. The benefit is that you know how much every single thing costs and it allows you to let your funders know exactly what you do. As a new director, applying some of the zero-based approach to your own planning can help to force you to do the math. The drawback is that it’s a brutal process: It’s extremely time consuming and barely any organization stays with it after going through it once. Staff of course feel highly threatened. Very few people know how to do this type of process properly and generally only organizations that have been specifically asked by funders to take part in the zero-based approach do it.

Useful points made during the day (some are simply affirmations of what we’d already expect):

1. The projection for libraries isn’t good. Libraries need to embrace the greatest good for the greatest number of people. We can’t be wimps about getting complaints from one or two people, whether they be members of the public or staff members. Don’t be afraid to reallocate resources!
2. Budgets are data-driven, defendable, and defensible.
3. The most important part of the strategic plan is the implementation.
4. Don’t take a crisis to your board/funder. Give them a solution. A budget that is monitored appropriately gives you the forewarning to solve a potential budget problem before it’s a crisis. For instance, if you’re spending a lot more on heating during the winter than usual, don’t wait until the spring to try to resolve it.
5. Use budget as a tool for accountability and make the adjustments as necessary.
6. Sooner or later you need to figure out how long it takes to complete a specific activity. What does it cost to deliver a specific service? That leads back to the programmatic budget.
7. The current reality is that the public is not willing to pay for the services that they receive. As long as that dynamic remains, special tax districts are doing better than libraries receiving a line item in the general fund.
8. Each of us is always talking about our own unique library situation, which makes is very hard to compare apples to apples. However, thankfully you can compare budgets year within your own organization.
9. Libraries are moving in the direction of greater public/private relationships – that’s why foundations are becoming increasingly important. Libraries will be unlikely to be able to maintain current levels of service without developing these relationships.
10. It’s usually better to have a board member present the budget to the county than a library employee. They have more authority in the funder’s eyes. Board president and library director presenting together would be fine, but you want to avoid having the library employee seem to be in a self-serving role.
11. In some library budgets, Personnel must be totally separated from Operations and other expenses. Usually this is due to a county requirement to control increase/decrease of FTEs.
12. Some place in the budget you need to show that you have planned for capital maintenance: replacement for the roof (20 years), HVAC (10-15 years), carpet (5 years), etc.
13. Training is the last thing that should be cut from library budgets, although it’s often the first to go (Sandy’s opinion, which I agree)

That’s all for Day 1. More tomorrow! I may not get a chance to post until the weekend though, since I plan to drive back tomorrow evening. Thanks for reading. :)

-Joe

Introduction to RDA (ALCTS webinar)

2010-09-23T14:05:00.003-04:00

Staff member: Carrie Willson-Plymire
Original event date: September 22, 2010
Original event time: 5:00-6:00pm
Speaker: Robert Ellett

Train the Trainer

2010-09-21T10:05:00.005-04:00

Staff member: Carrie Willson-Plymire
Original event date: September 21, 2010
Original event time: 9:30-4:00pm
Speakers: Gail Griffith

Highly recommended! This program will be offered again, so consider attending if you do any sort of training.

WCFL/WMRL Book Club Meeting #1 Minutes

2010-09-16T13:35:00.003-04:00

The WCFL/WMRL staff book club met for the first time today from 12:00-1:00PM in the B/C meeting room to discuss the first part of the book, Switch: How to change things when change is hard, by Dan and Chip Heath. Here are some of the highlights from that meeting. Those in attendance and those who are participating but couldn't attend today's session are encouraged to add comments that elaborate on any of the issues noted below.

A-Ha Moments

The idea that will power is limited; it doesn't mean we are lazy; and it's nice to know that we aren't alone in this feeling (everyone experiences this from time to time)
The examples illustrated in the book are true (i.e. BP, the Brazilian Railroad, the Vietnamese children)
It's refreshing to know that in order to make a change we don't have to address everything. We just have to make baby steps--Like with the 1% milk example.
Challenge: would the 1% milk campaign have worked in other locations such as California which is vastly different from West Virginia? Or would they have experienced decision paralysis because of soy vs organic vs 1% vs no milk at all. What do you all think?
Several folks brought up an outside example. Jamie Oliver tried to revamp the quality of food that was served in schools as a way of getting West Virginians to improve their diet and at first he failed miserably - as the group deduced, it was probably because of his approach. He started out by coming in as this expert and the notion of why wouldn't anyone not listen to him? FAIL. But try, try again he did and was more successful with his food revolution which appealed to several individuals' elephants. He brought in truckloads of fat in order to illustrate just how unhealthy the food was that was being served at the schools. He showed people a mortuary where there were coffins for obese people, specially designed hearses that are equipped to fit the over sized coffins, and the issues people encountered when trying to transport these coffins. (To those who shared this story, please help me clarify this example a little better!)
It was interesting to read about the Brazilian railroad's goals as they seemed to be contrary to what the norm is (quick fixes vs. long term fixes).
A couple parallels were drawn between this section of the book and the renovation of the Hagerstown branch library. Why tear it down and rebuild when it seems like we could simply re-purpose/recycle what we already have access to and only make small additions to the portions of the building that need them.
Another parallel was made between this section and the Longmeadow shopping center. One one side of the street is a rundown strip mall but instead of renovating it, a newer shopping center was built on the other side. Is this the best use of Hagerstown resources?
One reader interpreted the first section of Switch in political terms where the Rider is President Obama, the people are the elephant, but the problem with the political process is the path. For example, the health care debate. The President more or less charged congress with figuring out a way for all Americans to have health care but he didn't outline the steps to get there. He didn't script the critical moves which seems to have lead to paralysis in the face of ambiguity.

Real-World Example (to be carried through the next 3 book club meetings)

Problem: Dirty dishes are left in the sink in the staff lounge on a daily basis. How do we change staff behavior so that each person washes his/her dirty dishes rather than leaving them in the sink?

Goal (postcard view): There will be no dirty dishes left in the sink or on the counters. They will be washed and placed in the drainer to dry and then put away in the cupboards.

Why do people not wash their dishes?

Time
"I don't do dishes"
Monkey see, monkey do
"It's not my job" or "It's someone else's job"
Plan on doing it later and then forget (or maybe they don't)
Water doesn't get hot enough
The soap isn't the kind that softens my hands
I'm a sponge user and there are no sponges (vice versa w/wash cloths)
Someone else always washes my dishes so, I figured it was ok
There are no consequences for leaving the dirty dishes in the sink

Why do some people wash their dishes (and in some cases, wash others' dishes)? These are the bright spots:

A sense of personal/professional responsibility
It's the right thing to do
Courtesy
Reducing health issues (bugs, germs, etc)

How are we going to change behaviors?

Modify the environment by providing a dishwasher
Modify the environment by providing a sponge/soap combo gadget
Take the dishes/silverware away thereby causing staff to provide their own dishes/silverware. The idea behind this is that people will be more responsible with their own personal belongings than with community belongings.
Reinstate housekeeping committee?
Build this topic into the ethics discussion at staff day (ethics) and use in conjunction with the move to Phoenix Color/North Pointe/Susquehanna
Make an xtranormal.com video in order to communicate and motivate
Advertise: Will work for dish money. Either pay me to do your dirty dishes or do them yourself for free!

To be continued on Oct. 14, 2010

Web Resources for Children's Librarians

2010-09-02T11:55:00.000-04:00

This workshop highlighted quality web resources to be used by children and/or adults working with children. Most of these recommended sites utilize human editing or reviewing as opposed to machine selection (e.g. Google search).

The recommended web resources included child-friendly directories, reading resources, image searching, film guides and reviews, and reference tools on the web. Sites specifically geared toward parents and public librarians were also showcased. A full listing of these websites can be found here.

My favorite sites were DAWCL, Author Name Pronunciation Guide, and NCES Search for Schools.

The Database of Award Winning Children’s Literature, aka DAWCL, is a searchable database of 8,300 award winning books. Ninety-one awards across six English-speaking countries are included. Searches can be conducted using the following criteria: suggested age of reader, format, setting, genre, historical period, multicultural, ethnicity/nationality of protagonist or tale, gender of protagonist, languages, publication year, keyword or phrase, author/illustrator/translator, and award. An explanation of awards and calendar of awards is also provided.

Author Name Pronunciation Guide is a fun, yet useful, tool. How many times have you needed to tell a patron about an author only to feel uncertain about the pronunciation of his or her name? Jon Scieszka? Shirley Hrdlitschka? Genevieve Simermeyer? This site is a collection of brief recordings of authors and illustrators saying their names. As someone who has her name butchered on a near-daily basis, using correct pronunciation for other people’s names is of great importance to me.

The National Center for Education Statistics’ Search for Schools [and public libraries] offers a wonderful resource for parents, educators, and librarians. Parents can obtain valuable information about schools when considering a move to a new area. Educators and librarians can use this same information when applying for grants. Some of the information to be found includes student/teacher ratio, enrollment by race/ethnicity, enrollment by grade, and number of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.

It was helpful to have someone else do the legwork of selecting quality web resources for children, parents, educators, and librarians. I have already added a number of these recommended sites to the Kids portion of our webpage.

Brainfuse Training, 8/26/2010

2010-08-26T14:16:00.003-04:00

Posted on behalf of Keela Pfaff (Ruth Enlow Library of Garrett County).

Brainfuse Webinar
Thursday, August 26, 2010

Tutor.com will soon be replaced with Brainfuse. Brainfuse appears to be a user-friendly database with features for students of all ages. In particular, this resource could be of great benefit to older homeschoolers who may need additional assistance with advanced topics..

All tutors have at least a Bachelor’s Degree and are subject to a background check. Tutors must also pass Brainfuse tests in the subject areas for which they would like to specialize; these are the only subjects for which they may provide tutoring. Live chat sessions with these tutors are offered from 2:00 PM until 12:00 AM each day.

Students can receive answers to specific questions or tutoring for a specific skill set via a live chat session. By creating a username and password [no other information is required], patrons can view past sessions which never expire from their account.

Students may also submit writing samples for review; tutors will respond with comments and/or other feedback within twenty-four hours. The “24/7 Help” feature allows students to send specific questions on any topic to a tutor outside of normal operating hours.

Brainfuse recognizes that learning does not end with high school. The “Adult Skills” portion of this database offers assistance with the GED, US Citizenship Test, resume writing, and Microsoft Office, along with standard subject areas.

Practice tests are offered in a variety of subjects. Users may also select “Standardized Tests” to practice taking the SAT or ACT.

Brainwave is a function which allows the user to create movies. For example, you can record a multi-stop math problem which can then be viewed any time you wish and/or sent to others via e-mail.

I am glad to have participated in this webinar. It was easy-to-follow, brief (under 45 minutes!), and very informative. I look forward to sharing this resource with many of our patrons.

Building the Digital Branch

2010-08-04T15:42:00.004-04:00

Staff member: Tracy Carroll
Original event date: August 3, 2010
Original event time: 2:30-4:30 pm
Speaker: David Lee King, Digital Branch & Services Manager at the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library

Building the Digital Branch with David Lee King provided lots of insight on how to approach redesigns, which are coming up soon for a few libraries. One thing that he suggested in usablity studies is to make it short and sweet, no more than 5 minutes to complete 8-12 questions and to ask questions like "where would you go to find..?" to see if patrons can find stuff. He even suggested special computers (like the lab) to take the survey.

In focus groups try to "weed" out what can be combined or just removed from the sites. He suggested going to the public to find out what they call stuff and rename parts of the site based on what they call it, which was a great idea! Like what do patrons or students call the "databases" page? Making things that patrons are looking for more prominent, like a "Fee Information" bright and bold on the front page.

I also found out that I'm not the only person who is doing it solo, there are a lot of libraries where there is only 1 person doing the web, if they even have a web presence. He suggested getting a good CMS (Content Management System) to make life easier. After my Drupal class I'm convinced that I need to carve out more time to get to know more about Drupal.

I have to go back and review the webinar again because between the instructor and the chat, there was so much information being passed around I need to go back and catch what I missed.

Looking forward to the next redesign and will definitely implement the suggestions from this webinar. Here are some notes and handouts that I will be using for my next redesign.

http://64.26.76.140/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=https://ala.ilinc.com/content/phpjmfv/vvxjyvy

ALA 2010: Staff Development Discussion

2010-07-14T12:04:00.003-04:00

Staff member: Julie Zamostny
Original event date: June 28, 2010
Original event time: 1:30-3:30pm
Speakers: Sandra Smith

ALA 2010: Library Trainers as Leaders

2010-07-13T15:56:00.006-04:00

Staff member: Julie Zamostny
Original event date: June 27, 2010
Original event time: 10:30AM-12:00PM
Speakers:Paul Signorelli, Maurice Coleman, Sandra Smith, Louise Whittaker

ALA2010: Purple Crayons, Random Dots, and PB Sandwiches

2010-07-13T15:34:00.004-04:00

Staff member: Julie Zamostny
Original event date: June 26, 2010
Original event time: 4:00-5:30PM
Speaker: Frances Yates, Director at IU East

ALA 2010: Librarians Just Need to Have Fun

2010-07-13T14:41:00.005-04:00

Staff member: Julie Zamostny
Original event date: June 26, 2010
Original event time: 10:30AM-12:30PM
Speakers: Teresa Doherty, Erin Davis, Patricia Van Zandt, Frances Yates

ALA 2010: Beyond F2F: New Methods for Staff Training

2010-07-13T13:57:00.007-04:00

Staff Member: Julie Zamostny
Original event date: June 25, 2010 (ALA Preconference)
Original event time: 8:30AM-Noon
Speakers: Jay Turner, Maurice Coleman, Mary Beth Faccioli

Building with Competencies at ALA

2010-07-08T12:24:00.003-04:00

Staff Name: Jennifer Spriggs

Learning Event: Building with Competencies at ALA 2010

Library System: ACLS

Date: June 26, 2010

Summary: I was so pleased that I was able to attend this session, which was sponsored by the LearningRT. The two presenters were excellent - Betha Gutsche of OCLC and Sandra Smith of Denver Public Library. They engaged the audience by giving everyone a two-sided sign with a smiley face on one side and a frown on the other. They continually asked questions and asked the group to respond to their answers with their signs. Competencies can be a scary word - the presenters suggested that skill set might be a less intimidating term. The outcomes for session attendees were:
-A basic understanding of what competencies are
-A basic understanding of potential employee and organizational benefits to utilizing competencies
-Examples of how libraries are utilizing competencies to enhance their operations and missions
-An increase in willingness to explore the use of competencies in their work

The presenters walked through 6 case studies that showed how competencies were used in a practical way to benefit library systems and individuals. I took away quite a few good ideas, especially in regards in how to tie competencies to performance reviews, which I hope to implement in the next review cycle.

Aha! to share: On average, approximately 60 to 70 percent of library funding goes to staff - salaries, benefits, etc.

You can view the session resources at:
http://www.webjunction.org/conferences/-/articles/content/99973597

Marketing Seminar with Matt Hackett

2010-07-08T07:59:00.001-04:00

Posted by J. Zamostny on behalf of M. Fuller.

I learned to detail why our customers choose to do business with us rather than our competitors, i.e., we're free, better searches, and provide online info by subject

I learned to detail the one thing we do better than anyone else, i.e., provide free books and DVDs.

Booklist Webinar - Trends in Literature

2010-05-20T11:32:00.002-04:00

On May 18 I viewed the Booklist webinar with the speakers Andrew Wooldridge, publisher of Orca Books, Rick Wilks and Susan Siptoe of Annick Press and Firefly Books, and the wonderful Michael Cart of Booklist and YALSA president. Each of them discussed current Teen/YA books, specific titles, and the changing scene with authors and publishers and most of all - the interests of young people. Much of this discussion sumarized what we already know about from our reading and awareness of the teen requests but the views from them were quite informative and interesting. I trust that the webinars will be an on-going activity for us.

Assess, Prioritize and Manage

2010-05-04T14:25:00.004-04:00

I recently attended the National Archives and Records Administration Preservation Conference in DC entitled Plan for Preservation: Assess, Prioritize and Manage. A pretty daunting title, and an impressive list of speakers, including the head of Collection Care at the UK archives, as well as the Archivist of the US, who was formerly the chief executive of the research libraries at The New York Public Library, Duke University's librarian and had worked for 31 years before that in the Massachusetts Institute of Technologies libraries. This bio in itself was interesting - former Archivists had been historians.

Topics that raised interest:
Do you perform mass deacidification to reduce the ongoing decay of organic matter, or do you fix the younger items first so you will have fewer problems in the future - along the lines of a stitch in time saves nine
Do you just deal with the paper and other artifacts you have, or should archivists also be concerned climate change, fossil fuel reduction, and the need to reduce CO2 emissions? (This raised issues that I believe WCFL should address for the Western Maryland Room in the new library, as well as the history room in George's Creek).
Should the Archives/history rooms be a cataloging agency or is their role to consider vulnerability of objects?

Useful to know organizations
EGOR - Environmental Guidelines, Opportunities and Risk
The Centre for Sustainable Heritage
Heritage Health Index

Besides issues like these, some statistics put me in my place -
Only 2% of government records are selected for permanent preservation at the National Archives.
The UK National Archives has 80 million documents on line
The Library of Congress has 12 million photographs and 4 photograph conservators

LOEX: Library Orientation Exchange

2010-05-03T16:37:00.003-04:00

I'm going to hazard a guess that many of you have never heard of LOEX, the Library Orientation Exchange primarily made up of instruction librarians at academic institutions.

Now you can say that you've heard of LOEX and that you know someone who attended and presented at the 2010 annual conference: me, Julie Z.

You might be asking yourself, why did she attend such a conference when she's no longer affiliated with an academic library and does not do as much instruction? That's a good question, and the answer is two-fold. Firstly, I attended the conference in order to deliver a co-presentation with 4 colleagues of mine on the topic of non-traditional methods of instruction. Secondly, I attended the conference because although few public librarians attend LOEX, there is still much that can be applied to the public library world--especially from a staff development point of view. For example, one session I attended was on the learning cycle (how to make learning stick) and this is a very real concern regardless of whether your workshop participants are first year college students or twentieth year library employee veterans!

So, if you teach in a public setting, you might want to look into some of the materials LOEX makes available online to help you freshen up your instruction skills. Eventually, the proceedings of this conference, complete with reports and slides of each presentation, will be available online. Until then, you're welcome to look at the clearinghouse materials and past-conference materials.

Of course, if you have any questions, I'd be happy to talk with you!

What's your sign...I mean, style?

2010-04-27T09:48:00.011-04:00

This is the first of many installments on the MLA 2010 Annual Conference that the western Maryland library staff (this means you!) will be posting to our learning journal and I am definitely excited to hear about all the adventures everyone had in Ocean City.

The first learning adventure that I'm going to share with you is the preconference I attended on Wednesday, April 21 entitled, "What's Your Style? 9 Paths to Personal and Professional Development" with facilitators Peter and Suzanne Bromberg.

This workshop centered around The Enneagram (pronounced ANY-a-gram), a personality inventory that describes one's primary motivations, outlook on life, and how and to where energy and attention are focused. There are 9 Enneagram styles:

Style One, aka: perfectionist, reformer, principled teacher
Style Two, aka: helper, giver, pleaser, caretaker, mentor
Style Three, aka: achiever, performer, motivator, producer
Style Four, aka: individualist, romantic, creator, artist, poet
Style Five, aka: investigator, observer, thinker, scholar, sage
Style Six, aka: questioner, loyal skeptic, troubleshooter
Style Seven, aka: adventurer, enthusiast, fun lover, cheerer
Style Eight, aka: challenger, leader, boss, confronter
Style Nine, aka: peacemaker, mediator, acceptor, connector

I am a Seven and my core motivation is to experience life to its fullest. But knowing which characteristics I borrow from other styles during periods of stress is actually the most beneficial piece of information I took away from the preconference. Each style is fluid and in times of stress and in times of security will morph into other styles. For example, when a Seven is feeling secure and stable she morphs into a Five and becomes more thoughtful, deep, and serious about ideas. Under stress however, a Seven starts to take on qualities of a One and becomes rigid, angry and controlling. Knowing this will help me become more aware of my energy and if I see myself becoming angry all the time I will know that I'm showing my One side and that I need to stop, take a deep breath, and reevaluate my situation.

Whew! It's a good thing we have some stress management programs scheduled in May!

On the other side however, if I notice my Five qualities starting to show I can take advantage of them as well, but for good instead of evil.

This is a topic that I'm very interested in and could probably blog all day about but, I won't, and instead I'll share one last take away.

In the afternoon we split up into groups by style to answer some questions about ourselves like:

What do we like about being Sevens?
What annoys or stresses Sevens?
Sevens are needed in our library because we...

But even that wasn't the most eye-opening part. The eye-openers came from listening to the other groups of styles share their answers to these same questions and making the connections between things they said and real examples from my own life (i.e. John Doe might be a Three because in meetings he's always saying, "get to the point" or "just spit it out.") which will help me modify my behaviors in the future in order to foster better relationships because I realize now that certain behaviors like in the John Doe example, are linked to core motivations and that they shouldn't be taken personally. If John Doe is a Three then it's important to him to be efficient and me spending time to give him background that I think he needs is just slowing him down so, in the future I can always let him know (after I've gotten to the point) that I have background information available and if he wants it he can ask me for it.

If anyone is interested in learning more about The Enneagram just let me know. The Bromberg's said it was OK to share their materials with anyone who's interested. In the meantime, you can take the brief, free version of The Enneagram inventory and learn more about your style at The Enneagram Institute's web site.

New Jersey Train the Trainer

2010-04-08T15:06:00.004-04:00

About three weeks ago I was fortunate enough to attend a four-day Train the Trainer seminar in Eatontown, NJ. Although the program was designed with New Jersey librarians in mind, they were kind enough to open registration up to the surrounding areas. Alicia Hyre from Harford County Public Library was the only other Maryland library employee who attended--and like all of the other Maryland librarians I've met thus far, she's totally awesome and is doing great things for her library! I met several wonderful NJ librarians to whom my heart goes out during their current budget crisis. There were folks from public libraries, academic libraries, the State Library of NJ, special libraries; it was awesome!

The program was pretty intense. The first three days consisted of jam-packed schedules of 9AM-9PM classes with scheduled breaks and meals in between. We covered everything from adult learning principles, how to plan effective trainings, how to use training aids appropriately, ways to incorporate technology into training, group facilitation, and evaluation.

Then we had one week to put what we had learned to the test. We were tasked with writing an instruction plan and training guide for an upcoming course that we will actually be executing at our library system and we had to come back on March 26th to present a select portion of that training to our peers so we could receive feedback and so we could practice with a captive audience. This was an extremely valuable exercise. I was able to write my instruction plan and training guide for the self-defense program I'm presenting to the Washington County branch staff at their meeting on May 10th. I received some useful feedback that allowed me to edit my plan and guide to make the training more participant-friendly!

As I start to get ideas for home-grown continuing education/professional development (whatever you'd like to call them) courses, I will most definitely continue to write up instructional plans and guides for each one. These will come in handy as well if the libraries across the state move forward with the idea to form a staff development coop. The instructional guides and plans will be posted electronically for anyone to download and edit to suit their needs!

A couple of fun NJ facts:

The bartender at the hotel I stayed at worked as an extra for the TV show, The Sopranos.
You cannot pump your own gas at NJ gas stations. They are full-service only.
You cannot make left turns off of most NJ highways; instead, you have to use these things the natives call Jug Handles...they're like sideways horseshoes.

Klickatat and all that

2010-04-02T15:58:00.000-04:00

PLA in Portland and the home of the Quimby family. Lots of new ideas to think about and its always good to wander amidst people who have the same interests as you so when you suggest something wacky, at least they have a context.

One idea that struck me in these tough economic times was if we have to limit our collection spending than we need to be as fast and efficient as possible getting items back on the shelves. The session on "leaning your library " covered this area and reminded me of Frederick Taylor's time and motion studies, plus the recently in vogue ISO 9000 certification. Ask at your library, how many people touch an item before it is back on the shelf? Can you get it back to the shelf in less than 5 touches?

Unfortunately the LITA top ten tech trends was not their best work. If you think about time, convenience, and independence as the new currency, how can libraries assist our patrons make the most of their daily lives? Can technology help? Can technology help us form better relationships with our patrons?

Some good and reasonably priced stuff in the vendor areas as well. I was pleased to find web based scheduling software for our whole system would cost about $330. What do you think, would you like centralized scheduling of all staff?

Also thanks to some good questions, it dawned on me that if patron reviews of books is to succeed (be used by other patrons) in our catalog, we need a lot more reviews and multiple reviews per item. Which brought me to chilfresh a company that can insert those reviews and comments from patrons around the work into our catalog.

Visiting vendors also helped clarify the path so that our patrons can pay their fines by credit or debit card from within the library and from home.

Thanks for the invitation to post on the WMRL Learning blog.
Please share your comments and ideas here or my blog.

PLA Conference March 2010

2010-04-01T15:32:00.002-04:00

The Public Library Association (PLA) Conference was held in Portland, Oregon March 23-27th. The city of Portland has a wonderful transportation system that enabled conference goers to easily travel from area hotels to the convention center, not to mention area shopping and restaurants, for free. The system even went to the airport for a small fee.

The workshop highlights for the conference for me were Book Buzz with Nancy Pearl, What's New in Fantasy, Paranormal, and Science Fiction for Teens and Adults (a gift to myself :), and oddly enough, I Have These Statistics--Now What? Getting Started on the Path of Collection Analysis. Other highlights for me included hearing the keynote speaker, Pulitzer Prize winning speaker Nick Kristof and listening to a short concert by Natalie Merchant prior to the keynote. These two individuals started things off on an inspiring and positive note, as they each spoke of the impact libraries had on their own successful lives. They also provided critical reminders of the great difference librarians can make daily in the lives of our customers and in our communities, things that go way beyond the collections and walls of the buildings to the heart of libraries: the interactions of the customers and the library staff.

In addition, a lot of my focus for the conference was on collections and collection development, so I also took the opportunity to visit the booths in the exhibit hall. I picked up a couple of galley copies of Fang by James Patterson and The Passage by Justin Cronin. I also spoke with some vendors like BWI, discussing their services and discounts; checked out Brainfuse to compare it with Tutor.com; spoke to our ILS vendor TLC to ask some questions and make some suggestions; and scoped out some library card vendors for our upcoming First Library Card project. (I may have picked up a free cookie here and there along the way!)

I've come back with some definite ideas and action items: First, I am running reports to get relative use figures for our collections to help us better identify where our weeding needs to go deeper and what areas of our collection are successful and need to be expanded. My goal is to complete these reports and present findings within the month so that we can move forward with next fiscal year's collection budget allotment with accuracy. Next, I am going to follow up with some other collection vendors to see if they offer competitive pricing, convenient services, etc. Finally, I've got some good information to use for my proposal/plan for the First Library Card.

Thanks to Western Maryland Regional Library for supporting the trip to the conference.

Learn How to Learn Online (LHTLO)

2010-01-20T13:18:00.000-05:00

Staff Name: Julie Zamostny

Workshop: Learn How To Learn Online (LHTLO)

Library System: WMRL

Date: January 19, 2010

Aha! to share: The whiteboard is a great space to use to encourage participation. I never had an instructor use the whiteboard area in a collaborative fashion before!

Questions to ask yourself:

What barriers do I have to synchronous learning?
How can I overcome those barriers when I'm learning and when I'm teaching?

Rating: 3 stars; There was nothing terribly wrong with the course but the topic is something that I'm fairly familiar with and would have preferred to participate in an asynchronous course in order to get up to speed with Wimba.

Additional notes: I made a contact with Trina Panagos at Frederick County Public Library and we are hoping to work on a synchronous training project involving Google Wave in the future.

SkillSoft Kick-off Session 2009

2009-10-13T14:50:00.000-04:00

Relevance?

2009-10-09T12:59:00.000-04:00

I recently attended a workshop presented by OCLC. Some of the talk was promotion of the various WorldCat entities, not relevant to me. What was relevant was a talk by Michael Edson, Director, Web and New Media Strategy, Smithsonian Institution, Office of the CIO entitled Relevance, Existence, and the Smithsonian Commons.

The Smithsonian is the world largest museum and research complex. And yet on an issue they have spent much effort - the oceans, a 2 person website called Enchantedlearning.com gets many times more hits. What is wrong with their site? Why do people not start their research there?

So the Smithsonian has been working through issues like how their task should be to:
Empower citizen-scholars!
Solve big complex problems!
Interdisciplinary collaborations and partnerships!
Create innovative informal education
Use their resources for the public good in the midst of unceasing change

It seems to me this is the role of libraries too, and I would like to think, of Whilbr. Ok - Whilbr doesn't solve big complex problems but could empower citizen scholars, assist in interdiscplinary collaboration (as in C&O Canal project) and be part of innovative informal education.

Micheal used this image for the new model - collaboration and innovation

And I started thinking of the need for Whilbr in particular and libraries in general to move from the left image to the right. Hard to do, control is lost, possibly quality is lost but a common space where ideas are more freely exchanged seems relevant. Can we foster learning and collaborative knowledge creation? For Whilbr,
what can I do with this content once I find it? How can I interact with my fellow-visitors to the website?

More from Michael's talk can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/edsonm/michael-edson-relevance-existence-and-smithsonian-strategy-for-oclc-web-scale-or-bust

Introduction to Photoshop CS2-Online Class

2009-10-06T12:53:00.000-04:00

Course Name: Introduction to Photoshop CS2-Online Class offered by Hagerstown Community College Center for Continuing Education

Course Description: The Introduction to Adobe Photoshop CS2 online class provided hands on, project-oriented lessons filled with detailed step-by-step instructions. In the introduction to the Photoshop environment I discovered tools that I had not used as of yet. Specifically, I learned two more ways to straighten and crop pictures. The lessons revealed how to edit photographs to remove red-eye, to get rid of dust and scratches, and correct image exposure. I’m amazed by the variety in the Photoshop’s brush engine and I’m overwhelmed by all the choices provided by Photoshop’s tools and procedures.

Course Mechanics: Two lessons became available every week for six weeks. After all twelve lessons were released there was a two week grace period to complete the lessons and take the final exam. This gave me an extra two weeks-a total of eight weeks to complete the course. I was able to print all the lessons and assignments-a very helpful reference. I will use these again to strengthen my skills in Photoshop and to better comprehend the procedures and options that Photoshop has to offer. After each lesson I took a brief multiple-choice quiz. Each lesson was accompanied by an assignment. The assignments helped me to better comprehend the steps and tools utilized.

Course Benefits: You do not have to be present when each lesson is released. This is very convenient. You can get online and do the lessons, assignments, quizzes, and test -24/7. The Continuing Education course is worth 24 hours. However, I worked an average of 3 ½ to 4 hours per lesson (not 2). I still need to go back and review all the tools and steps in order to grasp all the techniques. Having a printed copy is an excellent resource.

Back-to-School Update for High Schoolers

2009-09-18T10:19:00.000-04:00

Webinar-Building the Digital Branch for the 21st Century

2009-09-03T08:37:00.001-04:00

As budgets may force us to move more services online, consider this Webjunction webinar.
Building the Digital Branch for the 21st Century

"When was the last time your website was redesigned - three years ago? Last century? Join presenter David Lee King for Building the Digital Branch: Guidelines to Transform Your Website for the 21st Century, a webinar brought to you in special collaboration with WebJunction-Kansas and ALA TechSource. David explores and expands on the process his web team used at Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library to transform their outdated website into a 21st century digital branch. David covers the differences between a website and a digital branch, and describes the redesign process - everything from the introductory planning stages of overhauling their website to the process of actually "doing stuff" at the new digital branch. Finally, planning for the future is discussed."

Simplified Code of Conduct

2009-08-31T16:12:00.000-04:00

I liked the code of conduct used at Imaginon as presented by Michele Gorman.

Respect Yourself.
Respect Others
Respect the Space.

what else do you need?

"This Ain't Your Mama's Library"

2009-08-31T13:38:00.000-04:00

This program was sponsored by WMRL and presented by the funny and knowledgable teen guru Michele Gorman www.comixlibrarian.com

Some important tidbits from the program:

Adolescent Brain Research:
Adolescent brains are not as developed as we might believe. Emotion often overtakes rationality. When teens misbeahve in the library- a banning for life policy may not be appropriate. Michelle's library uses a progressive dicispline policy where the punishment is determined by the offense.

The 7 Developmental Needs of Teens (As documented by Michelle Gorman, 2009)
1. Physical Activity
2. Competence and Achievement
3. Self-Definition
4. Creative Expression
5. Positive Social Interaction with Peers and Adults
6. Structure and Clear Limits
7. meaningful Participation

Many application systems require statistical support for assertions, but it is also just as important to maintain ancedotal records to support them with actual real life stories if they are so warranted.

Keep in Mind the 40 Developmental Assets for Adolescents. It is so important that we recognize these needs and try to structure our programming efforts to meet them. To look at 40 Developmental Assets go here http://www.search-institute.org/assets/

According to Michelle there are a couple ways you can go about creating positive relationships with teens:
1. Make the first impression a positive one
2. Keep your cool
3. Remember that this is not personal
4. Lighten up
5. Remember what it was like to be a teen

Get to know what graphic novels and manga are and why you should have them in your library. Many teens are really into these literary works and would love to see more of them in our librarues, and more programming with them in general.

Also, get to know what the different Annual Awards for Young Adult Books and Authors are. You can access them via the American Libraries Association Website www.ala.org and for teens especially, the YALSA division www.ala.org/yalsa

Don't be afraid to get into the 6R (Reduce, reuse, reclaim, redesign, recycle, renew) Movement. It is amazing what you can make out of soda can tabs or duct tape.

Overall, take a moment to realize why you love being a YA Librarian or serving YA's and keep in mind that you were a teen once, too. Most of the opinions people have about teens, teens have about them.

"Celebrating Summer with Some New and Award Winning Books"

2009-08-31T13:23:00.001-04:00

This presentation was given by Carolyn Cook, Mount St. Mary's University Assistant Professor of Education cook@msmary.edu and Michelle Foreman, Shippensburg University Assistant Professor/Librarian mtforeman@ship.edu

If you are interested in some good recommended reads for your young patrons, just check out the past winners of the following awards:

The Pennsylvania Center for the Book's "The Baker's Dozen"
Theordore Seuss Geisel Award-author and illustrator of best beginning reader book
Randolph Caldecott Medal honors the finest children's illustrator for the year
Coretta Scott King Award is given to the best African American children's writers and illustrators
John Steptoe Award for New Talent is given to a new talent in writing or illustrating
John Newberry Medal honors the year's best children's book
Robert F. Siebert Informational Book Award is given to the author of an outstanding nonfiction book
Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature honors writers of excellent young adult books
Pura Belpre Award honors the best latina/latino writers every two years
Mildred L. Batchelder Award recognizes publishers of foreign books for children
Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award honors a poet who published an excellent book of children's poetry

Most of the winners can be accessed via the American Libraries Association Website at www.ala.org

New Ideas

2009-08-12T15:41:00.000-04:00

This past week, I attended the Children's Services Division Meeting of the Maryland Library Association. I just wanted to share with you some of the wonderful up and coming programs, as well ideas and programs that are being done around the state. These meetings are every month at different library branches and are well worth the time. This group is also responsible for the Blue Crab Award for literature. Feel free to go to the MLA website and check it all out!

Up and coming:
Kids Are Customers is taking place on Thursday, October 15th at the Best Western in Westminster. There were be lots of different sessions on homeschooling, challenge materials, online book groups, book clubs, mutlicultural programming, music programming, and much, much more. The fee for registration has been reduced. It promises to be an educational event!

Look for a Blue Crab/CSD page on Facebook. Soon there will be a page up to get the word out there.

Program Ideas:

Manga drawing
Teen Team Reading where teams of teens compete to see which team can read the most pages in a set amount of time
Lego programs
"Discover Your..." sessions discovering/exploring different topics
Stuffed Animal Slumber Party
Yoga for Tots
Anime drawing
Creating Duck-tape wallets
Musical instruments from around the world
Chess clubs
Teen Activities Blog
Teen Summer Reading Club Blog of Book Reviews
Wacky Water Fun Fests with Water Games
Measured reading collections online
Bookmark Contests with prizes for each age group
Art Show for the community put together by kids
Mall story-times
Percy Jackson Parties
Fancy Nancy Parties

All kinds of fun things are going on around the state! Feel free to share what you are doing or even use some of these ideas on the list.

ALA Scholarship Bash

2009-07-30T22:18:00.000-04:00

On Saturday night, Nora and I were fortunate to attend the ALA Scholarship Bash which was held at the Art Institute of Chicago. The bash started at 7:00 p.m. and I can tell you that the two of us arrived back at our hotel shortly before 11:00. It was such a wonderful event and the museum was only open that evening for ALA attendees. If you remember our morning fiasco with missing the kickoff breakfast for the empowerment conference... our lunch was store made yogurt and fruit at a little coffee shop in the Hyatt conference area, so by the time we arrived at the Art Institute we were starving. They had at least 3 areas set up for food service. We gravitated to the outdoor area and joined a very friendly librarian from Phoenix (who ordered teen books for the Phoenix Public Library System- Nora did get her email for tips) for finger foods, sandwiches and drinks. Wandering the art exhibits was amazing. But don't point too close to the paintings or alarms go off, trust me, they do.

ALA Empowerment Conference, 2009

2009-07-29T22:47:00.000-04:00

When my copy of American Libraries arrived and I scanned the information about the upcoming ALA conference in Chicago, the Empowerment Conference caught my eye. Sponsored by the Library Support Staff division of ALA, of which I have been a member for the last several years, the "mini conference" for support staff who supervise others appealed to me immediately. As both a Branch Manager at our Main Library Branch and the Circulation Supervisor for our Library System, I felt this could directly affect my day to day activities both in my branch and in my duties system-wide. I mentioned the Empowerment Conference to our Public Services Coordinator, Lisa McKenney, and she invited any Branch Manager who was interested in attending ALA this summer to let her know how the experience would benefit them and the Library System.

Nora Drake also responded to her inquiry and the two of us were selected to attend the conference. We arrived in Chicago Friday afternoon and were on our way to McCormick Place early the next morning, sans breakfast. After criss crossing the complex we finally arrived the Welcome Breakfast and conference kickoff at the HYATT REGENCY McCormick ( geesh!) only to find nothing left but coffee and crumbs of the breakfast. We did get to hear most of Prof. Gini's keynote address about "Lincoln's ten critical tasks of leadership"

The first session I attended was "Leadership = Vision + Communication + Empowerment: an overview with Alexis Sarkisian, who is a Library Marketing consultant. She discussed communication models and explained how leaders need to make sure that the message you are sending out is understood. It is the "senders" responsibility to get feedback from the "receivers" to elminate misunderstandings and assumptions. You don't "push" a message out, it is your responsibilty to be sure it is being sent in a way that people can understand or "hear" your message. She makes the point that leaders have vision and while leaders can be managers, not all managers are leaders.

The second session was Leadership for Library Support Staff lead by Kevin Dudeney from Austrailia. It was interesting in itself to learn a little about the Australian system, they take a 2 year required course to become Library Technicians. He began by talking about how we manage stuff, but lead people. He developed this course himself and focuses on the 5 practices of exemplary leadership:

Model the way - earn the right and respect to lead, people follow the person, then the plan.
Inspire a shared vision - express enthusiasm for the vision and it will spread to the team.
Challenge the process - step into the unknown and look for opportunities to innovate.
Enable others to act - make it possible for others to do good work.
Encourage the heart - show appreciation of the teams contributions, teams can become tired, frustrated and disenchanted.

We saw his list of the differences between leaders and managers, a long list I might add, that most of us furioulsy scribbled away to copy since there were no handouts for this session. There was a discussion of the different types of power, such as legitimate power; reward power; coercive power; expert power; charismatic power; referent power; and information power.

After scrounging up some lunch and a chance encounter with Joe outside the building, Nora and I attended "Leading from any position: opportunities to contribute to your Library's success" with Maureen Sullivan who happens to be from Maryland. She also mentioned the communication issue, i.e. "What I think I said may not be what you heard" and the notion that even leaders need to know how to be effective followers. She focused on resonant leadership and how that is based on the relationship between the leader and those who work with them. Resonant leadership depends upon emotional intelligence which can be intuitive or developed. Emotional intelligence is based on the competencies of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. She points out that we must listen to the negative but don't focus on it. Focus on the people who are doing what needs to be done. Don't let negativity hold the organization back.

And we're just gettin' warm!