Pt. 2: Statewide Staff Development Coordinators meeting

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

Charter Update
We crafted a statement of purpose for the MD Statewide SDC group:

The Maryland Statewide Staff Development Coordinators team exists to provide a framework for effective and efficient collaboration of statewide staff development projects and programs, and to share staff development experiences and resources.

We are staff development coordinators from Maryland's public and regional libraries.

We serve the staff and patrons of Maryland's public libraries under the auspice of the Division of Library Development and Services.

We also shortened the operations document that accompanies the charter. Once the final document as been reviewed and approved by Nini Beegan, I'll share it here.

Work Group Updates

Online Exchanges: Jennifer Hopwood (SMRLA) has taken this initiative and turned it into her Conversation Sparks project which is to offer one one-hour event every month on a variety of topics. These events are open to all library staff across the state and country and they will essentially be 40 minutes of presentation made by a guest and then 20 minutes of all-participant dialog/sharing/conversation. There is one event currently scheduled:

August 27th: Tech Savvy Kids at the Library

Conference Sharing: This group is tasked with providing an outlet for staff across the state to share what they've learned at conferences that they've attended and ideas for how they might use what they've learned within their library systems. This group has offered 3 online conference sharing events to date and we have 2 more on the calendar. We hope to offer 4 events per year and we'd also love to see others (library systems, MLA divisions, etc) adopt this conference sharing model themselves and offer them statewide - hint, hint. 

Book Expo America: June 19th at 10am: if you're attending BEA and want to share your experience and if you aren't attending but want to hear what BEA was all about, please click on the first link to register!

Masie's Learning 2013: November 21st at 10am: registration will be available later.

New Projects

Staff Development Presenters/Trainers Master List: Sam Eddington (ESRL), Jennifer Hopwood (SMRLA), Lisa Kenyon (EPFL), and I (WMRL) will create a pilot master list of the staff development presenters and trainers we've had over the past year or two that includes the presenters' names, contact info, websites, topics, whether or not we'd hire them again, etc. Sam will create the document and share it via Google Drive and then the four of us will populate it. We'll share it with the other SDCs and if it looks like this is something others would want to add to then, we'll share it with the SDCs who are interested in contributing. Maybe we could possibly add it to the MERLIN site and/or staff development wiki?

Children with Autism: Margaret Carty, Executive Director for the Maryland Library Association, has some strong contacts with autism professionals who she is going to work with to put together a workshop or two on the topics surrounding how librarians can best serve autistic children - and potentially austic humans in general (all age groups)? More info to come on that later...

Creating a Culture of Learning Unconference: So, the SDCs were hoping to walk out of the meeting yesterday with one project that all of us could work on that would benefit the whole state of Maryland. We started to run out of time so, the only suggestion that was made was for us to host one or two unconferences on the topic of "Creating a Culture of Learning." And that was about it. We talked about maybe having 2 separate unconferences - one for supervisors/managers/directors and one for non-supervisory staff. One of the main concerns that bubbled up from this idea is the observation that staff who do not need to earn CEUs are less likely to have learning in the forefront of their minds as they go about their jobs. They're less likely to ask for training or even want to attend training and we would like to see this be different - we would love to see all staff in our libraries have learning at the forefront and be enthusiastic about attending training, even feeling empowered to look for training and requesting it on their own. So, we don't have a date or any other details beyond that so, the group will keep thinking about how we can approach this and go from there. if you're reading this and you have thoughts, ideas to share please do so in the comments section or email me directly. 

Pt. 1: Statewide Staff Development Coordinators Meeting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MD Polaris Users Group Meeting

http://www.polarisusersgroup.org/

MD PUG met on Thursday, May 30th at Chesapeake College. The following post will share some reminders as well as some products/enhancements that are on the horizon.

The next MD PUG meeting will be at the new Hagerstown library! The date of which is TBD.

Websites to know about and to visit frequently:

PolarisLibrary.com
is the main site for Polaris ILS. 
Come here for:
Free Webinars
Polaris Users Group
Polaris Town extranet

www.polaristown.com 
Is the extranet for Polaris users.
RELIB - contact Ann Leighton for your staff username and password
WCFL/WMRL - contact whomever we hire for Carrie's position, or Julie, or Tracy for your staff username and password.
Come here for: 1) more webinars, 2) marketing materials, 3) news and events, 4) help in general.

tour.polarislibrary.com 
Shows you what other libraries have done to customize their PAC from vanilla out-of-the-box set-ups to PACs that are extremely customized down to the very last material icon. See what your PAC could be.


What's on the horizon:

• Readers' First compatibility 
• Community Profiles (Carrie won this package at last year's PUG conference and we're currently looking for ways to implement it)
• Browser-based staff interface. Baltimore County Public Library is currently testing this. If implemented, staff could potentially provide roving, mobile check outs and other staff-client based services on tablets or other hand-held devices. Exciting!!
• Cloud-based functionality
• Enhanced mobile functionality

Product highlights: Fusion

catalog.bcpl.lib.md.us/polaris/search

Fusion: integrates digital collections into the PAC. BCPL is currently using this product with the help of volunteers who enter the images, their titles, and their descriptions. Check it out.

Product highlights: Federated Search

catalog.bcpl.lib.md.us/polaris/search

Unless you have a BCPL card, all you'll be able to do is click on the Selected Databases link beneath the search box to see which databases you could be searching all at once.

Basically, this feature let's the user search up to 10 electronic resources at once. 
Doing a science paper? Search the catalog for books at the same time you search EBSCO's Science Resource Center for news and journal articles, and your favorite online encyclopedia for an encyclopedia article! 

MLA Tech Meeting

I've become slack with posting about the meetings I attend so, in an attempt to rectify my lazy ways here's what went down at the most recent MLA Technology Committee Meeting on November 29th.

Any MLA members are welcome to join the Tech Committee. Just contact Stuart Ragland for more information.

In-house equipment for MLA 
The Tech Committee would like to get the MLA office their own laptop, projector, and screen for use during meetings and presentations at the MLA office (and potentially at off site locations like the annual conference). Some team members, including myself, were asked to gather some more information about the options available to us so we can make more informed decisions when we get the green light to buy, buy, buy.

Staff development meeting follow-up
There is a subcommittee of the statewide staff development coordinators that is headed by Joanne Trepp that has agreed to take on the task of coordinating online learning exchanges. The first event they are hoping to do is an online follow up to an LMD (leadershp and management division) event. Joanne wanted to check with Margaret to make sure it'd be OK for her subcommittee to hold an online learning exchanged fueled by the LMD event that is free. The concern here being that most MLA events charge a fee but Margaret said that due to past discussion and decisions made by the PDP (professional development panel) that MLA does not charge for discussion group events - regardless of whether they are held in an online or physical location). In the end, Margaret decided that she'll get back to Joanne and let her know that she indeed has MLA's blessing, zero charge and all.

Recording the annual conference
Stuart recommended considering live streaming parts of the conference in 2013 using such technology like Ustream. I let him know that there is going to be a Ustream test on Dec. 10th with some folks, including myself, from across the state. So, the committee agreed to wait and see what the Dec. 10th event finds and to go from there.

The committee also selected preconferences and programs that at-first-read sound worthy of being recorded. Margaret is going to compile a list of the programs we selected so we can check for overlap in the schedule and finalize our first picks. MLA will need to get the presenters' consent for recording in advance so, the sooner we make our decisions the better.

We also talked about the need to increase the amount of video cameras we have access to at the conference. Right now we have 3 which greatly limits our recording capabilities. If anyone reading this has a proper video camera and tripod that you wouldn't mind letting the Tech Committee borrow for three days in May, will you please let me know?

Praise for photocopier subcommittee
Yes, there once was a photocopier subcommittee and they did a fantastic job of hooking the MLA office up with a brand spanking new super scanner/copier extraordinaire. Yay!

In the Works: Reader's Advisory for Children/YA/Teen/Juvenile Librarians

Go to 100 Scope Notes to view full image.

This morning Jeff Ridgeway and I met to talk about the possibility of coordinating efforts in order to schedule a day-long staff development event for the region centered around reader's advisory for children's/teen/YA/juvenile literature and below are the notes and ideas I gleaned from our discussion. Please chime in with feedback and ideas!

Format: We're looking at following a modified format of BCPL's Great Books events they once held back in the day where it might look something like this:

10am-11am - Keynote speaker (author or RA guru)

11am-11:30am - Q&A with keynote speaker

11:30am-12:30pm - lunch and time to catch up w/colleagues

12:30pm-1:30pm - Breakout Session: Hands-on RA activities

1:45pm-2:45pm - Breakout Session: Colleague show-n-tell

2:50pm-3pm - Evaluations / CEUs (up to 3 CEUs)

If there's interest among the library staff and the public school teachers in each of the three western counties and if I'm feeling especially ambitious, I can foresee a plan where we hold this event three days in a row - once in Washington county, once in Allegany county, and once in Garrett county. But this absolutely depends on interest and # of attendees because of course the cost would go up regardless of the keynote speaker and we definitely want to make sure ROI is high for something like this.

Content: I like the idea of using films to predict popular titles among youngins and if we can identify 3 top trends in this genre then we could identify either one author from one of those genres or one RA specialist to be our keynote. These top trends would then set the stage/framework for the hands-on breakout session at 12:30pm and the show-n-tell session at 1:45pm. Some current trends that we identified: fairy tales, distopian fiction, supernatural but not vampires. Which trends do you see on the horizon? It might also be to our benefit to invite local authors/RA specialists who fit the bill rather than looking nationally. Thoughts on this?

WENTK: (Who Else Needs to Know?) I'm currently working to pick the brains of my colleagues at the Eastern Shore Regional Library who recently hosted a public event featuring Jack Gantos.

 

But if you know of other libraries near or far who have done something similar, please let me know. This type of thing - content wise - finds me bit out of my element so, I'm happy to learn from those who have more experience! 

In addition, I have been in contact with Jamie Watson at BCPL to get more information about their Great Books events - they haven't had one of these in a couple of years but it's still good to have a contact to give me some perspective! These events were on a much grander scale than what I'm envisioning is possible for the west but it seems scalable enough.

As far as who else I might be roping in with me ... well, I definitely want to involve anyone from the MLA Reader's Advisory Interest Group - especially those who work in Allegany, Garrett, and Washington counties; any and all library staff from the western region who work closely with the youngins in our libraries; and possibly the public school teachers from those counties, as I know this group is near and dear to Jeff's heart since he works with them (at least the ones in Washington county) quite frequently. 

Did you know? There's a Children's Literature Centre at Frostburg State University? This just happens to be almost right in the middle of the western region! They often host literature festivals and author institutes. These would count toward certification so, if you're interested be sure to bookmark the site and talk with your staff development coordinator.

Stay tuned ...

WMRL Database Advisory Committee Meeting

This is my 2nd attempt at sharing the learning that occurs at and that which can be gleaned from reading about committee meetings. As always, discussion and questions are welcome.

Meeting held: Friday, July 27th at 10am-12:30pm

In attendance: Lisa McKenney (ACLS), Chris McGee (ACLS), Cathy Ashby (RELIB), Bonnie Winters (RELIB), Elizabeth Hulett (WCFL), Bill Taylor (WCFL), Joe Thompson (Chair, WMRL), and Julie Zamostny (note-taker, WMRL)

Presentation by Monica Wilson, Gale Databases Representative
Monica provided a 40 minute overview of some of the lesser-known features of the Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL). Below are some of the highlights.

• Unlimited simultaneous use; 24/7 access with authentication via library barcode
• Articles are downloadable to eReaders and tablets; Kindle users must know their Kindle email to take advantage of this feature
• MARC records are available so that GVRL titles display in the PAC = increases discoverability
• Articles can be read aloud in 19 languages
• Articles can be downloaded in MP3 format
• Articles can be viewed in enriched text and PDF
• Ability to download up to 50 titles at once
• New and improved Help Guides with text and video
• Can create a GVRL username and password so you can save articles in folders for retrieval at a later date
• Reminder: support.gale.com has a lot of helpful resources
• GVRL can create special collections from the admin site or by contacting tech support. For example, they can create a collection of DK titles that libraries can then display/link to on their websites.
• GVRL has an Access My Library app - still glitchy - use with caution. GPS authentication only, barcode authentication is not available through the Access My Library app.

 Review of December Meeting Minutes

• Page 2: NextReads. Group recommended that Joe get a quote from EBSCO that would separate out NextReads from the other subscriptions so we can tell how much we're actually paying for it. All three counties still use it to some extent so, the intent is to continue to subscribe unless the cost is prohibitive.
• LibraryThing has been officially dropped.
• Lisa McKenney's and Emily Zumbrun's names were misspelled.
• Minutes from the December meeting were approved.

Review of SAILOR Subscriptions

• SAILOR databases have not changed, the contract with EBSCO for MasterFILEexpires June 2013
• Committee would like to know when discussions will start regarding the renewal of the SAILOR contract

Review of WMRL Subscriptions

• eVanced scheduling software is now available and is being utilized by ACLS and WCFL. RELIB may work with ACLS to determine whether or not it is the right product for their needs.
• Mango Languages: Joe hasn't received an invoice yet but the intention is to renew
• OverDrive Advantage funds goes to buying more copies of titles already owned plus buying unique titles that are not already in the OverDrive database. Lisa McKenney and Carrie Plymire (WMRL) are responsible for purchasing Advantage titles for the region.
• MPERL has been unofficially dissolved and therefore we are now responsible for negotiating contracts for four databases: Gale package of Biography in Context/Literature Resource Center, Testing and Education Resource Center, ValueLine, and BrainFuse.
  
• Committee recommended that Joe get quotes from EBSCO for comparable products: Biography Reference Center and Literary Reference Center
• Compliance Suite expires in September. Julie Z, Jennifer Spriggs (ACLS), and Franny Lockely (WCFL) all use this software for librarian certification tracking. Intent is to renew.
• Dropped OCLC for Garrett County due to shared ILS

 FY2012 Database Usage Stats

• This is a little like combining apples and oranges because each database defines usage differently (i.e. page views, searches, downloads, etc.)
• If you want to see raw database usage data, Joe will email the committee his extremely detailed spreadsheet following today's meeting.
• Committee recommended that Joe see if he can separate out usage stats for NoveList Plus and NoveList Select Classic (this is what shows up automatically when you do a title search in the PAC). Committee would also like to look at pricing for each of these as separate entities.
• Committee would like to recommend that we strongly encourage our respective children's departments to promote Little Pim (language learning database for kiddos)

Reference USA Discussion
This was originally discussed as part of the FY2012 Database Usage Stats but since it is a recurring discussion I decided to give it a separate heading.

• ACLS and RELIB do not see the value when examining the Cost: Use ratio (at a regional level)
• WCFL staff rely on it heavily - and that is reflected in the usage stats (at the county level)
• ACLS and RELIB feel like the information in RefUSA can be found easily on the Internet.
• Cathy mentioned that, historically, the information contained within RefUSA has been out of date and inaccurate.
• WCFL cannot afford the database on their own
• ACLS and RELIB agree that it is not a matter of training that would help rectify the lack of usage in their counties.
• Can WMRL pay for just WCFL to have this database and have WCFL act as clearinghouse for all things Business that are received across all three counties, similar to The Foundation Center (Note: WMRL does not pay for the Foundation Center database, it was only mentioned in the meeting as a comparison). This model would be cause for more in-depth discussion because of the possibilty of setting a precedence. Joe feels awkward about this because he strongly feels that WMRL should be paying for resources that are available and of use across all three counties. 
• · There is precedent for resources to be used by one county heavily (examples: World Book by ACLS and ReferenceUSA by WCFL) or subscribed to only one county (OCLC for ACLS).
• Final settlement: committee agrees to keep paying for it but it will continue to be a point of discussion for this committee

TRIALS Follow-Up

• Access News: not interested
• Zinio: not interested until it's iPad compatible
• Universal Class: not interested, do not consider for 2 years
• Dzanc Books: not interested, but Joe appreciates that this independent publishers is expressing interest in working with libraries.
• Proquest Historical Newspapers: not interested, do not consider for 2 years
• Pronunciator: not interested, do not consider for 2 years
• Muzzy: not interested
• Axis360: not interested
• 3M ebooks: not interested until more information is available from BCPL (they're BETA testers)
• Hoopla: there is interest around this; look at it after the Fall 2012 release

Committee is not looking to add anything new at this time be we'll consider any left over money to be used to enhance OverDrive or to purchase a new product later if we identify one.

Committee would like to consider using any leftover funds to promote the databases. This will be an agenda item at the next Spring meeting.

Newly formed MLC: Maryland Library Consortium. Joe might have to provide more information on this. The group's target is databases but Memorandum of Understanding to participate does not express a limitation on only databases. WMRL is participating.

GVRL Weeding

• WCFL is purchasing their own GVRL ebook titles and they're happy to share with the rest of the group even though WMRL is not paying for region-wide access
• Committee would like Joe to get quote from Gale regarding a special DK package and we want to know what the age of the titles is, then we'll decide if we want to trial. It was recommended that we talk with Harford County - they already have something comparable in place.
• Joe will make his recommendations to the group as to which titles he thinks should be withdrawn. 
• In the van on the way home, Joe and Elizabeth decided that Elizabeth would take on this task instead.
• We still want to receive the MARC records of the titles that are relevant.Lisa also said that ACLS can obtain MARC records for database subscriptions via OCLC.

 Discovery Services

• Joe asks that the committee keep these services/products in mind when we're at conferences, etc. They aren't a top priority but he foresees possible interest in them in the future. A one point-for-search could increase usage of the online subscriptions.

End of Meeting

• Joe will Doodle the committee to determine the next 2 dates of meetings.