Since the training, I have listed
out all staff goals and plan to review them quarterly. I hope to implement a new monthly special
activity sheet that includes a section where goals are listed, so that
employees will be reminded of their goals on a monthly basis. An employee’s
review is coming up in July so I hope to practice some of the new techniques I
have learned, such as: filling out the review with the employee, choosing goals
to help them exceed current performance, and using effective words in the
review.
Friday, June 21, 2013
Conducting Effective Performance Reviews
Andre
Jones was an effective speaker presenting on the topic of performance
reviews. The presentation gave me a lot
to think about in terms of how we facilitate our reviews at the branch. The branches are already in the process of
revamping our evaluations so this training could not have come at a better
time. It was also refreshing to know
that I was already ahead of the game when it came to completing reviews as
we’ve already written branch expectations, went over job descriptions,
etc.
MLA Conference
While attending MLA, I attended the trainings listed
below. If you want more information,
please contact me and I would love to talk more about them (mfoltz@washcolibrary.org).
-
FOCUS ON GENRES – We learned how to narrow down
titles into sub-genres (not just a mystery but a cozy mystery). The trainers provided websites for Reader’s
Advisory that could be very useful, Bill Taylor, wrote a wonderful blog post on
this topic already. Please refer to Bill’s entry for more information. I hope to apply my new genre knowledge to RA
services.
-
SCVNGR Hunt – The presenters went over how to
set up a scavenger hunt through the SCVNGR program. They demonstrated how it can be used by
planning a SCVNGR hunt that we could do in the conference center. They liked the app but it had limitations:
only 5 spots could be used per SCVNGR (free version) and the statistics were
unreliable. They suggested other
scavenger hunt apps that could be used but there wasn’t a clear leader
scavenger hunt apps, it’s whichever app would work best for your
situation. Although I wouldn’t run this
app for a scavenger hunt, I learned that there are apps out there to help
facilitate these adventures.
-
Speed Mentoring – I got to talk with other
librarians about their backgrounds and was given advice on my career. I purposely chose to mingle with other branch
managers but they were in larger systems so our experiences weren’t very comparable. I did benefit from this training my making
new contacts and being inspired to keep searching for a mentor.
-
STEM Discovery Programming – This session was
split into 4 stations: (1) Scribbler machine, (2) Makey Makey, (3) Tweens/Teens
programming, and (4) Children’s programming.
I got to play with a Makey Makey, I learned from Jeff that we have these
in the system. I LOVED the scribbler
machine, you can program it to move and then put a pen in the top so kids can
use it to draw shapes on the floor. I
could see my teens at Boonsboro loving this! (http://www.parallax.com/tabid/455/Default.aspx) The Tweens/Teens program focused on science
with, which seemed to me, science fair projects that were cheap & easy for
kids to do. (I have a handout if anyone
is interested!) The Children’s programming station was very basics on things we
do now – reading children’s book and then having hands on
learning/counting/etc. I’ve been looking
into these ideas for STEM programming since I have returned from the
conference.
-
Mad about Libraries – the founder of Mad
magazine talked about censorship in libraries.
This presentation was an open discussion of how different systems deal
with censorship issues – graphic novels, internet usage, etc. It was interesting to hear other’s opinions on
these issues.
-
Radical Customer Service – was a big
conversation regarding what MD libraries are doing to provide great customer
service. It was nice to hear what other
counties were (and were not) doing in customer service and why. I learned from
the training to keep questioning “Why” when given (or taken) a no answer from
anyone.
-
Graphic Novel collection building – was a local
comic book shop owner who came in and presented a history of comic
books/graphic novels, what we should have in stock, and why graphic novels are
important. The handouts from this presentation were very useful (I’ve already
lent the notes to another staff member but if you want to see them, please let
me know.) I hope to be able to look into graphic collections more and recommend
some titles. I hope that if WCFL develops an adult graphic
novel collection that I will be a resource for them. Although, I still need
more knowledge in this area as it is ALL new to me.
-
The closing luncheon was a presentation called
Access Schmaccess by Eli Neiburger. He was a very effective presenter and had
my attention the entire time. His longer
presentation is available online (I hope to have time to watch it again - http://webcast.gigtv.com.au/Mediasite/Play/1e065b11e6924a0a908cebb76d7917c71d
). His view of the futures of libraries
is that we will be the center of the community and evolve to offer things
(telescopes, etc.) and not just books.
He thought libraries should become places where people create (Makers
Spaces??) their own content (sound studios, movies, etc.). He seems to be an up and coming voice in the
library world so it’s beneficial to be aware of his message.
Friday, June 7, 2013
Conducting Effective Performance Reviews
I attended Andre Jones workshop on Conducting Effective Performance Reviews.
I thought Andre Jones did an excellent job explaining and demonstrating how to write and deliver a performance review. I feel as though following his guidelines, I will be able to give a performance appraisal that will really reflect my co-workers performance.
I thought Andre Jones did an excellent job explaining and demonstrating how to write and deliver a performance review. I feel as though following his guidelines, I will be able to give a performance appraisal that will really reflect my co-workers performance.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Performance Evaluations, presented by Andre Jones (5/20/13)
I thoroughly enjoyed this presentation—I found Mr. Jones using WCFL's evaluation form and scoring system practical and quite
useful. I, too, found the suggestion of
making quarterly check-ins a habit good advice.
If nothing else was impressed upon me during the
presentation, it was that solid documentation is the friend of both the giver
and receiver of a performance review. Preparing throughout the year by noting positive and negative employee conduct can cast a better light on any “burning images”
that may unfairly temper our judgment. I feel I benefited greatly from this training and gained some real insight on the evaluation process.
Monday, June 3, 2013
MD Polaris Users Group Meeting
 |
| http://www.polarisusersgroup.org/ |
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:
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.
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
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
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!
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