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

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.

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

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

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:

1. 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. ;-)
   
2. 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

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

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.