Professional Development Opportunities

All first-year college students are not the same—far from it actually! Starting with the understanding of the unique backgrounds of each student is necessary for developing effective instruction. At the same time, if you know your student body, there are research and trends that can be useful in the development of information literacy lessons.

In this one-hour webinar, information literacy expert Lauren Hays, will introduce attendees to pedagogical methods that recognize the differences of each learner. She will also share research on first-year college students and explain how the findings from the research can be applied in information literacy instruction. Attendees will leave the session with practical ideas for developing information literacy lessons for first-year college students.

Higher education institutions are increasingly recognizing the value of open educational resources (OER) - or resources that are licensed to allow free access, use, adaptation, and redistribution - as OER eliminate textbook costs, contribute to student success, and allow for pedagogical innovation. Academic libraries often initiate and/or lead OER initiatives, however, OER intersect with and impact many other stakeholders across campus. It is important for OER leaders to understand the perspectives of these stakeholders, including students, instructors, instructional designers, the bookstore, administrators, and more. With an understanding of multiple perspectives around OER, academic libraries can generate buy-in, collaborate with campus partners, and develop broader support for the OER initiative. Attendees will engage with multiple stakeholder perspectives, consider how these perspectives are influenced by their specific institutional context, and develop strategies for collaborating with campus partners. While some background on OER will be covered, this session is intended for librarians that already have a working knowledge of how OER are defined and why they are important.

Digitization can create much broader access to collections and be a great asset to researchers and individuals interested in using your collections without coming to your institution, but how do you get the word out about all of your digitized content? This class will cover methods for promoting collections to users, discuss case studies from institutions that have successfully promoted their digital collections, and help participants create their own outreach strategies around digital projects.

Emotionally intelligent libraries are filled with leaders who lead by example and have a healthy, positive work environment. This webinar will describe how everyone in a library – up and down the organizational chart – can contribute to creating an emotionally intelligent culture in their library. Libraries and organizations with a strong collective emotional intelligence communicate better, deal with difficult situations more easily, more effectively manage their emotions, and have an open environment conducive to the healthy exchange of ideas.

Library and Community wellness programs help promote productivity and positive work culture that can having lasting impacts. We will look at trends and strategies for incorporating and promoting positive self-care and healthy habits in your library environment. Learn about tools to make any new or renewed wellness initiative fun and engaging. Look at ways to prioritize health in the libraries for the new year.

Cemetery Searching may seem morbid; yet cemeteries, headstones, and their corresponding records contain a wealth of information about ancestors and a location's most prominent citizens. This workshop will show participants the types of information found when researching cemeteries, how to locate burial records, and point researchers towards best practices in cemetery research for genealogical and local history research.

One of the toughest tasks expected of library managers and leaders is to make good decisions. Whether the stakes are small or significant, getting the decision right will enable library workers to make the best possible use of library resources for great service delivery. Effective leaders decide within reasonable timeframes, avoid analysis paralysis and achieve fair, practical resolutions. This two-hour webinar introduces participants to the art of decision making through the exploration of time-tested approaches to making thoughtful, service-centric decisions.

Podcasts. Maybe you are a devotee, listening to shows like Serial or Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History. Maybe you’ve never listened, but you are peripherally aware of the fact that 44% of Americans have listened to a podcast in their lifetimes, and 20% listen to shows each week. Have you ever considered how your institution can use podcasts as a means to engage your community, spread the word about your unique collections, and tell your compelling stories? Museums, libraries, and other cultural heritage institutions can create podcasts that showcase their own special stories and collections. Podcasts candrive interest, engagement, and support. . Join presenter Heather Teysko to learn the basic steps to creating a podcast including basic hosting and editing options, and explore the many ways you can use audio to increase engagement in your community.

This class will provide a broad overview of quantitative methods and the focus will be on understanding terminology and concepts used by quantitative researchers. We’ll discuss some of the most commonly used statistical tests, outlining the types of research questions they address and the basic mechanics of the tests. T-test, correlation, chi-square test of independence and regression will be briefly explained. Along the way we’ll touch upon variables, level of analysis and the role of theory in quantitative methodology. This course is accessible to those without a math background as it focuses on providing a broad overview of quantitative methods concepts.

The effective management and use of organizational records is necessary and remains a key objective of recordkeeping professionals. This class serves as an introduction for archivists to the management and systematic control of modern records in all media formats. This class is designed to provide an overview of the theoretical principles, methodologies and practical administration of a records/information management program. The professional responsibilities of a records manager working in today’s business, government, academic and nonprofit environments will be examined as well as the fundamental functions and proficiencies of the profession. The role and nature of recordkeeping strategies, techniques, and technologies will be explored. Topics include the nature of records, history of recordkeeping; file/classification/taxonomy management, records surveys/inventories; retention and disposition scheduling, legal and policy matters, records storage and access; industry standards; and business continuity planning. The class also examines emerging technology trends and their impact on the records that archival repositories may acquire.

Library projects involving Wikidata are becoming increasingly common, as library staff are realizing how the power of Wikidata can be harnessed to enhance user discovery. Wikidata is a freely available editable knowledge base for linked data. Attend this session to find out how libraries are using Wikidata and learn the basics of how to edit and enhance Wikidata information.

This four-hour class, which will be offered online in two-hour increments, focuses on preparing for and writing grants for digitization and/or preservation projects. The class covers the grant writing process from start to finish. Starting with finding funding opportunities, moving on to writing a proposal, through the grant review process, and finally covers grants administration and promoting grant-funded projects. The class also addresses collaborating on grant projects. General grant writing information can be applied to grant opportunities from a range of different funding agencies, but the focus of examples given in the class is on the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), since they are major funders for a range of institutions.

Canva is a popular platform for creating flyers, posters, presentations and more. Join us to learn some quick and easy tips for utilizing the best new content from Canva. Get ideas for making graphics for your programs, websites, emails and social media marketing.

Arrowhead or projectile point? Inches or centimeters? Circa or ca.? If you’ve ever torn your hair out about data inconsistency across your collections management system, creating a cataloging manual is a great first step toward gaining better intellectual control over your art, artifact, and object collections.

We’ll start with the why, helping you articulate to colleagues and leadership how a cataloging manual will improve things for everyone. Next we’ll explore data structure, value, and content standards - helping you decide which information to capture, how to format it, and what sources to use. Finally, we’ll look at formatting - what’s the best way to get your information across so that catalogers can easily find it and use it? Resource lists and sample manuals will be provided for all attendees.

Employees and managers are often frustrated with the actions or inactions of people in their organization, and they do not know how to effect the desired changes. During this webinar participants will learn a few tips and techniques that all employees can use to improve communication and decision-making at any level in the organization. The methods presented in this webinar will not be a “cure-all” to improve every conflict, but you will learn some ways to interact more effectively in difficult situations with the employees you manage or supervisors who manage you.

This 1.5 hour session will provide a hands-on overview of tools that extract, embed and monitor metadata into digital preservation-quality files. The class will begin with tools that can extract technical metadata from digital files and export them into XML formats. After that, the class will go through the installation and basic implementation of embedded metadata tools for both still image and audiovisual files. Finally, the class will end with tools that can be used to perform quality control on metadata.

Graphic novels are always trending and highly anticipated by readers of all ages. Join us for an hour of trends and new titles in Graphic novels for your readers. We'll discuss ways to promote Graphic Novels and programs through your library.

Have you ever tried to write a how-to manual or other documentation for your library’s processes? Have you gotten overwhelmed trying to figure out where to start, or simply too busy keeping up with your day-to-day work to take a step back and document it?

While most of us know that documentation is crucial to continuity and sustainability of processes in library work, it's still a very easy thing to mentally set aside for a "slow period" that never comes, or write off altogether as too hard. Lessons from the field of technical writing can help us prioritize these important tasks. Though most librarians are not trained technical writers, we can incorporate key tips from technical writers into our work to make our documentation creation easier and more useful.

Poetry and poetry collections about always be a core collection for any library. We'll look at some new voices and names in poetry as well as long time favorites. Get ready for April's National Poetry Month ahead of time as we focus on ways to use poetry to spark community conversations and engagements. We will celebrate poetry for all ages in libraries - from reading it, writing and presenting.