Professional Development Opportunities

This four-hour online class is designed to help institutions identify common photographic processes and develop sensible preservation strategies for these materials.

Did you know that there are many free IIIF-based tools that can be used by instructors and to incorporate primary resources into teaching and research? Librarians and teachers can use these tools to create engaging online or in-person learning experiences using digital primary resources.

Application profiles for metadata can provide structure for library data, both for human users and machines. Whether you are working with non-MARC metadata for digital items, or thinking about creating a local subset of RDA elements for more traditional cataloging, knowing how application profiles work can help a lot when it comes to streamlining metadata production. Attend this session to find out what application profiles are, how they can help library data, and how you can easily get started creating your own.

With the hustle and bustle of libraries as community hubs, how can staff possibly create a safer space while also opening the doors to everyone? Is it possible to improve safety while still making your library welcoming and functional? In a word, "yes!"

Does your institution have unique digital objects, but lack a long-term program for digital preservation? Data stored outside of a preservation-specific environment is often unmonitored, misplaced, or poorly tracked, all of which leaves it at a high risk of loss. A well-timed and carefully written business case can help you advocate for the funding needed to implement sustainable digital preservation at your institution.

This class will cover the steps to creating a persuasive business case for a digital preservation program. We will discuss creating a business case to persuade colleagues, administrators, a board, or others that digital preservation is important and should be prioritized over other competing priorities. Worksheets will be provided to help attendees take what they have learned and develop a business case for expanding digital preservation at their organization.

Participants will learn about starting a digitization program. The first session covers the basics of project planning, equipment selection, digitization preparation, care and during digitization. The second session covers technical information relevant to getting started with digitization, such as metadata, file format selection, compression, and more. The class also covers quality control, access, and touches upon basic concepts of digital preservation as relevant to small institutions planning digital projects.

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, went into enforcement in May 2018. The spring and summer of 2018 saw a flurry of activity as businesses, including library vendors, worked to update their privacy statements and policies to reflect the requirements. Given all that has happened since 2018, including Britain’s exit from the European Union and new worries around data security and the COVID-19 pandemic, it is an important time to revisit what the GDPR means for libraries. This session will cover the basic requirements of the GDPR, how it affects libraries in non-EU countries, and what libraries need to be doing and reviewing to ensure they can work with their legal representation to be compliant.

This session will be dedicated to reviewing the methodology and the results of the LYRASIS 2020 DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) Survey, concluded in May 2020. The goal of the survey was to map the landscape of DEI policies and initiatives in GLAM institutions across the United States. The webinar will discuss the three sections of the survey covering three different areas: (1) policy/infrastructure, (2) recruiting, training and retaining a diverse staff, and (3) maintaining/building diverse collections.

Drones are quickly becoming part of everyday life. More and more companies are finding ways to use drones to improve their services and delivery. From the local hospital or university campus to your neighbor's backyard, drones are making a scene. What are implications for drones in libraries? Learn about the innovative way that libraries are using drones in programs and services. Consider ways to bring drones into your library.

Web design, in the form of creating online research guides, has become a big part of many librarians’ jobs, but we’re rarely taught how to do it well. Most of us learn the nuts and bolts of how to make guides, without learning the principles of how to make them usable — the simple techniques of visual and textual design that can help us create guides that users will understand more easily, and stick around to use.

Ransomware (software that blocks access to systems until money is paid to the attacker) can be disruptive and expensive. For some libraries it can be catastrophic, though it doesn’t have to be. Planning and preparation are key to surviving a ransomware attack.

This presentation will focus on cybersecurity steps that can help libraries protect their systems from ransomware. The instructor will walk participants through steps to take at their institutions to ensure that the organization can survive a ransomware attack. The class will cover plans, tools, and techniques that can help lower the risk of a ransomware attack, regardless of your budget.

Writing a disaster plan is a great step towards improving your cultural heritage institution’s response to a disaster, but practicing your disaster plan is a crucial part of ensuring everyone involved is prepared to execute the plan in a disaster. A tabletop exercise, where plan stakeholders verbally walk through executing the plan in a hypothetical disaster scenario, can help institutions practice their plan in a low-stress, low-stakes environment. After the exercise, the institution improves their plan and can respond more effectively in a real disaster. Tabletop exercises are common in the emergency management field, but not used as frequently by cultural heritage institutions, so this session aims to provide cultural heritage professionals with the background and tools you need to run your own tabletop exercise. The session will cover more details of what a tabletop exercise is, how to plan and run a tabletop exercise, and how it can improve your institution’s disaster plan.

Library Technology is not new, but the world of our tools is changing with astonishing speed. Every library and information center will face moments when our basic operations, and the meeting of our users’ needs, demands a re-assessment of our basic technology. Rather than just being a moment of fear, the process of selecting and acquiring new technology can instead be a time of growth and learning about our own institution, and about our users.

This presentation will take participants through the process of selecting an ILS, with an emphasis on making the experience practical and successful. We will review the basic components and functions of the complete ILS, explore the vendor landscape, and consider some of the various options available including a public-facing Discovery Layer, a complete Library Services Platform to integrate with e-resources, and even open-source options.

This session will provide an overview of basic concepts and definitions in web archiving, and then will demonstrate some tools that can be used in web archiving. Instructors will cover the basics of what the WARC (Web ARChive) format is and how it can be created and viewed, as well as other important concepts and terms in web archiving. Instructors will also demonstrate tools and discuss how they can be incorporated into a larger web archiving strategy at cultural heritage institutions. Tools covered will include WebRecorder, the Wayback machine, and WARCreate. Most tools demonstrated in the class will be freely available so they can be used after the class at no further cost to the institutions, but the class will also include discussion of paid alternatives for archiving web content.

This class will provide an overview of several core data management frameworks, adapted for use in a cultural heritage collections environment, including the Data Management Body of Knowledge and the emerging Datapractices.org project. Attendees will gain an understanding of what good data management is, learn how to evaluate current data management practices within their own organizations, and take the first steps toward creating a data management plan.

Digital projects usually require some amount of copyright assessment. This session introduces the major considerations about copyright and rights statements when digitizing collections: What is copyright? How does copyright affect decision-making? Participants will learn about developing a copyright approach for their institution. The session will also include tools and resources to use for evaluating copyright and its role in digitization projects.

Are you an innovator? Are you taking challenges head on and adapting? Are you establishing, retooling, or redefining programs and initiatives in your organization? Are you creating new services or content and delivering in new and unique ways? We want to hear from you.

Join us on September 23, 2020 for "Like the Ceiling Can’t Hold Us: Sharing Innovations in Libraries"

Share your innovations in reference, technology & content. This Amigos Library Services online conference will explore ways that library organizations and library professionals are innovating services, programs and content in the face of adversity and constant change.

As teams have shifted remotely in response to COVID-19, managers and leaders accustomed to working with their teams face to face have shifted to new ways of working. This webinar will provide tips for those new to managing remote workers on effectively managing teams in a virtual environment.

The presenters will cover skills to improve virtual communication, manage projects remotely, and consider productivity and burnout in a virtual environment. The webinar will provide an opportunity for managers of remote teams to reflect on the communication systems and policies they set up in responding to COVID-19, assess whether they are still working, and improve modes of communication and collaboration as teams continue to work remotely or in hybrid remote and in-person environments.

Cultural heritage institutions often choose to outsource digitization of audiovisual materials to work with vendors that have the equipment and expertise required for a wide range of audio, video, and motion picture film formats. Outsourcing still requires significant work on the part of the institution, such as selecting appropriate standards to follow for file formats and metadata. Institutions must also physically prepare items for shipment, prepare metadata for items being digitized, and implement quality control procedures to ensure the quality and accuracy of digitized content.

Have you found yourself responsible for cataloging with no previous experience? Is "cataloger" yet another cap to be added to your collection of the many hats you wear at your library? Fret not – we have (some of) the answers you didn't even know you needed. Attend this session to learn about free tools to innovate your cataloging process, make your life easier, and get your library's materials cataloged and in the hands of your patrons.

This two-part webinar will introduce participants to podcasting, a medium defined by a complex "systems ecosystem" consisting of digital audio files (namely WAVs and MP3s), distribution mechanisms (RSS feeds) and platforms providing services to both podcasters and listeners. In part one of the webinar, PTP will step through the curriculum devised by the PTP team, briefly go over the history of the development of podcast technology, and "prove" that some of the earliest podcasts have, in fact, disappeared. Part two will focus on RSS technology and how PTP devised their own homegrown mechanism to preserve their own podcast and website beyond their grant funding. We will end with providing some examples of current institutional podcast collecting efforts, and discuss how participants might envision incorporating elements of the PTP curriculum into what they do at their respective GLAM institution or organization.