Introduction to Homelessness Resources - Webinar Recording available

Topic: Introduction to Homelessness Resources
Date: Apr 29, 2021 09:46 AM Eastern Time

Speakers:  Michael Stafford and Jessi Stevens, Mayor's Office of Homeless Services

Below is the link for the program we ran this morning.  Please note that the beginning of the recording is missing, but it picks up at the end of Michael's introduction.

https://marylandlibraries.zoom.us/rec/share/pNOTNtrPpfYzvgHoK5qaxzr4UzQxJFL0bEobnVVUruf80zKgKybj9QuZiuJUAAT7.nOAD7N1Iiz62BdC9 

Passcode: *0i7$3Xq

The resources that go with this program are now available under the new Resources for Staff and Customers page of the blog.

Also, the transcription was done by auto-transcript, so try not to laugh too hard - Lisa

Black Lives Matter: Community Read - free without wait-lists or holds

I thought this might be helpful for our staff assisting customers or just wanting resources for themselves.

From Overdrive:

Knowing that our library partners want to provide antiracism and social justice titles to their patrons, we are launching a new program called Black Lives Matter: Community Read. The titles included in our Black Lives Matter: Community Read program are focused on #ownvoices and are intended to help patrons read, listen, learn and grow as they expand their knowledge of race relations. Donated by OverDrive, titles will be made available to United States and Canada libraries at no cost and patrons will be able to check these books out without waitlists or holds.  

Blackhttps://company.overdrive.com/2020/06/30/now-available-free-to-libraries-without-waitlists-or-holds-black-lives-matter-titles-to-read-listen-learn-and-grow/

The titles included in Black Lives Matter: Community Read are provided at no cost to your library and you will be able to use these like any other OverDrive titles for curation or promotion in various reading rooms, featured lists, and other programs at your discretion. Be sure to also visit the Resource Center to get a marketing kit that you can use to promote these titles to your community.

ALA Annual - Reflections on Diversity

The 2019 American Library Association Conference offered many opportunities to reflect on diversity, and to find ways to include diverse elements of the US population in everything we do.

Here is a taste of two of the sessions I attended:

“Muslims in Story” – Ms. Sadaf Siddique, coauthor of the book Muslims in Story: Expanding Multicultural Understanding through Children’s and Young Adult Literature, talked about the intent and the content of the book. This book is a collection of resources and curated booklists that will help educators expose their audience to positive images of Muslims.

A powerful way to counter bias is for Muslims (or anybody else who is the victim of prejudice) to tell their own story through actual personal experiences. The book’s purpose is to show commonality. It is not so much about religion. It is about the people and how diverse they are. The books that the authors included in their booklists have a common quality. They are culturally authentic and they depict positive images that will make Muslim children feel proud of being Muslims.

Muslims in Story includes a thematic framework to use throughout the school year. Some of the themes featured in the book are: Historical presence of Muslims in America, Muslim kids and heroes, Fasting traditions among the various Muslims in the world, Similarities between religions, Respect and tolerance between people, Knowledge overcomes everything. Each story comes with complete lesson plans and extra resources.

For more details, read an Interview with Sadaf Siddique and Gauri Manglik

“Ready to Learn: Public Media and Library Partnership for Early Science and Literacy Learning” – The “Ready to Learn (RTL)” initiative’s “goal is to promote early learning and school readiness, with an emphasis on supporting children from low-income, underserved communities.” PBS (Public Broadcast Service) and their librarian partners from one library in Kentucky, and the other one in Tennessee shared their successes and failures in offering the Family Learning Community workshops.  

These workshops are usually divided into 4 weekly sessions, but they can be adjusted to be a standalone program. Each session is composed of 4 parts:

EAT: Participants eat a meal together and get to know each other

EXPLORE: Hands-on explorations and discussions in groups (inter-family connections)

MAKE: Families work together on their own projects

SHARE: Participants share their projects with the other families, and give feedback to each other.

Most programs and resources necessary to set up such workshops are available for free to all educators at PBS Learning Media.  The website is a treasure trove of information!

Sylvie Merlier-Rowen
Children's Department, CEN

MLA/DLA 2016 Conference Notes - "Legal Resources for Public Librarians"

I took an informative course called "Legal Resources Training for Public Librarians." Many of the poor and indigent come to the public library looking for legal information. Often they expect us to know the answers to the legal questions they seek. As librarians, we cannot give legal advice, but we should be able to provide good resources. Please keep in mind that there is a misperception that the poor have access to free representation in court; this is only true in regards to criminal matters, not civil. It is our duty to help them as best we can.

With that in mind, here are some good online sources:

• Maryland Courts.  mdcourts.gov.   Best starting place.
• The Maryland People's Law Library.  peoples-law.org.  Think "Wikipedia" for Maryland law - but maintained by the Maryland State Law Library. Try the "Get Help" link.
• Google Scholar.  scholar.google.com   Best for finding cases nationwide and for legal articles.
• Maryland State Bar Association Lawyer Referral Services.   msba.org/public/lawyer-referral.aspx    For finding a lawyer.
• Code of Maryland (aka Michie's)  https://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/mdcode/  In case you don't have it in print at your location.
• Maryland Legal Aid. http://www.mdlab.org/   Private, non-profit law firm providing free legal services to low-income people statewide.
• Family Law Assistance. http://mdcourts.gov/family/familylawassistance.html    Family Services Programs & Self-Help Centers

Morgan Stanton
Edmondson Avenue Branch

MLA/DLA 2016 Conference Notes - Pratt Staff Share Knowledge at MLA

The Library had a strong presence at this year's MLA/DLA conference.  Not only did we have 25 attendees, but our staff participated in a number of presentation and panel discussions. 

Aryn Dagermanjian, Ray Cruitt, and Jeanne Lauber presented “Connecting Resources: Becoming a Link to Local Industries.”  

Linda Thompkins-Baldwin participated in the session on "Digital Maryland and Digital Partnerships -- Developing Collaborative Digital Collection."

Erin Kelly was on the panel for "Improving Library Services for Our Homeless Patrons (and Those Facing Housing Crises)."

Valerie Diamond shared her "De-Stress with Desk Yoga" program with MLA attendees.

Kaitlin Peterson connected with her former colleagues at Frederick County Public Libraries for  "From Traditional to Transformed: An Interactive All Ages Summer Reading Program for Any Community." 

Congratulations to all the staff who presented at the conference this year!

More from MLA/DLA Annual - Documenting the Lives of Veterans

MLA/DLA Annual Conference

May 6-8, 2015

Documenting the Lives of Maryland Veterans: How to Provide Access

Mary Mannix - Maryland Room Manager, Frederick County Public Libraries, Melissa VanSchaick and
Kathryn Ryberg - Practicum Students, Jill Craig - Digitization Librarian, Western MD Regional Library

The librarians of Western Maryland presented nontraditional resources to use with researchers. 1) Local smaller newspapers published information about local people. The articles are much more detailed than national newspapers. 2) Scrapbooks as a resource. These are archival (usually) and held by local libraries or genealogical societies. 3) Local Oral History Projects: The Oral history project in Western Maryland has been partnered with Library of Congress’s Veterans history project. For the oral history project, interviews were recorded on DVD. The information in the DVDs needed to be more ‘discoverable’. 

The FCPL’s interns created subject rich summaries of each interview (Full transcripts would take too long to create). The summaries in turn were added to the catalog with an original cataloging record. Subject headings (650 fields) and full text searching will make it easier for researchers to find information by name and by topic. The oral histories included local ‘Rosie the Riverter’ as well. Women working in the Fairchild plant in Hagerstown were interviewed for an oral history project in 2004. The interviews, photographs and memorabilia are available at Western Maryland’s Historical Library (WHILBR).   Excellent presentation and very useful information.

Sarah Kuperman

Collection Management

MLA/DLA Annual Conference - More Great Sessions

Maryland Library Association/Delaware Library Association 2015 Conference

May 6-8, 2015

 “Now More Than Ever: Offender Workforce was an especially useful workshop.  At Enoch Pratt we work with ex-offenders fairly often, and particularly in the Job and Career Information Center.  We heard about the Offender Workforce Development Training from the National Institute of Corrections.  The workshop addressed the question: What can libraries do to assist ex-offenders?  Some answers:  book discussions, educate and encourage lifelong learning, provide career/job centers, create specific programs for them, and provide links to various community services.

Some useful tools included:

Maryland Community Service Locator:  http://www.mdcsl.org/search.html

A jobseeker site: http://www.americasjobexchange.com

“MLA Legislative Update Plus Engage Software taught me about the legislative process at the state level, particularly the budget. We learned about advocating for libraries at the state and federal level. The Engage software makes it easy for people to support their libraries. There is a link on the Maryland Library Association website under “Engage and Advocacy Resources” or at:  http://cqrcengage.com/alamd/

 An important point one of the presenters made was that we should encourage customers, family, friends, neighbors and any citizens who support libraries to speak up. They can call, go online, or write to tell their elected officials the importance of libraries and their services.

Career Development in the Libraries was directly applicable with our library customers in the Job & Career Information Center, and the information can be shared with the branch staff also.  Tips included:        

•  When uploading a resume to an online application, a PLAIN TEXT document is best.
• O*NET is good for language to use on resumes (The career counselor mentioned this too, and we already had it on the Jobseekers Toolkit website)
• LinkedIn is a good tool for networking when job searching. (Which we know but sometimes forget to mention to customers.)
• The importance of listening before giving information (Librarians tend want to find and offer information and sometimes skip the first step of really listening.)
• If using Indeed to search, try to go directly to the company’s website to apply.

Mindful Leadership  with Patty Sundberg  and James Kelly provided useful information for all employees, even those who  aren’t supervisors.

The benefits of emotional intelligence in the workplace are numerous: better task performance and fewer cognitive failures, less emotional exhaustion , and  greater job satisfaction. The RAIN  technique can be used before the amygdala in the brain hijacks us:   Recognize what’s going on, Allow experience to be just what it is, Investigate with kindness, and Natural awareness which comes from not identifying with the experience (keeping it at arm’s length).   Focused attend and open monitoring are important for self-regulation.   We practiced active listening without speaking.

Recommended books:

Flow : the psychology of optimal experience  by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Drive by Dan Pink

Finding the Space to Lead: a practical guide to mindful leadership by Janice Marturano.

Emotional intelligence  Daniel Goleman.

Jeanne Lauber

Workforce Development Librarian

Enoch Pratt Free Library/State Library Resource Center

Understanding and Working with Patrons from Poverty

The "Framework for Understanding and Working with Patrons from Poverty" class on 3/16/15 was a huge success. If you did not attend the class, you missed a great workshop on understanding class differences and discussions about how to provide better services and relationships with our communities.  Bethanie Tucker led the class through the hidden rules and language that separates economic classes and helped the attendees to recognize their own biases.

Reactions from the attendees were overwhelmingly positive, and many were interested in immediately trying some of the strategies that were discussed in class.  One attendee left "tired but saturated" with helpful information and another was disappointed that there wasn't time to cover all the materials in the handout.  There was a request for the followup program and a suggestion that all supervisors should attend this training.  Most attendees learned to be wary of assumptions and expectations and saw this as the start of an ongoing project to connect customers with resources.

The book that was mentioned in class is owned by the library and is "A Framework for Understanding Poverty" by Ruby K. Payne (SSH Department  HV4045 .P39 1998Q).