Program Resource - BINGO card generator

 I found this useful resource online:  https://myfreebingocards.com/bingo-card-generator

This would be great for a public program, or maybe as a scavenger hunt list?  I've seen videos on YouTube where they do hunts in the Disney properties using a card like this, so maybe you could design one for your branch or department?  

This would also be a good tool for training programs, as you could select your main topics as squares and ensuring that your audience would be listening for those concepts.

Here is one I did quickly on the theme of leadership:

There are various styles of card and the program can randomly generate the locations of the words.

This might also be a useful tool for meetings or group discussions.

New email for program announcements -- epfl.classes@prattlibrary.org

 As SD&T continues to expand our online/webinar/virtual training options, it seems our email output is becoming an issue.  To help mitigate this problem, SD&T collaborated with the Systems department to create a new email for offering these non-Pratt training opportunities.

The new email is epfl.classes@prattlibrary.org, and you now receive program and webinar announcements from this email.  This is also the place to send program announcements for us to share with the staff.  Registration requests, funding paperwork, and any other questions still go to me or to the training email as usual.

We are also trying to put the announcements in a digest form, so that you receive one email sent once a week rather than one email for each announcement.  This should make it easier to differentiate important SD&T announcements and internal programs from general course announcements and find the program information that is of interest to you.  

SD&T will continue to send individual emails for time-sensitive events, conference deadlines, and for programs suitable to age-specialists and other groups.  

I hope this makes it easier for you to find interesting and helpful programs and webinars.

Lisa

Continuing Education Hours for Staff Presented Programs

If your department or office is providing training to other staff members I wanted to remind you of a few things.

Any training that offers continuing education hours for staff needs to be approved by SD&T for those hours to count for r-certification.

Just send me a draft of your CEU form before your program and I'll check that it meets state requirements.  Forms not meeting the requirements will be discarded when they are received by our office even if staff have completed the program.

Actually, if everyone remembers to do this it cancels out the other things I wanted to mention.  Just be sure that I get a look at your forms before you send them out to participants.  Thanks.

Lisa

Librarians ARE Wikipedians

The Wiki Scholars Program was highlighted by Staff Development & Training in Fall 2018. The program instructs professionals in academia and libraries to become Wikipedia editors and/or initiate library partnerships with Wikipedia. The program was presented by the Wiki Education Foundation https://wikiedu.org/ and sponsored by the National Archives and Records Administration.

As a result of the Centennial Celebration of Women’s Suffrage celebrated in March 2020 many archives, libraries and museums are preparing and expanding content on this theme.  Wikipedia is no exception. It was an honor to be a part of a Wikipedia Scholars cohort as we learned to edit and create 2 biographical articles to increase the quality and quantity of information about suffragists on Wikipedia. Our instructions included using mainly secondary resources to create articles. Having chosen two Baltimore suffragists I searched some resources familar to librarians such as the Library of Congress, the Maryland Historical Society and several databases. It was more challenging than I had anticipated to find resources that were both in the public domain and accessible online. I had the opportunity to review resources that were less familiar to me such as SNAC at the National Archives and Records Administration http://snaccooperative.org and the HEARTH Archive at Cornell http://hearth.library.cornell.edu.

Since most Wikipedians are male there is a disproportionate amount of male editors and this seeps out in the form of lack of information by and about women. Through the Scholars program my cohort along with others were able to make contributions that change that statistic.  Becoming a Wikipedian is a positive way to engage and make a change for the better so I hope other librarians will be encouraged to participate. Though It was intense I am glad I gave myself this challenge which led to a sense of accomplishment, inspiration, and motivation to do more.

        The majority of my time was spent finding facts about suffrage and the lives of women in early 20th century Baltimore. With a cohort of about 8 librarians we met online weekly to review our progress, work out any difficulties, and take self-administered quizes to check our mastery of quality fact-finding, copyright issues and editing. By the end of the 3 month program I had created an article about Etta Haynie Maddox, vocalist, suffragist and first Maryland woman to attend law school (Baltimore Law School now the school of law, University of Maryland) to become a lawyer, sit for the Bar exam and practice law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etta_Haynie_Maddox.

Though disappointed that her photo was under copyright I was pleased to complete my first article by bringing an unknown Baltimore lawyer and suffragist into view. In 1902, Maddox successfully fought the state legislature to permit Maryland women to take the Maryland bar exam and practice law. In 1910 she submitted the first suffrage bill to the Maryland state legislature. For those who might be interested, it was exciting to find a bit about her sister at our own www.digitalmaryland.org here <ahref="http://collections.digitalmaryland.org/cdm/ref/collection/scws/id/462">Page 2 (page 1 is missing)</a>

For a second article I chose to edit an existing biography about another Baltimore suffragist, Edith Houghton Hooker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Houghton_Hooker. Hooker was a social worker who attended Johns Hopkins in the early 1900s and became part of the social hygiene movement. She believed women’s rights and women’s public health challenges could gain much needed attention by supporting womens’ right to vote. She founded the Just Government League of Maryland, established the Maryland Suffrage News and became the editor for the national newspaper, The Suffragist. There are some primary source materials regarding Hooker at www.digitalmaryland.org such as this suffrage phamphlet dated around 1912 http://collections.digitalmaryland.org/cdm/ref/collection/scws/id/107 for those interested.

The nature of Wikipedia as an open access repository of information that anyone can edit may seem unsavory until, like with most new initiatives, involvement in contributing to articles and engaging in the Wikipedia community reveals the many attributes and benefits for librarians and libraries. Then there is an awesome discovery that even Wikipedia itself makes users aware of their tools that should be used to verify information found on Wikipedia. Wikipedia even provides the caveat that not everything you find will be accurate-it is a dynamic platform that is in constant motion. Though clearly accuracy is what the organization strives to do with multiple layered checks for quality control. But there is an increased need to engage librarians in order to have greater accuracy in citations and reference lists. Additionally its an environment that can be used to educate patrons about determining what is fact and what is fiction.  The realization dawns that engagement in this self-described encyclopedia of the world is a win-win partnership for public libraries. To find out more about engaging library patrons in Wikipedia see GLAM-Wiki on page 4 https://www.ifla.org/files/assets/hq/topics/

info-society/iflawikipediaandpubliclibraries.pdf.

The future is more than promising for this resource to continue to grow in quality and quantity. It is already being used as a teaching tool, reference resource, and to engage communities in a stronger sense of ownership of their own history. Its informative, fun, and gives power to its users, editors and libraries to change the world and provide access to otherwise hidden or limited-access information and collections.

 Finally, in addition to the objectives to make Wikipedia more accurate, complete and accessible there are efforts to make it more inclusive across all subjects and all underrepresented people. Editing biographies, for example, helps to remove bias and highlight the rich diversity that makes up the real world. Correcting a citation supports increased accuracy and reliability. Uploading historic Baltimore photos can help to address underrepresented communities. Who better to do that than public librarians that already show students of all ages how to find accurate information, who strive for diversity and inclusivity in storytime and collection selection, and seek to provide access to technology, research guides, educational events, and electronic materials that address the needs of their communities every day?

See Also

Cummings, John, Fenoll, Carme, Hinojo, Alex & Tramullas, Jesus. (2016).  Opportunities for Public Libraries and Wikipedia: a discussion paper [International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), The Information Society, News, 20 January 2017, Presenting the IFLA Wikipedia Opportunities Papers]. Url: https://www.ifla.org/node/11131.

OCLC WebJunction. Wikipedia + Libraries: Better Together. Retrieved March 5, 2019 from

https://www.webjunction.org/explore-topics/wikipedia-libraries.html

OCLC WebJunction. Wikipedia + Libraries: Empower Communities to Learn from and Share Reliable Information. Retrieved March 5, 2019 from

https://www.oclc.org/en/member-stories/wikipedia-libraries.html

Proffitt, M. (2018).  Leveraging Wikipedia: Connecting Communities of Knowledge

9780838916322. Publisher: American Library Association. https://books.google.com/books?id=hYZ8DwAAQBAJ

Rose Anne Ullrich, Librarian

Information Services

MLA 2019 - Two Favorite Programs

Two workshops at this year’s MLA Conference really stood out to me: What If … You Could Make Sense of Management and What If … Equality Is A Reality.

The What If … You Could Make Sense of Management Workshop was extremely helpful to me as a first time supervisor. This workshop was led by Professor Brian Butler from University of Maryland’s iSchool. The focus of the workshop was on how to navigate the creation of your personal leadership toolbox in order to make dealing with the myriad of issues and personalities that you are responsible for less stressful and more effective. We discussed the various stakeholders that are involved in the operations of a public library and the many demands that they make on our resources. It was really helpful to hear from peers from different types of library environments and with different levels of management experience on how they deal with these, often conflicting, demands on their resources. Some of the issues discussed were ones that I have already had to deal with as a new supervisor and some of the issues were ones that I had not considered. The end conclusion of this workshop was that management is hard and if you think that it’s easy or that you have a one-size-fit-all solution, then you are doing it wrong.

The other workshop that I found particularly compelling was What If .. Equality Is A Reality. This workshop was led by Dr. Michael Edge from the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the College of Education at Wilmington University, and his ability to combine his life experience with the topic matter was compelling. He spoke about implicit biases and how they impact our relationships with one another. While I’ve been to several trainings that have discussed implicit biases in some form or another, Dr. Edge spoke on this sensitive topic in a way that was both highly impactful and not at all blaming or shaming of the participants. One of the things that he brought up over and over again was that you can not blame someone for having implicit biases, they are something that are formed in your childhood by circumstances that you have no control over because you were a child.

This was a welcome approach to the topic since many such trainings on implicit biases have a tone that seems intended to instill a sense of guilt in participants. This approach led to a more open and, in my opinion, honest discussion of the participants’ experiences with implicit biases. The workshop discussed how these biases impact our interactions with customers, both internal and external, and our ability to give excellent customer service. The only downside of the workshop was that it was too short to cover the breadth of the topic.

Kalyn Shields

Pennsylvania Avenue Branch

MLA 2019 - Favorite Program

One of my absolute favorite and most valuable trainings at MLA was Cindy Pol of BCPL’s training on serving Latino customers. I learned some fascinating facts about demographics of Latinx customers in Maryland, such as the fact that Hispanics in Maryland have the highest median income in the nation. 

We also went over the cultural norms of Central America, where the plurality of Latinos in Maryland are from. We learned crucial vocabulary and outreach strategies for reaching our newest neighbors and practiced filling in a map of Latin America. It was a humbling and educational cultural experience.

 I was excited to see several Pratt employees in the audience- I can’t wait for us to put our cultural competencies to use to reach Spanish-speaking and Latinx Baltimoreans!

Cornelia Beckett

School and Student Services

MLA/DLA 2019 call for program proposals - Technical Services Division

The Technical Services Division of the Marlyand Library Association is inviting submissions for programs to be presented at the Annual MLA/DLA Conference (Cambridge, MD, May 1-3, 2019)

Part of the MLA-TSD’s mission to is “provide quality opportunities for updating skills and knowledge in acquisitions, automation, cataloging, preservation and all other areas of technical processing.”

This is an excellent opportunity for anyone to present on new programs, cooperative ventures, innovative techniques, problems solved – if you are proud of the work you have done, consider letting the rest of us know about it!

You can submit program ideas using this survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/KDG6BS7

Preliminary conference program approval forms are due to MLA by Oct. 12, so please get your submissions to us by Sept. 17 so we have time to review them, make selections and get all of the details worked out. If you have any questions, please get in touch!

Cheers,

David Brennan, MLS Head, Technical Services & E-Resources Librarian 131 Hoover Library McDaniel College 2 College Hill Westminster, MD 21157-4390

Working with Patrons from Poverty

Today we held another successful session of the "Understanding and Working With Patrons from Poverty" program.  For those of you who could not attend, or those who might be interested in more information on this topic, here is a link to a curated list of books on this subject:

https://www.bestmswprograms.com/50-best-books-on-poverty/

Many of the books on this list are in our collection, although some are only available as ebooks.

Other books on this topic include Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance, and Evicted:  Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond, which are both in our collection.

MLA 2018 - Table Top Gaming in Your Library

For Jacob Hutton, Harford County Public Library, tabletop gaming is a fun and educational way of getting people from various backgrounds to play together. There are tabletop games for every style and every age. The three major categories that work best in the library are: trading cards,t role playing, and board games.

I focused my attention on board games which are numerous and diverse. On the one hand, there are many advantages in bringing board games into the library. The many genres make it fairly easy to find a few that will appeal to our specific users. In addition, they are a relatively low-cost investment. Once you purchase the game, you do not need to buy anything else. More importantly, players are all starting with a similar amount of resources and potential.

On the other hand, even the best board games become stale after playing them for a while. There are lots of potential pieces that can get lost, and they only allow a limited number of participants.

When choosing a game, Jacob’s advice is to keep in mind your target audience (children, teens, or adults, beginners, intermediate or advanced players), and the number of participants. If your audience is made of children and families, it is best to choose simpler games with familiar themes that will last no more than 15-20 minutes.

I noted a few of the presenter’s advice in order to run a successful program:

During the selection phase, ask your customers what kind of games they like, try the games yourself, learn the rules, and go to local stores to get recommendations. Often, they will give out games they cannot sell anymore.

During the program, have one adult in charge for each board game.

Be one of the players. It builds a bond between the players and you.

Try only one type of game at a time (i.e., only trading card games, or only board games), but have both a beginner board game and an intermediate in order to adjust to your audience’s skills.

Have a clear beginning and end time of the gaming session.

For game recommendations, reviews, and additional information, explore the following sites, all recommended by Jacob Hutton:

Exhaustive listing of children’s board games with descriptions and reviews: https://boardgamegeek.com/childrensgames/browse/boardgame

Role playing games, specifically written for young children: http://www.playgroundadventures.net/

Dragon Talk- Official Dungeons & Dragons Podcast by Wizards of the Coast:
http://dnd.wizards.com/dragon-talk/podcast-hub

http://games.ala.org/international-games-week/

Sylvie Merlier-Rowen
Children's Department. CEN

PLA 2018: The Accidental Trainer: Teaching Technology in a Modern Day Library

So often as programming librarians we create our own presentations for workshops from scratch. I have found over the years that had I checked online I would have had a nearly there version that could have cut down on planning time while still being a high quality, unique program. Even so, putting together a detailed and intentionally educational program can be quite time-consuming. This is especially the case for librarians responsible for prioritizing the needs of patrons approaching their desks in addition to planning programs. There may be a few minutes here and there for planning but no dependable blocks of time. Creating materials for teaching technology and computer skills is just as time consuming.  

Fortunately, in 2015, the staff at Gail Borden Public Library in Elgin, IL developed a grant funded digital literacy toolkit for trainers.  This initiative continues via a partnership with the Public Library Association. The toolkit consists of an instructor’s guide and all necessary materials for each computer course. The toolkit is valuable because they follow best practices for quality e-learning content development. The trainer website can be found at https://training.digitallearn.org/  and the learner website is https://digitallearn.org/ .

During The Accidental Trainer workshop, I realized the importance of ensuring busy librarians have structured tools for creating programs and workshops that lessen the burden of planning, yet provide the freedom to add important personalized details.

Here are some of the highlights of the DigitalLearn Trainer website:

• Includes a content outline and agenda, topics, talking points and a step by step guide.

• Provides templates to create your own Powerpoint presentations and videos using Articulate Storyline software.

• Provides handouts that include screenshots to give to patrons in addition to a well-designed survey for evaluation of the course.
• Provides complete course material for relevant topics addressing hardware, software and applications, Google tools, Microsoft tools, resumes, social media and more. One course example is entitled: Learn how to build your own computer and perform basic computer repairs in this three-part, hands-on series https://training.digitallearn.org/courses/all-about-computers.

Rose Anne Ullrich
Info. Services

SD&T Winter/Spring courses

Over the next few days we're going to start announcing the classes we are offering for winter/spring 2018.

Keep your eyes on your email for these announcements and contact SD&T to register for any or all of the programs.

ALA 2016 - 3D Printing: Programs and Partnerships

I enjoyed my time at the ALA Annual Conference in Orlando, FL. I attended engaging and thought provoking workshops during this year’s conference. For me the 3D Printing: Programs and Partnerships session really stood out. The workshop focused on the basics of 3D printing and offered program ideas that were unique.

Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library has a variety of programs that include animation, robotics, cosplay design, fashion, and host of other examples. They offered great ideas for programs. They also spoke about partnering with their area community college and even connecting with an animation studio to show their preteens and teens how their current projects could lead to other educational opportunities and careers. Their unique programs were great examples of how to integrate 3D printing into current programs. They also offered tangible ways to invite community members into libraries to enrich the experience of local teens.

Zandra Campbell
Orleans Street Branch