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

ATD International Conference and Expo

Association for Talent Development International Conference and Exposition

May 17-20, 2015

The ATD conference is for training and development practitioners at all levels.  Attendees come from all over the world to share best practices, learn about current and future trends, and listen to industry leaders.  This year there were 9600 participants from 92 countries.  Since the discussions were focused on training, I thought I'd share some random ideas that I picked up at the conference, either in sessions or in discussions.  

• The day after an employee attends a training program the manager should ask “what did you learn” to boost retention of information and thwart the forgetting curve.

• There is a difference between being productive and being busy (or, if you like, between being busy and being productive).

• Communicate your value to your supervisor and leadership.  Up to 93% of the messages you are sending are non-verbal (dress, posture, attitude) verses what you actually say and do.

• Dressing for work?  Consider this -- if the CEO came in and invited you to a lunch meeting with a potential partner/board member could you go as you are?

• There is a great shift to video in our culture; people now go to YouTube for repair information rather than looking in a handbook.

• Most organizations experience at least 3 major changes per year.

• Communication is different from connecting, message sent does not equal message received.

• The richest form of communication is face-to-face; if it’s important have a meeting, don’t call or email.
• Just because an email is sent doesn’t mean it was read. (Especially if it comes from SD&T)

• Email is not an instant messaging tool!

• Employee engagement (emotionally connected and psychologically committed) leads to employees who are productive and provide better service.

• Organizational diversity generates more profits/better service, and diverse teams perform better.

• False consensus is the belief that other people know what you know.

• Everything we learn in the first four years of our life we learn by playing.

• Training is a process not an event.

If you are interested, check out the Twitter feed for the conference -- you don't need a Twitter account to view the feed, just go to the website and enter the hashtag #ATD2015.

Lisa R. Kenyon
Staff Development and Training Coordinator

MLA/DLA Annual Conference - Boldly Go Where No Libraries Have Gone Before

MLA/DLA Annual Conference

May 6-8, 2015

The Place to Find What’s Free, Online, Collaborative, and Shared (aka Crowdsourcing)

Joyce Valenza presented the “Hack Library” during Friday’s lunch and reception.  A school librarian and professor at Rutgers, Joyce explained that when we hack libraries, we are doing “…playful problem solving of a problem by understanding it as part of the system.”  A motto to librarians that hack is, “Nothing is ever complete.” 

When we think the best answers are only from scholars and databases, we learn from Joyce that there are free, online resources built in collaboration with several people and are meant to be shared.  “Crowdsourcing” resources have credible and insightful information from and about us.  Yelp:  http://www.yelp.com/ and Yahoo! Answers:  https://answers.yahoo.com/ are crowdsourcing mainstays.  Two unique crowdsourcing resources to try out are:

Ask.fm:  http://ask.fm/

Whisper:  https://whisper.sh/

Even Tom Croft, the graphic designer at the Frederick County Public Library, shared great resources during his program that he uses on the job:  some are free, and some come at a low-cost that also happen to be crowdsourced:

Dafont:  http://www.dafont.com/

Dafont has freeware, shareware, demo versions, and public domain fonts that get submitted in by “font authors.” 

Videvo:  http://www.videvo.net/

Videvo has free photo stock and motion graphics.  You can make a free account, find graphics by subject, and download for fair use.

Joyce Valenza’s presentation is available at http://www.slideshare.net/joycevalenza/hacking-libraries.  Joyce’s blog is the “NeverEndingSearch:” http://blogs.slj.com/neverendingsearch/.

Who’s ready to crowdsource?  

Paul Chasen, Statewide Coordinator, Maryland AskUsNow!

ATD Conference Orlando

I'll be at the Association for Talent Development Conference Sunday-Tuesday of next week.  You can follow the action on Twitter #ATD2015 if you are interested, or follow me @LisaRKenyon.

Lisa

Computers in Libraries Conference 2015

Computers in Libraries 2015: Cool Tools to Use Today

by Rebecca Starr

Computers in Libraries 2015, held in Washington, D.C. at the end of April, was abuzz with the latest technology, fun new apps, and innovative strategies to bring both to your community. While the total list is quite exhausting, here are some of my favorite tools that can be used on-the-job or shared with your patrons.

Educational

Mary Ellen Bates introduced these websites in her presentation, “Super Searcher Tips and Tools”:

●     Microsoft Academic: When Mary Ellen is tackling a search about which she knows very little, she will type it into this search engine to find dominant keywords, authors, and authoritative websites.

●     Instya: This cool search tool scours multiple search engines and social media sites at once.

●     Google Trends: This site is great for those obscure “Most Popular Searches” questions. It also houses great data visualizations of searches from around the world.

Finally, for those of you who answer technology questions or teach classes, be sure to visit NYPL TechConnect’s website. They host all of their presentation handouts and tutorial videos here!

Creative

In her presentation “A Thousand Voices: The Power of Storytelling”, Diane Cordell offered these digital tools to help patrons of all ages tell stories of their own:

●     Zooburst: This application let you create digital 3D pop-up books! (If you closed this post now in favor of playing with this tool, I wouldn’t blame you.)

●     Shadow Puppet: Upload images, add text, and set them to narration to create your own video story. One classroom used this application to create a listening center.

●     Thematic: Create a narrative using your images and text...think Medium, but for photos. Here’s a cute example.

●     Storybird: Users of this social media-esque site can create stories using illustrator-developed work and share them within the Storybird community.

Just For Fun

Gary Price, the co-founder of INFODocket, shared some of his favorite apps, both old and new:

●     TinEye: This app allows you to upload an image and conduct a reverse image search. It may be handy with those “What is this?” questions where someone just has a photo.

●     AudioNow: Users can listen to radio stations from around the world on their phone for free. This site lists all of the phone number for different radio stations.

●     PhotoMath: Take a picture of a math problem and this app will solve it and show its work.

●     Office Lens: This scanner for smartphones “clears up” images that are otherwise hard to read (such as receipts and whiteboards).

To view additional presentations, head over to the Computers in Libraries website. I highly recommend this conference for all librarians and IT professionals.

Maryland Library Association Conference and Twitter

The Maryland Library Association and Delaware Library Association Joint Conference is May 6 - 8 (this week).  This year's them is Boldly Go . . .  where no libraries have gone before.

You can follow the action on Twitter #mladla15.

The following staff will be tweeting from the conference:

     Sarah Kuperman  @librnatconf.

     Jessica Brown @wearingsunlight

     MarylandAskUsNow @askusnow

Computers in Libraries Tweets

Sarah Kuperman will be tweeting from the Computers in Libraries Conference through Wednesday.  If you are interested, you can follow her on Twitter @librnatconf.  

The hashtag for the conference is #cildc