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ARSL and Back in Circulation Scholarships Available

This year's Association for Rural & Small Libraries (ARSL) Conference is scheduled for September 14 - 17 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Early bird registration opens next Tuesday, June 14. If you're thinking of attending, consider applying for a CE Scholarship from SCLS. This full scholarship will cover one year's membership in ARSL, registration, transportation, lodging, and meals. One of the nice things about attending ARSL is that your registration includes five meals - this is a great way to get to know your fellow conference attendees. Apply for the scholarship by July 20, 2022, for the Early Bird registration rate.

If you're looking for something closer to home, registration for Back in Circulation Again from the UW Madison iSchool Continuing Education is now open. This conference is scheduled for October 3 and 4 on the UW Madison campus. SCLS is offering full scholarships for this conference which include registration, transportation, lodging, and meals.

Contact Jean Anderson with any questions about CE Scholarships or CE Grants.

The SCLS CE Scholarship program is funded in part with a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services which administers the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA).

Trustee Training Week 2022

Registration is now open for Wisconsin Trustee Training Week 2022. This year's webinars will be held from August 22 - 26. There will be one webinar each day from noon to 1 p.m. on a topic that's relevant to public library boards, friends, and trustees. Webinars are available free of charge and are open to anyone.

The schedule of presentations is as follows:

• Monday, August 22 -- Materials Challenges and Your Library from the Trustee Table-- Regardless of whether or not your library has had a request for reconsideration of library materials, the increase in challenges is dramatic, and quite frankly, upsetting. Becky Spratford, an expert in serving leisure readers through the public library with over 20 years of experience as a locally elected library trustee, Reaching Across Illinois Library System board member, and Illinois Library Association Executive Board member, will walk you through everything you need to do to prepare for a request to ban titles at your library. From the steps you need to take right now, to how to properly handle a challenge from your seat at the trustee table, Becky will help you to put the emotions aside and protect intellectual freedom.
• Tuesday, August 23 -- Here to Stay: Recruiting & Retaining Dedicated Library Workers -- The highly competitive job market makes it much harder for libraries to attract and keep library staff - including directors. While libraries might struggle to compete with other employers on wage scales, they can create a culture of inclusivity, inspiration, and belonging that appeals to creative and hard-working employees. This session will include practical tools for library boards like improving board-director relationships, reviewing job descriptions, and investigating options for improved salaries and benefits, and more to make your library a great place to work and help reduce staff turnover and shortages.
• Wednesday, August 24 -- Effective & Efficient Meetings: Parliamentary Procedure -- Planning great meetings and running them effectively and efficiently is crucial to a strong organization. This webinar will help make parliamentary procedure understandable and useful to you as well as focus on the tools to help you with the meetings you conduct and attend. After this webinar, the attendees will not only have a better understanding of parliamentary procedure but will have the knowledge and skills to help run an effective meeting.
• Thursday, August 25 -- Making Sense & Cents of a Library Building Project: The Library Trustee Role -- Public libraries around Wisconsin are building, expanding, and/or renovating their spaces. Your Library Director or Building Consultant is recommending to the board the need for additional library space. What is the role of the library board? How can the library board support the project? John Thompson will share some tips and insights on the library board role, an overview of the process, some of the costs involved, and how potential choices might impact the project and library services.
• Friday, August 26 -- From Stories to Action: How to Talk about Your Budget to Activate Support & Secure Funding -- The core of any library's strategic plan, management plan, or development plan is the organization's own mission, vision, and values system. But very often, the plans describe the “features” of the library, like hours, collections, staffing levels, and facilities rather than the expected or hoped-for outcomes. And library leaders are ready to share powerful stories about how the library impacts users, but not often about their own work. Learn how to talk about your funding in a new way by talking about you, your staff, and board, and why you do the work you do.

You must register for each webinar individually at www.wistrusteetraining.com. More information, including bios of the presenters, is also available at the link above, and you can also access recordings from the 2015-21 webinars.

Trustee Training Week (TTW) is produced by the South Central Library System with support from all Wisconsin Public Library Systems. TTW is funded in part by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services which administers the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA). Thank you!

PLA Conference Reports

SCLS sent four of our member library staff to the Public Library Association (PLA) Conference in Portland, Oregon this past March. Here are a few of the highlights from our scholarship recipients.

Amanda Wakeman, Director of the Jane Morgan Memorial Library (JMML) in Cambria attended her first PLA Conference. Among the sessions she attended was "Teen Perspectives on Positive Youth Development." Amanda said: "I think I found this presentation so engaging because I know it’s something I need to work on at JMML. We haven’t really done much for teens and this session gave me a great place to start, which is engaging the teens and seeing what they would like. The presenter is the head of teen services in Denver Public Libraries however much of his presentation was a video of teens on his advisory board talking about what they want from their library and what they would like to see." As a result of attending the conference, Amanda plans to start Teen Advisory Board to meet the needs of the teens in the community. In addition, Amanda said: "Going to this conference was insightful and refreshing. I feel like I am going back to my library with a list of new ideas and plans that I want to implement."

Lynn Montague, Head of Youth Services for Sun Prairie Public Library, attended PLA for the first time since 2014. Among the sessions that Lynn attended was "Building a Dynamic World Languages Collection for your Multilingual Community." Lynn said that "One of my collection goals is to increase the volume and range in our children’s world language collection, so this presentation was very timely and informative for me! Their hands-on professional experience helped me to better understand why I’ve had some difficulties acquiring particular languages, and ways to solve this problem. I walked out of this presentation with several new vendors to investigate and consider, and ideas on how we can make this collection more visible and recognizable to everyone. I have already made a change in our current collection to make Children’s World Language more visible!" In addition, Lynn visited a lot of vendors in the Exhibit Hall to find explore options for furniture and fixtures for the upcoming expansion and renovation at the Sun Praire Public Library.

Emma Cobb, Head of Reference for the Verona Public Library, attended PLA for the first time in Portland. One of the sessions that Emma attended was "Diversity Count: An Audit Tool that Adds Up." Emma said "Last year I had my department work on a diversity audit of our adult fiction collection. The process was clunky, inefficient, and, in hindsight, not as effective as it could have been. Having a tool that was developed and fine-tuned by another library will help as we move forward with our second, hopefully, more successful audit." Emma plans to "redo the diversity audit, and using the data collected from that, set a diversity percentage goal for our adult fiction collection. While this goal could and should reflect the community, after attending sessions on diversity audits, I think our goal should more align with the diversity level of the school district versus just Verona residents, as the school district is more diverse."

Amy Sampson, Community Engagement Librarian from the Waunakee Public Library also attended PLA for the first time in Portland. Among the sessions that Amy attended was "Programming for Neurodiverse Adults." The program was presented by Carrie Banks and co-developed by Barbara Klipper. Amy said that "Banks walked through a list of 10 best practices for creating an environment more accessible for and responsive to the needs of neurodiverse patrons. Banks used humor and personal experiences to illustrate her points and connect with the audience. I appreciated how the list of best practices combined quick, tactical actions like offering fidgets during programs with long-term systemic changes like using Universal Design for Learning in program design or reviewing hiring and staff support practices to include neurodiverse adults in the library staff." Amy is already thinking of how to make their programs more accessible and welcoming by including some sensory tools, visual supports for content, and communication options like note cards for submitting questions.

The SCLS CE Scholarship program is funded in part by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services which administers the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA). Thank you!

 

 

Readers Advisory Series with Becky Spratford

Beginning in May, SCLS will be hosting a series of webinars with Readers Advisory Expert, Becky Spratford.

RA for All: Flip the Script and Think Like a Reader, May 17 from 1 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. Register here!

Readers Advisory belongs in every library, no matter its budget. The implementation of this vital service is the responsibility of every staff member-- from pages to directors, from those behind the scenes to the ones on the front lines. This program will remove the mystery behind providing great RA service. Using her “Ten Rules of Basic RA Service” as a guide, Becky Spratford will use your own love of your favorite books to show you how to help any patron find their next great read. It's not as hard as you think. But more importantly, you will learn why a staff that can harness the power of sharing a great read will become a stronger team and improve service to all patrons, especially the hardest to reach ones.

Booktalking Your Way to the Friendliest Library in Town, June 14 from 10:30 a.m. - 12 noon. Register here!

Booktalking is at the heart of what we do with patrons each and every day at the public library. Whether we are sharing books informally at the services desk, presenting a prepared list of books, or posting information online, talking about books is something we do each and every day. It is a core service, but it is also hard to teach. Booktalking is more of an art than a skill, but with the right guidance and some practice, it can go a long way toward engaging your patrons and re-energizing your staff. Join experienced Readers’ Advisory Becky Spratford as she shares the secret behind delivering great book talks, giving you tips and tricks you can begin using right away to hone your own skills. Rediscover the power and joy that comes from sharing books with patrons.

Demystifying Genre, July 12 from 1 - 2:30 p.m. Register here!

Nothing is scarier than trying to help a fan of a genre you yourself don’t enjoy. You want to help that, for example, Romance reader find the perfect book, but you are having trouble knowing where to begin because...eek!... you don’t read Romance. You are afraid they will find out you are a fraud. How can YOU possibly help THEM?!? Never fear, in this program, Readers’ Advisory expert, Becky Spratford, will teach you the basic appeals of the major genres, give you the inside track on what a fan of that genre is most drawn to, and provide you with talking points to get your genre readers to tell you what they want. This program focuses on providing you with a diverse and inclusive list of up-to-date authors with at least 40% of the example titles representing “own voices”. You will leave this session with the confidence and skill to help fans of every genre, regardless of whether or not you have ever read a book in that genre yourself. And that will leave a trail of happy patrons in your wake.

Each of the webinars will be recorded and captioned.

 

 

This program is presented in part by the Department of Public Instruction, with funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services in the form of a Professional Learning Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant.

Adult Mental Health First Aid Course

SCLS is offering two MHFA sessions: June 1 and 3 or June 8 and 10. The sessions will not be recorded so please be sure you are able to attend both sessions.

Adult Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) training is intended for adults who wish to help people with emerging mental health disorders or experiencing a mental health crisis. The goal of MHFA training is to teach people to recognize signs and symptoms of an emerging mental health disorder or mental health crisis. Participants also learn a 5-step action plan to engage and ultimately guide people to both professional and community resources that can help.

The class is a two-part training. Part one is a self-paced, online overview of the entire training. It takes about 2 hours and must be completed before the instructor-led session(s). This section includes:

• What is Mental Health First Aid?
• What do Mental Health First Aiders do?
• What is the Mental Health First Aid action plan?
• Considerations before reaching out.
• What is mental health?
• What is a mental health challenge?
• What is stigma?
• What is person-first language?
• How do gaps in treatment impact people?
• What are the risk factors for mental health challenges?

Certified Mental Health First Aid instructors lead Part 2 of the training. The 6-hour online session takes place over two days and takes the knowledge and skills learned in part one and applies them to crisis and non-crisis situations. Through a combination of lectures, activities, scenarios, and videos, participants learn to assess, approach, listen nonjudgmentally, give reassurance/information, encourage appropriate help, and encourage self-help to people showing signs/symptoms of a mental health disorder or mental health crisis.

Participants who complete the class receive a 3-year certification as a Mental Health First Aider.

This program is presented in part by the Department of Public Instruction, with funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services in the form of a Professional Learning Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant.