Index
- CARES Act grant approved
- OverDrive Support Course begins Nov. 2
- Member/Staff News
- Tech & happiness hacks
- Four stages of compassion fatigue
- Encourage earth citizen science at home
- Continuing Education Calendar
CARES Act grant approved
South Central Library System (SCLS) has received notification that the DPI CARES Act Grant has been approved by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The total amount of the grant is $62,141.80. SCLS staff responsible for the various projects will be reaching out to individual libraries regarding next steps.
To help meet the needs of all member libraries, SCLS provided a range of options in its grant application that will prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus. These include:
- Expanding Digital Network Access
- Internal wireless access points will expand access in the building to meeting rooms and other areas.
- External wireless access points will extend wireless to areas around the building such as the parking lot and/or gardens.
- Mobile hot spots can be loaned to patrons who do not have reliable internet access.
- Cabling supports the infrastructure for access points.
- All of these respond to coronavirus by increasing access to the internet during times of high unemployment and school closings. They help prepare for future shutdowns by providing access to the internet outside of the building.
- Providing technical support services
- RFID staff stations and RFID tags to tag collections will lead to reduced touches for library staff and patrons, which will help prevent coronavirus. Self-checkout stations and wireless printing will create physical distancing between staff and patrons, which will help prevent coronavirus.
- Equipment and software to improve virtual meetings responds to coronavirus and prepares for coronavirus by providing a physically distanced means to communicate with staff, board members and patrons.
- Software to assist job seekers responds to coronavirus by helping disenfranchised workers develop new skills and/or find jobs.
- People counting software connected to a TV monitor will allow patrons to see that the library is at capacity and responds to coronavirus by assisting with limiting capacity in the building with minimal staff interaction.
The CARES Act, signed into law on March 27, 2020, provides economic stimulus to individuals, businesses, hospitals, and Local Educational Agencies in response to the economic distress caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. More information is available on the Division for Libraries and Technology (DLT) website.
Every library in SCLS received a grant and each grant is different. Therefore, it will take SCLS staff some time to connect with each library, but we are excited to be working on this grant as these are some great projects.
To quote Michael Dennison at DPI, "All of us on the Libraries Team in the Division for Libraries and Technology appreciate the time and effort that went into your project application, and we are confident your project will improve library services in Wisconsin in response to the COVID-19 pandemic."
In addition to the external access points funded by the CARES Act grant, federal Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) funds were used to purchase external access points for the Adams County Library, Jane Morgan Memorial Library in Cambria, Monticello Public Library, and Spring Green Community Library.
All of these grant projects will provide enhanced service, but the external access point grants may prove to be the most helpful during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
OverDrive Support Course begins Nov. 2
The last OverDrive Support Course of 2020 begins Nov. 2 and runs through Dec. 11. Registration is now open.
The SCLS OverDrive Support Course is a virtual five-week course designed to help library staff provide front-line support to OverDrive users. There are no scheduled meeting times for the course, but it is paced week-to-week. Each week there is a lesson, a quiz over the material, and a mock support email to which participants respond. The typical time investment is 1-2 hours per week, and it is expected that all coursework be completed two weeks after the course ends. Participants are required to have access to a computer and the internet to complete the coursework.
If you have questions about the course, contact Jean Anderson.
Stoughton Public Library reached out to WebJunction to share the great success they've had with their new materials unboxing videos. Sarah, the library's Technical Services Manager said, "I started doing it after I spent 20 minutes watching a fabric store opening boxes of fabric and realized I had something in boxes to share too! The unboxing videos are literally just me opening and pulling books out of a box in the tech services department. Patrons like it if I can share a bit about the book which I really can only do for the nonfiction materials. Videos are a great way to keep engaging your patrons. They miss the library and miss library staff!" The videos are all under 5 minutes and Sarah is a joy to listen to. You can find all of them on the library's video collection on Facebook.
Svetha Hetzler, director at Sun Prairie Public Library, has been invited to present at Library Journal’s Virtual Summit on Oct. 6. The editor-in-chief learned about SUN's Racial Literacy Plan and asked if Svetha could help out with one of their sessions. More about the virtual summit, including registration, is available on the LJ website.
The September issue of WSLL @ Your Service is now online. Please send comments to the editor, Carol Hassler. In this issue: Research with BadgerLink -- BadgerLink is Wisconsin's online library of magazines, journals, newspapers, and scholarly articles. A boon to researchers needing to search literature from multiple disciplines, BadgerLink provides several subject-specific databases to Wisconsin users (read more); New Books -- Our featured titles this month are Quick and legal will book and Chapter 13 bankruptcy: keep your property and repay debts over time. Don’t forget to check out our September new book list (read more); Tech Tip -- Earlier this year, Fastcase announced that Fastcase 7 will become the new default interface starting September 2020. We cover some quick tips for using the new interface (read more); State Law Library Art Tour (Part Three) -- A photograph of Gilson Glasier, State Librarian, oversees the David T. Prosser Jr. Library's conference room. During this time of social distancing we connected the artwork in the library to the gravesites of prominent figures of law and Wisconsin and Madison history (read more); Library News -- Library closures during September’s upcoming state holiday (read more); September Snapshot -- We love publishing reader-submitted photos. This month’s beautiful photo of the Sparta Free Library was taken from the Monroe County Justice Center (read more).
Many of you know that I admire Gretchen Rubin and have read many of her books and listen to her podcast. I've picked up many tips on how to make my life happier simply by listening and trying out some of her happiness hacks. On a recent podcast, Gretchen reminded listeners that September is the "other" January and to use the start of the new school year as a time to set new goals and try new things*.
This reminded me that I never shared a resource from Your Nerdy Best Friend from January of this year. In this post, Beth shares an updated handout called "Be a Nerd for a Year" with small fun tech activities that you can try out monthly. For September, some of the options are:
- Trying out Zamzar to convert a JPG to a PDF (see Tech Bits posts here, here, and here for more)
- Using Photomath to help your kids (or yourself) with math homework
- September 24 is National Punctuation Day and you celebrate by using Grammarly to check your punctuation, tone, and more! (See Tech Bits posts here, here, and here for more)
It's a fun resource to look at and learn from all year round. Next year, I'll start in January!
*And buy new office supplies!
--by Jean Anderson for TechBits
Four stages of compassion fatigue
During last week’s System Directors meeting information from the Wisconsin Initiative for Stigma Elimination (WISE) was shared about coping with the stress that may be affecting people during the COVID-19 pandemic.
WISE is a statewide coalition of organizations and individuals building resilient and hopeful communities by promoting inclusion and support for all affected by mental health challenges. WISE implements and advances evidence-based practices for stigma reduction.
According to WISE, the current pandemic presents the perfect storm for what the presenters call compassion fatigue. In our new normal, many of us will experience the stages of compassion fatigue. Do these sound familiar?
- Zealot -- Overabundance of “can do” activity. We stock up, we confer with others, we offer our assistance and we go the extra mile to keep ourselves and others safe.
- Irritability -- We start to notice the imperfections around us and move into the Irritability Our leaders contradict themselves at times, we see a neighbor’s car trunk full of toilet paper, our care providers point out a woefully unprepared system, and we fail to do all we planned. We move from “can do” to a sense of frustration and cynicism. Our hopefulness starts to wane.
- Withdrawal -- We see the intricate connections between our health behaviors and our economy and the day-to-day activities of life. We sleep more, engage less and find accessing energy for the tasks of caring for others and ourselves increasingly difficult.
- Zombie -- We put up walls by shedding connections to avoid facing the imperfections and complexities and “go it alone.” We trust our ability to care for ourselves and others all on our own with a new level of zealousness that can lead to sleeplessness, physical and mental strain, and certainly, ineffectiveness.
Of course, in none of these stages are we the person we want to be. We have been acting as if this is a sprint instead of a marathon. We have not preserved our balance amid fear. We have been responding from our desire to do the right thing and may be on the path to do just the opposite. AND, this is the normal human response to overwhelming and complex challenges.
For more information and resources, visit the Compassion Resilience Toolkit. More information about WISE is available on the organization’s website.
Encourage earth citizen science at home
STAR Net and its partners are reaching out to libraries across the U.S. to encourage their patrons to participate in Earth-related Citizen Science activities that they can safely do, both in and outside of their homes.
Opportunities, Resources and Activities:
- Live Webcast (Oct. 15): Keeping Watch on Planet Earth
- Recorded Webinar and Training Videos
- GLOBE Observer at Home Activities and Resources
- Join the NASA@ My Library teams' mosquito campaign
- SciStarter Blog and Online Resources
- Browse STAR Net's new “Take & Make collection”