NEFLIN Blog goes on Holiday

Another year is coming to a close and the NEFLIN Blog is going on Holiday. We will be back in 2011 with more great content.  Happy Holidays!

Brad and Patty

New LE@D Courses

LE@D has announced two new courses available to NEFLIN members.
See all courses and registration instructions here

Genealogy: An Introduction for Library Staff

What is your first response when faced with a genealogy question? Interest in family history research is fast-growing, both as an educational tool and an enjoyable pastime. Users seeking information about their ancestors often have high expectations when requesting assistance from library staff, but your library's ability to serve genealogy searchers depends on your size, your collection, your staff, and your experience and training. Given these factors, this course is designed to provide you with tools and training to share your skills effectively within your library. Your understanding of research methods and resources and your ability to locate and access information can be a valuable asset to genealogy searchers. When you have completed this course, you will be able to:

• Teach other staff members in your library five steps to answer genealogy questions
• Describe genealogy records as evidence and explain the various record types
• Explain how genealogy forms are organized and formatted, giving examples
• Create useful genealogy research notes with different types of sources
• Show your library users how to use some specific online genealogy resources
• Avoid common problems in genealogy research
• Recognize some social networking sites for genealogy (with helpful organizations)
• Begin to develop your collection to support genealogy research more thoroughly
• Customize some genealogy programming ideas for your library.

Homework Help: Your Project is Due When?

What does it take to be ready, willing, and able to provide quality homework help (with all that that phrase entails), while all around you, everything seems to be spinning wildly out of control? That's what we're going to find out! In our economic climate, libraries are critical to fostering school success. Within this course, we will discuss practical ideas and tips for reaching today's students and assisting them in achieving their educational goals. When you have completed this course, you will be able to:

• Do a better job of preparing for your library users
• Provide useful homework help in a busy environment
• Respond to more kinds of information needs from your library patrons
• Discuss tools to create homework help
• Recognize some high-quality resources for homework help
• Understand what other folks have done that works well in libraries
• Share tips and techniques
• Feel confident launching a homework help center in your library, using the suggested sites, tips and tools provided.

See instructions for registration and all LE@D courses:

http://www.neflin.org/services.php?pid=13

Paul Clark is 1 of 10 national award winners

We are very proud to announce that NEFLIN member, Paul Clark, is one of 10 librarians in the nation to receive the “I Love My Librarian” Award.

This award is sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the New York Times and the American Library Association.

Clark, an unassuming but passionate technical services worker at the Clay County library system’s Fleming Island headquarters, was among 2,000 nominees from libraries in cities, schools and colleges throughout the U.S.

He said he was told about the award two weeks ago, but was asked to keep it “hush-hush” until a formal announcement was made.

“Actually, I cried,” Clark said of his reaction to hearing the news. “It’s been hard not to tell anybody. It was overwhelming for me.”

Each of the 10 award winners receives $5,000 and will be honored at a ceremony hosted by The New York Times on Thursday, Dec. 9. 

“The money comes at a time when I most need it,” Clark said. “My kids will get a good Christmas.”

Clark became known as “The Library Guy” because he planted himself at the state capitol every day for two weeks during the 2010 legislative session. He would hold up signs – sometimes two or three at a time – urging politicians to cancel their plans to cut $21 million in public library funding from the state budget.

And he used 80 hours of his vacation time to do it.

His efforts paid off. Legislators restored the funding – and in essence, $8 million more in federal matching grants – that library officials says is desperately needed by unemployed and low income families who rely on public library computers to search for jobs.

Clark said he plans to continue lobbying on behalf of Florida’s poor and working poor, and that he hopes recognition from the award will help him open doors “to all the right people” in Tallahassee.

“Libraries are more than just books,” he said. “They’re busier than ever.”  

The award wasn’t the first time Clark has been honored. Last summer he was named the Florida Association of Counties’ Advocate of the Year, and he was recognized by Clay County commissioners for his selfless dedication to a worthy cause.  “It’s been a humbling experience,” Clark said. “There are thousands of librarians out there that are just as valuable.”  

http://www.claytodayonline.com/content/2883_1.php

All Images Copyright 2010 Paul M. Gaykowski

20 Questions: Deluxe Edition

NEFLIN presents a workshop offered in eight on-site locations throughout our region.

Join popular Lyrasis trainer Russell Palmer for this face-to-face class designed to offer an introduction to free online reference tools for the new reference practitioner or as an excellent refresher for the experienced librarian.

The 20 Questions: Deluxe Edition class will draw questions and resources from many of the popular live online “20 Questions” series of classes, and will be accompanied by hands-on exercises that will offer students an opportunity to practice answering questions in the humanities, the sciences, social sciences, education, genealogy and more!

After this class, students will be able to:

• Guide users to quality reference resources on a range of topics
• Understand the kinds of questions users are likely to ask
• Utilize many new and different reference resources

Register to attend one of these hands-on sessions. All classes are 9:00 am - 4:00 pm.
Free to all.

Wednesday, January 26: Live Oak

Thursday, January 27: Ponte Vedra

Tuesday, February 22: Gainesville

Wednesday, February 23: Starke

Wednesday, March 9: Yulee

Thursday, March 10: Ocala

Wednesday, March 23: Jacksonville

Thursday, March 24: Fleming Island

Register at http://www.cvent.com/d/rdqt44

January Training Events from NEFLIN

Solving the Personality Puzzle: Live Online 3 part series.
Classes are Mondays from 2:00 - 3:00 pm
#1: Personalities at Work: January 10
#2: Who's Who in This Puzzle? February 14
#3:How in the World Can I Communicate with Them? March 14

Collection Development for Children: Live Online
January 13, 2:00 - 4:00 pm

Keeping Your Balance in the Midst of Change

January 14, 9:30 am - 4:30 pm @ Millhopper Library, Gainesville

HTML 4.01 Web Authoring
Level 1: January 20, 9:00 am - 4:00 pm @ NEFLIN
Level 2: February 17, 9:00 am - 4:00 pm @ NEFLIN

Speaking Skills: Live Online series. Mondays from 2:00 - 3:30 pm
#1: Skills for a Persuasive Presentation: January 24

#2: Practice Session: Apply What You've Learned: January 31

Word 2007

Level 2: January 25, 9:00 am - 4:00 pm @ NEFLIN
Level 3: March 29, 9:00 am - 4:00 pm @ NEFLIN

Copyright: Live Online series. Wednesdays, 2-3:30 pm.

1. Basic Copyright Issues: January 26
2. Fair Use vs. Copyright: February 23
3. Digital Rights, the Internet and Social Media: March 23
4a. Copyright Issues for School Libraries: April 6
4b. Copyright Issues for Public Libraries: April 20
4c. Copyright Issues for Academic Libraries: April 27

Integrating Social Media and Mobile Technologies to Help Enhance Library Services
January 27, 9:00 am - 4:00 pm @ NEFLIN

Why Should I Care? New Technologies for Libraries: Live Online
January 28, 10:00 - 11:30 am

See all NEFLIN Events at http://www.neflin.org/registration.php

FLYP Workshops coming in 2011

Plan to attend one of the 2011 Florida Library Youth Program workshops for a day of programming and storytelling ideas, singing, dancing, games and crafts. This free, all day workshop will focus on children’s (ages 5-11) programming in the morning; the afternoon will include storytelling demonstrations and an overview of teen and adult programming.

The NEFLIN area workshops will be at the Flagler County Public Library on January 20, and the Jacksonville Public Library on February 15.

Registration

MARC 21 in Your Library: Live Online

This 3-session online course is an introduction to MARC21 and how it is meant to work in a library automation system. It explains what the MARC standards are and how those standards tie in with our cataloging rules (AACR) to help catalogers create data that will function effectively in a library catalog.

There are two components to this course. Part One is a series of 9 free self paced webinars that cover the underlying fundamentals of MARC and bibliographic information. You should complete the Part One webinars before starting the live online Part Two which covers the core codes that are most commonly found in MARC records, and their functions.

Part One: MARC and Bibliographic Information: The Underlying Fundamentals: Prerequisite before attending Part Two. Click here to access the webinars: http://www.marcofquality.com/webinars/webm21.html

Part Two: MARC Coding: The Core Codes and Their Functions: Meets online over three days (see dates below). You must attend all three sessions.

Learning Objectives:

• Explain and illustrate correct MARC coding for:
• Indexed fields (used for searching in a catalog to find a description of a resource)
• Display fields (used for choosing between resources found in a catalog)
• Coded fields (used by the catalog to customize searches and displays)
• Number fields (used for searching in a catalog and for duplicate record detection)
• Provide practice in reading MARC records

At the conclusion of this course, you should be able to read a MARC record, talk MARC, understand how errors in MARC coding affect a library catalog, and correctly explain the following, and many other, mysteries of the catalog:

• why can I find this book in the catalog if I search its author but cannot find it when I search its title?
• why does the catalog say we only have six books in Spanish, when just looking at the shelves I can see hundreds of them?
• why do so many descriptions of videos show up in the catalog with a little book icon instead of a video icon?

Who should attend: Directors, reference and acquisitions staff, copy, beginning and experienced catalogers.

Three classes to choose from:

• March 23 - 25, 9:00 am - 11:00 am
• May 17 - 19, 4:00 - 6:00 pm
• July 12 - 14, 9:00 am - 11:00 am

Note: These registrations are for NEFLIN Members only. All others, register at OCLC Training Portal

Free Webinars in December

On our sister blog, Library Webinars, we have just put up the monthly list of live webinars.

We have found numerous webinars in December, most of which are free, and can assist with your professional development. Here are some randomly selected topics:

• Books that Make Great Gifts
• Bringing Home and Garden into the Library
• Building Community Partnerships
• Care of Paper, Photographs and Audiovisual Collections
• How to Make ILL Statistics Work for You
• Marketing as a Team Sport
• New Technology Training Materials
• Re-Energize Your Preschool Storytimes

Check them out!