The Professional Development Office is excited about the new year and all of the things we will be offering to Indiana librarians. We are starting a new series of webinars called What’s Up Wednesday?, which are scheduled for the last Wednesday of every month – except December – at 10 a.m. EST. The first one will feature one of our own Indiana librarians, Jennifer Taylor, from Hagerstown Public Library and the webinar is called “Quick Play Gaming for Teen Outreach.”
The next thing we are doing is offering the first Indiana online conference, “Hot Topics for a Cold Winter’s Day.” It will take place online Monday, Feb. 17 from 9 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. EST. Our keynote speaker will be Julius Jefferson, Jr., ALA’s 2020-2021 president-elect. Also speaking will be Cyndee Landrum of IMLS, Pam Seabolt of MCLS, ILF President Susie Highley and Kelly Krieg-Sigman, retired director of the LaCrosse Public Library in Wisconsin. Stay tuned for registration information.
The Difference is You conference is scheduled for Friday, Sept. 18 at the Indiana State Library and is in the early planning stages. This year we will also present our 2020 Indiana Library Leadership Academy on Oct. 28-30. Participants are selected through an application process so keep your eye out for the application. This opportunity is open to librarians from all types of libraries – public, academic, school, special and institutional.
We are also happy to announce that we have hired a new Northwest regional coordinator, Laura Jones. She will be working remotely from Argos. Laura has experience in both public and school libraries.
We have updated and added to our Face to Face Training options. There are several new options: “Teambuilding 101,” “Soft Skills for Librarians,” “Developing Community Partnerships” and some new subject-specific INSPIRE trainings. We are excited that we have been able to redo our tech kits with new choices and we will have three kits now instead of two. We have added the littleBits Star Wars Droid Inventor Kit, Squishy Circuits, Dash Challenge cards and the Code and Go Robot Mouse Activity set. Checkout for the updated tech kits will begin in February. Please talk to your regional coordinator if you would like to reserve one. In addition, we purchased two Breakout EDU kits which we will also be circulating this year.
Of course, we will continue offering webinars at various times throughout the year so please check our calendar so you don’t miss out. I hope you are as excited about 2020 as I am! It’s going to be a great year!
This blog post was written by Kara Cleveland, Professional Development Office supervisor at the Indiana State Library.