Tag Archives: continuing education

Remaining 2023 Indiana State Library LEU opportunities

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Believe it or not, 2023 is coming to a close, but we still have many opportunities for you to get LEUs this year, in-person and online.

“Every Child Ready to Read & School Readiness in Storytime” – in-person:
Dubois County Public Library – Jasper Branch, Nov. 17, 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. EST
Talking, singing, reading, writing and playing! Parents who do these five things (while sprinkling in early math & science skills) can set their children up for success in school. This workshop will introduce attendees to the Every Child Ready to Read program, as well as the basic tenants of the Reimagining School Readiness program, and will discuss ways to encourage reading and school readiness during storytime. Join us for this interactive workshop that will provide you with concrete examples for using ECRR in your library.

Note: This workshop includes a lot of crowdsourcing and brainstorming! If you are a storytime practitioner, please reflect on your storytime favorites (books, songs, rhymes, etc.) before the workshop and come prepared to share!

Webmaster Roundtable – virtual:
Nov. 28, 2-3 p.m. EST
Would you like to connect with other library staff members in Indiana who are tasked with their library’s webpage? This roundtable shares skills, brainstorms and mentors each other.

“What’s Up Wednesday – Anatomy of a Book Challenge” – webinar:
Nov. 29, 10-11 a.m. EST
As the pressure to remove and censor books from our libraries increases, librarians have to be prepared to defend everyone’s right to read. Learn how one school corporation has dealt with several recent challenges to their school library collections and has been able to educate their staff and community on the tenants of intellectual freedom. While challenges can be stressful situations, the presentation will offer you several tools, resources and guidance to help you find some unintended positive outcomes when these contentious situations find their way to your library.

Adventure Begins at Your Library – CSLP 2024 Training & Roundtable – in-person:
Lawrenceburg Public Library District, Dec. 1, 10 a.m.-12 p.m. EST
Warsaw Community Public Library, Dec. 8, 10 a.m.-12 p.m. EST
Porter County Public Library – Valparaiso Branch, Dec. 15, 10:00 a.m.-12 p.m. CST
Hussey-Mayfield Memorial Public Library, Dec. 18, 10 a.m.-12 p.m. EST
Brown County Public Library, Dec. 19, 10 a.m.-12 p.m. EST

Get started planning your 2024 Summer Library Program by attending one of our Collaborative Summer Library Program trainings/roundtables across the state!

Join the Indiana State Library for this training where you will be introduced to and receive updates about the 2024 CSLP Summer Reading Program “Adventure Begins at Your Library,” followed by a round table discussion of programming ideas.

What does this mean? Bring your program ideas! Each participant should bring at least one program idea to share with the group. Program ideas may or may not be related to the CSLP theme “Adventure Begins at Your Library,” and can be geared for any age. We want to hear what your library is up to and what you’re excited about!

CSLP’s Summer Symposium (FREE National Virtual Conference on Summer Reading) – virtual:
Dec. 7, 11 a.m.-4:30 p.m. EST
The Collaborative Summer Library Program (CSLP) will host the third annual CSLP Summer Symposium on Thursday, Dec. 7, 2023! This half day FREE & virtual offering is for public library staff to connect, learn and collaborate as we plan for summer library programming around the upcoming theme of Adventure Begins at your Library.

Sessions will include:
“Simplifying the Adventure of Summer Reading: Observations from a Seasoned Storyteller,” presented by Jenifer Strauss.
“2024 Manual Highlights: Adventure Begins at Your Library!,” presented by Alyssa Graybeal and manual committee chairs.
“Once Upon an Adventure: Practical Tips for Gathering Stories to Promote Your Library,” presented by Angela Hursh.
“Taking Adventure Outdoors: Programming and Partnerships,” presented by Amanda Raiche.

“Navigating Privacy Issues in the Public Library” – webinar:
Dec. 12, 10-11 a.m. EST
The library is a public place where individuals go to seek information and resources for reasons and purposes that they may want to keep private. It’s no surprise, then, that privacy issues arise every day in the public library. In this webinar, we will answer some common questions about privacy, including: What patron or employment records must be disclosed and to whom? Can a citizen take video of staff and other patrons – and the materials they are accessing – in the library without their consent? Can a staff member post cute photos of children participating in library programming on the library’s social media? This webinar will provide you with an overview of various state and federal laws that address privacy in the library and considerations for crafting related library policies.

Don’t forget, you can also earn LEUs for watching Indiana State Library archived webinars. Information on how to obtain your LEU from the recordings can be found on our Continuing Education site under LEU Policies.

This blog post was written by Courtney Brown, Southeast regional coordinator from the Indiana State Library’s Professional Development Office.

The InLLA Leadership Toolkit

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When you go to build something or make repairs, you grab a toolkit, right? Toolkits have the basic tools you need to accomplish your goal: Repairing or building things! When you need resources about management, leadership or both, where do you look? Library? Work? Friends? Now you can go into your Leadership Toolkit! This toolkit gives you the tools to help you become the best leader you can be.

The toolkit is the culmination of a project from the Indiana Library Leadership Academy (INLLA).

The Toolkit is free and contains resources such as books, articles and videos about leadership and how to improve or supplement current leadership skills. Have other ideas and resources that should go into the toolkit? Contact us and let us know. We can all lead from where we are; position or title is not a requirement for the toolkit. We look forward to see the growth of leaders in the Indiana library community! It’s time to build.

This blog post was written by Kimberly Brown-Harden, northwest regional coordinator, Indiana State Library. For more information, email Kim.

Continuing education website gets a facelift

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The Continuing Education portion of the Indiana State Library’s (ISL) website will be undergoing some changes soon. ISL’s Certification Program Director and Legal Consultant Cheri Harris and Professional Development Office Supervisor Suzanne Walker have been working through the website to identify instances where the same information is listed in multiple places, places where information does not match and pages that are confusing and wordy. “Our hope is to make the website more useful by making it easier to navigate,” Harris said. “In addition to streamlining the way the site is organized,” she added “we are also updating the language and content.”

The website will be updated gently in stages. A major overhaul to the archived webinar page has already been completed. The next phase will tackle the main menus and the initial landing pages and then more changes will spread out from there. The look of the site will mostly remain the same, but watch for a new menu for important forms, more ISL staff on the contact page and the changes to the Archived Webinar page.

“That’s what I’m most excited about,” Walker said. “Now people will have a much more visual experience with our archived webinars. They are now grouped by category with clickable tags to help the user find similar trainings. We have so many great trainings. We will easily hit fifty webinars this year. It is great that people can use the search box on the website to find them and the fact that they are now categorized and tagged makes it almost like a webinar database.”

Here’s a sample of what the old archived webinar page looked like:

Lots of text, arranged by date, with the newest webinars at the top and it linked out directly to YouTube.

Introducing, the new look:

Each webinar has a landing page where ISL can link to additional resources about the topic and each webinar has a category at the top of the block of text (Populations and Programming are shown here) that are color-coded and alphabetized.

Check back often to observe all of the updates.

Submitted by Suzanne Walker, supervisor of the Professional Development Office at the Indiana State Library and co-director of the Indiana Center for the Book.