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Upcoming webinars from the Indiana State Library’s Professional Development Office

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Greetings this holiday season! The Professional Development Office is busy planning a wide range of webinar topics for the coming year.

Below you will find the important dates for the Indiana State Library’s training and professional development events taking place in 2023. You’ll notice that we will feature a What’s Up Wednesday webinar training series on the last Wednesday of each month and our new webinar training series called What’s Up Wednesday: Trends & Technology will take place on the second Wednesday of each month. Some topics are still being developed, but we hope you can find some areas of interest in the list below. Best wishes from the Professional Development Office.

January 2023
Jan. 11 “What’s Up Wednesday: Trends & Technology – Dementia Friendly Libraries.” Hosted by Thrive Alliance and Bartholomew County Public Library.
Jan. 25 “What’s Up Wednesday – INDiPres.”

February 2023
Feb. 8 “What’s Up Wednesday: Trends & Technology – How to do a Presentation, Best Practices.” Presented by Paula Newcom, Northeast regional coordinator at the Indiana State Library.
Feb. 22 What’s Up Wednesday: Topic to Come!

March 2023
March 8 “What’s Up Wednesday: Trends & Technology – Powered by Sunshine: How Solar Projects Benefit Libraries and Their Communities.” Hosted by the Brown County Public Library and Pendleton Community Public Library.
March 29 “What’s Up Wednesday – All Free for the Finding: Digging up Family History for Free on the Internet.” This presentation is a sampling of the best, free websites for genealogy. Attendees will become versed in research tips, general genealogy websites, Indiana genealogy websites, immigrant genealogy websites, British genealogy websites and newspaper websites. Presented by Angela Porter, Genealogy librarian at the Indiana State Library.

April 2023
April 12 “What’s Up Wednesday: Trends & Technology – Enhancing Services with Outreach.” Hosted by Floyd County Public Library.
April 26 “What’s Up Wednesday – LaPorte County Public Library and The Exchange.” Hosted by the LaPorte County Public Library.

May 2023
May 10 What’s Up Wednesday: Trends & Technology – Topic to come!
May 31 What’s Up Wednesday – Topic to come!

June 2023
June 14 What’s Up Wednesday: Trends & Technology – Topic to come!
June 28 “What’s Up Wednesday – Bendable.” Hosted by St. Joe County Public Library.

July 2023
July 12 What’s Up Wednesday: Trends & Technology – Topic to come!
July 26 “What’s Up Wednesday – Edelweiss & Libraries.”

August 2023
Aug. 9 What’s Up Wednesday: Trends & Technology – Topic to come!
Aug. 24-25 (tentative) “Indiana Library Leadership Academy 2023.”
Aug. 30 “What’s Up Wednesday- What’s New in INSPIRE.” Presented by Paula Newcom, Northeast regional coordinator at the Indiana State Library.

September 2023
Sept. 13 “What’s Up Wednesday: Trends & Technology – Building Back After the Fire.” Hosted by the Eckhart Public Library.
Sept. 15 The Difference is You Conference.
Sept. 27 What’s Up Wednesday – Topic to come!

October 2023
Oct. 11 What’s Up Wednesday: Trends & Technology – Topic to come!
Oct. 25 What’s Up Wednesday- Topic to come!

November 2023
Nov. 8 “What’s Up Wednesday: Trends & Technology – The Bridge: Noble County Public Library’s Makerspace.” Find out how The Bridge Makerspace evolved at the Noble County Public Library. Presented by Derrick Leatherman, IT services manager at the Noble County Public Library.
Nov. 29 What’s Up Wednesday – Topic to come!

December 2023
Happy holidays from the Professional Development Office!

Submitted by Laura Jones, Northwest regional coordinator, Indiana State Library.

Professional development in the new year

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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.