Tag Archives: webinar

New webinar series announced from the Indiana State Library’s Professional Development Office

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The Indiana State Library’s Professional Development Office has announced a new series of webinars, What the Research Says, featuring academicians and their research. This series will be irregular, but the hope is to feature at least one per quarter. We invite academic librarians to reach out to us with projects they would like to present or topics they feel would make good additions to this series. Submissions may be directed to George Bergstrom, Southwest regional coordinator in the Professional Development Office.

This spring, we kicked of this new series with “Creating Informed Learners in the Classroom: Librarian Experiences of Developing a Multi-institutional Information Literacy Project,” featuring librarians from Purdue University. In this webinar Clarence Maybee, Rachel Fundator and Amity Saha presented on their three-year research project funded by an IMLS grant.

The Creating Informed Learners in the Classroom project, made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (RE-13-19-0021-19), facilitated librarian-instructor partnerships to integrate information-rich student projects into disciplinary classrooms. The project was a partnership between librarians at Purdue University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Arizona. Over the course of  four weekly online sessions, the project team trained 15 librarian-instructor teams – five from each university – to use an information literacy framework called Informed Learning Design to design student projects that enable students to use information in new ways in their courses.

In this webinar, the team gave an overview of the principles of Informed Learning design, their specific project, how they had to adapt due to COVID and some great lessons learned from this three-year effort in improving student learning. Anyone who missed this webinar is invited to view the recording on the State Library’s YouTube channel. More details can be found on the archived webinars page of the Continuing Education website.

The Professional Development Office hopes that this series will offer a venue for academic librarians to not only share their work with others in their field, but with the wider library profession. The format will most often be a one-hour panel discussion webinar, but we are open to discussing other options with interested presenters. Anyone who is curious about being a part of this new series is invited to reach out to George Bergstrom.

This post was written by George Bergstrom, Southwest regional coordinator, Professional Development Office, Indiana State Library.

What’s Up Wednesday adds INSPIRE sessions

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The Indiana State Library’s Professional Development Office will be adding a new session to the What’s Up Wednesday series that started in 2020. This year we will be adding Get INSPIRED sessions on the second Wednesday of every month. INSPIRE is Indiana’s virtual library of databases made available to residents free of charge across Indiana. It has existed for the past 22 years and, although that is a long time, there are still people who have never heard of INSPIRE. So, we want to help people learn what resources are available as well as how to use them.For example, did you know that you can access Consumer Reports or learn a new language with Rosetta Stone by using INSPIRE? There are also a variety of databases for health research and these are reliable sources of information that you can trust, not something you read on Facebook. The list of health databases includes Alt Health Watch which focuses on holistic medicine and therapies. Consumer Health Complete covers key areas of health and wellness and it does this by being available in 16 different languages. Health Source – Consumer Edition provides access to 80 consumer health magazines like Men’s Health, Prevention, Bicycling, Golf Digest, Health, Parenting and more.

If you are a parent who is homeschooling, or a parent helping your child with homework, Explora is available for different grade levels – elementary, middle and high school – and allows the student to find articles on their grade level about a wide variety of topics. We have also increased the number of eBooks available to more than 75,000. The eBook collections are divided into grade levels K-8 and High School. TeachingBooks offers resources related to fiction and non-fiction books for school-age children. You can meet an author, hear the author pronounce their name, read a portion of their book, watch book trailers and many other activities and resources related to books. The Points of View database is an excellent place to start if you are doing a speech or trying to decide on a topic for a research paper. Learning Express Library offers practice tests for the SAT and ACT as well as study guides.

INSPIRE offers a rich collection of research databases for academic institutions, as well. These include Academic Search Complete, Humanities Full-Text, Literary Reference Center Plus and other databases that are subject- specific like History Reference Center, Science Reference Center and Social Sciences Full-Text.

For people looking to start their own business, they can access databases such as Small Business Reference Center, Entrepreneurial Studies Source, Business Wire News and Legal Information Reference Center. Census.gov offers demographic information that can help when writing a business plan.

Indiana-specific databases offered by the Indiana State Library through INSPIRE include Hoosier State Chronicles, which offers access to historical collections of newspapers from around the state that have been digitized. Indiana Memory is a collection of primary sources (i.e., letters, photos, maps, etc.) that have been digitized so that people can access them virtually.

As you can see, INSPIRE offers access to a vast collection of resources related to many subject areas and interests. We hope that you will join us on the second Wednesday of every month to learn more about INSPIRE. The session in February will be an open Q & A session where attendees can submit questions in advance to George Bergstrom and he will answer as many as he can during the session. Each What’s Up Wednesday Get INSPIRED training session is worth one TLEU.

This blog post was written by Kara Cleveland, Professional Development Office supervisor at the Indiana State Library.

Gaming in the library; soft skills webinar announced

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On Friday, Nov. 8, the Indiana State Library held a small gaming demonstration for library employees. The event was designed to help librarians and library employees begin to explore the use of board games in a library setting; especially the games’ ability to help promote the development of soft skills. It was held in conjunction with the American Library Association’s International Games Week. In the future, we hope to bring this type of discussion to library communities as a training opportunity.

In 2007, two librarians whom I consider pioneers in the use of games in libraries, Jenny Levine and Scott Nicholson, had the idea to attempt to set a world’s record for the number of people playing the same game at the same time at libraries. This day became National Games Day and libraries around the United States were encouraged to hold events to promote and play games and, if possible, help set this record. Five years later it was re-branded International Games Day and five years after that, on the tenth anniversary, it was expanded and re-branded again to International Games Week. For a full history, check out their website.

As I wrote about in my last blog entry, “Fun and games or secret career-building tool?,” games of all types can help the players learn and practice skills that are coveted by many employers. The participants at this event got a chance to discover and discuss these concepts and the consensus was to bring this discussion to the larger Indiana librarian community. Join me on Wednesday, Nov. 27 at 10 a.m. for a webinar on this topic: “Engagement with soft skills – using board games at the library to engage patrons and improve career readiness.” Please see our calendar for this event and for other training opportunities.

This post was written by George Bergstrom, Southwest regional coordinator, Professional Development Office, Indiana State Library.

Future genealogy webinars

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Did you make a New Year’s resolution to get started on your family history? Are you wondering how to begin or where to start? The Indiana State Library (ISL) Genealogy Division wants to help you stay on track and meet your goal this year. Perusing your family history can be fun and rewarding. However, for the beginning genealogist, research can be difficult and many wonder how to get started. ISL can help you with this goal.

The Genealogy Division has created a brand new webinar that will be available online in the coming months. This webinar will help you tackle the beginning steps in genealogy research. The webinar will be recorded and available on ISL’s website. Once the webinar is published you will be able to access the recording free and on your own time. Learn about records sets, how to get started and why you might be having road blocks; all from the comfort of your home. Topics to be discussed include the basic principles of genealogy research, where to start and what information you can find in different records. Be sure to check out our website for updates on this and future webinars.

In the meantime, please browse our current collection of webinars and videos.

This blog post was written by Crystal Ward, librarian in the genealogy department. If you would like more information about this webinar or other genealogy events, please contact the genealogy department at 317-232-3689. 

Fair Use Week: Feb. 20 – Feb. 24

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Everybody loves “Weird Al” Yankovic. Okay, maybe not everybody, but most people can find humor in his parody songs like “White and Nerdy” and “Amish Paradise.” Well, almost everybody not named Coolio. Word on the street is that “Weird Al” is a nice guy and gets permission to parody songs from the original artists. However, he is not legally required to do so thanks to fair use. A 1994 court case, Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, 510 U.S. 569, ruled that parody qualifies as fair use.

Photo by Kyle Cassidy

In the United States, fair use permits the restricted use of copyrighted material without obtaining permission from the rights holders. This allows everything from “Weird Al” parody songs to movie reviews to certain “Saturday Night Live” skits to exist. Fair use is even the reason we’re allowed to use DVRs. So, if you DVR “Saturday Night Live” it’s double the fair use. Of course, there are academic applications relating to fair use, too. Try writing a scholarly paper without quotations. Thanks, fair use. For a great overview of fair use, click here.

Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week, a week dedicated to celebrating the doctrines of fair use and fair dealing, is in full swing, running from Feb. 20 – Feb. 24, and is commissioned by the Association of Research Libraries. According to the Fair Use Week website, the event “is designed to highlight and promote the opportunities presented by fair use and fair dealing, celebrate successful stories and explain these doctrines.”

Fair use is important to librarians and educators alike. The American Library Association (ALA) is currently hosting, on their website, a webinar titled “Complete Copyright for K–12 Librarians and Educators.”  In the webinar, Carrie Russell, a copyright expert, discusses common copyright concerns for librarians and educators.

Fair use applies to almost everyone. For a complete list of organizations, including many libraries and universities, participating in Fair Use Week, click here.

So, next time you try to imagine a world without “Addicted to Spuds,” research papers, movie reviews or an “SNL” cold open, remember that fair use makes it all possible.

This blog post was written by John Wekluk, communications director, Indiana State Library. For more information, email the communications director at communications@library.in.gov.