Tag Archives: webinar

What’s Up Wednesday EBSCO INSPIRE series webinars scheduled

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EBSCO is a leading provider of research databases, collection development materials, e-journals and more for many libraries worldwide. The Indiana State Library has been with EBSCO since INSPIRE launched in January 1998. INSPIRE – the lifelong learning library for Hoosiers – provides free access to many EBSCO databases statewide. In early 2026, Indiana residents were given access to all EBSCO resources that had previously been available through INSPIRE, as well as a few new databases. Residents of Indiana could now access EBSCO Academic Search Complete and Business Source Complete, as well as use various research methods like EBSCO Open Dissertations.

INSPIRE logo with text "Lifelong Learning Library for Hoosiers."During spring 2026, the Indiana State Library’s Professional Development Office booked Shana Ashwood-Viala, senior customer training specialist at EBSCO Information Services, to conduct a training series regarding EBSCO and the new offerings available via INSPIRE. The sessions are part of the Indiana State Library’s What’s Up Wednesday webinar series, and will give residents of Indiana, as well as librarians and librarian staff, real time training on how to access the databases and how to use certain functions. The webinars will also give the confidence to show others how to use EBSCO databases. The first series offering was completed on Wednesday, June 17. “What’s Up Wednesday: EBSCO Databases – What’s New for Indiana State Library” was hosted by Meg Pool. During the session, residents learned about:

  • EBSCO Management Collection: A collection of 11,117 full-text academic journals, magazines, trade publications, reports and company profiles designed to serve researchers in all fields of business management, including advertising, marketing, banking, public administration and the arts.
  • EBSCO Open Dissertations: Provides access to 2 million electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) from more than 300 universities worldwide.
  • Business Source Complete: The new interface for Business Source Complete, a full-text database with content from leading business magazines and journals.

If you missed the first offering, don’t fret! There are plenty of other sessions to attend, and you can view the first session on our YouTube channel.

 

We hope you can join us at our next session on Wednesday, July 29, at 10 a.m. Eastern Time. For more information about the future offerings, you can find the details below or visit the Indiana State Library’s events calendar.

“What’s Up Wednesday: Get To Know EBSCO”
Wednesday, July 29, at 10 a.m. Eastern Time

You will learn what key interfaces and databases you have access to, why they are important and how to access them. We will discover articles, eBooks, journals and primary source documents in popular EBSCO databases; perform basic and advanced searches; and review custom tools and functionality.

Hosted by Meg Pool.

“What’s Up Wednesday: Business Source Complete Overview”
Wednesday, Sept. 30, at 10 a.m. Eastern Time

We will review the new and improved interface for Business Source Complete, EBSCO’s full-text database with content from leading business magazines and journals, including Forbes, Harvard Business Review and Academy of Management Perspectives. We will cover basic and advanced search, review custom content including company profiles, case studies, SWOT analyses and highlight key features including the citation tool, Google and OneDrive integrations and personal MyEBSCO accounts to organize research.

Hosted by George Bergstrom.

“What’s Up Wednesday: LearningExpress Library Complete Overview”
Wednesday, Dec. 2, at 10 a.m. Eastern Time

Join us for an in-depth review of LearningExpress Library; the interactive learning platform that provides the most comprehensive collection of resources for basic skills mastery, academic success, job preparation and career advancement. We will review the user interface, highlight the new content we’ve added and demonstrate key resources for learners of all ages. We will also uncover hidden gems you didn’t know were available and discuss ways to promote these valuable resources. Bring your questions and we’ll learn together!

Hosted by, Paula Newcom.

This post was submitted by Meg Pool, Central regional coordinator at the Indiana State Library.

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.

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.”

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.