Celebrations

Celebrations, Online Collaboration
2011 Through the WebJunction Lens
January 3rd, 2012 | Permalink | Comments Off
The days are getting noticeably longer in the Northwest, a welcome return of the light after a long period of leaving for and returning from work in the dark. It is also the time when a year’s worth of data comes to light as a reflection of what was accomplished in the previous twelve months. Although January 1^st is an arbitrary blip in the continuum of busy activity, it is illuminating to look back and bask a bit.

WebJunction shines because of the participation and contributions from the library community. Whether you’re a registered member, a webinar attendee, a social networked follower or a visitor to the site, you a part of the numbers that add up to another busy and successful year.
- 341,123 unique visitors came to the website to view 2,991,000 pages.
- 11,587 people joined as new members in 2011, and 3,455 subscribed to Crossroads e-newsletter.
- 7376 people attended one or more of the 32 webinars we hosted plus the August online conference on Trends in Library Training and Learning 2011. Registration and attendance for the 2-day conference was the highest ever for a live WebJunction event.
- 4,993 members enrolled in 16,836 courses, and completed 7,277 of them.
- Library staff used TechAtlas to inventory 16,594 new computers.
- Plus, there are now 2, 270 followers of WebJunction’s Twitter feed, where we posted 1,937 tweets of news and information about libraries.
- 1276 Facebook users are hanging out with us at Facebook.com/WebJunctionNews.
- There’s been a lot of conversation on our LinkedIn WebJunction group, where 1954 members engage each other on a variety of current topics; there’s even a sub-group with 364 members focusing on Social Media use in libraries.
- Project Compass focused its second year of effort on helping public library staff augment their services to the unemployed, delivering 54 full-day, in-person workshops to 1,242 frontline staff in 11 of the highest unemployment states; 38 workshops or presentations in other states reached 703 staff; and 339 from 22 states people participated in two online workshops.
  One participant summed up her workshop experience: “I have been in the workforce for 32 years and have been to various seminars. This by far was the best and most helpful one I’ve attended.”
As the online learning place for library staff, we strive to offer quality courses and current content. We happily share the credit with all of you who have contributed your knowledge to enhance the body of information housed on WebJunction.
- We did some weeding and trimming in our course catalog to keep it relevant and findable.
- 550 new documents were published by WebJunction staff, our partners, and members of the WebJunction community. Highlights from our partners include:
  - North Carolina’s Ereader Petting Zoo collection of documents on how to help staff get started with ereaders;
  - Illinois’ Business & Libraries: Working Together information on staff training workshops and other resources to help libraries support small business in their communities;
  - Washington’s Volunteer Engagement Strategies for Libraries materials from the Carla Lehn workshop series Transforming Life After 50.
- Our 32 webinar topics covered a wide range of topics, including:
  - The Entrepreneurial Librarian – Running the business of your library
  - Cataloging as Collaborative Librarianship
  - Developing Online Patron Tutorials
  - Putting the Public Back in Public Libraries: Community-Led Libraries
  - Creating a Web Presence for Every Library
  - Teaming Up with Teens @ Your Library
  - And many more
- The Workforce Resources community of practice grew so big, we had to divide it into sub-topics. For the second year in a row, this was the most visited topic page on WebJunction.
As budgets tighten and the world gets flatter, it becomes ever more important to form new partnerships and solidify existing ones. At WebJunction, we value these relationships highly.
- Texas became our newest state library agency partner this year. We look forward to welcoming more partners in the coming year.
- We had a very successful collaboration with the ALA Learning Round Table to plan, promote, host and present the online conference.
- Other programming partnerships included ALA TechSource, YALSA and ARSL.
Perhaps the most significant and exciting growth around our office is the WebJunction kids.

We celebrated the one-year birthday of Veronica Rose Hill Briggs. We welcomed the arrival of Shepard Russell (Gesinger) Turnbull and Coco Marie Maddison. We await the imminent arrival of TBD (Van Noord) Peterson. And we continue to enjoy the adventures of Loren and Clara Peterson.
Celebrations
What? Me Celebrate?
December 30th, 2010 | Permalink | Comments Off
I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t feel like a “New Year”–let alone a new decade–right now. The economic crisis still grips us all, and libraries are still working furiously to serve the sea of patrons coming in for information, training and support, while simultaneously fighting for the funds, staff and resources needed to keep the doors open. At WebJunction, we are already neck deep in our 2011 plans, as we continue to adapt to respond to what our library community needs from us, right now.

Who has time for New Year’s celebrations, right?

But I believe that when we don’t feel like we have time to celebrate is exactly when we most need to do it. It’s one of those “red flags” that means stress is taking control. So, I’m taking a short breather to look back at what happened at WebJunction in 2010, convinced that this is a good way to maintain the healthy perspective that is required to keep us motivated and focused. I invite you to do the same for your year.

Looking at the pile of numbers my colleagues sent me, all I can say is: the WebJunction community was busy this year!

Here are some examples of what you did:
- 4,500 members enrolled in a total of 12,000 courses
- 7,426 people attended one or more of the 37 webinars we hosted, and 1,549 attended our two online conferences.
- 340,737 unique visitors came to the website to view 3,301,240 pages. [We have that many pages? Yikes, perhaps it's time to do some weeding!]
- Library staff used TechAtlas to inventory 23,960 new computers.
- 11,000 people joined as new members in 2010, and 2,500 subscribed to Crossroads e-newsletter.
- 108 state library officers attended one of four in-person Project Compass summits hosted around the country and/or the follow-on online summit to help address the increased traffic and demands on public libraries from the unemployed.
Plus, there are 1,246 Twitterers out there now following WebJunction’s Twitter feed of news and information about libraries; and 858 Facebook users are hanging out with us at Facebook.com/WebJunctionNews, discussing the issues of the day.

WebJunction started the year like many libraries did, with making tough belt-tightening decisions and reprioritizing around the essentials. We were pleased to see that despite having to work with reduced staff and resources, WebJunction content and programming actually grew in 2010. Some examples:
- 600 new documents were published, by WJ staff, WJ partners, and members of the WJ community.
- New courses were added to the catalog, such as the Microsoft Office 2010 suite and LibraryU’s Storytelling course.
- We hosted our first two free online conferences ever, one in February on Technology Essentials and then in December on Serving 21st-Century Patrons.
- We gained three new state library agency partners: Florida, Pennsylvania, and our newest–Virginia.
- We formed a programming partnership ALA TechSource that led to cohosted webinars and discounts on ALA publications for WebJunction members.
- We improved the Groups functionality, so that members can more easily find and stay in touch with the members of their group.
- We redesigned the Home page.
- The Workforce Resources community of practice grew by leaps and bounds: it now has 88 documents, 16 discussion threads, and an active live Twitter feed; much of the content has been contributed by the community. This was the most visited topic page on WebJunction in 2010. We also kicked off the second Project Compass initiative, which will result in more library staff training to support job seekers and the unemployed (and more content on WebJunction.org!).
- The Patron Training section grew a new Technology Training section at the end of the year, and it already has a couple dozen resources.
- We spotlit content and hosted free webinars focused on a wide range of issues, including (take a deep breath now)
  Website Development
  Library Videos
  Libraries and Workforce Recovery
  Mini Conferences & Web Conferencing
  Legal Information Resources
  E-Government
  Marketing the Library
  TechAtlas Tools
  Online Community Building
  Services to Older Adults
  Leadership Skills
  Libraries and Access to All
  Services to Spanish Speakers
  Public Access Computers
  Social Networking & Web Tools
  Digitization & Preservation
  Gadgets for the Library
  Disaster Planning
  Services to Teens
  Customer Service
  Rural Library Trustees
  Tool for Job Seekers
  Technology Planning
  Competencies
  Wireless Networking
  Virtual Orientation
  Patron Training
  Workforce Agency Partnerships
  Support of Small Business
Finally, we ended the year by greeting our newest and youngest WebJunction member, Veronica Rose Hill Briggs, who was born on Dec. 19 to WebJunction Director Chrystie Hill.

Gee, that’s a lot to celebrate!
Advocacy, Celebrations, News, Seattle
Marathoner runs 50 miles visiting 17 library branches in one day – in a snowstorm!
December 19th, 2008 | Permalink | 3 Comments

Runner Sam Thompson got his Seattle Public Library Passport stamped at 11 different library branches throughout Seattle yesterday.

“I heard about the library-passport program and thought it was really cool,” said Thompson, 28. “I love going to my library. It’s such an incredible resource. My goal is to get people excited about visiting their local branch.”

Thompson had originally planned to visit all 28 branches of the Seattle Public Library system in one day, but freezing temperatures and early library closures shortened his list. Besides the 11 branches he was able to reach before snow forced them to close, he also visited 6 more branches which he photographed.

Seattle Public Library created the Library Passport program to celebrate the completion of its Libraries for All program, encouraging library patrons to visit the new and remodeled library branches.

To read more about Sam Thompson’s library marathon, see the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s article, A marathon task: Runner logs 50 miles visiting library branches in one day. Also see SPL’s recent news release on other locals’ programs centered around the Passport.
Celebrations
Whatcha wearing today?
October 31st, 2008 | Permalink | Comments Off

There isn’t a whole lot of visible Halloween spirit at the WebJunction offices today. No one dressed up and there isn’t a jack-o-lantern in sight. (Does it count that we all wore Hawaiian shirts and hula skirts last week as part of our team retreat?) So I was delighted to see Mary Beth Sancomb-Moran post to the St. Jerry’s Virtual Scriptorium discussion forum a great photo of herself and colleagues in costume today.

I was also led to this more librarian in-joke costume. Sheesh, good thing it was the concise AACR2!

Can you match that? Show us what you got.
Celebrations
Celebrate the Internet on OneWebDay
September 18th, 2008 | Permalink | Comments Off

The organizers of the global event OneWebDay took the concept of Earth Day and thought it was time to acknowledge the Internet in a similar fashion. “The idea behind OneWebDay is to focus attention on a key internet value, focus attention on local internet concerns (connectivity, censorship, individual skills), and create a global constituency that cares about protecting and defending the internet,” states their website. The first OneWebDay was in 2006.

The key value that is the focus for 2008′s event is “online participation in democracy,” in acknowledgement of the Internet’s substantive impact on this year’s U.S. presidential election. The big day is this Monday, September 22.

Go to their simple yet cool website to learn about the scheduled events around the world and how you and your library can participate. I would suggest contributing to the e-Democracy Time Capsule (hurry, only a few days left to add content!).

You can also check out Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s press conference from the WWW2008 conference held in Beijing, plus his “global message” (kinda like Santa Claus?) videocast from 2007.
Celebrations, Library Management, Online Collaboration
Five years, five lessons, five memories
May 15th, 2008 | Permalink | Comments Off

I fell off the turnip truck in June of 2003, stumbling in the door to join the WebJunction project with little idea of what I was getting into. There are way more than five things I have learned since then, but here are the biggies:

1. It’s not about technology. WJ is successful because we have great people and we work with great people–and those people make great things happen. That is our not-so-secret weapon.

2. Hang in there. There are few virtues as valuable as persistence. There have always been and will always be tons of new and creative initiatives in libraryland: I think what sets us apart is that we just keep at it and keep at it and find ways to keep it stable and keep it going. I love that!

3. Take the middle path. It’s not content or community, it’s not big libraries or small libraries, it’s not folksonomy or taxonomy, it’s not top-down or bottom-up. Balancing seemingly irreconcilable opposites is one of the main keys to our character and our strength.

4. If it’s going to be difficult, it might as well be fun. Humor has saved us from ourselves over and over again. This is a high-stress business and it helps enormously to find and enjoy the absurdity of it all. I am so grateful for the amazing collection of funnybones that I’ve been privileged to work with.

5. We’ve only just begun. As our Seattle staff has grown from 3 to 30 and our network of partners has exploded exponentially, it’s become ever clearer that WebJunction has the potential to represent and support the consciousness and vitality of the library world in even greater ways than we have so far. Building on our considerable success so far to realize WJ’s potential as a comprehensive platform for library staff–that’s what keeps me excited and motivated and passionate about WJ.

OK, I am an old-timer so I will maunder on a bit more, as old-timers are wont to do. Here are a few select memories from my five years at the WJ:

2003. Writing my first Crossroads newsletter in June 2003 a few weeks after I started at WJ (Web-what?), and getting markup from Chrystie Hill on my copy, in which every instance of the word “you” was crossed out and replaced with the word “we”. The beginning of my online community education.
2004. Putting the one-year anniversary cupcake on the site in May 2004, one of our first custom home page graphics, I shudder to admit, but at least it was a small step toward the much more graphically dynamic site we have today.
2005. The first OCLC blog salon at ALA 2005 in Chicago, when it seemed like we really hit a new critical mass of awareness and interest. There were people who actually recognized what we had started writing on our baby-infant blog. (And I got inspired to write my very first parody song ever, “The Blog Party“.)
2006. Getting a fresh round of funding, validating the work we’ve done and propelling us into the future. “You mean we’re for real?” Boy that feels good.
2007. Presenting the Government Documents librarians workshop in Denver in spring 2007, and seeing the palpable excitement in a room of a whole new type of mostly non-WJ-savvy users about the possibilities for the site. Something clicks: hmm, maybe this really is real.
2008. Welcoming an influx of dedicated, professional, committed staff who see WebJunction as, yep, a real thing, not just an idea. This is great–they actually know what they’re doing AND they think WJ is a cool place to be? Wow, that is an accomplishment!

And the best is yet to come…
5th Birthday, Celebrations
WJ Birthday Memories: Five from the beginning
May 12th, 2008 | Permalink | 2 Comments
Kicking off the WebJunction birthday week is WJ Executive Director Marilyn Gell Mason with her memorable “fives” from the founding of WebJunction.
1. Five partners who wrote and received the original grant from the Gates Foundation to create WJ: Benton Foundation, Colorado State Library, ISOPH, TechSoup, and OCLC.
2. Five days before submission of the proposal when Mike Teets and I met in Dublin to organize all the pieces created by the partners. I kept wandering the halls of OCLC saying, “There’s something missing” until it finally came to me in a dream. Mike ended up chasing a fed ex truck in the rain to make sure the paper copy of the report got to Seattle on time.
3. Five days before launch in May, 2003. Don’t ask. Some of us survived.
4. Launch event at the Library of Congress. And the staff party that followed.
5. The go live moment when people, real people, started signing in and using WJ. We discovered that DC had been omitted from the states list.
We invite you to share your memories of WebJunction from the distant or not so distant past. Comment here in the blog or add your list of five to the memories discussion thread.
5th Birthday, Celebrations, Online Collaboration, Tim
Celebrating Five Years of WebJunction Community
May 10th, 2008 | Permalink | 1 Comment

Monday WebJunction turns five! In this web-based world where the shelf life of blog posts and RSS feeds is measured in hours, five years is a major milestone that we couldn’t have reached without all of you.

In honor of the occasion, we thought it appropriate to share some of our memories, invite you to share yours, and generally enjoy a fun week of both looking back and looking forward.
Where shall we start?

First of all we have a little recap of WebJunction history. We take you from the the WebJunction launch in 2003 at the Library of Congress to updates on some of our favorite programs and events.

We’ve also thought it would be fun to share our personal memories of WebJunction and related library experiences. We’ve created a discussion forum where we hope members will share some of their favorites. Already we have well wishes (thanks Maddog!) and a few WJ team recollections. Please add yours!

Also this week WJ staffers plan to share some of our personal “top fives” on the blog. The scuttlebutt I hear around the office hints at topics like favorite programs, shoes, WJ member milestones, memorable meals, conference swag, stories and more. I can’t wait to see what surfaces.

If you’d like to get in on the action and share a five (or two), I invite you to either drop us a note in the blog comments or add your list of five to the memories discussion thread.

It should be fun week. Stay tuned!
Celebrations, Community Building, Library Management, Online Collaboration, Teens, Tim
Move over Free Cone Day: Saturday is Free Comics!
May 3rd, 2008 | Permalink | Comments Off

Each year in the Spring, Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream runs a “free cone” promo at their stores. Kids (and parents) line up around the block—last year my two ice cream junkies waited 40 minutes—40 minutes on line and the cone was gone in five! Luckily, the goodies from Free Comic Book Day should last quite a bit longer (and could bring returns for years).

All you need to do is stop by a participating comic store and make your free pick from a selection of titles like Archie, Superman, Hellboy, World of Aspen, X-men, Tiny Titans and many more. Seriously. These are free. I know you are thinking: “What’s the catch?” Nothing is free, right?

(more…)
Celebrations, chrystie, News, WebJunction Staff
Farewell Liz Kellison
April 15th, 2008 | Permalink | 2 Comments

Liz, Chrystie, and Marilyn at ALA07
Originally uploaded by WebJunction

It is with great sadness, but lots of well-wishes for a bright future ahead of her, that we bid farewell to Program Director Liz Kellison. Liz was our first Content Manager and the third WebJunction employee EVER. She’s been with the project since before it began – quite literally! – as she was one of the authors of our original grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, along with our Executive Director Marilyn Mason. Largely responsible for the initial vision of our service, Liz is famous around the office for promoting “read, learn and share” – i.e., bringing together courses, discussions, and articles all together on a single WebJunction page. Liz has been fun to work with, inspiring as a leader for us and for libraries, and a tireless advocate for our programs and the people we work with. We will miss her dearly, but hope you’ll join us in wishing her well in all her future endeavors. (sniff. sniff.)
Advocacy, Celebrations, Recognition
National Library Week: Happy Library Workers Day
April 14th, 2008 | Permalink | 1 Comment

Tuesday is National Library Workers Day!

You’ll get no argument from me on the the premise of this campaign: “Libraries Work Because We Do.” I love my library and all my library friends and invite you to pat your co-workers, friends, employees, or (even yourself) on the back today.

If you have an library appreciation /awareness event in the works, we’d love to hear about it. If you don’t, well, never fear; ALA/APA has your back with some quick celebration ideas. While you are on their site, take a gander at the map of library stars. You may find someone you know.

Finally, don’t forget to share your plans for this and other events you are running during National Library Week! We’d love it if you’d share your thoughts in the blog or our Library Week discussion in the WebJunction community forums.