Panelists include:

• Sarah McHugh, Statewide Projects Librarian, Montana State Library, including Montana Memory Project.
• Amy Rudersdorf, Director of the Digital Information Management Program, State Library of North Carolina and lecturer at San Jose State University, School of Library & Information Science.
• Taylor Surface, Senior Product Manager, Digital Collection Services, OCLC.

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The PNLA/WLA 2010 conference in picturesque Victoria BC provided my first opportunity to give a retrospective report on Project Compass, the year-long, IMLS-funded program to work with State Libraries and focus on building public library capacity to meets the needs of a workforce in crisis. After a whirlwind year, I could start to take a few steps back and look at what we (the big WE of state and public libraries all over the country) have accomplished in response to the economic downturn and the dramatic increases in demand for library services.

My slide presentation describes the scope, goals and phases of the overall project, and then focuses on the past, ongoing and future actions of the states represented at the Pacific Northwest conference—Idaho, Montana and Washington. To get the full-throated understanding of all the amazing work that State Libraries are doing, browse the list of Showcases presented by participants at the Project Compass summits. Nobody is resting on their laurels either, as evidenced by the list of projects that are being implemented in the coming year.

The most rewarding aspect of the year with Project Compass has been engaging in a vibrant knowledge exchange with the library community, not just with participants at the in-person and online summits, but with library people everywhere. From those who attended my conference session, I got to hear perspectives from the front lines and from rural libraries about what was needed to serve job-seekers. I hadn’t heard before about the need for wifi printers so users could print directly from their laptops and not have to queue up for the public computers. Or the need for space in small libraries; job-seeking can be an all-day effort and the job-seekers impact the tiny spaces of many rural libraries.

For ongoing connections, there is the community of practice for Workforce Resources on WebJunction. This section burgeoned since the start of the project. It is truly a community effort with lots of room for continued growth. If you’re on Twitter, use the #libs4jobs hashtag to broadcast news and events about the library-workforce connections. If you’re not a tweeter, you can still see freshly updated posts in the Twitter badge on the main section page.

Stay tuned for Year Two. Project Compass continues to augment public library services to the unemployed with a follow-on grant from IMLS.

Libraries are looking for ways to be better prepared for disaster response and recovery. Join guest presenter Lauren Mandel, research coordinator at the Information Use Management & Policy Institute at Florida State University’s College of Communication and Information, as she introduces a new key service role, Get to Know Your Emergency Operations Center (EOC), to the existing Hurricane Preparedness & Response for Florida Public Libraries Project. The Florida-based project helps libraries throughout the U.S. serve their communities through partnerships with fellow responders (e.g., emergency management, local government and other agencies) and become a safe haven, recovery center, information hub and evacuee resource. Come learn how this project can inform your library’s disaster preparedness plan and how your library can play an important role in community preparedness and recovery by working with your EOC. With updates to service roles and resources since the project’s fall webinar and relevance to any sort of partnership development, you won’t want to miss this session!

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Communities across the country are pursuing a burgeoning strategy known as economic gardening, which works to stimulate the development of small business with the goal of growing a healthy, community-scale economy. Libraries can be key players in supporting and facilitating their success. This Libraries and Economic Development webinar series will expand your thinking about the powerful connection. Your host for the series is Shelley Walchak, a mover-and-shaker with the official title of Library Community Programs Senior Consultant at the Colorado State Library.

Webinar 1: How to Make Your Library Entrepreneur-Friendly
Tuesday, Aug 17, 4pm Eastern/1pm Pacific

Christine Hamilton-Pennell literally wrote the book. She is an articulate proponent of libraries’ support for local entrepreneurs. Learn specific steps your library can take to connect with and support its local business community. If you’re at all intrigued by the concept of economic gardening, this webinar is a must-see. Hamilton-Pennell introduces the strategies and lays the groundwork for their practical application, which will be covered in the following two webinars.

Webinar 2: Turning Your Databases into Business for Your Customers
Tuesday, Aug 24, 4pm Eastern/1pm Pacific

Your library may already have the tools at hand (or close by) to help stimulate economic development in your community and you don’t have to be a trained business reference librarian to use them. Presenters Terry Zarsky and Kathleen Rainwater will give a guided tour through the best databases for small business information.

Webinar 3: Going to Your Customer – Outreach and Strategic Partnerships
Tuesday, Aug 31, 4pm Eastern/1pm Pacific

How do you let the business community know that your library is primed and ready to help? Presenters Suzanne Kaller and Colbe Galston will talk about how to get the word out to Chambers of Commerce, small business development centers, community groups and government entities.

For more information and to access archives and registration:
http://www.webjunction.org/workforce-resources/articles/content/103122377

View Archive »

WebJunction is building a community of practice around libraries and workforce recovery. We want to surface all the mega and micro resources, strategies, or stories to let the world know how libraries and their staff throw out the lifeline to the community in tough times.

Here are four ways to share what you know:

1. The fastest way is through your Twitter account, using the #libs4jobs hashtag. You can see the accumulated tweets by searching for the hashtag in Twitter or following the live feed on the Workforce Resources overview page.
2. Jump in to any of the discussions or start one of your own. Current topics include Partnerships with workforce centers and the IMLS 21st Century Skills.
3. Add to this list of workforce resource websites that libraries have created to help staff and patrons find what they need. It’s a wiki —you know how to wiki, don’t you?
4. Write up a story, short or long, about the impact you or your library has had on a patron. Post it in the documents section or send it to WebJunction to post on your behalf. We know there are big and little success stories occurring every day. We’d like to put them all together as evidence of the amazing power of libraries.

What is your story?

If you work in a library, you’ve experienced it first-hand: people need libraries for Internet access. And now there’s data to prove it! Last year we blogged about the WebJunction group: Does your PAC have IMPACT? and we’re thrilled to share news of their completed research.

The new report, Opportunity for All: How the American Public Benefits from Internet Access at U.S. Libraries, is based on the first, large-scale study of who uses public computers and Internet access in public libraries, the ways library patrons use this free technology service, why they use it, and how it affects their lives. This powerful research was conducted by the University of Washington Information School and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Nearly one-third of Americans age 14 or older – roughly 77 million people – used a public library computer or wireless network to access the Internet in the past year.

Low-income adults are more likely to rely on the public library as their sole access to computers and the Internet than any other income group. Overall, 44 percent of people living below the federal poverty line used computers and the Internet at their public libraries.

Americans across all age groups reported they used library computers and Internet access. Teenagers are the most active users. Half of the nation’s 14- to 18-year-olds reported that they used a library computer during the past year, typically to do school homework.

The use of library technology had significant impact in four critical areas: employment, education, health, and making community connections. In the last 12 months:

• 40 percent of library computer users (an estimated 30 million people) received help with career needs. Among these users, 75 percent reported they searched for a job online. Half of these users filled out an online application or submitted a resume.
• 37 percent focused on health issues. The vast majority of these users (82 percent) logged on to learn about a disease, illness, or medical condition. One-third of these users sought out doctors or health care providers. Of these, about half followed up by making appointments for care.
• 42 percent received help with educational needs. Among these users, 37 percent (an estimated 12 million students) used their local library computer to do homework for a class.
• Library computers linked patrons to their government, communities, and civic organizations. Sixty-percent of users – 43.3 million people – used a library’s computer resources to connect with others.

The report’s findings (over 200 pages worth!) are based on nearly 50,000 surveys – including 3,176 from a national telephone survey and 44,881 web survey responses – from patrons of more than 400 public libraries across the country.

You can access the report, an executive summary, and read more of the press release on WebJunction and on the US IMPACT study website.

And for those of you on the front line, you can stand behind those number to show that YES, your hard work supporting public access computing in libraries does have a *huge* impact!

The initiative includes 3 parts, all available here http://www.imls.gov/about/21stCSkills.shtm:

1. The Online Self-Assessment: a brief interactive survey that quickly analyzes an institution’s 21st century strategies and describes next steps for action.

2. The Report: outlines a vision for the role of libraries and museums in the national dialogue around learning and 21st century skills and includes case studies [be sure to read these case studies!] of innovative audience engagement and 21st century skills practices from across the country.

3. The Self-Assessment Tool: allows museums and libraries to determine where they fit on the continuum of 21st century skills operations and programming.

I found numerous parallels to the efforts of the initiative with those of Project Compass and thought it would be great to start a discussion about the long term goals your library has to support the development of patrons’ 21st Century Skills beyond the current workforce challenged economic climate and on into the future.

The report identifies the differences between 20th and 21st Century skills, and provides a framework including four skills areas:

• Learning and Innovation Skills
• Information, Media, and Technology Skills
• Life and Career Skills
• 21st Century Themes, including: Global Awareness; Financial, Economic, Business, and Entrepreneurial Literacy; Civic Literacy; Health Literacy; Environmental Literacy

You can see the skill sets cover many of the areas we have traditionally focused on. I’m very excited to see how this framework might help libraries clarify our role and forge potential community partnerships to build 21st C. skills in our communities.

I found these 3 quotes to be particularly powerful:

First an overall call to collaboration:

All libraries and museums—and the people they serve—stand to benefit from becoming more intentional and purposeful about accommodating the lifelong learning needs of people in the 21st century, and doing this work collaboratively in alignment with community needs.

And then more focused on learning, specifically the role we as libraries can play in informal learning to help our communities…

Skills like critical thinking and problem solving are not only relevant for K-12 students and schools. There are millions of adult learners not in formal education programs looking to refine workplace skills. Even school-aged children spend the overwhelming majority of their waking hours in non-school settings, and increasingly they spend this time in organized out-of-school settings such as afterschool, museum, and library programs. In these settings, they develop important skills—such as problem solving, collaboration, global awareness, and selfdirection—not only for lifelong learning and everyday activities, but also for use back in K-12 schools and college classrooms.

And I loved this one that encourages us to

The report itself is loaded with other excellent information that can both guide programming as well as advocacy efforts, with clear articulation of the critical value of libraries. I’ve yet to dive deep into the assessment tools, but kudos to the task force and team member who pulled together the launch of this outstanding initiative!

Read it and tell me what you think!

New:

• Economic Gardening: libraries help to grow local economies
  Find out how libraries can nurture this exciting idea.
• Community and Library Services Analysis Tools
  Analysis worksheets created by Kitty Yancheff of the Humboldt County Library in Eureka, California to assess community and library services to triage social services.
• Speaking of Kitty, she is one of the presenters in Thursday’s (Jan 28) webinar on Libraries and Workforce Recovery. If you miss it, there will be an archive.
• In fact, there’s a collection of links to Webinar Archives related to Economic Recovery.
• There is a new addition to the Impact Studies and Reports document— a link to ALA’s report A Perfect Storm Brewing: Budget cuts threaten public library services at time of increased demand.

Workforce Resources will continue to grow. We welcome your contributions. Tell us what your library is doing to guide patrons toward recovery. Share your stories of patrons who were steered toward success with the help of the library.