“Wow, That’s Cool! What is it?”
Thursday, November 10, 2011 ♦ 2 pm Eastern / 11 am Pacific ♦ 60 min
The Library of Virginia spent part of the last 12 months touring the Commonwealth with a van full of technology toys: e-readers, iPads, pocket video cameras and more, thanks to a grant from IMLS. This webinar, presented by Cindy Church of LVA and her Wow That’s Cool trainer Lisa R. Varga, will describe how the project evolved, the response of library staff who had never seen or touched the technology patrons were asking about, things they’d do exactly the same next time, and things they’d never do again. Join us and learn about the program from several perspectives: the administrator, the trainer, and the conference attendee. Presented by: Cindy S. Church, Continuing Education Consultant, Library of Virginia and Lisa R. Varga, Trainer and Executive Director of the Virginia Library Association.

And thank you to Betha Gutche for the new compilation, The Gadget Ecosystem, filled with information on smartphones, tablets, ereaders, and apps, and how they enhance the library landscape.

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Stay up to date on the latest information and register for the first in the series at: www.oclc.org/go/buildingbridges

Building Bridges #1: Principles of Advocacy
Wednesday, November 2, 2011 2:00 pm Eastern/11:00 am Pacific

Public library professionals know the importance of demonstrating their value to their local communities. Are you looking for inspiration to jump-start your own advocacy efforts? Join us to better understand how ongoing community advocacy supports the vital role your library plays in the community.

Speakers include:

• Mary Hirsch, Project Coordinator for PLA and Lynn Slawsky, Program Officer, Turning the Page 2.0, who will discuss PLA’s Turning the Page program
• Janet Sawaya, Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, who will discuss the foundation’s role in funding public library advocacy programs
• Jennifer Pearson, Senior Manager of Advocacy Programs, OCLC, who will discuss the Geek the Library community awareness program

Building Bridges #2: Community Outreach
Learn more about building successful community partnerships that really work.

Building Bridges #3: Communicating Your Value
Without sufficient funding, your service to your community can suffer. But you can effectively communicate your value to those who fund your library—learn how.

Building Bridges #4: Your Library’s Future
This look ahead will focus on (1) the critical services libraries should provide; (2) services that only the public library provides; and (3) communicating the library’s future plans to the community.

More information and registration »

Click on the “Like” button to share the event to your Facebook wall. Subscribe to the RSS feed to get alerts to new event listings. And, starting today, you can register for one or *all* upcoming events directly from our WebEx Registration Page. Select those you’d like to attend and click Register, and you’ll only have to fill in your registration info once for the group. For each event you’ll receive a confirmation email with login information, as well as a reminder email—also with login information—the day before the event.

We look forward to seeing you at one of these upcoming webinars, now open for registration:

• Winning Library Grants
  Wednesday, May 4
  Presented by Stephanie Gerding

• Libraries Partnering to Support Small Business and Entrepreneurs
  Tuesday, May 17
  Moderated by Melinda Ludwiczak and presented by Marshall Jones, Tom Schaefer and Nancy Corcoran

• Cataloging as Collaborative Librarianship: Partnering with Your Colleagues
  Thursday, June 2
  Presented by Rebecca L. Lubas, Amy Jackson and Sever Bordeianu

• Cataloging Efficiencies That Make a Difference
  Tuesday, June 14
  Presented by Daphne Kouretas, Helen Heinrich and Debbi Dinkins

• Foreclosure, and Bad Credit and No Job, Oh My!
  Tuesday, June 21
  Moderated by Melinda Ludwiczak and presented by Joe Manion, Nicola Viana and Brian Huffman.

View session descriptions and registration details »
View webinar archives »

Ioannis actually has a far-reaching vision to transform all public libraries in Greece. Beginning in his own small city of Veria, Macedonia (pop. 55,000), he champions the library as a “center for creativity, innovation, and learning.” As he described to us Veria Central PL’s approach to serving the unserved, building partnerships, and creating experiences, we noted that his vision and strategy aligns very closely with the IMLS 21st Century Skills Framework. IMLS is promoting the critical role of U.S. libraries and museums in preparing citizens for success, and emphasizes the importance of skills in creativity, innovation, technology literacy, self direction and lifelong learning. Ioannis’ library actively models and engages its users around those skills, striving to provide a user-centric library environment that offers up-to-date and new technology.

Their outstanding results led to Veria Central PL’s receipt of the 2010 Access to Learning Award from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This award recognizes non-U.S. organizations for their efforts to connect people to information through free access to computers and the internet. Veria Central PL’s technology outreach programs, focus on children, and emphasis on digital libraries, has been recognized as a model of what can happen when a small public library focuses on meeting the needs of its users. Ioannis of all people understands the challenges around doing this, as illustrated by this equation he showed us:

Ioannis didn’t just present on the library’s past accomplishments, but also described their current strategy to reshape Veria Central PL to create experiences for “Generation Y,” renovate the building, foster civic engagement with offline and online social networking, and identify funding sources that will ensure long-term sustainability. But don’t forget that his vision goes beyond Veria: he is also working on a nationwide initiative to transform Greek public libraries into vibrant new resources sitting at the heart of their communities.

Please schedule an hour to listen to and view the presentation, and prepare to be inspired!

Building on what attendees told us after last February’s conference, Technology Essentials 2010, we made some tweaks to the format for this one. But, our main goal was once again to provide a conference experience to those who can’t normally attend conferences due to budget issues or other resource constraints. And we also enjoy encouraging attendees to play with online learning, social tools, and to collaborate with colleagues from across the miles.

Some of the changes we made:

• We shared a set of Best Practices for Cohorts attending Online Conferences. 35% of respondents indicated they attended conference sessions with colleagues or as a cohort and anywhere from 2-18 people gathered at a time.
• We reduced the number of sessions per day, to accommodate as many timezones as possible.
• We experimented with a Battledecks session, (we think the first-ever online Battledecks!) and heard mixed reviews of the format:

“REALLY enjoyed Battledecks with the presenters! I give them a lot of credit and it was a fun relaxing way (for the audience anyway) to end the webinar especially some of the silly chat.”

“All were good, but the Battledecks session was not as helpful to me as the rest.”

“I know you were trying out Battledecks. It did not work well in the webinar setting. Good job for trying something new.”

“Battledecks was a scream! Much Fun.”

“Battledecks was a new concept and I wish the overall explanation could have been a bit better (or maybe I needed to scrub out my ears more). Anyway, I caught on and it was a fun exercise to watch and comment.”

“Battledecks! It’s like an informal wrap-up of the whole conference…”

According to the survey responses, 95% of attendees agreed that the conference content was “relevant to my library”; 91% agreed that the content “will help me in my work”; 95% agreed that the content was “worth sharing with my colleagues.”

To make sure that we know what we are getting right, we asked respondents to list one thing they thought was done particularly well, and here are the top responses:

1. Interactive format (chat, twitter, presenters and moderators engaged)
2. Presenters (prepared, clear, quality of presentation)
3. Interesting/relevant/timely topics
4. Clear instructions/tech support
5. Time management of sessions and transitions

And as always, we wanted to hear where there could be improvements and these topped the list:

1. Audio Quality
2. More engaged and prepared presenters, vetted presentations
3. Breaks: more, less, or 30 minute lunch break (hard for us to accommodate with so many timezones!)
4. More online conferences (working on it!)
5. More chat/less chat/chat distracting/private chat

We asked what topics would be of interest for future conferences and here are the top 10 suggestions:

1. Technology
2. Tough Times (economic challenges for libraries and patrons)
3. Programming (Adult, Teen, Children)
4. Reference and Readers Advisory
5. Staffing and Performance
6. Fundraising and Grants
7. Collections (managing, cataloging and circulating)
8. Partnerships
9. Leadership, prioritization
10. Academic

And there were lots of other great ideas and comments shared:

“Definitely felt like I was getting training “from the trenches”…I was being taught by people with experience practicing what they were preaching…not someone presenting a cookie-cutter class about something they’ve never done or even seen first-hand.”

“That we could tune in as a group or individually!”

“As the director of a library with no budget for continuing education and a small staff, I really appreciate these free webinars both for the content and the ease of use.”

“Conferences like this help me get beyond the day to day to see the bigger picture.”

With this valuable feedback, we plan to offer another, even better conference in the future on one or more of the topics you suggested. Stay in touch with Crossroads to learn about this and other events at WebJunction.