Friday, December 28, 2012


Upcoming WVLS Co-sponsored Webinars Available To All WVLS Libraries Staff and Trustees

January 16, 2013, 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Wisconsin Valley Library Service along with 13 other systems in the state is co-sponsoring the Wild Wisconsin Winter Web Conference. This event will feature six webinars in one day with presenters from California to Maine. Attend what you want – one….four….or all six! Participate from the comfort of your own chair or join others at the WVLS office where we will host the event in our meeting room.
View the programs being offered and register at: http://nicbits.blogspot.com/p/wwwwc.html#!/p/wwwwc.html

January 31, 2013, 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. The One Organizing Strategy That Will Triple Your Efficiency At Home and Work Webinar
Imagine 2013 as the year when you stop spending time looking for things on your desk, and when your office is an efficient sanctuary instead of a place that makes your stomach knot up. Professional Organizer Heidi DeCoux Giron will help us come up with systems and processes that will help make sense of our offices, our desks, and our lives to help ensure we can spend more time doing the things we love. This webinar is co-sponsored by IFLS, NWLS and WVLS.
Reserve your webinar seat at: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/635381118

February 12, 2013, 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. Five Powerful Email Techniques For Emptying Your Inbox and Keeping It Empty Webinar
Join professional organizer Heidi DeCoux Giron for some tips to manage the flood of emails you receive. This webinar is co-sponsored by IFLS, NWLS and WVLS.
Reserve your webinar seat at: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/441154878

February 28, 2013, 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. Readers' Advisory: Spotlight on Nonfiction Webinar
Sarah Statz Cords is an author, presenter, and blogger with plenty of public library experience. Her specialty is Readers' Advisory. Learn about some basic, easily-applicable readers' advisory techniques, and then we'll hone in on nonfiction readers' advisory. This webinar is co-sponsored by IFLS, NWLS and WVLS.
Reserve your Webinar seat at: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/956951502

All webinars will be available from the WVLS office on the day of the event.
Juanita Thomas, WVLS Outreach Coordinator

Reading Between the Lines


"As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.”  -- Andrew Carnegie
 
The first news bulletins from Littleton, Colorado on the car radio were sketchy at best on April 20, 1999. My husband and I were driving toward the Twin Cities to visit the historic Titanic Exhibition. In a bizarre twist the two events, 87 years and six days apart, were to become indelibly connected in my mind.
 
It was after 9 p.m. that evening before we finally tuned into CNN from our hotel room. Commentators attempting to make some sense out of the shooting and bombing at Columbine High School switched back and forth between Colorado and the refugee crisis in war torn Kosovo, another tragedy suddenly relegated to second place in the infotainment food chain. The images of stunned people living half a world apart in places numb from unimaginable calamity wrought by modern weaponry were almost interchangeable. 
 
Among those interviewed was Marion Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund. She stated that in most communities it was easier for a teenager to get a hold of a gun than a library book. I thought about the parental permission forms required to obtain a library card under the age of 18 and supposed she could be right.
 
Twelve hours later saw us stepping back in time to the last hours of the doomed Titanic. We managed to cover about half the exhibit before several classes of fourth graders poured in. Carrying some sort of worksheet, the girls and boys darted in between display cases and the few adults in the gallery like minnows schooling around pier pilings.
 
Remembering the Rhinelander District Library’s chapter of Junior Historians, I was initially excited at the prospect of observing these youngsters reacting to their surroundings. Sadly, the majority of them didn't seem to be connecting at all. The paper they clutched was a checklist designed to make sure they "saw" everything, but their visit quickly become a frenzied scavenger hunt focused on filling in the blanks to earn access to the gift shop.
 
After the wall of 2,226 passenger names, the last thing the kids passed before entering souvenir land was the visitors comment book. Many of their reactions were surprisingly thoughtful considering the frantic atmosphere. However, the first page I flipped to contained these words in childish scrawl:
 
"It was pure crap. No guns."
 
I wondered then, as now, how the personal reality of the child writing those six words in the Titanic Exhibition guest book would someday be translated into the pages of time. By my reckoning that 1999 grade-schooler was only a couple years older than Adam Lanza of Newtown, Connecticut.
 
Flash forward twelve and a half years to another story unfolding on the car radio as I drove home to Rhinelander from the WVLS office on a December evening. Another massacre in another school in another quiet, above average income community. Only this time it was elementary school children and teachers. I gripped the steering wheel, remembering all the bright, eager gap-toothed smiles I’d seen during twenty-seven years as a children’s librarian, and felt physically ill.
 
Over the weekend that followed, we learned their names and faces.
 
Charlotte. Daniel. Olivia. Josephine. Ana. Dylan. Madeleine. Catherine. Chase. Jesse. James. Grace. Emilie. Jack. Noah. Caroline. Jessica. Benjamin. Avielle. Allison.
 
Rachel. Dawn. Ann Marie. Lauren. Mary. Victoria.
 
Nancy. Adam.
 
As an anxious public reaches for answers that may never be known, Adam Lanza has been described as autistic, possibly challenged by Asperger’s syndrome, and home schooled. ABC News even reported that geneticists have been asked to study his DNA for “abnormalities and mutations.”
 
Caught up in the furious media driven stew that has mixed the voracious debate over guns, massacres and mental illness, it’s vital that we don’t create additional stereotypes for struggling children who are every bit as bright and loving and deserving of our nurture as those who died in the first grade classrooms of Sandy Hook Elementary.
 
Isolation and misunderstanding, hubris and blame create invisible wounds. We are passengers all together on this journey.
 
There are striking similarities between our world of 2012 and the gilded age of a century ago that launched the Titanic, a veritable calamity of human failing. Captains of industry still plot a full throttle course under cover of darkness without binoculars in the crow’s nest, paying more attention to the dictates of marketing than to warnings of potential submerged danger. Life boats for all simply aren’t a priority. Those not berthed in first class are expendable.
 
Icy water and bullets are equally unimpressed by social strata. Terror cuts across all boundaries of race and place. Thousands of Americans are slaughtered annually in less picturesque communities than Newtown but their loss doesn’t capture public notice. 
 
Enough! 
 
May our lifeboat libraries welcome all children, making it easier to obtain a library card than a gun. May librarians overcome fear with knowledge, providing answers to tough questions while recognizing all points of view. May we continue to address poverty of the mind, enfold lonely spirits and give support to those who grieve.

 

Tuesday, December 18, 2012


Mark your calendar for upcoming CEU events/webinars/meetings in 2013

System Events:

January 16 – Wild Wisconsin Winter Web Conference (all day Webinar)

January 31 – The One Organizing Strategy that will Triple Your Efficiency at Home and Work (Webinar sponsored by IFLS, NWLS, and WVLS) Watch for email to sign up.)

February 12, 2013 – 5 Powerful Email Techniques for Emptying Your Inbox and Keeping It Empty Webinar sponsored by IFLS, NWLS, and WVLS) Watch for email to sign up.)

February 28, 2013 – Readers’ Advisory: Spotlight on Nonfiction (Webinar sponsored by IFLS, NWLS, and WVLS) Watch for email to sign up.)

March 4 & 5, 2013 – Children’s Book Fest in Rhinelander and the WVLS Grassroots Gathering is scheduled for March 5, 2013 in Rhinelander following the Children’s Book Fest.

March 14 – Planning and Leading Effective Meetings (Webinar)

April 18 - WVLS Director’s Retreat

Happenings around the State:

January 16 – Lake Superior Libraries Symposium Mid-Winter Un- Symposium at UW Superior
February 5 – Library Legislative Day in Madison
May 1- 3 – WAPL Conference, Grand Geneva Resort & Spa in Lake Geneva
June 7 – Lake Superior Libraries Symposium, WITC in Superior

DPI Webinars for school and public libraries:

January 8 – 3 to 4 p.m. Summer Library Programming with BadgerLink
February 13 – 3 to 4 p.m. School and Public Library Collaboration
Heritage Preservation offers free, online collections care courses – “Caring for Yesterday’s Treasures -Today”, an online series about the preservation of archival and historical collections.   
Webinar Courses Schedule:
January 9, 10, 15, 16, 17, & 23 – 1 to 2:30 - p.m. Collections Care Basics: Where Do I Begin?
February 5, 7, 12, & 14 – 1 to 2:30 p.m. - Risk Evaluation: First Step in Disaster Planning
March 5, 7, 12, & 14 – 1 to 2:30 p.m. - Protecting Your Collections: Writing a Disaster Response Plan
BadgerLunch Webinar Series - Spanish Language Resources:
January 17 - EBSCO
January 24 - Encyclopædia Britannica
January 31 - EBSCO (en español)
February 7 - TeachingBooks
February 14 - EBSCO Recursos de Salud (en español)
February 21 - LearningExpress Library
As more information becomes available and registration opens email notices will be sent via the WVLS listserv.
Juanita Thomas, WVLS Outreach Coordinator

Friday, December 14, 2012

OverDrive - "Recommend to Library" Feature Coming to the Wisconsin Digital Library


A new feature is coming soon to the Wisconsin Digital Library. "Recommend to Library" opens up a book search to the entire OverDrive catalog and offers the patron an option to send the WPLC a request-to-purchase for titles not already owned. We can set a limit on how many suggestions each patron can make (for example, no more than 5 requests per month).

There are a couple of screen shots below, as well as the our development site URL and login credentials. Please take a few minutes to log in and test it out. Send your questions and comments to me by Tuesday 12/18, as we'd like to launch next week (*before* Christmas).

If you need a quick example, in the advanced search in the test environment, put "cooking" in the keyword box and click on "Additional titles" at the bottom.

     
RTL is now added to your site and available for you to preview in development:
Login: wplc.midas.preview
Password: d3w3y
You will now see the option for “Additional titles” on the Advanced Search page, as well as all search results page. Clicking on “Additional titles” includes search results that are not in your catalog with the option to “Recommend to library.”
 

 

 


 


Screen shot of search screen:

 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
Jane Richard
Wisconsin Library Services
Wisconsin Public Library Consortium
jrichard@wils.wisc.edu
728 State St., Room 464
Madison, WI  53706-1494
608/263-5051

Monday, December 10, 2012

OverDrive Training - Hot eBook Devices for the Holidays


Hot eBook Devices for the Holidays!


Prepare to meet the holiday rush! Your users will soon flock to the library with the season's most popular eReaders, tablets and more.
In this special session, we'll bring you up to speed on the latest eBook devices and how your users can use them to enjoy your OverDrive collection.
Register for a FREE webinar:
Wednesday, Dec. 12 @ 11 am EST
Wednesday, Dec. 12 @ 3 pm EST
Thursday, Dec. 13 @ 11 am EST
Thursday, Dec. 13 @ 3 pm EST
Register Now

Can't attend? Visit our Learning Center beginning December 21 for a recorded session.
Questions? Please contact training@overdrive.com.