By Joanne Gialelis, Library Assistant II, Utah State Law Library
The Utah State Library Division’s UPLIFT Professional Excellence Grant provided me with an excellent opportunity. With this grant award, I was able to pay for a Collection Management course and apply the credits towards my graduate degree program at SJSU’s School of Library and Information Science. This course showed me how collections are built and changed over time. There was much discussion of the obstacles and challenges faced when trying to build and maintain a strong, relevant collection. These obstacles include censorship challenges, copyright issues and the increasing annual costs of books, videos, and periodicals.
I had the opportunity to learn about item selection tools that relate to my work in a public law library. I also learned about materials selection in subjects I don’t see in my day to day work, including entrepreneurship, home ownership, and stock investment books. The most challenging assignment was putting together an Opening Day Collection using a predetermined budget. This forced me to choose a few titles among so many available while trying to keep a variety of viewpoints.
The most valuable lesson taken from this course was that networking will be an important part of managing a library collection. Whether being active in a library association, talking to cultural or business leaders, or keeping in touch with teachers or faculty, librarians don’t work in isolation to provide the best collections and services. I learned a lot from my classmates (including two fellow Utah students) how different types of libraries face challenges such as budget crises and shared with other libraries. The class was a valuable experience that will have lasting impact on my emerging professional career.








Utah Library Association received an 
Free Webinar: Finding (Legally Safe) Music and Videos for Presentations, Blogs and Podcasts
June 17, 2009, 1-2 pm MDT
InfoPeople of California is offering a free webinar. Pre-registration is not required. To participate go to
http://infopeople.org/training/webcasts/webcast_data/321/index.html
Your library has been creating content for websites and blogs for years, and now it’s moving into adding sounds, songs and video. You know just what type of clip you want, but have an uneasy feeling about its copyright status. Do you have a right to use it? Is there podsafe content you can use?
This webinar will help you analyze the legal rights attached to sounds, songs and video you find online and offline. It will walk you through safer approaches to using audiovisual content you want to use to make your podcasts sing!
At the end of the presentation, participants will be able to:
• Understand the concept of podsafe music and sounds
• Identify at least three good sources
• Be familiar with best practices in evaluating Fair Use when using video and audio
• Know what to ask for when requesting permission from copyright owners
This webinar will also be of use to reference staff who field questions from the public about copyright issues.
Speaker: Mary Minow, attorney, consultant, and a former librarian and library trustee. Mary has taught library law at the San Jose State School of Library Science. She was President on the board of CALTAC in 2002, the California Association of Library Trustees and Commissioners, and now serves as its Policy Analyst. Mary is the first recipient of the California Library Association’s Zoia Horn Intellectual Freedom Award, given in 2004.
If you cannot attend the live event, access the archived version the day following the webinar: http://www.infopeople.org/training/webcasts/list/archived