Free Webinar: Finding (Legally Safe) Music and Videos for Presentations, Blogs and Podcasts

Published by
ceggett
at June 10, 2009 in Colleen Eggett, Comments and training. 0 Comments

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

My Professional Excellence Grant Experience, June 2009

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at June 10, 2009 in UPLIFT grants. 0 Comments

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.

UPLIFT Professional Excellence Grant- Shelly Maag Heaps

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at June 8, 2009 in UPLIFT grants. 0 Comments

I received a Professional Excellence Grant from the Utah State Library to attend Emporia State University’s class called “Organization Theories for Administering Information Agencies” this spring. This class provided a great deal of information and ideas about managing libraries and other information institutions. For the final project, each student chose an issue facing library managers and researched that topic. I looked into reasons a library manager should allow teenagers to play computer games and participate in social networking on library computers. In the Fall 2008 issue of Directions, Linda Fields-Richfield discussed her realization that teens gain important literacy skills through gaming (p.4). This is one of many reasons that teen gaming and social networking are valuable to teens and should be allowed in the library. This article outlines one more of those reasons through an interpretation of a recent study on the association between teen gaming and civic involvement.

One benefit of teen gaming that is being explored by researchers is the civic experience teen’s gain from playing games. The link between teens that play games and involvement in the community is investigated in a 2008 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. This study looked at the fact that a vast majority of American teens play video games and that there “are civic dimensions to video game play” (Lenhart, Kahne, Middaugh, Macgill, Evans, Vitak, 2008, p. viii). This study found that teens who play civic computer games, especially in a social setting are more likely to be politically involved. These games include a wide variety of elements that make many games civically tied, including: helping and guiding other players, teaching about a problem in society, exploring a social issue, thinking about moral or ethical issues, helping make decisions about how a community, city or nation should be run and organizing game groups or guilds” (Lenhart, et al., 2008, p. 41). Most teens are benefiting from these skills by playing computer games, and many are doing it in the library, a place where all teens are free to try these games and play them with friends.

While much research is still needed about the connections between gaming and civic involvement, the “Teens, Video Games, and Civics” study by Lenhart, et al. (2008) indicates that teens that play these types of games in a group are significantly more likely to:
• go online to get information about politics or current events
• raise money for charity
• be committed to civic participation
• be interested in politics
• stay informed about current events
• try to persuade others to vote a particular way in an election
• participate in a protest, march, or demonstration (p. 44).

All of these things are important in a society where citizens can make a difference and the library should be promoting these activities. While it is surprising that allowing gaming can result in these activities, and it is not a logical link many people make, showing this connection to local decision-makers and library leaders can make gaming that much more valuable to individual institutions. Continue reading ‘UPLIFT Professional Excellence Grant- Shelly Maag Heaps’

Kanab City Library celebrates 10 years in its new building

Published by
ceggett
at June 2, 2009 in Colleen Eggett and Comments. 1 Comment

Kanab City Library was filled with fond memories and tributes to Marolynn Watson at their Tenth Anniversary Open House on May 16th 2009. The Library Board and staff had gone all out to show off many highlights of the past ten years. There were displays showing library accomplishments and artifacts of the library in days of old. The library first started in 1915.

Marolynn Watson was the Library Director from 1980 to 2002. She got the funding and all of the approvals for the current library building. She was described as a “bulldog,” fighting hard for the community and the library. She received a special gift: a plaque to be put up on the entryway pillar. She and her son Rob flew in for the occasion.

Dicki Robinson, Library Director, gave a rousing speech about the library and Marolynn’s part in it. Rob Watson paid tribute to his mother and told many of the things she did to improve literacy in the community during her tenure as Director. Gail Glauser, Library Board Chair, presented the library a plaque that will be mounted in the front foyer.

Sheila Bernstein completed the day by playing “Impossible Dream.” A great time was had by all.




UPLIFT grant: Utah Library Assoc. Conference

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at June 1, 2009 in Colleen Eggett, UPLIFT grants and training. 0 Comments

Norma BlakeUtah Library Association received an UPLIFT Organizational Resource grant from the Utah State Library in 2009. About 400 librarians and library enthusiasts attended the annual conference, “Utah Libraries: Turning up the Volume.”

Four presenters were sponsored, in whole or in part, by the grant:

  • Norma Blake, NJ State Librarian, LJ 2008 Librarian of the Year, ULA keynote speaker, “Libraries Surviving Tough Times”
  • Joyce Saricks, “What we didn’t learn in library school”
  • Celia Ross, “Making sense of business reference”
  • Grace Mary Gouveia, “Collecting and supporting local history”

Here’s what attendees said about the programs:

Confidence building
Exceedingly interesting
She (Joyce Saricks) was amazing.
Great ideas and how-to with a small staff
Dr. Gouveia was very interesting–good choice for a presenter
I will share this info with my library’s other reference librarian
I can serve our community’s needs better because of this training
Norma gave a wonderful presentation about coping in today’s world
Celia was great! Excellent speaker with great useful information and sources
I enjoyed learning from this very knowledgeable and competent presenter. She is very good at explaining complex info in an understandable way. I would recommend her returning in the future for additional presentations.

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