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My Professional Excellence Grant Experience, June 2009

Published on June 10, 2009 in UPLIFT grants. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

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

Published on June 8, 2009 in UPLIFT grants. 0 Comments Tags: , .

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’

UPLIFT grant: Utah Library Assoc. Conference

Published on June 1, 2009 in Colleen Eggett, UPLIFT grants and training. 0 Comments Tags: , .

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.

UPLIFT Grant: The Economics of Consortia class

Published on June 1, 2009 in UPLIFT grants. 0 Comments Tags: .

Joanne Taylor received an UPLIFT Professional Development grant in 2009. One class she attended through the grant was Economics of Information.  Here are her thoughts on just one piece of the puzzle:

The Economics of Consortia

“Libraries have long engaged in cooperative ventures.  Government documents and interlibrary loans are two of the older and better-recognized cooperative arrangements among libraries.  Cooperation among libraries offers participating libraries broader collections of resources to meet many and varied user information needs and often at lower cost to participating libraries.  Where it would not be feasible for all libraries to house the many materials that each of their users might seek; through cooperation there is created a much broader collection that all participants may access.  The concept of sharing resources has recently expanded as electronic resources and the Internet now make broad information access possible at many levels.  On-line catalogs have made it possible for information seekers to view the collections of many libraries using computers from most locations.  Electronic media provide full-text books and journal articles, again for information seekers living and seeking from computers at almost any location.  These information opportunities have lead to the development of more extensive and creative collaboration among libraries.  Further, digitization is opening the possibility for information seekers world-wide to see replications of objects, including books and manuscripts, that have long been protected in secure archival libraries and previously only accessible to limited numbers of scholars. These new media have created opportunities for cooperation among libraries and even expanding circles of cooperation among consortia.  Resource sharing may well expand as current economic conditions constrict library budgets. One might anticipate that further emphasis will be placed on consortial relationships where participants may provide broader access to resources at lower cost.”

I really do appreciate how the State Library has offered this support.  Thanks for all you do.

Joanne Taylor

Upgraded to Wordpress 2.7

Published on December 18, 2008 in Website in a Box. 0 Comments Tags: .

I just barely upgraded all the sites to Wordpress 2.7.  The main advantage is that it will take you fewer clicks to do what you need to do. You will see that the menu bar, which was on top, is now down the left side.

Also, if there is an upgrade to something you are using on your site (a widget, a template), it will tell you and you can just click on the upgrade and do that yourself. It’s really easy.

We will have an online workshop on using Wordpress 2.7 in Jan. Watch for it on our Workshops page.