Recharging the Corporate Library with Public Library Ideas, an introduction to LibX, the March Courses of the Month, an explanation of competencies and a WJ webinar featuring Illinois presenters. Find it all below in the latest “What’s New @ WJIL.”
Contents: Resources | Courses and Learning | Community | What could I do with…? | What’s New RSS Feed 
“What’s New” RSS Feed
Want the latest “What’s New @ WJIL” to come to you? Add the RSS feed to your blog reader.
[http://webjunctionworks.org/il/blog/index.php/category/new-wj-il/feed/]
Resources
Recharging the Corporate Library with Public Library Ideas
- Authored by our very own Synergist and WJIL Special Libraries Subject Curator, Nancy Maloney, this article gains inspiration by looking toward the public library as a model for corporate library service, especially in challenging economic times.
- Path: [Illinois Center » Illinois Libraries » Special Libraries]
The Continuous Improvement Approach
- Chapter 1 from The Quality Library: A Guide to Self-Improvement, Better Efficiency, and Happier Customers, by Sara Laughlin and Ray W. Wilson
- Path: [Library Management » Organizational Management]
Understanding Teens and Their Space
- Teen Spaces introduces how to recognize teen behavior and needs, likes and dislikes, in order to understand what is necessary and appropriate for the ideal young adult area.
- Path: [Library Services » Populations Served » Young Adults & Teens]
- The Amelia Bloomer Project (http://ameliabloomer.wordpress.com/) is a committee which creates a recommended book list of newly published books with significant feminist content for youth readers, ages birth through age 18.
- Path: [Library Services » Readers Advisory]
- This is the ppt from a conference presentation introducing LibX (libx.org), a browser extension for Firefox and IE that better integrates library resources into the online research experience.
- Path: [Library Management » Training & Development » Presentations & Publications » Conference Presentations ]
Courses and Learning
Join us in March as we tackle two new courses as a statewide learning cohort. Remember to join the group, then keep an eye on the Discussion and Documents tab on the Groups page for supplementary learning materials.
- Technical: Creating and Maintaining an Engaging School Library Website
- Library Management: Change Management and Leadership
Meet the Course of the Month Author for Change Management and Leadership
- Pat Wagner has over 30 years’ experience helping library employees improve productivity and workplace relationships. She is known for her practical and good-humored classes on personnel, management, leadership and career development. Pat is also a consultant, facilitator and writer. She helps individuals and teams resolve conflicts, make difficult decisions and create and execute marketing and strategic plans. Pat assists library boards, foundations, Friends groups, and national, state and regional library organizations as well. Although her focus is on libraries and universities, Pat also works for innovators in schools, nonprofits, local government and professional, business and trade organizations, as well as medical, scientific and research institutions. Pat is a frequent speaker at state and national library conferences, both live and online, and is a contributor to library-related publications. She has a liberal arts degree with an emphasis in print communication and performance.
The Customer Focused Library: A WebJunction Webinar
- What happens when you look at your library through the eyes of your customers? Three public libraries and one academic library from the Chicago area did just that, as part of a LSTA grant-funded initiative on patron needs assessment. A retail-space consulting firm conducted a two-day study of patron behavior, touch points, and interactions at the four libraries. The results of those observations led to the libraries adjusting staff behavior, space layout, signage, and marketing tactics, in order to better serve and delight their patrons. During this webinar, Gretel Stock-Kupperman, director of consulting and continuing education at Metropolitan Library System; Jamie Bukovac, director of Indian Prairie Public Library; and Detlev Pansch, director of Barrington Area Public Library, will share the details of what issues were surfaced by the study, and the best practices they have adopted from the retail world in order to better address patron needs. You can hear more about the experiences of these Illinois libraries in the WebJunction webinar on March 17 from 1:00 – 2:00 pm. Find out more and register on L2.
What’s the Difference? ALA Core Competencies of Librarianship and the WebJunction Competencies
With the recent release of the ALA Core Competencies and the addition of Competencies to the WJIL Course Catalog, you may be wondering how these two relate to each other. For one, the ALA Core Competencies did not inform the development of the WebJunction Competencies at all, since they were not released to the public until after the WebJunction Competencies had been formulated. WebJunction competencies were synthesized from other existing competency sets, two of which are from ALA divisions –YALSA and RUSA.
There are some additional major differences between WebJunction and ALA’s:
- The ALA Core Competencies set is specifically defining standards for LIS education. The WJ Competencies do not wade into the LIS standards specification arena.
- ALA separates degreed librarians from library staff by creating two major competency sets—the Core competencies for librarianship and the LSSCP competencies for library support staff. WebJunction’s competencies are intended to be more universal to library service and practice. The boundary between tasks performed by LIS or non-LIS people is so indistinct and variable that WebJunction felt it was more constructive to provide an “index” of competencies that any library or institution could select from to meet their own needs. WebJunction is not attempting to define standards for the field.
- WebJunction’s competency statements are much more granular and practical than ALA’s, which tend toward the abstract. The detail of the WebJunction Competencies that you see in the WJIL Course Catalog and the associated skills and knowledge make it possible to build a curriculum and to link to learning opportunities.
Wimba Archive: Technology Services for Children
- Archived webinar and related resources from February 2009, when Stephanie Gerding interviewed Kelly Czarnecki, Technology Education Librarian at PLCM’s ImaginOn, on best practices for libraries working with children and technology
- Path: [Technology » Public Access Computing » MaintainIT Cookbooks » MaintainIT Webinars
Wimba Archive: Using Wimba Classroom to Train Librarians to Apply for Grants
- Malavika Muralidharan and Laura Stone from the Arizona State Library present how their team used a web-conferencing approach (Wimba Classroom) to train rural library staff to apply for grants. Joined by Dale Savage, director of Parker Public Library, and Rose Bebris, director of Florence Public Library, both of whom participated in the Excelling Grant-writers Group (aka EGGsters) online training.
- Path: [Member Center » Events » Webinars » Webinar Archives]
Upcoming WJ Webinars (see L2 for details)
- The Customer Focused Library, March 17
- WJIL: Welcome to 2.0, March 18
- WJIL: Intro to TechAtlas in Illinois, March 18
Community
- If you’re planning to take advantage of the WJIL statewide learning cohort or just want to gather your staff or a group of colleagues for a learning experience, this set of guidelines and recommendations from Betha Gutsche of the WebJunction staff is intended to help you have a richer, more engaging learning experience built around the WJIL self-paced courses.
- Path: [Member Center » Illinois Library Community » Illinois Groups]
What Could I do with…Social Networking on WJIL?
Social networking is here to stay via sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and professional networking sites liked LinkedIn. WJIL offers some of the same advantages in their social networking feature of “friending” that allows you to easily connect with and learn from colleagues and friends.
For example, let’s say I decide to “friend“ Sue Brown, a colleague that I know is regularly using WJIL. After she accepts my friend invitation, I can click on the “My WebJunction” tab at any time that I’m logged into the site and check my “Updates” column to tag along with what Sue has been doing on the site. Maybe she joined the Course of the Month group. I can follow the link to that group and check it out myself. Maybe Sue contributed to a discussion thread on Reader’s Advisory or posted a document. I can see that in my updates and follow the link to read the thread or browse the document.
You get the idea. The more friends you have on the site, the more time you can save by networking and keeping in the loop on the “hot spots” and new content on the WJIL site. So “friend” someone today on WJIL and learn from them tomorrow.