2019 Pacific Northwest Library Association Conference

Health and safety is a very important, but often overlooked topic when it comes to library operations. Lethbridge Public Library has spent the past few year re-focusing on health and safety and ensuring management and staff are well informed of all our health and safety policies and procedures.

The session will review what Lethbridge Public Library has done in regards to health and safety and how other libraries can translate that information to their organizations. Topics covered will include:
Evacuation, shelter-in-place and lockdown plans
Crisis response plans
Health and safety policies
Staff co-operation and training
Working with your municipality
Workers compensation responsibilities
Mental Heath in the workplace

Libraries often have hidden collections in their archives that schools can tap into with little effort – if they only know about them!  This program explores a collaborative project between the Montana State University Library Special Collections, the Yellowstone Writing Project, the Museum of the Rockies, and Montana middle and high school teachers to create a traveling “Writer’s Quest” discovery trunk using a Montana author’s archive and works. Focused on Ivan Doig’s novel “The Bartender’s Tale”, our trunk intersects digital and physical archival materials with published books, writer’s tools (including a manual typewriter and digital recorder), and lesson plans to help teachers and their students enter the mysterious world of the writer’s process.  

Attendees will come away with 1. ideas for promoting collections to new user groups; 2. a list of resources for a traveling trunk on books and writing; 3. sample curricular materials that engage students in library/archival materials and an author's works and process. 

At the Gary Strong Curriculum Center (a library dedicated to Education majors that houses State if Idaho adopted curriculum as well as a wide variety of books one might encounter in a school library), we strive to provide the most relevant and diverse materials for students, staff, faculty, and community members.  Managing and organizing a small curriculum library takes a lot of flexibility, creativity, ingenuity, and muscle (textbooks are heavy!).  Learn what it takes to plan, organize, and implement the yearly accessioning and purging of 1,000’s of curriculum items while maintaining an exceptional collection of fiction and nonfiction materials and staying sane doing it (just kidding!).

Attendees will leave with tips and techniques for managing the flow of new and old materials while working with limited staff, space, and time, as well as strategies for enhancing permanent collections with a limited budget.
 
Provide information on collection development with a continually rotating section, managing a relevant fiction and nonfiction section, and making the most out of a limited budget. 

This is a Power Point presentation for libraries to support their communities for the 2020 Census - ensuring continued resources of federally funded programs.  The timing of this conference is perfect for this once-a-decade population and housing count that is mandated by congress.  The purpose of the 2020 Census is to conduct a census of population and housing and disseminate the results to the President, the states, and the American people. The goal of the 2020 Census is to count everyone once, only once, and in the right place. The decennial census, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, is the country’s largest nonmilitary mobilization of a workforce and its data are of paramount importance to the nation, determining each state’s number of representatives in Congress and the allocation of billions of dollars in funding for many federal programs, the boundaries for voting and school districts, and countless other decisions that benefit local governments in all 50 states and the territories. Businesses of all sizes depend on census data to make decisions about where to locate, hire, and invest. The widespread availability of data through the internet, as well as through third‐party entities that often repackage Census Bureau data, has been important for entrepreneurs who need to make data‐driven decisions to benefit their businesses. 

1. Outreach/education to underrepresented, rural and hard-to-count populations.  2.  Support innovative technology with internet response opportunities for the first time in Census history.  3.  Support resources of federally funded programs for local communities. 

 In December 2016 Montana State University Library migrated to Ex Libris’ Alma unified resource management system.  In the first year using the system, as new workflows were identified, opportunities to streamline processes arose. As a result, in July 2018 the Collection Development (CD) and Resource Description & Metadata Services (RDMS) departments were merged into a single department, Collection Access and Technical Services (CATS).  The formation of this new department has in turn led to physical changes to the technical services area at MSU Library.  The presenter will address the workflow changes, the process of merging the departments, and describe the physical changes currently underway. 

1.) Share how workflows were affected by the migration to the new library management system, 2.) Share how the decision to merge departments was reached, and 3.) Address the physical changes resulting from the merger.  

In this workshop, we’ll explore the data that surrounds us and permeates our lives. We’ll complete a creative exercise to capture a “data snapshot” and talk about the discoveries prompted by this type of noticing, which is new to many. We’ll then talk about how data visualization can be used to explore and find patterns in more formal data, and do a brief exploratory project using library survey comments. 

Bring colored pens and pencils if you have them, and be ready for some fun learning! 

After this workshop, students will be able to:
1. Articulate what data is, how it surrounds us, and why it is important;
2. Use visualization techniques to explore relationships and patterns in a data set;
3. Apply best practices for data visualization to other collections of data in formal and informal settings.

Opening Books, Opening Doors is a community partnership and commitment to ensure that by 2020, all students in the Coeur d’Alene School District exiting third grade experience a deep love of reading and meet grade level reading proficiency goals, including comprehension and fluency. This initiative is anchored by a $600,000 grant to University of Idaho to implement the Coeur d’Alene Early Reading Project, now called Opening Books, Opening Doors (OBOD), in partnership with the Coeur d’Alene School District. OBOD will add to existing Coeur d’Alene School District reading resources for students and teachers, and will coordinate literacy efforts of parents, volunteers and nonprofit organizations in Coeur d’Alene to create a community-wide approach to ensure reading success for K-3 students. This session will share the background on how this project came to be, the key role of the community partners and collaborators, the importance of reaching beyond our comfort zone into the community, as well as our successes and challenges. Participants will leave with a framework to develop this project in their communities. 

By the end of this session attendees will:
• identify community partners and resources to implement an OBOD model in their community;
• understand the OBOD initiatives, timeline, and program requirements;
• have an OBOD project outline to implement in their community.
 

With growing budget constraints, it is hard to find resources for capital projects, not to mention invest in new innovations to enhance a patron’s experience. Learn the steps to creating a grassroots capital campaign in your library from start to finish—identifying donors and community partners, leveraging matching funds, and seeking grant opportunities. We will use the Spokane Public Library as an example to learn how they privately fundraised just shy of $200,000 for the remote access 24/7 library in a year’s time. 
Learning Goals: How to identify potential partners, learn strategies to identify donors and project management  

To improve community health, we cannot be afraid to have difficult conversations, even with our earliest learners. One of the best ways to introduce children ages 4-11 to a tough topic is through books before the difficult situation has occurred.
Tough topics story times use picture books to gently explore themes of death and grief, mental health, and divorce. These story times can be held as special events or be incorporated into your existing story times. Learn the developmental stages of child grief and the research behind exploring tough topics through books. We will discuss ways to acknowledge Children’s Grief Awareness Day and how to create hands-on activities to assist children in working through difficult subject matter. Resources on community partnerships that can provide emotional support to families will be included, as will booklists on each tough topic. 

1.    Participants will learn the ages and developmental stages of child grief.
2. Participants will understand the importance of social emotional learning for preschool and elementary aged learners.
3.    Participants will be equipped to discuss difficult topics with families in a story time setting, connect families to community resources, and to advocate for tough topics programming in their library.