Volume 11, September 24, 2015 for the WSL Updates mailing list

Topics include:

1) HR – LOOKING OUT FOR RED FLAGS

2) STEM LSTA GRANT CYCLE OPENS

3) IMPLEMENTING WIOA IN RURAL AREAS

4) FREE CE OPPORTUNITIES NEXT WEEK

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1) HR – LOOKING OUT FOR RED FLAGS

Most supervisors are surprised at the amount of time they spend on human resource issues. Do you have questions about Family Medical Leave, overtime/comp time, or how to deal with difficult employees? Join us for a First Tuesdays session with Pam Ward and Lynda Ring-Erickson of LRE Solutions as they tackle the topic “Things Librarians Should Know about Human Resources.” Bring your questions; as consultants they have worked through these issues and can help you find the answers.

First Tuesdays webinar: October 6, 9:00 – 10:00 a.m. For more information, visit sos.wa.gov/q/FirstTuesdays. Instructions for joining the session are at sos.wa.gov/q/FirstT.

First Tuesdays was designed as a continuing-education opportunity for staff of libraries in Washington State; this free web presentation allows attendees share their skills and successes and learn about new topics. The special-subject presentations, lasting about 60 minutes, are recorded so that others may listen at their own convenience.

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2) STEM LSTA GRANT CYCLE OPENS

The Washington State Library (WSL) is pleased to announce “The Future STEMs from Reading” grant cycle. The recent recession resulted in cuts to many school library budgets. Since materials in science, engineering, technology and math (STEM) fields become dated quickly, budget shortfalls mean that many school library STEM book collections were particularly hard hit.

In response, WSL is providing an opportunity to help school libraries update their STEM collections. 230 STEM book collections aimed at elementary, middle, and high school students were put together from lists of award-winning books as suggested by an advisory committee of teacher-librarians.

230 STEM collections will be available. Of those, 120 will be awarded to elementary school libraries, 55 to middle school libraries, and 55 to high school libraries. All collections will contain 50 titles plus three professional development titles. The majority of copyrights are within the last 3 years. The book collections will be shipped to successful grant awardees.

All public school libraries are eligible to apply. The collections will be awarded via a one-page grant application process that will be made available at sos.wa.gov/q/grants. The grant cycle will open on Monday, September 28, at which time the application forms will be posted. Applications are due by 4 p.m. October 30, 2015. For questions, contact Carolyn Petersen [email protected].

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3) IMPLEMENTING WIOA IN RURAL AREAS

The WIOA (Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act) is federal legislation. This webinar will focus on what’s different about making workforce investment for youth meaningful in rural areas. Rural areas face challenges related to widely dispersed populations and distance from places to access goods and services in addition to poverty, lower educational attainment, and lower earnings.

In the webinar you will hear how the White House and the Administration are focused on rural areas, the goals and strategies of the Domestic Policy Council on rural affairs, and the important role the workforce system plays in helping young adults meet their education and employment goals. The new law provides opportunities for rural areas to establish regional strategies for youth service delivery, to coordinate planning across workforce system partners, and to use technology to ensure access to workforce services in remote areas. Hear about promising approaches that local youth service providers in two states have taken to solve some of their rural challenges.

The “Implementing WIOA In Rural Areas” webinar is scheduled for Wednesday, September 30, at 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., Pacific Time. Use this link: sos.wa.gov/q/WIOA. A WorkforceOne site registration is required.

“Implementing WIOA In Rural Areas” is the eighth webinar in the “Enough is Known for Action” series for the youth community, hosted by the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) Division of Youth Services and Regional Offices, to inspire strategic planning and action now as the system is in the early stages of implementation of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). The full series is available on the WorkforceOne website via this shortcut: sos.wa.gov/q/Action.

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4) FREE CE OPPORTUNITIES NEXT WEEK

September 28

• Teacher-Librarian News Night (Teacher Librarian Virtual Cafe); 5:00 – 6:00 p.m. PDT
• ProQuest Research Library – With so many publications, how do you find the right one to search? 11:00 – 11:30 a.m.

September 29

• Reading Nooks that Encourage Writing Too! (Georgia Public Library Service); 7:00 – 8:00 a.m. PDT
• How to protect the freedom to read in your library (Sage); 9:00 – 10:00 a.m. PDT
• Boundless Libraries: A Look at the 2015 New Landmark Libraries (Library Journal); 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. PDT

September 30

• Total Boox and New Ebook Pricing Models (Minitex); 9:00 – 10:00 a.m. PDT
• Getting Your Slice of the Pie – Identifying the Assets You Need in Your Community (4Good); 10:00 – 11:00 a.m. PDT
• Enough is Known for Action: Implementing WIOA In Rural Areas (WorkforceOne), 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., PDT
• STEAM & Día: Offering Informal Learning with a Mind Toward Diversity (Texas State Library and Archives); 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. PDT
• Libraries & Technology: The Librarian’s Online Management System (American Association of School Librarians); 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. PDT

For more information and to register (unless otherwise linked above), visit the WSL Training Calendar at sos.wa.gov/q/training.

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The Washington State Library has gone social! Friend/follow us at:

• Facebook: on.fb.me/FBWSL;
• Twitter: twitter.com/WAStateLib.

Librarians love stories like this. A real estate agent is engaged to clear the junk out of an old house so that it can be sold. What does he find? Thousands upon thousands and more thousands of maps. Maps stashed EVERYWHERE in the house, “stuffed in file cabinets, crammed into cardboard boxes, lined up on closet shelves and jammed into old dairy crates.”

He can’t bear to just throw this amazing collection away, so he calls the local map librarian, having recently and fortuitously read an article in the Los Angeles Times about the city library’s map collection. Said the librarian, once he had seen the maps himself: “This dwarfs our collection – and we’ve been collecting for 100 years.”

It took 10 people several hours to box up the entire collection and haul it away. It’s expected to take over a year to catalog the collection, and in the end, it will give the Los Angeles Public Library one of the country’s top map collections, right after the Library of Congress, and public libraries in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, according to the librarian.

I might not have taken the trouble to blog about this interesting story here, if one of the pictures hadn’t been of an old Tacoma, Washington street map, which provides a tiny bit of local color to the story. Read the entire story of the incredible find in this Los Angeles Times article.