As the pressure to remove and censor books from our libraries increases, librarians have to be prepared to defend everyone’s right to read. Learn how one school corporation has dealt with several recent challenges to their school library collections and has been able to educate their staff and community on the tenants of intellectual freedom. While challenges can be stressful situations, the presentation will offer you several tools, resources and guidance to help you find some unintended positive outcomes when these contentious situations find their way to your library.
Date Recorded: 1/24/2024
Format: Archived YouTube Video
Presenter: Tara White, Director of College and Career Readiness / New Prairie United School Corporation
Resources:
Rebuilding and serving after catastrophic events at the Eckhart Public Library in 2017.
Good policies are an essential part of library operations. They help to create and enforce expectations and rules as well as serving as a guiding framework for decision making. Unfortunately, writing policies can sometimes be very stressful and time consuming. In this session, we will go over the basics of writing policies and learn tips and tricks to making them as painless as possible. We will also talk about how we can ensure that our policies are fair and equitable. We will have hands-on practice with writing a simple policy. 
Over the last decade many areas in the state of Indiana have paid increasing attention to individuals living with dementia, primarily due to the rapid growth of the elderly population. Thrive Alliance and Bartholomew County Public Library have formed a partnership to work with individuals that are experiencing memory issues. This partnership has included working with music, delivering educational programs to the community at large and to the staff at the library, circulating kits targeting this population, and many more services. Come learn about how Thrive Alliance and Bartholomew Public Library evaluated and implemented these services.
The programming section on the Indiana Public Library Annual Report has always been a bit tricky to navigate – even before recent years saw the addition of virtual programming to the mix. In this webinar, we’ll focus on how to determine if something is considered a program, what statistics to track, and how to break them down for the report. We’ll also address common questions related to programming section and preview the (relatively minor) changes coming in the 2022 report.
Community inquiry is inquiry, questioning, and exploring of, for, and by communities. A library can facilitate inquiry sessions both internally with staff and/or externally with their stakeholders and users. Libraries can use community inquiry tools and techniques to reframe and take a fresh look at complex questions and challenges which stall and even halt innovation and positive change. Community inquiry creates the chance to create lasting impact for and with communities. This session will overview community inquiry techniques, discuss possible hurdles, and walk you through one librarian’s experience utilizing community inquiry to support curiosity.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the employment of social workers will grow 12% from 2020 to 2030 to meet an increase in demand. Further, with the growth of telehealth and telemedicine visits continuing beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals are finding more ways to reach their healthcare providers. However, in rural areas, finding local providers and reliable Internet access can create a barrier to access. As public libraries have long been viewed as the central hub for information, gatherings, and broadband service, their pivot to serve as a place for patrons to meet virtually with social workers comes at an opportune time. This presentation will show how three public libraries developed a pilot program – titled “Because You Matter” – with the Indiana University School of Social Work to coordinate weekly telehealth visits with social work students and library patrons. They’ll share successes, failures, and what they learned to improve the program in the future. 
Kim Hagerty, Director of Digitization and Micrographics Services at the Indiana Archives and Records Administration will go over best practices for preserving library board minutes. She will also cover what needs to be sent to IARA – board minutes or board packet? Board minutes and supporting documents if available. The best way to send it – digitize or original copies? Digital copies of the original files is best. Kim will explain further how libraries can do this in-house. What is the timeframe? This is dependent on amount of files. One reel of microfilm holds approximately 2,500 files. This could be over ten years’ worth of meeting minutes. And she will also cover best practices – start with current and work backwards? Either way is fine, if the oldest minutes are in brittle condition, the IARA would recommend starting with them for preservation purposes.