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CTLS Board of Directors

Larry Ringer

Chair Gretchen Pruett Vice Chair Alice Nixon Secretary Nicki Stohr Treasurer Eileen Altmiller Karen Ellis Larry Koeninger Jean Phipps Kelly Skovbjerg Laurie Mahaffey Executive Director

From the Executive Director By Laurie Mahaffey

CTLS Newsletter May 2015 No. 146

IN THIS ISSUE:

News from ED-Pg 1-2

News You Can Use - Pg 2-4

Library Spotlight - Pg 4

Shoppers Corner-Pg 5

Happenings - Pg 6

Training—Pg 7

Calendar - Pg 8

Workshop—Pg 9

Conference Wrap-Up The CTLS staff saw many of you at the recent Texas Library Association confer-ence here in Austin. Thanks for stopping by to say hello! We are grateful to the Tocker Foundation for letting us share their booth, along with the TAME (Texas Alliance for Minorities in Engineering) Trailblazer science experiment trailer and the Writers’ League of Texas. Conference attendance was around 8,000 people. The exhibits were interesting, the workshops excellent, and the speakers amaz-ing! Next year, the conference will be in Houston, so start making your plans now to go. Several retirees stayed at our booth to help with visitors so that staff could attend workshops. Thanks to Pat Tuohy, retired Executive Director of CTLS; Beth Fox ,retired director of the Westbank Community Library; and Pauline Lam, re-tired director of the Cedar Park Public Library for standing on your feet and smil-ing at all who approached.

If you didn’t get to attend because of funding issues, start now putting this in your budget for next year. Look around your community and talk to other people to see what they get to attend. If city depart-ment heads go to a conference, the library director should get to go, too. These confer-

ences are great for recharging your batteries and helping you come back to work refreshed and revitalized. Find out what is paid for: lodging, meals, transporta-tion, conference registration, and so on. The workshops are easy ways to learn new things; the networking is priceless; and the exhibit hall has delightful prod-ucts from chairs to books to puppets.

Be sure to watch for the announcements of conference stipends this fall and winter. Several divisions of TLA and many sponsors give out money for confer-ence assistance. Watch the TLA website and the CTLS-L list. We will pass on as many of these as we hear about.

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From the Executive Director By Laurie Mahaffey

CTLS Long Range Planning Committee Up and Running

The CTLS Professional Collection CTLS has an amazing collection of professional materials available for members to check out for 6 weeks at a time. Renewals are allowed if no one is waiting, and we don’t charge fines or postage fees. Many of the books are helpful ones for librari-ans doing anything from writing grants to preparing storytime to building a new library. Other books are about our history as librarians; we have one on Carnegie libraries that I’m itching to read. We also have several books by the library humorist Will Manley, who used to write a column for Library Journal. If ever you are having a dark day, or are at a critical point and could use something to cheer you, just read a little of Will Man-ley! Need something on children’s or teen services? We have Paper Hat Tricks (several sets) and Children Telling Stories. We have books on serving children of many cul-

tures, and we have quite a few books on serving children with special needs. I have recently gone through the professional collection and personally handled every book, so I can attest that they are recent, in good condition, & ready for you. Just check the Professional Collection link on the CTLS website (www.ctls.net) and make your selection, then call or e-mail us and tell us what to send you. We are open to suggestions if you don’t see what you need in the catalog. Just let us know what you want and we will get it to you!

After a hiatus, the CTLS Long Range Planning Com-mittee is meeting again to discuss the future of CTLS. We had an introductory meeting in January and will have another meeting on Friday, May 1, at which we will discuss the results of our recent survey. The com-mittee has 11 members representing all sizes of librar-ies. Because our current Long Range Plan ends in 2015 and is not as relevant as when it was written, we will rewrite it and hope to present it first to our board this summer and then to the membership this fall. Many rapid changes over the past few years have made a shorter plan sound like a better idea. Committee

members are: Michelle Cervantes, Round Rock (chair); Karen Ellis, Taylor (vice chair); Waynette Ditto (secretary); Mickey DuVall (Bastrop); Brenda Lincke Fisseler (Hallettsville); Veronica Grooms (Madisonville); Larry Koeninger (Bryan+College Station); Eric Lashley (Georgetown); Susan Mann (Hillsboro); Melissa Uhlhorn (Schertz); and Lisa Youngblood (Harker Heights). Most of these people were members of the Long Range Planning Committee when it last met in December 2013. Thank you, committee members, for taking the time to serve!

News You Can Use

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News You Can Use

Tech Tools Katelyn Patterson I just wanted to share a couple of tech tools I learned about at TLA this year that might be helpful to some of you! Digital Compass CommonSense created an education game called Digital Compass that gives children the freedom to explore how decisions made in their digital lives can impact their relationships and future. You could think of it as a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure for digital dilemmas like cyberbullying, Internet safety and privacy, copyright, and self-image. This tool seems like a wonderful way to teach information literacy to our middle school aged patrons! Nearpod This is a free tool that allows you to create or download multimedia presentations, share your lesson, view and con-trol responses in real time, and measure activity through reporting. I saw this as a demo for classroom use for you school librarians out there. Kahoot This is a game-based response system. Basically, participants are given a Kahoot code and can interact on their own devices through a game or quiz. The way I used it was by participating in a Battle of the Bluebonnets! In a room full of librarians all using their own devices, we answered questions about the latest Bluebonnet books. And for a very brief moment, I held third place.

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News You Can Use continued...

Going to the Harwood Public Innovators Lab? Paul Waak

Many library directors are transplants, new people on established ground. Even after spending years in the same community it can be hard to shake off that new-ness. People have ties that are hard to fully appreciate and even harder to navigate. This makes it all too easy to focus just on the library, the one place where things seem predictable even if they do not always make sense. Being an outsider is not easy. So, are you going to one of the Harwood Public Inno-vators Labs? I admit I was skeptical at first. When I glanced through their descriptions of what people will learn, I saw fancy language for what every small com-munity library director seems to know: get to know the other organizations in your community and work with them. In other words, you already know your relatives and the people you grew up with. Now go to celebrations, stop to talk with people, and pick up the phone when you hear about something. Be there for them and help them be there for you. If you grew up where you work then you have this already and you are also very fortunate.

How do directors from the outside, the transplants, get what the native grown already have? This is what I see the Harwood Public Innovators Lab as having to offer. Any director, whether there for one year or fifteen, can feel like an outsider and meet firm re-sistance at every turn. The Harwood Public Innovators Lab presents a way to make those connections, make your place in your new community, and create a better future for the people you are there to help. I will be at the Harwood Public Innovators Lab in San Angelo. If you are ready to make new connections and navigate the established ties in your adopted commu-nity, then I hope to see you there too. There is still room for the workshop on May 20-22 at the McNease Convention Center, San Angelo (Register for San Angelo Lab)

Library Spotlight Austin Public Library

Wilson County Public Libraries Become Family Place Libraries

The Wilson County Public Libraries, WCPL, will be join-ing eleven other Texas libraries in a three-day training session in Centereach, New York. This training is spon-sored by the Texas State Library and Archives Commis-sion and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. WCPL will become a member of the ever-growing Fam-ily Place Libraries Network. We now embark on a mis-sion to create and strengthen our partnerships with various community and county agencies, all the while maintaining a family friendly interactive space within our libraries. We reaffirm our belief that “literacy be-gins at birth and that libraries can help build healthy communities by nourishing healthy families” – (familyplacelibraries.org).

This training comes at a good time because we are in the middle of a large scale county renovation project that will double the size of our library facility in Flores-ville. We have a great opportunity to create new and inviting areas for our youngest patrons and their fami-lies. With assistance from Middle County Public Li-brary, we will develop an all-encompassing assortment of new services for our families with young children. So look for new parent/child workshop sessions to be added to our already full events calendar. WCPL will be reinforcing our goal of a positive family centered li-brary services and programs at all three of our library locations.

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Shoppers Corner

Eventkeeper Sammie Simpson, CTLS Vendor Program Manager

Ever get overwhelmed trying to keep programs and events in your library tracked and organized? Have a manu-al or labor-intensive system and know there’s a better way? Wish you had an assistant to devote to it? Our friend Jim Stewart from Plymouth Rocket tells us below about budget-friendly products that can meet that need! “Libraries are both community centers and hubs of digital activity. Plymouth Rocket, Inc. provides web-based applications that support you in both of these mission critical functions. Our simple to use software brings core library outreach functions online and features a wealth of administrative and statistical reporting. Our suite of web-based applications include: EventKeeper, our popular public events calendar; EKRegistration, enabling library patrons to register online for library events; EKRooms, software for room and equipment man-agement; LitKeeper, bringing year round reading management online in a simple, intuitive interface (this is an excellent Summer Reading management tool); KitKeeper, for reserving book club kits; and there’s even TixKeep-er, enabling patrons to research and reserve passes online! As libraries move increasingly to a central community center model and grow their web offerings, our applica-tions can play a large role in supporting you. Library staff can become web publishers without a lot of technical expertise or training and patrons can assume greater ownership of the library experience by registering for an event, reserving a pass and viewing events online. For more information, visit www.eventkeeper.com.” Thanks to Jim for telling us about these tools. Plymouth Rocket has been in business for more than a decade and has highly satisfied subscribers in over 40 states, Canada and Australia. Jim would be glad to answer any questions or provide you a brief web demonstration. You can contact me (samantha.simpson@ctls.net or 817-550-7730) or contact Jim direct (jstewart@plymouthrocket.com or 508.942.4209). When you talk to Jim, be sure to identify yourself as a member of CTLS. We also like to thank Plymouth Rocket for being a respected CTLS Commercial Partnership Program (CPP) par-ticipant. If you have a vendor you would like to see become a member of your CPP, let me know.

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What’s Happening

Let us know what you are doing at your library!

What's Happening! Welcome to These New Library Directors Paula Waak - Hutto Public Library Allison MacKenzie – Fayette Public Library in La Grange Virginia Mundt – Mesquite Public Library Carolina Martinez – Pleasanton Public Library Julia Mitschke - Cedar Park Public Library Essy Day - Waco –McLennan County Library Diane Insley - San Marcos Public Library Eileen Bell - Real County Library in Leakey Congratulations!

The Buffalo Public Library was honored as the Chamber of Commerce Member of the month in April 2015. Accepting the honor was librarian Helen Motl, Sandra Dawkins and Chris Geidel. The library has been serving the community of Buffalo for 37 years. Lisa Charbonnet is leaving her post as director of the Pflugerville Library. She will become the Go-To Librarian, a consultant for Library building, marketing, and administration. She can be reached at lisa@gotolibrarian.com or toll-free at 844-422-5102. Check out her website at www.gotolibrarian.com. Lisa’s book Public Library Build-ings: the Librarian's Go-To Guide for Construction, Expansion and Renovation Projects, will be published this fall. Library Fundraiser The Schulenburg Public Library Friends present The King Lives! Saturday, May 23 at Sengelmann Hall in downtown Schulenburg. Elvis will be preceded by Marilyn Monroe at 7:30 p.m. The evening will conclude with Kraig Parker and his 4-piece tribute band at 10 p.m. Doors open at 6 pm. Tickets are $40 per person. Contact the library for more information: 979-743-3345. McAllen Public Library Video I wanted to share the video that our staff produced for National Library Week. Staff from the McAllen Public Li-brary Main, Palm View and Lark locations posed this question to staff and patrons, “What unlimited possibilities do the McAllen Public Libraries provide for you?” The video was produced by Danica Salazar, Teen Assistant, and members of our Teen Theatre Club. Click here to view the video. Thank you Dawn Rapoza, Assistant Director of Public Services, McAllen Public Library

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Continuing Education in May

Technology for the Future Without Going Broke

Based on the response we have received, we are adding three new sites for our workshop on technology man-agement from an administrator's point of view. The first part covers how to bring in new technology in a non-threatening way. The second part covers how to focus and manage staff time in a way that keeps costs under control. The workshop is worth 5 hours of CE. We have added these three sites: May 8, Edinburg Public Library - Register Here May 14, Waco-McLennan County Library, Central - Register Here May 15, Huntsville Public Library - Register Here If several people in your area are quietly interested then please let me know. We can certainly add more loca-tions. Tickets may be purchased at http://www.eventbrite.com/o/ctls-inc-58656743. Prices are $45 for CTLS members and $65 for non-members. This workshop is separate from the State Library's Small Library Manage-ment series. The workshop agenda is: Arrive and sign in (8:30am - 9am) Introducing Your Library to New Technology (9am - 12pm) Some new technologies naturally connect to existing services (eg., streaming video compliments DVD circula-tion) while others (eg., 3D printing) present wholly new services that are harder to explain. Once the decision is made to bring in a new technology, the staff and patrons will determine whether it succeeds or fails. Find out how change management helps people understand and adopt new technology into the library’s services. Cultivating Knowledge to Keep Technology Affordable (1pm - 3pm) Some libraries manage to provide high technology services on a shoestring budget. How do they do it? What do you need to know to get started, and how do you stay current with limited time? This workshop goes be-yond discount pricing and examines the Do It Yourself side of technology with an eye toward developing staff talent while managing staff time.

Customer Service in a Changing World

Monday, May 18, 2015 at Fayette Public Library 9:00 am - noon Need some encouragement for giving Better service to your customers? Have a problem to solve? Join us as we discuss how to provide positive, welcoming service to all your customers. We will delve into the tougher situations that can arise and talk about any specific problems you might be experiencing at your library. This workshop will give attendees strategies to use with challenging patron behaviors while providing ways to win the loyalty and support of the entire community. Katelyn Patterson, CTLS Youth Services consultant and ‘Bots & Books grant coordinator, has worked for CTLS for 7 years and has her MLIS from UNT. Please send any questions or specific issues you would like to have addressed in the workshop to her ahead of time at katelyn.patterson@ctls.net Register Here.

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CTLS, Inc.

Connecting Texas Libraries Statewide

CTLS Staff Directory Laurie Mahaffey, Executive Director laurie.mahaffey@ctls.net Paul Waak, Assistant Executive Director paul.waak@ctls.net Katelyn Patterson, Bots and Books Grant katelyn.patterson@ctls.net Kim Lehman, Youth Services Specialist kim.lehman@ctls.net Samantha Simpson, Vendor Program Mgr ssimpson@ctls.net

CTLS, Inc 5555 North Lamar Blvd, Suite L-115, Austin, TX 78751 Toll Free (800) 262 - 4431 Office (512) 583 - 0704 Fax (512) 583 - 0709

CTLS Calendar of Events

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CTLS Events and Meetings

CTLS Calendar May 1 Long Range Planning Committee—Giddings Public Library May 8 Technology Workshop - Edinburg May 14 Technology Workshop - Waco May 15 Technology Workshop - Huntsville May 25 CTLS office closed for Memorial Day May 29 CTLS Board Meeting - Remotely July 3 CTLS office closed for Independence Day

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