The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the disparities of underserved, minority, and underrepresented communities. This includes ensuring equal understanding of accurate health information, education in hard-hit communities, and valuing inclusion in clinical research to overcome COVID-19.

The NNLM Virtual Symposium is an opportunity to address misinformation and mistrust, raise awareness about the pandemic and efforts to combat it. Symposium attendees can expect to come away from this experience with a better understanding of COVID-19 as well as strategies and programs that can be used to engage with communities. We are excited to feature the following keynote speakers:

• Vinay Gupta, MD, MPA, Affiliate Assistant Professor, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Seattle, WA
• Gregg Orton, National Director, The National Council of Asian Pacific Americans (NCAPA), Washington, DC
• Elizabeth Wilhelm, Health Communications Specialist, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Global Immunization Division, Atlanta, GA
• Chris Pernell, MD, MPH, FACPM, Chief Strategic Integration and Health Equity Officer, University Hospital, New York, NY

Despite the best plans about what to do in the moment you experience a fire or flood or extended power outage, these random events still occur. And then what?

The focus of this webinar is about helping libraries plan for recovery after a catastrophic event. This session is structured as a panel discussion with three library directors who have experienced disasters at their libraries. They will briefly explain what happened and then describe how they and their staff transitioned from the immediate response to rebuilding. They will share lessons on what they wished they had known or done before the disaster, what they learned during the rebuilding, and any steps they took to review what happened that inform new plans or policies.

This event is free and open to all library workers.
All participants will receive a certificate for CE Credit.
The webinar will be recorded.

The Network of the National Library of Medicine Pacific Southwest at the UCLA Biomedical Library and Southeastern Atlantic Region at the University of Maryland-Baltimore are excited to announce the final webinar in the NNLM Transgender Health series. With approximately 1 million adults in the U.S. identifying as Transgender/Gender Non-Binary (TGNB), less than one percent of physicians fall within this number, and the number continually decreases when surveying medical students, with a mere 0.7 percent identifying as TGNB (Dimant et al.)(link is external)

Join us to learn about the health disparities for Transgender and Gender Non-Binary (TGNB) individuals in receiving quality mental healthcare.

Objectives:
By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to:

• Distinguish sex, gender identity, roles & sexual orientation
• Define 3 mental health stressors for TGNB youth and minorities
• Cite 3 health information resources to support TGNB healthcare

The mental health impact of the pandemic is taking a toll on our communities, often compounding the physical and emotional effects of trauma experienced by many, including library patrons and staff. With increased understanding of mental health and trauma-informed care, library staff can be better prepared to provide unbiased service to those struggling to find help, information, and support. Join this webinar to learn how libraries can be better prepared to respond using the principles of trauma-informed care, and how Mental Health First Aid can equip staff with the knowledge and confidence to communicate with compassion, even in difficult situations. Learn ways to apply a trauma-informed approach to library services, internal and external policies, and practices, and how to build connections with other community providers.

Members of the Correctional Workforce have long agreed that educational programs have a significant impact on recidivism rates. However, educational rehabilitation is concentrated at the State Prison level. Local jails must rely on local funding to provide rehabilitation and educational resources to their inmates, and most rural areas cannot afford to fund resources of this type.

The Cherokee Regional Library believes that this is too late into the lives of these inmates. Educational resources are needed at the local jail level when incarceration periods are short and there is a higher chance for these individuals to remake their lives and prevent a lifetime of incarceration and separation from families.

Join Assistant Director Chelsea Kovalevskiy as she describes the Next Chapter Program—a partnership between the Dade County branch of the Cherokee Regional Library and the Dade County Jail. This digital literacy and life skills program uses the Niche Academy platform to track inmate participation and completion data. Learn how your library can utilize this program, or create your own, to make a life-changing impact on one of the most vulnerable populations within your community.

This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services LG-28-19-0238.

Looking for some best practices for fundraising that can be implemented within pandemic safety guidelines? When you cannot gather crowds at large-scale book sales, are there other creative projects and tactics your Friends and foundation can undertake? Rebecca Fuss of the Friends & Foundation of the Rochester Public Library will discuss annual appeals, donor relations, peer-to-peer fundraising, and other community-wide donation efforts that provide a good return on the investment of your time. Jenny Goodemote and Kathy Shay of Wood Library in Canandaigua will share the details of their “knock-out” fundraiser, Pursapalooza, a sale of purses, jewelry, artwork, and more. This in-person annual event morphed into an online store of designer handbags in November 2020. Until large-scale book sales can resume once more, strengthening connections with long-time supporters and adapting the library’s profitable fundraisers is the name of the (socially distant) game!

After the webinar, attendees will be able to:

• Adapt previous fundraising techniques to fit today’s environment.
• Communicate with your Friends group or Board of Trustees about the future of library fundraising.
• Identify best practices for connecting with your community and communicating your needs to them.
• Begin planning your own library fundraiser using one or more suggestions from our presenters.
• Evaluate online platforms for virtual, in-person, and hybrid fundraising events.
• Expand your ability to reframe and organize library fundraisers.

Transforming physical spaces and library programs into active learning hubs is a powerful opportunity to strengthen the library’s connection to the community. Through WebJunction’s Small Libraries Create Smart Spaces project, a range of free resources and tools—built from the project’s four years of real-life successes—are now available for libraries of all sizes to transform their spaces. In this webinar, we’ll share examples of design thinking and collaboration with the community and the positive outcomes achieved, even through the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. Gail Bruce, director of Laurel Public Library (DE), will describe the arc of discovering community needs and realizing multiple projects to meet those needs at her library. Participants will be introduced to the Toolkit to Create Smart Spaces community collaborations for active learning.

Interested in capturing and documenting the stories of your community? Join Jery Y. Huntley to learn about the following websites and resources and how your library can use them:

• Adirondack Community: Capturing, Retaining, and Communicating the Stories of Who We Are (www.myadirondackstory.org)
• OurStoryBridge: Connecting the Past and the Present (www.ourstorybridge.org)
• Explore the Teacher’s Guide contained on both websites so that you have a resource to use in libraries and share with students and teachers.
• Recognize how you can help communicate and improve these projects.

This presentation will introduce free resources to walk you through the process of planning, implementing, and sustaining your unique story project. It will demonstrate the Teacher’s Guide, used by schools and libraries to select stories from existing story projects for their school courses and library programs.

The webinar will be recorded and archived for future viewing.

Questions? Please contact Sharon Phillips, Project Director for Ready to Read at New York Libraries, at Sharon.Phillips@nysed.gov

New supervisors need timely training as they step into their new role. Not only do they need to learn how to manage people effectively, they need to learn specific procedures particular to their library. Trainers know that it takes a lot of time, up to a year, to develop this kind of training. What if there were some existing training that one could build upon without starting from scratch? There is!

The Learning Round Table of ALA developed three self-guided Supervisor Success modules—Performance Management, Managing Conflict, and Encouraging Motivation in the Workplace (available on WebJunction). Join us as we explore how the Indianapolis Public Library Training and HR staff used this ready-made self-paced learning, added some library-specific context and group discussions, and created a successful new learning process for their managers. Presenters will share their lessons learned to help you implement this kind of supervisor training at your library.

Trauma-informed care has been used more extensively in psychotherapy and social work settings, however, it can also have a practical application in any setting, personal or professional. This is especially relevant for libraries where we work with patrons and, at times, in large organizations with many moving parts. In this talk, we will define trauma and how it affects the nervous system, discuss some approaches to trauma-informed care, and imagine ways it can be applied to your library setting.