In This Issue
Upcoming Pilot Projects!
Spring Membership Meeting
End-of-School Year Reminder About Delivery Services
Discounts
Social Media: Twitter!
Quick Links
LibraryLinkNJ Website
Follow librarylinknj on Twitter
Find Us on Facebook
 
Upcoming Pilot Projects!
NJ Library Makerspaces: The Leading Edge &
NJ Libraries On The Go, Part 2

We’re pleased to announce a very exciting new initiative. LibraryLinkNJ’s Executive Board has approved the allocation of $50,000 from the FY2014 budget for a new pilot project called NJ Library Makerspaces: The Leading Edge. This will be an equal partnership with the New Jersey State Library, with an expected grant of $50,000 to LibraryLinkNJ for a total budget of $100,000.

Photo from: Piscataway Public Library’s Make It Yourself (MiY)

What is a Makerspace? The focus and structure varies across libraries. As a general overview, IMLS explains, “Makerspaces are part of a growing movement of hands-on, mentor-led learning environments to make and remake the physical and digital worlds. They foster experimentation, invention, creation, exploration, and STEM learning.” Making things is a core function of libraries already -- building a Makerspace is just a logical extension of services libraries have been providing for decades. When a library develops a dedicated space and links it to a strategic goal that resonates with community interests, everyone benefits.

The LibraryLinkNJ Executive Board has also approved the allocation of $100,000 from the FY2014 budget for a second round of our successful Mobile Pilot Project, NJ Libraries On The Go. The new Mobile Project will be revised slightly -- expect it to launch shortly!

As we did during the NJ Libraries On The Go Mobile Pilot Project, we’ll be providing an opportunity for public, academic and school member libraries to apply for subsidies towards their strategic initiatives. Eligible libraries may apply for subsidies under either or both the Maker Space and Mobile programs.

 

Spring Membership Meeting - Reminder to Register Now

Voting representatives from our member libraries are called on to vote to approve all plan initiatives along with the FY2014 budget and proposed Board slate at our Spring Membership Meeting on June 18. Please take a look at the relevant documents and register to join us!

 

End-of-School Year Reminder About Delivery Services

As the school year draws to a close, we’d like to share a friendly reminder that delivery for eligible school libraries will cease on June 21, 2013 and will resume on September 9, 2013. We thank the members of the New Jersey Association of School Librarians Board for their input in making this date determination.

 

Discounts

Big discounts for school libraries on Gale ebooks!

gale

LibraryLinkNJ is pleased to offer discounts upwards of 45% on select Gale|Cengage ebook products for school library (K-12) members.

Orders must be placed by September 23, 2013.

Members can choose from several categories of titles from Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) based on grade-level.

 

CE Updates

Webinar: Fresh Lit 2013! Forthcoming Literary Fiction
Presented by Roz Reisner
SAVE THE DATE: Wednesday, July 10, 2013 | 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM

Description:
Tracking popular genre authors is easy—the bestseller list is filled with thrillers, mysteries, fantasies, and paranormal novels—but what about all that great literary fiction, the mainstay of so many of our readers and “best” lists? Join Roz Reisner to learn about the best of the recent and forthcoming midlist literary fiction from the "Big Six" and the best small literary presses, so you’ll be able to suggest titles to your patrons. We’ll also share resources for keeping up with new titles.

Learning Objectives:
After participating in this webinar, you will be able to:

  • Recommend current and forthcoming literary fiction to your Readers’ Advisory patrons;
  • Identify and use print and online resources for staying abreast of new and upcoming titles.
  • Discover which small presses are publishing interesting, award-winning, literary fiction.

This 90-minute webinar will include a 60-minute presentation and 30 minutes for Q&A, as well as an interactive portion about resources and keeping up with new and forthcoming titles.

Registration will open at 9 AM on Monday, June 10.

This webinar will be recorded & archived on our website.


Lynda.com Online Training - Learn How to Run Meetings or Give a Speech

Ever found yourself stuck in an unproductive meeting and thought “There must be a better way!” Lynda.com has two training videos that can help. Discover how to get the most from your meetings—turning them into productive avenues for communicating, connecting, and accomplishing real work with Leading Productive Meetings or Leading Productive One-on- One Meetings. Are you seeking community partnerships and need to make a presentation to possible stakeholders? Develop the skills you need to prepare and deliver an outstanding speech or presentation with Effective Public Speaking.

This massive online training source is available free to all members of LibraryLinkNJ. Details on the program and our monthly open registration procedure can be found on our website.

 

Staying in Touch With Social Media: Twitter

This month, as part of our series highlighting LibraryLinkNJ’s social media channels, we’re going to talk a little bit about Twitter.

If you’re on Twitter, we’d love for you to follow us! We’re @librarylinknj. We publish several 140-character updates daily, mostly tied to posts at our Tumblr blog (more on that next month!), and on days when we host or attend a workshop, webinar or conference, we provide a running commentary of it to our followers.

This is called live-tweeting, and we’ve found that it provides the best way to participate in lively, timely, thoughtful conversations with colleagues.

How do we participate? Most events now have a designated hashtag associated with them. This goes for both face-to-face events, like the upcoming NJLA Conference, and virtual ones, such as Twitter chats and webinars.

When you add a hashtag (such as #njla13) to your tweet, it acts as a searchable keyword, automatically grouping your hashtagged tweets with all the other tweets using that same hashtag. When other event participants (or even people following the stream of tweets from afar) check the stream of tweets for the event, they see your hashtagged tweets and can (and often do) respond. It’s a great way to network with colleagues and community members. Recently, some libraries have been live-tweeting non-library events, such as the Grammys and the Academy Awards. This is a fun, smart way for libraries to embed their services into a real-life conversation of interest to their patrons.

Curious about what you can do with Twitter? Here are some ideas worth considering: