Member Highlight:
Robin Siegel

We held our Spring Membership Meeting on May 22 in three locations across the NJEdge Network. Executive Board president Jane Crocker presided over the business meeting, shepherding the passage of the proposed budget, strategic plan and service initiatives, and slate of incoming board members, with assistance from fellow board members Ruth Bogan, James Keehbler, Margaret Shapiro, and Joe Toth.

Peg Cadigan & Cheryl O'Connor	James Keehbler & Michael Maziekien
Ralph Bingham & Manny Paredes	Pat Collins & Geoff DiMasi
Brian Auger & Eileen Palmer	Arlen Kimmelman & Michele Kowalsky

Congratulations and many thanks to our newly elected Executive Board Members (biographies here):

• Ruth Bogan, Executive Director of PALS Plus, member-at-large
• Michelle McGreivey, School Library Media Specialist at Hoboken High School, member-at-large
• Kathy Schalk-Greene, Director of Mount Laurel Library, public library representative
• Robin Siegel, Medical Librarian at CentraState Medical Center, special library representative
• Rick Vander Wende, Trustee at Waldwick Public Library, lay representative

State Librarian Mary Chute provided updates about programs and events at the State Library, including their recently updated website, the launch of the Literacy Innovations Grant, and the upcoming Trustee Institute in September. [Photo on the right: Some of our Kindle and Nook Raffle winners - Joan Divor, Sheila Mikkelsen & Margaret Ware]

Following the business meeting, Program Coordinator Sophie Brookover welcomed our guest speaker, Geoff DiMasi, to the podium. In her introduction, Sophie remarked, “When I had the good fortune to see Geoff speak at the TEDxPhiladelphia conference a couple of months ago, it took a huge force of will not to jump up and shout, ‘Please come to New Jersey to talk with library people!’” Geoff is the co-founder of web design firm P’unk Ave, co-working space Indy Hall, and public idea-sharing series Ignite Philly, and is deeply invested in finding ways to help the City of Philadelphia become a better place to live, work and learn.

Geoff’s talk, Libraries as Hubs of Self-Organizing Communities, highlighted the strengths of libraries as connectors of people with information and asked: What if we used our reference and reader’s advisory skills for community advisory, introducing people with similar interests, and then getting out of the way to let them pursue their ideas and plans? How can we leverage what we do so well already to bring people together and help our communities continue to move forward?

We look forward to continuing this conversation with all of our members. To that end, Geoff’s slides are available on our website, and we’ve pulled together our tweets, links, photos and some contextualizing text into a Storify to give you a sense of the talk. We’re also hoping to capture an audio version of his talk -- stay tuned!

Webinars

Won’t Someone Think of the Children?! Avoiding the Trap of Self-Censoring Materials and Services for Youth, a webinar with Julie Jurgens, School Services Coordinator at Illinois’ Arlington Heights Memorial Library.

Date & Time: Thursday, June 12 | 10-11:30 AM

Audience: Librarians, Library Assistants and Library Associates serving children and teens

Registration is open!

Description & Learning Objectives:
Access to information and intellectual freedom the backbone of our profession, but sometimes we deny children and teens access in ways we might not even be aware of. Book banning gets a lot of press, but we also need to consider the more subtle, insidious forms of censorship that happen in our libraries every day. Join us for an honest, lively conversation including real-life examples of restricting access, gatekeeping and censorship from professionals in the field, as well as thought-provoking “what if” scenarios.

After participating in this webinar, library staff will be able to:

• Identify examples of censorship besides materials challenges, and explain how these types of censorship can have a negative impact on collections and programs for youth, and ultimately on youth, themselves.
• Demonstrate a working knowledge of the children’s bill of rights, and the history of our perception of children’s rights and their need for protection.
• Identify incidents of restricted access and censorship in their own work and viable alternatives to these practices.
• Access and rely on a variety of resources for staying current on intellectual freedom issues, especially regarding children and teens.

Space is limited - register today!

Fresh Lit! 2014: New & Forthcoming Literary Fiction, July 22
with Roz Reisner

Do your readers love mid-list literary fiction? Reader’s Advisory expert Roz Reisner has the books for you! For the fourth year in a row, Roz will be highlighting the best new and forthcoming titles for your avid readers and book groups. Every year, Roz delights us with her ability to give us a heads-up on titles that wind up on Best Of and award shortlists. She also knows a future buzz-worthy title when she sees one, and shares those, too. Registration for this NJ tradition opens Monday, June 23 at 9 AM.

Lynda.com - Up and Running with Twitter

Join the 140-character communication revolution. A really up-to-date course (just created in April!) on Twitter is available. Learn how to:

• set up an account
• read and write tweets
• add images, links, and tags to your tweets
• and interact with other users by sending replies, using mentions, favoriting tweets, and sending direct messages.

Maria Langer shares her insider etiquette tips for tweets and retweets, and shows how to customize your privacy settings as well as personalize your feed.

The massive lynda.com online training library is available free to all members of LibraryLinkNJ. Details on the program and our monthly registration procedure can be found on our website.

New discount offers have sprung this Spring! Take a look and see what might be a good fit for your library.

AWE Early Literacy Stations: through 6/30/14
Members are eligible for reduced pricing through a multi-state volume discount on ELS and AfterSchool Edge. A new tablet edition is also included in the offer.

Ebsco Restoration Offers: through 7/31/14
These special discounted packages will allow libraries to subscribe - at a steep discount - to EBSCO databases no longer provided by the New Jersey State Library as part of the Statewide Database Package.

• Full Restoration Offer (public libraries)
• Partial Restoration Offer (public libraries)
• K-12 Schools Restoration Offer (K-12 school libraries)

InfoBase Learning (Facts on File): through 9/1/14
Back by popular demand! LibraryLinkNJ members receive up to 40% off list pricing. The offer includes Facts on File databases, ebook subscriptions, E-Learning Modules and multiple streaming video products.

Mango Languages: through 7/1/15
Public libraries receive 10% off list pricing. This discount is year-round for new subscribers. Current subscribers who renew by July 1, 2014 will also get the 10% discount!

Gale Cengage Learning Discount Offer (coming in early June!)

Our TechEx Guest Contributor for May is Emily Weisenstein of Madison Public Library, posting about Infographics. (Emily was also our Guest in March when she posted on Visual Social Media.)

If you want eye-catching, substantive graphics for your websites, social media feeds, reports or slides, Emily’s posts are a great crash-course. (The image above is a piece of an infographic Emily links to in one of her posts.) From an overview of infographics, to a selection of free infographic builders, to tips and tricks, you will learn a lot!

Check out TechEx in June when Heather Dalal of Rider University posts on Screencasting & Screensharing.

She goes above and beyond whether it is for her internal staff, patients, or colleagues. She will always go the extra mile to find answers to their questions and is a highly skilled and dedicated librarian.”

Robin, who was also just elected to serve as a Special Libraries representative to LibraryLinkNJ’s Executive Board, answered a few questions about her award and work. As you’ll see from her answers below, she’s quite a dynamic role model for us all.

Congratulations on being named the Health Sciences Librarian of the Year! What does this award mean to you?

Of course it was a huge honor to be named Health Sciences Librarian of the Year by HSLANJ. I’ve worked with the HSLANJ librarians for so many years and to be recognized by one’s colleagues just feels great. I’m not sure if you know the story of how this award was presented to me. It’s generally presented at our Annual Meeting. It’s a big surprise and the recipient doesn’t know until his or her name is read out. I was unable to attend the Annual Meeting this year, as I was involved in our three day Nursing Skills Days at CentraState. I staff a computer at this 32-hour marathon and meet with every nurse on staff to make sure that they know about the Library resources, and even more importantly, that they know about me and how I can help them. On the last day, the Director of Professional Development called me unexpectedly up to the podium. HSLANJ had arranged to Skype in and present the award to me that way. To say I was surprised is an understatement. So not only was I recognized by my colleagues, but my customers got to be a part of it also. One of the librarians making the presentation said that she got choked up when she heard my nurses applauding. It was very, very awesome.

What does the daily life of a medical librarian look like? Have you ever been called on to help a clinician resolve a diagnostic mystery?

The bulk of my day is spent on answering reference questions, running literature searches and doing ILLs. I’m a solo librarian, which I love, as I get to do a little of everything and work with everybody on staff. My customers are physicians, nurses, administrators, physical therapists, social workers, housekeepers and more. I solve diagnostic mysteries every day – I can’t think of one in particular. My most recent “triumph” was being handed a web page from 2002 with my Library stamp on it and being asked to find the graphic on that page. The web site was long gone, of course, but I was able to locate it in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. And this is why I love my job! I also sit on many hospital committees, such as the Bioethics Committee, the Infection Control Committee and the Patient Education Committee. We librarians have so many useful skills, and it’s exciting to use these outside my library walls. I also attend weekly Morning Report with our Family Medicine Residents. That’s real-time problem solving.

Have you always worked in special libraries? What drew you to medical librarianship?

I fell into medical librarianship completely accidentally. When I graduated from Library School a million years ago, jobs were scarce. I sent out over 80 resumes and got 2 nibbles. The first one that came through was as a children’s librarian at the Brick Town branch of the Ocean County Library. I worked for the Ocean County Library and then wanted to move on. I answered an ad in the Asbury Park Press for a medical librarian job and from the day I started here 35 years ago, I knew I had found my niche. Every day is different. Every day I get the opportunity to learn something new and hopefully make a difference.