I can’t believe you are one and seeing all the kids here makes me miss you more (and the rest of the family too.)

More about ALA later. It’s 3am east coast time so I am exhausted.

I just broke the news to my 4-year-old son that I am leaving town in the morning. His reasoning and bargaining skills are amazing, but the fact remains that yes I am heading out to ALA bright and early tomorrow morning. I still can’t get over the fact that I am going to miss my daughter’s first birthday on Friday, but she was actually due on July 4th so we’ll have a great party when I get back.

If you are heading out to Anaheim stop by and say hello. Here’s a list of events that I will be participating in:

• Friday 8:30am - 12:30pm CLENE PreConference “Competencies for Your Staff: From Implementation to Integration” Anaheim Convention Center 212A

• Saturday 1:30 - 3:30pm WebJunction Library 2.0 Cafe Sheraton Park Hotel Palm Ballroom

• Saturday 4 - 5:30pm ACRL Learning Virtually Poster Session “LOL: Live Online Learning @ PLCMC” Hilton Anaheim Pacific Ballroom C

• Sunday 1:30 - 3:30pm CLENE Training Showcase “PLCMC’s Information Technology Core Competencies” Hilton Anaheim California Pavilion B

Hope to see you there.

I also have to add that this is my first time at ALA (first time at any library conference). At first I was overwhelmed but I have to say that ALA has been amazing in providing me with useful information through email, contact from conference ambassadors, and I even have an assigned ALA mentor.

I received this certificate and a nice letter in the mail today and that reminded me that it’s time to start thinking about and planning for Employee Learning Week which takes place December 8-12, 2008.

What is ELW?
Employee Learning Week is an awareness campaign highlighting the important connection between learning and achieving organizational results.

For last year’s ELW I kept things simple and sent out a daily email to all staff highlighting a learning benefit/opportunity available to them from the library. It seems like such a small thing but the response from staff was amazing. So this year I want to raise the bar.

So what ideas do you have? How will you celebrate learning at your library? And if you work at PLCMC what ideas do you have for this year?

p.s. You don’t have to be an ASTD member to participate.

LD5X8374 and LD5X8345 originally uploaded by illustrator_ian.

The staff at Morrison Regional Library built a play house out of weeded books. I love the creativity of our staff!

Happy Father’s Day to all the my blogosphere dad friends out there: Michael, Ries, Jason, Maurice, Darren, (hope I’m not leaving anyone out).

And an extra special Happy Father’s Day to my husband Russ. Without a great husband and father to our kids like him I would not be able to accomplish all that I have done in the past few years. People ask me all the time how I do”it all” and in one word the answer is “Russ.”

And happy Father’s Day to my dad who is a few states away. Luckily my dad is learning email so we can keep in touch more easily.

“We never know the love of our parents for us till we have become parents.”
~ Henry Ward Beecher

For the past three years I have been responsible for all of the technology training for staff at PLCMC. This past week my responsibilities changed to coordinating all of the training/learning for PLCMC.

I’m excited about the opportunity, and already have a huge list of projects to work on.

Lee over on TTW wrote a great post about reflecting on the satisfaction of each day. It’s something I’ve been making a conscious effort to do. When I was pregnant last year with my second child (who is getting ready to celebrate her first birthday) I was on bedrest for six months and hospitalized a few times. There were moments when I felt so sick I thought I might not make it. Then earlier this year I was hospitalized for chest pain (which luckily turned out to not be cardiac related).

When things like this happen it really puts your life in perspective. You realize what’s really important. There are times when I slip and get caught up in a project that takes me away from my family too much, but then you see people pass as young as Tim Russert and it reminds you of how fleeting and precious every moment is that we have.

To quote Lee:

Thinking about the quality of your day: are you happy with what you do every day; do you get more out of your day; is your time filled with people, activities, or ideas you find meaningful; are you content; what did you do to improve, today?

Every once in a while I think we need to take this a step further and ask ourselves these questions every hour. Are you happy? Are you doing what matters most? Do the things you love because this is not a dress rehearsal.

I really wish Tim were going to be here for the next election. I admired him as a journalist and for his ability to ask the tough questions and press for tough answers.

Over the past two years Web 2.0 has opened up a whole new level of communication for us as a profession. I remember when I began working in libraries nine years ago I felt very isolated as a trainer. I remember asking, “Where are all the handouts?” At the time each person in our system was doing his or her own thing and a few people shared materials. Eventually we established a system for sharing handouts for computer classes for all of our locations.

Every time I begin to work on materials for a new class I wonder, how many other librarians have already created a handout for this class? How much time do we spend recreating the same materials? Imagine what we could accomplish if libraries across the country, world even, collaborated and shared training materials. And now that so many of us are developing online learning materials how great would it be if we shared those as well and pooled our resources as facilitators/producers for synchronous learning.

OK I will admit there is some training that is unique to a system, but how customized does a Word handout have to be? I had a conversation with a colleague today who is rushing to put together Outlook training materials. I happen to have some and gladly sent them her way. Two other colleagues are also sending her their training materials. So we have four librarians/trainers in four different parts of the country sharing materials.

I feel lucky to work in a time when technology has made it so easy to connect with other people who have the same job as me in other parts of the world. I have a core group of four librarians/trainers who I talk to on a weekly, sometimes daily basis. We brainstorm, share our successes, share our challenges, seek advice. It’s really been great to get to know Sarah, Stephanie, Marianne, and Maurice.

And now I’d like to cast the net a bit wider. I’ve created a Google Group called Library Learning that is open for anyone to join who wants to participate in these kinds of discussions and sharing. I hope you will come join us so we can take learning to a new level!

“When librarians work together, our superpowers increase exponentially!”

- Louise Alcorn, Reference Technology Library from West Des Moines Public Library

shared via LSLC Training Blog

p.s. If anyone has training materials for MUNIS please contact me!

p.p.s. Be sure to also check out the Library Instruction Wiki another great idea for sharing resources.

If you missed Tuesday’s WebJunction webinar, you can view it here, and you can join in on the follow-up discussion over at BlogJunction.

Wow thank you to everyone who attended the webinar today on learning at WebJunction. Emily is working on uploading the archive which will include video and audio as well as a copy of the PowerPoint slides. I’m working on writing a post for BlogJunction summarizing some of the ideas and answering all of the questions that were asked. Feel free to email me if you have more questions.

In the spirit of learning I have to share with you what it was like today from behind the scenes.

First, it takes a lot of time to prepare for a webinar. Luckily I knew that in advance from reading Michele Martin’s post about her first webinar. In a face to face session you can wing it and adjust your content based on audience reaction. Online it’s a little different.

Second, you have to rehearse. I rarely rehearse for face to face training, but because online learning is so different it is essential to rehearse and ensure that your presentation is in synch with the technology.

Third, as Douglas Adam’s says, “Don’t Panic!” It does not matter how many times you rehearse, how well you know the material, or how fast your Internet access is. Stuff happens.

I delivered today’s webinar from home where I thought I would have faster Internet access and less distractions. I had two computers set up, one as a presenter, one as a participant so I could see both sides of the presentation. I dialed in on a land-line rather than rely on VoIP. I wore a headset so I could talk and walk around to keep my energy up. I was prepared!

But stuff happens anyway. Within the first minute my headset speaker fell off the headset. Then about 5 or 10 minutes into the webinar I asked everyone to answer a question in chat, “In one word what is the difference between training and learning?” I waited patiently for responses. None. I asked the question again. Empty chat box. I panicked and thought, “Wow no one is interested in this topic.” Little did I know that the answers were flying by on the screen.

From that point on I was pretty much flying blind. Thank goodness for Emily and her skills as a producer. I think she knew before I even said anything that something was wrong on my end technically. For some reason both my computers lost their connection to the WebJunction classroom. Rather than make a fuss about it, I just relied on the printed out copy of the slides. (Thank goodness I’m not 100% green yet.)

During all of this my cat decided to make an offering to me by puking a hairball at my feet. I’m surprised no one heard him.

Then the call got dropped. I didn’t even know that happened on land lines. Maybe it was the cat and he really wanted to tell me something. Like I said though, stuff happens.

It’s funny now looking back at it all. Think about it. How many things do we try to control or force? Some things are beyond your control.

Lesson Learned: You have to be flexible and able to adapt. You never know when the unexpected is going to happen and when it does you have two choices, panic or roll with it. Sometimes it’s probably a little of both. The key is knowing when to sweat (ideally do it before you have an audience) and never letting them see you sweat (which I hope I succeeded in doing today).

Again thank you to everyone who came today to hear my ideas about learning and libraries. Stay tuned to BlogJunction for some follow up discussions later this week.