North Country Reference and Research Resources Council 7 Commerce Lane Canton, NY 13617 (315) 386-4569

August/September 1999

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Continuing Education: Fall 1999 The Council's Continuing Education schedule for Fall 1999 has undergone a number of updates and additions since the March publication of the 1999 calendar. You will find an insert in this issue of Points North so that you can easily keep track of the opportunities for continuing education that are presented this fall. We have had a number of requests for training in database searching, and in particular for training in the databases offered to libraries by the Council - Wilson Omnifile and WorldCat. This will be addressed in the fall through three sessions of Database Searching, a one-day, hands-on workshop which will teach the basics of database search strategy in the context of the databases offered. This workshop will be taught in three sessions in three locations. We hope everyone will find it convenient to attend. Fall is the traditionally the time for two of our annual offerings. This year, the annual interlibrary loan workshop is on September 17, and will tackle an always thorny subject: evaluation. This workshop will be an opportunity to discover what can be evaluated, how to do so, why you should, and how you can use the result. Interlibrary staff around the region shouldn't miss this one. The Council annually presents an automation workshop, which this year will deal with a subject high on the agendas of most libraries: how to evaluate electronic resources. Libraries are spending significant portions of their budgets on these resources, and this workshop will help you to see that you get the most for your purchases. Libraries, Copyright and the Internet is a PBS teleconference available at 2:30 p.m. on October 14. The Council will sponsor a local showing of this event at Clarkson University. Two half-day sessions which work well together are scheduled for November. The morning session, Everyone Is Getting Crabbier, will help library staff learn what is causing their increased stress and how to deal with it. The afternoon session, Quality Customer Service: A Balancing Act will help participants understand the rights of library staff and library users, and how to balance the two for effective service. The schedule will be completed by the addition of three Roundtable meetings for the Documentary Heritage Program. These will be held in St. Lawrence, Essex and Oswego counties, so that all will be able to attend Details regarding these workshops are on the enclosed calendar, and on the Council's web page at: www.nc3r.org/calendar.html