Professional Development Program
The Northern New York Library Network’s Professional Development program provides
assistance to the staff of member libraries for continuing education. Financial aid from this
program enables staff to attend conferences, seminars, workshops and other educational
activities which are not available locally, and for which funds might not otherwise be
available. Eligible activities do not need to be sponsored by a library or library organization.
Michelle Parry of SUNY Oswego’s Penfield Library recently received assistance to attend the
2007 Annual Conference of the American Library Association. The following article from Michelle
shares some of the knowledge gained through this experience.
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"The 2007 ALA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. was informative and also a great
networking opportunity. The session entitled ‘Leadership or Management: Which Is It?’ was
informative and thought provoking. I came away with questions to ponder as well as ideas. A
poster session entitled ‘De-desk Reference: Using Web 2.0 to Provide Services Away From the
Reference Desk’ started out as an inquiry and exploration of information to take back to our
coordinator of reference. Along the way I discovered some possible ways to utilize the social
networking software, del.icio.us, to share links, but with notes and tags, that I want some of
my interlibrary loan folks to have easy access to, without having to remember to go to a variety
of URLs.
"’The Art and Science of Staffing, Structure and Organizational Design in an Age of Permanent
Change’ is a mouthful of a title, but made some good points. The two OCLC-hosted sessions that I
attended: ‘By Any Means Necessary: Fulfilling Your Users’ Needs’ and the ‘OCLC ILLiad Users
Group’ were specific to interlibrary loan and chock-full of need-to-know information. The
‘Shakespeare and Libraries: On Stage, Online, Off the Shelves’ provided some useful information
about resources, as I am responsible for English and Theatre collection development.
"Talking with the vendors was helpful as well. Being able to talk face-to-face with the folks
at ChoiceOnline meant I could tell them what I like and don’t like about their new interface.
They also pointed out a few features I hadn’t spotted yet. A first-time ALA vendor, Avision, is
selling a scanner that may be of interest - it’s very affordable and the software enables
auto-cropping. I’ll be sharing that information with various interlibrary loan folks who are on
a strict budget, but are working on streamlining their interlibrary loan service to achieve the
SUNY turnaround time goals. The NOAA folks had a helpful handout and I’ll be checking it to be
sure I haven’t missed any possible ILL resources."