August 2022 Newsletter

New Newsletter Feature 

For State Employees

Vermont State Employee Book Club – Request Your Copy!

Thanks to support from Vermont Humanities, this fall the State Employee Book Club returns! We will be reading The Most Costly Journey: Stories of Migrant Farmworkers in Vermont Drawn by New England Cartoonists, which is this year's Vermont Reads title. Any state employee can join this virtual book club.

Details on discussion sessions for the fall and sign ups are still being worked out. In the meantime, request your copy of the book to get ahead on your reading.

We will have 100 copies of the title to send to participating state employees and we can coordinate interlibrary loan requests for additional copies. Contact April.Shaw@vermont.gov with any questions!

Libraries across Vermont have been engaged in Summer Reading this year. The Department of Libraries supports the mission of local public libraries to provide quality library programming for children, teens, and families. The Summer Reading program encourages a love of reading, introduces children and teens to books and authors to expand leisure reading choices, and works to prevent the “summer slide” and loss of reading skills during the summer months when youth are out of school.

Since we’re in the middle of the 2022 Summer Reading session, we thought we’d share some testimonials from last year’s program for inspiration. See what library staff and patrons had to say:

• After a full year of social distancing and isolation, families were very grateful for in-person and outside programs at the library as places to gather and catch up with friends and neighbors.
• The live animal guests were a big hit during "Stories on the Lawn", especially the visit from the mini-donkeys.
• We put together a StoryWalk and a treasure hunt within the town forest walking/biking paths there. It allowed for outdoor library programming as well as promoting a town resource.
• We collaborated with our local Farm to School program so offering lunches really impacted our family involvement.
• The “mask”arade program for young kids started at the library then stopped at local businesses for an activity at each. It was event with a lot of community buy-in!
• We brought back our annual stuffed animal sleepover. It was the most missed program last year when all in person programs were cancelled!
• Our Early Literacy program family outings were impactful. Books were given to all the children to read along with the activity and then to take them home to build home libraries.
• We extended our adult Summer Reading Program to include our homebound patrons which was very well received! In fact, the winner of the summer raffle was a homebound patron and she was so excited to win!
• We had several teens who found a place to get out of the house and give back to the community or connect with other teens in our volunteer activities.

We couldn’t be more pleased to support the important work libraries do in the summer and throughout the year!

The Department of Libraries is excited to implement a Mentoring Pilot Program for the Certificate of Public Librarianship program beginning the fall of 2022. Many people enrolled in the certificate program are new to librarianship, often learning on the job as they also participate in coursework required for the certificate. The hope is that pairing certificate enrollees with experienced staff will help them make the most of the certificate program, navigating core classes effectively, making informed curriculum choices, and applying program content to their current jobs.

The mentoring program will also provide a unique professional development opportunity for people serving as mentors. The program will build on the already existing robust informal peer-to-peer mentoring among Vermont library staff to create a systemized program facilitated by Department of Library staff. It will be accessible to participants regardless of their geographic location, pre-existing network in the library community, and previous professional experiences. Over time, it may help to improve the sustainability and stability in the Vermont library workforce because of new staff gaining a deeper understanding of the scope of library jobs and how to thrive in them.

The target number of mentor pairs for year one is five pairs, with second year growth to ten pairs total. Information on how to apply to be a mentor or be paired with one will be shared on library listservs, the Department's resource update, and to people enrolled in the certificate program. For questions please contact Joy Worland at joy.worland@vermont.gov.

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Governance & Management

As another summer reading program wraps up, librarians are looking back on the events and thinking forward to next summer. For some, this year was a return to pre-pandemic practices with more people coming in, programs being held both indoors and out, and an easing of mask wearing.

This brings changes to how you might communicate about your library. Whether you are responding to a patron’s question, updating your board, providing a usage report, or preparing statistical information, here are some tips to aid you with these conversations:

• Avoid using library jargon
• Prepare an elevator speech for both your position and the library
• Use statistics in relevant and eye-catching ways
• Maintain a running list of notable positive comments and reviews of the library
• Track ongoing improvements and larger projects

Throughout the pandemic, libraries made changes to their workflow and, in many instances, were able to improve their physical space, collection, and operations. During the move to virtual, you may have also made major improvements to accessibility and those changes have continued to be relevant to programming and operations. It can be easy to forget about these details; keeping a list can help you remember all this hard work. As these changes to our lives become more normalized, it is useful to remember and communicate how far you have come in making the library more accessible for everyone.

Looking for additional resources? Connect with more of the Department of Libraries resources for public libraries by visiting https://libraries.vermont.gov/services/public_libraries. 

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The Association for Rural & Small Libraries (ARSL) will hold their annual conference September 14-17, 2022. There will be an in-person component in Chattanooga, Tennessee, as well as a virtual attendance option. Both versions offer keynote addresses. A selection of the breakout sessions will be available livestreamed, and there will also be several on-demand virtual sessions and spark talks.

In-person attendees will have the opportunity to attend pre-conferences, a wider range of breakout sessions, networking opportunities with library staff from small, rural libraries from all over the country, and the incomparable ARSL Trivia Night.

Vermont will be well represented in conference presenters, with Vermonters presenting on library sustainability, human resources, creative and accessible professional development, leadership, and leading the first ever in-person ARSL Professional Book Club. Registration for in-person attendance is open until September 7, 2022, with virtual attendance registration available through September 17, 2022. Full session descriptions and registration links can be found here: https://www.arsl.org/2022-conference. 

Information & Access

Online Resource Use June 2022 

We’d like to share the June stats for the online resources offered by the Department of Libraries. Learning Express and Vermont Online Library are free to all libraries (public, school, or academic), while Universal Class is only available to public libraries.

Learning Express

Learning Express provides training to develop workplace, academic, and job-hunting skills. It offers training for occupation exams, skills for school, exploration of careers, resume and interview help, and more

Note – We’ve changed our approach for Learning Express statistics. The spreadsheets will now be broken down by calendar year, with a different tab for each month. You can find them on the Learning Express Stats Page.

Sessions – 39 | Registrations – 17

Tests – 5 | Tutorials – 0 | Computer Courses – 3 | eBooks – 14

Resumes – 5 | Job Searches – 2

Most Used Resources:

• Tests – GED Practice Test in Spanish, Basic Algebra, Real Estate Salesperson, Nursing Assistant
• eBooks – CDL Test Prep, GRE Vocabulary and Test Prep, Becoming a Caseworker, Becoming a Nurse, Electrician’s Licensing Exam
• Computer Courses – Microsoft Office, Adobe Illustrator

Universal Class

Universal Class offers a wide range of online courses (from business to cooking, computers to social work) that are led by a real instructor, and that can be completed at your own pace.

New Registrations – 59 | New Courses Started – 237 | Login Sessions – 1,045

Lessons Viewed – 10,542 | Videos Watched – 6,703 | Student Submissions – 5,502

Most Active Classes – Computer Literacy, Statistics, Psychology, American History, Advanced Excel, Reading Comprehension, Economics, Meteorology

Vermont Online Library

The Vermont Online Library covers everything from magazine and newspaper articles to DIY car repair and business help, Vermont Online Library can help with any topic. Users can (with a bit of work) even read articles by issue from some popular magazines, such as The New York Times, Economist, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Highlights for Children, National Review, and Runner's World.

Sessions – 18,053 | Average Session Length – 18.58 minutes | Text Retrievals – 6,684

(Note about Sessions – This number is a bit misleading, as it counts multiple sessions when a user searches multiple databases at once)

Most Used Databases – Academic OneFile, Opposing Viewpoints, General OneFile, Biography, US History, News, Gale Virtual Reference Library

Chilton Library Retrievals – 26

Read more about Learning Express, Universal Class, or Vermont Online Library, or email Josh Muse with any questions.

Image credit: Creative Commons By John Morgan

Who is CLIC?

Founded in 2015, CLIC is financed by an annual grant from the Vermont Department of Libraries and operated by Vermont Law and Graduate School (VLS) librarians and staff.

What is CLIC’s mission?

CLIC is here to serve Vermonters’ legal research needs by providing legal information, resources, and referrals.

How can you reach CLIC?

Send an email to clic@vermontlaw.edu, or call the Ask a Law Librarian line at (802) 831-1313.

Vermonters are welcome to come, in person, to use our legal research databases, Vermont legal materials, and our legal self-help library. CLIC also provides access to computers, printers, a scanner, photocopier, and fax machine.

Where is CLIC located?

CLIC is located in the Julien & Virginia Cornell Library on the South Royalton campus of the Vermont Law and Graduate School.

Hours of Service

CLIC self-service is open during normal VLS Library hours, which are Monday through Friday from 8:00am to 8:00pm. Research assistance is available from the CLIC Coordinator Monday through Friday when the library is open and the CLIC Coordinator is onsite. For up to date hours please refer to the CLIC/VLS website, https://www.vermontlaw.edu/academics/library. 

Common Cracker: The Exhibit