System Spotlight

By Staff

Stevens Co Escape Room – By Laurie Crawford

The Stevens County Library had an Escape Room for the month of July and used the SWKLS Breakout EDU Kit. We started out with staff giving it a go to make sure everything worked right. It was lots of fun and all ages enjoyed it!

Looks like fun, Stevens County! Great job! 🙂

Scott County Library Invites Children to Get Creative

From Millie Dearden: Just wanted to share our “What’s In the Container?” passive program!

We had this large round container that we covered and ask patrons to give us their BEST CREATIVE guess as to what is in the container during the month of July.

At the end of July we reviewed all the guesses and posted our top five on the bulletin board and let patrons vote on their favorite guess!

FYI: there was nothing in the container!! <— 😯

We had a tie for first!! The two winners received a little gift bag of goodies!!!

What a great way to get kids’ imaginations going! You rock, Scott County! 🙂

StoryTime Swap Meet

Thank you to everyone who stuck around on Friday after the board meeting for our first ever StoryTime Swap Meet! We shared ideas, stories, props, and laughs as each librarian got to experience StoryTime from the other side of the book! We hope to see you all at the next one!

Future Dates & Training Opportunities (All Times in CST)

August 20th – 1:30 PM – 2 PM – NEKLS Presents Focus On: Mulvane Public Library/Register Here

August 21st – 10 AM – Kansas Library Guidelines Public Comment Forum/Zoom Link

August 28th – 2 PM – Breaking the Silence: Exploring Mental Health Challenges Among BIPOC Library Workers Webinar/Register Here

August 30th – Summer Library Program Evaluations Due!

September 10th – 2 PM – Twosday Takeaway: Multicultural Community Programming with Miguel Coca/Zoom Link

September 19th – 10 AM – 4 PM – Auto-Graphics SHAREit In-Person Training at SEKLS in Iola, KS/Register Here

September 20th – 10 AM – 4 PM – Auto-Graphics SHAREit In-Person Training at Advanced Learning Library in Wichita, KS/Register Here

September 26th – 27th – SWKLS Retreat/Register Here

Consulting

By Sara Wilson

Putting the “Science” in Library Science

The SWKLS Team has been hard at work developing a pilot program that we hope to launch next year. We can’t share all the details with you yet, but let’s just say . . . it’s out of this world. 😉

We had our inaugural trial run last week and we’re happy to report that it went (mostly) well! 🙂 As any good scientist will tell you, you have to experiment to find what works. We have been hard at work forming our hypotheses and developing prototypes and we can’t wait to show you what we’ve concocted in our lab.

Audubon of Kansas Birding Backpack Follow-Up

Last year, you all received a free birding backpack from Audubon of Kansas. They would like your feedback in regards to how the backpacks are performing at your library. Please see the following message sent out by Dr. Jackie Augustine of AOK:

Hello southwest Kansas libraries,

Can you believe that it has been a year or more since some of you acquired your Nature Adventurepack from Audubon of Kansas and a Chickadee Checkoff grant? I hope your patrons are enjoying the backpack with binoculars and field guides. I am preparing to write the final report and I could use some feedback about the success of the program.

If you could take 5 minutes to fill out this feedback survey, I would appreciate it. CLICK HERE.

Thank you for all the work you do for your community!

ESU Continuing Education Class: Intellectual Freedom in Libraries

Please don’t forget, Emporia State University is now offering a library science class in Intellectual Freedom. The class is taught by Dr. Mirah Dow and registration is open now. Details of the class are as follows:

Dates: 08/19/2024 – 12/06/2024

Time: Online – asynchronous

Cost: $350 per person

Intellectual Freedom in Libraries

The course examines intellectual freedom as a core value of librarianship and a foundational principle for library professionals. The course will provide legal, theoretical, and philosophical background for establishing connections between intellectual freedom, access to information, and freedom of speech. The course examines intellectual freedom in action in various scenarios and duties in librarianship. Students learn how to articulate, promote, and defend intellectual freedom practices and policies as a key component of professional practice in multiple types of libraries and information services. This course was created in collaboration with textbook author and the Freedom to Read Foundation.

Registration is open and can be found at this link: https://secure.touchnet.com/C20725_ustores/web/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=1021

koha eCard Admin Training Recording

From Andy Schafer of the State Library of Kansas:

Thank you to everyone who attended last week’s koha eCard trainings. Below is a link to a training session any library staff member can watch as initial training or as a refresher.

Watch the recording

In addition to the recording, the State Library has a webpage about the migration with links to useful content: https://kslib.info/1577/koha-eCard-Admin-Migration

Here is the plan for the first two weeks of August:

Week of August 5 – material encouraging patrons to renew or sign up for eCards before August 19

Patron-directed flyer
Patron-directed social media image and text

Week of August 12 – material for library staff to practice

How-to sheet for eCard koha system
Link to access the koha test side for training and practice

Thanks for your continued support and cooperation during this process.

Cataloging, Collection Development, and ILL

By Miguel Coca

Collection Development Inspiration

Adult Fiction

Children’s & YA Fiction

Cloud Library Circ Statistics

Stats are important! This week we began looking into how you could get the circ stats for Cloud Library. Katie Simmons from the state library was very helpful in finding this information.

They can be found at https://kslib.info/librarians. You can click Statewide Resources on the left side of the screen. Scroll down to Digital Books and click Cloud Library. This expands and then click Connections & Statistics. Scroll to Statistics. There are Excel sheets that can be downloaded from the webpage for Cloud Library: circulation by library and Active Patron Accounts by Library.

The Excel file contains quite of bit of information so you will have to find your library’s statistics on the sheet.

SHAREit ISSI Update

This week there was an update to the ISSI (InterSystem Lending Initiative), which allows you to be able to trade with other states that also use SHAREit for their ILLs.

From Nikki Hansen at the State Library:

Before the update it was set up so each library had to opt-in to borrow and lend with these states. Now everyone is opted-in and you have the ability to opt-out if you would like. The benefits of having ISSI libraries in your lender list is that you have the ability to borrow materials that no Kansas library currently has access to. You also have the ability to lend materials in kind to states where those materials may not be available. The states that currently participate in ISSI are Arkansas, Mississippi, South Dakota, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. Currently the Kansas Library Express courier connects with Texas and Arkansas through Trans-Amigos Express so you would be able to send/receive items from those states through the courier. Please contact Caroline Handwork at NEKLS for more information about the courier.

If you would not like to participate in ISSI right now, you do have the option to turn it off. A staff member with Library Superuser permissions can go to the Staff Dashboard and open the ILL Admin module. Click on Configure ISSI at the bottom of the menu

Un-check the box next to Participate in ISSI and click Save. If you’d like to continue participating in ISSI but put some limits on it, you can change your participation settings in the same screen.