ILEAD USA begins on March 23, when 23 library workers from across Pennsylvania come together in 5 teams to solve community problems with the use of participatory technology. This nine month program is divided into three in-person sessions of 4 days each in Harrisburg.
Classes and keynote speakers, streamed in from Illinois, will fill most of the days as the teams work on developing a final product. You are invited to participate in the streamed keynotes by visiting http://www.uis.edu/technology/live/ileadu.html at the following times:
(and please join in the twitter conversation at #ileadusa)!
Tuesday, March 24
11:00am
Anne Craig, Director, Illinois State Library
General Introduction
11:30am
David Lankes, Syracuse University, School of Information Studies, Syracuse, New York. Professor and Dean’s Scholar on New Librarianship
Everything You Learned in Library School is Wrong
We all know that Libraries are Good and Necessary Things and Libraries Collect, Organize, and Provide Access to Information. That’s what we were taught in library school right? Except of course, they don’t. Libraries don’t do anything except exert gravity and shield you from the rain. It is librarians and the people in the library that makes the world a better place. Collections are just tools, like buildings, and books, and databases, and 3D printers. This keynote will focus on how librarians are radical positive change agents that make communities better.
3:30pm
John Emerson, an activist, graphic designer, writer, and programmer based in New York City creator of http://backspace.com/notes
Inspired Outreach Inspired
How do you engage the hearts and minds of your audience? Connect and empower with outreach that makes people say “Aha!” and “Let’s do it!”
Wednesday, March 25
11:00am
Eli Neiburger, Associate Director, IT and Production, Ann Arbor District
FLATLAND: A Statistical Romance of Many Dimensions
In which our Hero, A. Librarian, must search for scalars amidst an increasingly flat landscape, with which to earn the favor of capricious higher-dimensional beings, before her entire world collapses to a single ultradense font of information, only to find that the only dimension that truly matters is LOVE.
3:30pm
Sina Bahram, an accessibility consultant, researcher, and entrepreneur
Perspectives and Advice on Accessibility and Universal Design
Join Sina Bahram as he walks through the concepts of accessibility and universal design. These core principles are fundamental to understanding how to be relevant in the 21st century to all audiences regardless of physical or cognitive ability. Through exploring a narrative about technology, access to information and the physical world, and practical tips and tricks about steps any of us can take, Sina will both motivate and show us how to augment our content, interactions, and thinking to become more inclusive.
Thursday March 26
11:00am
David Bendekovic, President, The B. A. David Company, Syracuse, New York
Great People Make Great Libraries: Know Yourself. Grow Yourself. And Take Your Library With You
Your ability to reach your goals has as much to do with how you choose to see the world as it does with your level of education and intelligence. This keynote will give you the keys to thinking in a more powerful way about yourself, the people around you, and the work you want to get done. What You Do Makes A Difference. You Just Have To Figure Out What Kind Of Difference You Want To Make.
Team Members, Mentor and Project Descriptions are listed below:
ALT (Adult Basic Literacy)
Team Members:
Joanne Austin, Osterhout Free Library
Edward Lupico, SCI Houtzdale
Rick Miller, Executive Director, Osterhout Free Library
Elaine Stefanko, Osterhout Free Library
Mentor: Bonnie Powers
It was easy for us to identify our community need: it is adult literacy. Our libraries receive many calls from community members and teachers seeking help with this issue. We have been unable to identify a free, easily-accessible service in our communities to help adults improve their basic literacy skills. Whether filling out a job application or e-mailing their child’s teacher, many members of our community need assistance with literacy skills to be able to function in society today. In the case of correctional institutions, demographics show low educational achievement and literacy skills across a large proportion of inmates.
Our project proposes to develop an online resource that will be used to train literacy volunteers. This proposed resource can be adapted to serve different kinds of libraries. Our group will be targeting public libraries and a prison library. The volunteers who are trained using this resource will then conduct one-on-one sessions with the individuals that need literacy help. For example, in the prison library more educated inmates can serve as literary volunteers for other inmates. In the public library all types of adults could be trained as literacy volunteers.
Bookends
Team Members:
Jennifer Coleman, Summerville Public Library
Jessica Lasher, Punxsutawney Memorial Library
Rosalee Pituch, Rebecca M. Arthurs Memorial Library
Karl Rebon, Reynoldsville Public Library
Mentor: Maryam Phillips
Our communities currently lack a comprehensive resource for information relating to the PA Forward literacies. Each team member will tackle one of the five literacies–basic literacy, information literacy, health literacy, financial literacy, and civic and social literacy–to gather local references and potentially develop interactive components relevant to users learning about these essential topics.
The Bookends will approach the needs of our communities by developing a patron-centered, web-based tool to connect patrons with these literacies on individual levels. This tool will bring reliable information to the fingertips of our users. Developing it with the end-user in mind, it will be easy-to-use and utilize minimal technology requirements. Together, we will collaborate our efforts to provide support in our communities for life-long learning.
Job Squad
Team Members:
Rebecca Baker, Community Library of the Shenango Valley
Nicole Henline, Monroeville Public Library
Leslie LaBarte, Sugar Grove Free Library
Rob Lesher, Adams County Library System
Robin Pundzak, Mercer Area Library
Mentor: Elizabeth Mahoney
The unemployed or underemployed patrons in the Job Squad libraries are in need of job readiness skills. The Job Squad team will address common issues in the job search process for these patrons by creating a tool and service to help those who lack computer expertise and an understand of the job search process develop the skills necessary for finding employment.
The Job Squad tool will pull together useful resources that help in the job search process. To advance technology skills, the tool will have information on how to create email accounts and search the web for job opportunities. To support the patron’s job search process, the tool will include information on how to write a resume, create a cover letter, solicit reference letters, fill out an online application, participate in online training, prepare for an interview, etc.
Memory Masters
Team Members:
Janet Eldred, Hollidaysburg Area Public Library
Abigail Gulya, Harrisburg Area Community College
David Runyon, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology
Beth Transue, Messiah College Murray Library
Edward Wolf, Bethel Park Public Library
Mentor: Mary Garm
The goal of the Memory Masters project is to design a framework for the capturing, recording, storing and exhibiting of oral and visual histories. Utilizing either the creation of a new, specially-designed platform or the repurposing of an existing service, the objective of the project is to enable libraries and other cultural institutions with the ability to ensure the preservation of the rich histories which surround them. Whether it is local history, family legends, cultural reminiscences, project documentation, individual achievements or any other form which a history may take, the aim is to provide libraries and institutions with the means of preserving these accounts for future generations through a participatory technology approach to history-keeping.
Conceptually, this project is designed to be used by any interested member of a library’s constituency. In designing a service with such a large and diverse group in mind, the idea is to not limit the potential users but to make the service open to and applicable by as broad an audience as possible. At the same time, such a service must ultimately be adaptive to those individuals’ needs. Therefore, the end-product of the Memory Masters project is the creation of a digital exhibition space, where these histories can be grouped and displayed according to the users’ needs—whether that be in the form of a collection of local histories or the documentation of student projects.
Ultimately, the goal for the Memory Masters project is to create a framework which can be shared with other libraries and institutions, thereby expanding the scope of the project to include many different types of histories in a variety of environments. The objective is to create a dynamic system which can continue and grow beyond the initial timeframe
imposed by the iLEAD program and to create a truly user-based means of capturing the oral and visual record of the present, as well as the individual and collective experiences of the past, and preserving that well into the future.
Techni-Gals
Team Members:
Mary Glendening, Middletown Free Library
Jason Fialkovich, Middletown Free Library
Laura Kuchmay, Middletown Free Library
Darlene Marshall, Mengle Memorial Library
Susan Ware—Penn State Brandywine Vairo Library
Mentor: Melinda Tanner
The Techni-gals ILEAD program will focus on creating interest in STE(A)M careers in middle school age girls through a series of hands-on workshops at the Middletown Free Library and a STEM Day at Penn State Brandywine campus. Middletown Free Library will complement the Penn State program through a series of workshops that will offer hands-on learning opportunities in various STE(A)M activities. We have discussed holding a workshop prior to the day at Penn State and then conducting a series of workshops after that event. Workshops will bring in these female leaders to help lend their expertise and continue to role model and perhaps even become mentors to the girls who participate in our programs.
The workshops being held at the Middletown Free Library will most likely focus on e-textiles, 3D printing, and perhaps robotics/animatronics. We are planning on the workshops being an ongoing series of programs where the girls will work on a project that will help them build skills and find their interests. We are looking at the teams building e-textile puppets or exploring animatronics and creating stories that will be filmed and shared virtually via Vimeo and YouTube. The girls will create the stories, props and puppets or animatronics to bring their stories to life. This type of workshop series allows the girls to get hands on experience with a variety of tools and finds the area they are most interested in exploring further whether it be robotics, programming, video & story, etc.
The program being held at Penn State Brandywine will be a one-day workshop featuring local STEM leaders. Susan will working on recruiting experts as well as girls to take part in the program. Speakers are at the heart of the program being held on the campus and there will be a variety of small workshops running 30-40 minutes throughout the day featuring the guest speakers.
On-site instructors include:
John Brice, Executive Director of the Meadville Public Library and
CEO of the Crawford County Library System
Video-Editing
Hadiyah Cleveland, LSTA Coordinator. Office of Commonwealth Libraries
Project Proposals
Carrie Gardner Ph.D., Principal Consultant at Clairmaxine
Privacy and Confidentiality
Copyright
Gail Griffith, Coordinator of Library Associate Training Institute, Maryland and Consultant
Envisioning Success
Vince Mariner, Deputy Director of HSLC
WordPress
Christopher W. Miller, Ph.D., NPDP, Founder and CEO of Innovation Focus
Approaching Design Thinking: Thinking Outside the Box, Inside a Box
Stephanie Zimmerman, Training & Development/HR Coordinator for the Library System of Lancaster County
Community Engagement
Managing Stress, Staying Positive