Are you looking for presentations or workshops for your library’s staff day? The State Library may be able to help. Check out the expertise we have to offer by topic or staff member! We are happy to offer these sessions free of charge.
Customer Service | Organizational Development | Personal Development | Learning/Teaching | User Experience
Customer Service
In Service of Hope: Empowering our patrons to achieve their goals – Christine Kreger
“The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life. It provides human beings with a sense of destination, and the energy to get started (Norman Cousins).” In today’s tumultuous environment, libraries are continuously developing services designed to meet the needs of the communities we serve. But what if libraries focused on directly impacting our communities by creating a culture of hope?
Join me for an interactive workshop exploring how we can align and/or create library services designed to empower our patrons to achieve their individual goals, to experience the power of hope, and to potentially transform our communities.
Minds Unlocked: Supporting Intellectual Freedom in Correctional Libraries – Erin Boyington
Come fill your toolkit with strategies to support intellectual freedom for those you serve with jail or prison outreach. Learn about the realities of correctional censorship, how to develop a policy to answer the toughest challenges, and how you can be a powerful and articulate advocate for your community.
Sticky Situations: Patron privacy, and customer service – Christine Kreger
Privacy and confidentiality are core values of librarianship, but what does that mean when we are interacting with our patrons on a day-to-day basis? Join me for an interactive session as we explore how patron privacy connects to everyday customer service.
We Need to Talk: Overcoming the fear of having a difficult conversation – Jean Heilig
When faced with having a difficult conversation do you find yourself procrastinating, back peddling, dodging, panicking, or finding yourself filled with dread? Whether the conversation is with staff, a patron, your family, or an annoying neighbor this session will help to move you forward. These conversations don’t have to be difficult if you prepare in advance and leave your emotions out of the equation.
Join me for this conversation…about difficult conversations!
When a Patron Needs More than a Book – Kieran Hixon
• Have you accidentally helped a library patron transform?
• Are you ready to be an intentional champion for your library users?
Join us as we explore services that make all the difference. Together we will share stories of extraordinary library moments and identify common ways library staff help people grow and learn in transformative ways. Walk away with an understanding of how libraries change lives and gain ideas for what you can do to provide more meaningful library services. Together we will discover how to shift libraries from places of transaction into spaces for interaction, and transformation.
Who’s Pushing your Buttons – Jean Heilig
It’s inevitable, at some point in your week you’ll run into one of them. Those people who seem to turn a wonderful day into a dark one. You know these people; they seem to be chronically critical, belligerent, indignant, angry, or just plain rude. But it doesn’t have to be that way for you. Learning tactics for dealing with negative or difficult people will help you survive in the workplace. Join us for this thought provoking session.
Organizational Development
Partnering to Provide Library Services to Jails and Prisons – Erin Boyington
The incarcerated in Colorado’s youth and adult correctional facilities are some of the most appreciative library patrons anywhere. 97% of them will be released someday, and many struggle with basic information needs. The key to helping the incarcerated successfully reenter society is library outreach. Join us to learn about forming partnerships with correctional libraries and to discuss how you can support your future patrons today.
Playing Well with Others – At Work – Christine Kreger and Kieran Hixon
We all know that children learn through play, but what about adults? Research shows that when humans, at any age, play, they learn and grow into healthy, happy, well-functioning individuals. Indeed, embedding playful work techniques into your day can lead to greater creativity, productivity, and resilience in you and your library. And knowing others’ play styles will help build better teams, improve collaborative work, and create a more enjoyable work culture. Join us for this lively, interactive, and fun session, as we delve into the research on play, identify your play style, and explore ways to add more play into your work.
Workplace Bullying: words can hurt more than you think – Jean Heilig
Remember being bullied in grade school? The tears, fears, and anxiety of facing bullies may have shaped who you have become today. Do you ever wonder what happened to those bullies? It’s sad to say but many have grown up and are now creating havoc in our libraries! This engaging session will show you how to remain calm and stay strong when coping with the bullies you work with or serve in your community.
Personal Development
Body Language: Understanding non-verbal communication – Jean Heilig
There are sometimes subtle – and sometimes not so subtle – movements, gestures and facial expressions that can indicate what we are thinking. By developing your awareness of the signs of body language, you can more easily understand other people, and more effectively communicate with them. Additionally, by increasing your understanding of others, you can also become more aware of the messages that you convey to them. It’s more important than ever to be aware of what your body is saying to the outside world.
Decision Making: Crystal ball or magic 8 ball? – Jean Heilig
Decision making is an essential skill. We make quick decisions all the time; other decisions we procrastinate and agonize over. Making poor decisions can label you as ineffective in your job. Learn how to make timely well-considered decisions to be assured of future success.
Join us for an engaging session that will offer you practical tools to make better choices.
Getting Unstuck: The Secret Life of Procrastinators – Jean Heilig and Christine Kreger
Do you believe you work best under pressure? Do you avoid tasks and deliberately look for distractions? Are you late for appointments? Have a hard time completing projects? If you struggle with any of these you may be a procrastinator. Join this session to explore why we procrastinate and how we can stop.
Leading with Emotional Intelligence: Become an Emotion Scientist – Christine Kreger
Did you know that emotions drive nearly every aspect of our work and personal lives? From decision making, to performance, to our relationships with others, our emotions can have a profound impact. Join us as we discuss the science behind our emotions, the importance of emotional intelligence in the workplace, and how we can all learn to harness the power of our emotions as leadership tools.
Look at Me When I am Talking to You!: Getting ahead by improving your listening skills – Jean Heilig
In our high-tech and often stressful world, communication is becoming more important than ever. If this is true, then why are so many of us such poor listeners? Becoming a better listener will allow you to become more productive, avoid conflict, improve accuracy, and build better friendships and careers. During this session you will discover how good your listening skills are and what you can do to improve them.
Mindmaping: how to maximize your brain’s potential – Jean Heilig
Have you ever brainstormed an idea only to find yourself with pages of information and no clue as to how it all fits together? If so, then Mind Mapping can help you organize your thoughts and move forward. Mind Maps offer a way of using and improving your memory, concentration, and creativity in planning and structuring thought on all levels, in order to accelerate your ability to learn, remember, and record information.
That’s Not What I Meant: Improving Your Online Communication Skills – Jean Heilig
The internet offers a variety of communication channels that most of us are relying on during the Pandemic. Personal relationships aside, poor online communication skills can harm your productivity and effectiveness. This means more emails, phone calls or repeated work when something is misunderstood. In this session we will discuss simple ways to improve your online communication skills with both your co-workers and patrons.
Time Management for Librarians – Erin Boyington
Overwhelmed by patrons the moment you open your doors? Not sure how you’re going to get everything done while balancing competing demands? Get tips on planning library services and time management strategies to make your correctional library successful and efficient!
Wake Up! Are you sleepwalking your way through the day? – Jean Heilig
Did you know that getting a good night’s sleep is just as important as eating healthy and exercising? Sleep can help protect your mental health, physical health, quality of life, and safety. The damage from a lack of adequate sleep can occur in an instant (car accident) or over a period of time. Ongoing sleep problems can increase your risk for chronic health problems. It can also affect how well you think, react, work, learn, and get along with others.
Join us as we discuss how sleep and lack of sleep affects us and brainstorm the changes you need to make to experience a good night’s sleep!
When you are Engulfed in Flames: Recognizing and overcoming job burnout – Jean Heilig
Job burnout is a response to stress that leaves you feeling hopeless, powerless, despondent and overwhelmed. But, don’t despair you can do something about it! During this session you’ll learn this doesn’t happen overnight. Our bodies and minds do give us warning signs, and if you know what to look for, you can recognize it before exhaustion and ineffectiveness set in.
Join us to discover if you are at risk or are experiencing job burnout and we will brainstorm what you can do.
Learning/Teaching
Learning IS the Work: Take charge of your workplace learning – Christine Kreger
Once upon a time, employers decided what, when, and how employs would learn needed work skills. However, in today’s ever-changing world, the modern learner needs to step up and take responsibility for our professional development. But where do we start? Join us for a lively discussion as we share ideas and brainstorm strategies you can use to take charge of your workplace learning.
Transitioning from Sage on the Stage to Engaging Learning: Tips and tricks for presenting to adults – Christine Kreger and Becky Russell
Tired of attending the same old presentations? Want to learn how to truly engage with your audience? Whether delivering presentations online or in person, attendee interaction and engagement are central to learning.
In this highly interactive session we will uncover the power of experiential, collaborative learning, and brainstorm ways to make your presentations more interactive.
User Experience
Learning from Your Patrons: An introduction to user research – Babi Hammond
User research doesn’t need to be time-consuming or expensive. A single librarian can conduct and analyze simple patron evaluations with technology readily available in nearly any library. Small scale research projects, done at regular intervals, can continuously improve library services, and help you to see your library through your patron’s perspective.
Join us as we discuss how to conduct some basic research with your patrons to help make your website or other services easier to use.
Working with WordPress – Babi Hammond
This session can cover anything from the basics of creating and editing content to more advanced topics such as working with themes and creating a usable site design.
Weeding your Website with Basic Google Analytics – Babi Hammond
This session covers the basics of how Google Analytics works, what terms like users, sessions, and pageviews really mean, and how to get the most meaningful numbers to guide your content weeding decisions.
Website Design and best Practices for Usability – Babi Hammond
Basic principles for creating clear, easy-to-use websites and web content.
Tips for Updating your Library Intranet: Creating a content management strategy – Erin Boyington
Does your website cause extreme anxiety? Are users lost in frustratingly dense pages? Come learn how one project to improve a library intranet can give you tools to enhance your site, from redesign planning to usability testing to content management.