On-Demand Webinars

It’s never too early to start planning for next year’s summer learning programs! Measuring the outcomes of programs and services helps libraries with decision making, program improvements, advocacy, and funding requests. PLA staff gathered stories from libraries participating in Project Outcome to create implementation tips and best practices to help libraries feel confident implementing Summer Reading surveys next year. Learn how libraries have used the standardized Summer Reading surveys to measure the success of their summer learning programs and demonstrate their impact in the community.

Photovoice is a type of participatory research methodology designed to empower participants through photography and the power of storytelling in small group settings. In 2013, the Chicago Public Library (CPL) partnered with a local organization to start collecting stories from refugees and political asylum seekers about their lives in Chicago. This on-demand webinar introduces the project and its methodology, and will help you begin to design your own photovoice project.

What happens when you mix public library staff, high school students, architects, and STEM curriculum? You get project-based learning that leads to students designing a hybrid public library/farmer's market facility! Learn from speakers who have been immersed in a year-long IMLS National Leader Planning Grant, which has involved teaching students about human centered service design and exploring libraries and farms in field trips, and hear how this innovative project engaged teens along with community partners.

Outcome measurement is a way for libraries to assess their impact on the people they serve and helps libraries answer the question, “What good did we do?” With a vast number of ways to collect outcomes, it may be overwhelming to identify which data collection methods to use. Choosing the methodology also depends on the library’s learning goals, time limitations, staff capacity and more. This on-demand webinar is designed to help libraries learn what methods are available to them, and the benefits and challenges to each. It highlights several methods, with an emphasis on focus groups.

Since 2015, Multnomah County (OR) Library has been providing a way for patrons to contribute to our e-book collection, bringing authors visibility while offering compelling local content to our patrons. The Library Writers Project engages with the writing community while promoting library staff as curators of books worth your time. We’ll walk through the project inception and execution, and discuss the place of self-published works in collection development and the role of librarians as tastemakers.

Pima County (AZ) Public Library (PCPL) has radically shifted its approach toward interacting with youth in violation of the library’s Customer Code of Conduct. Using restorative justice practices, PCPL created a justice board with community partners to facilitate more mindful approaches to incidents involving youth, focusing on creating opportunities for growth and engagement rather than barriers to library access. This webinar explores the praxis behind this organizational culture shift including the successes and challenges faced by staff.

Outcome measurement is a way for libraries to assess their impact on the people they serve and helps libraries answer the question, “What good did we do?” Libraries may need to measure outcomes for a variety of reasons—from measuring and improving impact, to better managing services and resources, to demonstrating a need for funding or other support. This on-demand webinar will help libraries develop their own outcome measures based on program goals and implement those measures through effective survey design.

Are you starting a partnership or have an existing partnership and want to measure the results of your combined efforts? A collaborative partnership is about having a common goal around better serving the ever-changing needs of your community and measuring outcomes can help you and your partner identify better ways to align your work to deliver more impactful community-based services. This on-demand webinar focuses on how to plan for collaborative outcome measurement with a partner, with a focus on partnerships between libraries and schools to stop the summer slide.

As part of PLA’s commitment to working toward making its educational events accessible to all, this webinar offers practical recommendations for creating accessible presentations for the PLA 2018 Conference and beyond. Learn how to design presentation materials that are accessible and to deliver educational content, including facilitating discussion, in a way that reaches all audience members. This webinar includes specific advice on slide structure, font choices, and file formats, and provides examples of the accessibility features of popular presentation software options.

In alignment with ALA’s strategic direction on equity, diversity, and inclusion, this on-demand webinar provides an introductory understanding of the concepts of power, identity, and oppression, and how they impact public libraries’ staff, services, programs, collections, and spaces. Through presentation and dialogue, the panelists discuss the role of allies in addressing these concepts. This on-demand webinar is also an excellent primer to the PLA 2018 preconference, “Understanding Identity, Power, Oppression + Liberation: A Justice + Equity Training.”