Posts filed under ‘Awards, Recognitions, Celebrations’
Money Smart Week® @Your Library (April 2-9, 2011) and ID Theft Resources
Posted by Robert J. Lackie
American Library Association logo
Additionally, Rider University’s Center for Business Forensics (CBF) has hosted several free interactive panel presentations for the general public (students, staff, community members, etc.) and law enforcement personnel focusing on the major issues surrounding identity theft—including financial literacy—and providing insight into the widespread, varying, and serious nature of identity theft.
Rider University's Center for Business Forensics
1. Shred with a crosscut or micro shredder pieces of mail that contain any personal information before throwing them in the trash at home or at work.
2. Place outgoing mail and retrieve incoming mail via a locking mailbox or official Postal Service box.
3. Use a virtual credit card number (available through most banks) for online purchases, rather than your “real” credit card—connected to your card, the virtual number can be set up to only be used once, for that one online purchase (or for longer, but only if you wish).
4. Keep an eye on your credit card when you are paying for something—don’t allow it to disappear out of your sight (skimming of your card could occur).
5. Inventory/photocopy what is in your wallet/purse and place that photocopy (back and front of cards) in a locked cabinet—if your wallet/purse is stolen, you have all the info.
6. Never respond to an unsolicited email from your bank, medical organization, etc., and don’t unsubscribe—don’t even click on the link, just delete it.
7. Cover the ATM keypad from prying eyes and cameras with one hand while you enter your PIN.
8. Review your credit reports (you can get a free one each year from each of the three credit reporting agencies, and if you stagger requests, you can get one every four months).
9. Clear private data from your browser (i.e., Firefox, IE, or Safari): delete temporary files, browsing history, cookies, cache, saved form information, and saved passwords, especially when using a public computer or kiosk at a library, hotel, airport, coffee shop, etc., and then shut down your browser.
10. Use different passwords for different sites—and try changing/updating your passwords to passphrases.
Last but least, my annually-updated free website, Personal Profiles and Other Publicly Available Information: An Internet Hotlist on Detecting and Protecting Your Digital Footprint, contains some of my favorite ID theft protection, privacy information, and financial assistance sites, among other things, found on experts’ sites on the free Web, including our Identity Theft: What You Need to Know seminar project’s 29-page handout from Rider University, available to all.
Remember, according to Terri Cullen, author of The Wall Street Journal Complete Identity Theft Guidebook: How to Protect Yourself from the Most Pervasive Crime in America, ( “…Identity theft covers several different specific crimes, and collectively,…is one of the easiest crimes to commit, one of the hardest to prosecute, and one that is drawing increasing attention from the media.” So, feel free to share this information with all of your patrons and students, especially because proactively protecting your digital footprint and your finances is much easier than dealing with them after the fact as a victim—being a victim can be a very emotional, time-consuming, and financially-unrewarding process. Again, prevent it from ever happening to you, and help others do the same.
Money Smart Week @ Your Library
-Robert
Robert J. Lackie
Congrats to Amy Kearns!!
Posted by Peter Bromberg
Congratulations to Amy Kearns on her appointment as Assistant Director at the Middletown Township Public Library!
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MIDDLETOWN TOWNSHIP PUBLIC LIBRARY
55 NEW MONMOUTH ROAD 9 MIDDLETOWN, NJ 07748
PHONE: 732.671.3700 * SUSAN O’NEAL, DIRECTORFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JULY 14,2010
CONTACT: Susan O’Neal, Director
671-3703SUBJECT: MIDDLETOWN TOWNSHIPS LIBRARY NAMES NEW ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
The Middletown Township Public Library is pleased to announce that Amy J. Kearns will join the staff as Assistant Director / Manager of Adult Services on July 27, 2010. She will replace longtime library employee and Assistant Director JoAnn Strano, who is retiring.
Amy has her undergraduate and Master of Library and Information Science degree from Rutgers University, where she is a part-time instructor on the topic of information technologies. She previously worked in the Clifton and Paterson public libraries before her most recent position as the Program Coordinator for the Central Jersey Regional Library Cooperative.
Her experience in information technology includes the development of new programs and workshops for the CJRLC, a consortium of over five hundred member libraries, presentations at state and national library organizations, workshops in libraries and one-on-one training. “Amy is an unabashed change agent,” said Susan O’Neal, Director of the Middletown Library. “We have every expectation that Amy will help us use the same technology that our customers favor and channel it to meet library needs and improve services.”
Ms. Kearns has experience developing and using webinars for training purposes. According to O’Neal, use of web-based training has reduced continuing education and training costs for the library, and that Ms. Kearns will be putting her skills to work to create a series of information literacy webinars for the public to access from work, school or home. A sample class might be on how to do research on the library’s databases, replicating instruction that is provided in-house, but for participants, who, for whatever reason, cannot come to the library itself.
Duties will include management of the Adult Services Department, selection of reference department materials, personnel administration, staff continuing education and subscription database management. The Assistant Director is on the management team, participates or leads several internal committees, and is the person-in-charge in the absence of the library director.
When asked to comment on this appointment, Ms Kearns said, “The Middletown Township Public Library is a model of excellent and creative library service and I am honored to have the opportunity to work with Susan O’Neal and the talented staff. I am very excited about joining the library team and providing service to the Middletown Township community.”
The Middletown Township Public Library is located at 55 New Monmouth Road, just off Hwy 35. For information about the library and its services check out the website: www.mtul.org.
Congrats to Dr. Marie Radford!
Photo by Victor Estrellado
What do these five people have in common?
- Marie Radford
- Joe Janes
- Anne Lipow
- Jim Rettig
- Carole Leita
If you guessed that they’ve all been honored for their distinguished contribution to reference librarianship by being selected for RUSA’s Isadore Gilbert Mudge Award you’d be right!
RUSA’s press release discussed why the awards committee selected Marie this year:
In selecting Radford for this honor, the committee cited her many accomplishments, including authorship of four books, among them “Conducting the Reference Interview (2nd ed.),” “The Reference Encounter: Interpersonal Communication in the Academic Library” and “Web Research: Selecting, Evaluating, and Citing”; editorship of three other books, including “Reference Renaissance: Current and Future Trends”and “Academic Library Research”;numerous articles published in top library journals; and dozens of conference papers and presentations.
In addition to her publications, Radford brings high energy, deep passion and an interdisciplinary approach to the study of face-to-face and virtual reference. She has provided inspirational leadership in professional organizations such as RUSA, ALA, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE). Radford is currently co-chair of the conference program for the Reference Renaissance 2010 and co-chair of contributed papers for ACRL’s 2011 National Conference. She will be the keynote speaker for the upcoming 2010 REFolution Conference.
Marie, a hearty congratulations from your fellow Library Garden bloggers on this well-deserved recognition. It’s nice to see others in the profession noticing and celebrating what we in New Jersey have known for a long time — you are amazing!!
In honor of Einstein’s birthday and Pi day, some life lessons
Albert Einstein
Posted by John LeMasney
Yesterday (March 14th) was Pi day in Princeton, a celebration corresponding with Einstein’s birthday, and I saw (a little bit too late, I’m afraid) a suggestion from Janie Hermann to repost a great article which I sent her on “10 amazing life lessons” that one could interpret from Einstein’s quotes.
The article is at http://www.dumblittleman.com/2010/03/10-amazing-lessons-albert-einstein.html and the ideas from that article are listed in this illustration here.
In keeping with my visual posting plans for LG, I used Inkscape to make this image. I started with the famous Lucien Aigner image of Einstein at a chalkboard, and bitmap traced it in grayscale mode with 4 layers, which results in a posterized, if very recognizable image made out of points and lines. I extended the blackboard and using the calligraphy and gradient tools made a smooth transition between what’s in the photo and a gray neutrality. Then, I took the content of the post and laid it out in the right side of the image.
Thanks Albert, for all you brought to our lives. Thanks Lucien for the great image. Thanks to Janie for the suggestion. Thanks to you for taking a moment to remember Einstein with me.
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Speaking of Nominating
There have been dozens of posts made over the last few months reminding everyone to nominate their favorite Mover and Shaker from libraryland for the annual Library Journal supplement. I myself am in the midst of polishing my M&S nomination for submission before the deadline on Monday November 10th, so I thought while everyone was in nominating mode I would post a reminder that nominating season need not end on Monday!
There are lots of ALA professional recognition awards that you can nominate your colleagues and institution to win — and many of the awards given by ALA have a December 1st deadline, giving you three weeks to put together your nomination!
I spent the last two years serving on the ALA Awards Committee and this year I was appointed the chair of the jury for the ALA/Information Today Library of the Future Award. This is not only a really prestigious award but a really cool one too — as is evident by the list of past winners. Look over the requirements, then think about what your library is doing and how you might possibly qualify:
… to honor an individual library, library consortium, group of librarians, or support organization for innovative planning for, applications of, or development of patron training programs about information technology in a library setting.
Criteria should include the benefit to clients served; benefit to the technology information community; impact on library operations; public relations value; and the impact on the perception of the library or librarian in the work setting and to the specialized and/or general public.
I know, for a fact, that there are many libraries with innovative, forward-thinking and amazing technology-focussed programs that are deserving of this award, so step forward and nominate yourselves or your colleagues.
Goodbye Mr. Carlin
George Carlin passed away yesterday. This makes me sad. Carlin was a comedic and linguistic genius as well as a defender–or perhaps practitioner is a better word — of free speech. Probably best known for his bit on the seven dirty words, Carlin shocked, but did not need to shock, to be funny.
His mind was brilliantly attuned to the absurdities of life, and his gift for language and physical humor allowed him to reflect those absurdities back to us in a way that both challenged and tickled our sensibilities.
George Carlin touched me. Literally. In college I was with a group that brought him to Rutgers for a performance . Before the show began I was charged with guarding his dressing room. The door opened and I felt a tap on my shoulder.
“Hey Buddy”.
“Yes Mr. Carlin”, I replied.
“Where’s the rest room?”
“Right down the hall to the left, Mr. Carlin.”
“Thank buddy.”
As “brush with greatness” stories go, perhaps this doesn’t make the top 10, but I was touched by his gentle manner and the way he called me buddy. I remember a lot of his material that night, but one of my favorite bits was his take on license plates:
- New Hampshire’s license plates say ‘Live Free … or DIE!!’ I don’t think I want to live in a state that actually mentions death right on their license plates. At the other end of the spectrum is Idaho’s license plates – they say ‘Famous Potatoes.’ I don’t know, I think that somewhere between ‘Famous Potatoes’ and ‘Live Free or Die’ the truth lies. And I think it’s closer to ‘Famous Potatoes.’
Goodbye Mr Carlin, and thanks for all the laughs.
LG Turns Two!
It’s our “blogaversary” and we didn’t even know it until several of us were sitting in a hotel bar at PLA unwinding after a busy day of conferencing and presenting. I mentioned that I thought it was during the last week of March that we officially started Library Garden, so Pete grabbed his laptop to verify the date. Lo and behold, it was on March 28th that Pete posted the intro post and I quickly followed with my thoughts on Sharing:It’s the New Black.
It was not planned, but what a happy coincidence that several of us could share a celebratory drink and photo op on the occasion of Library Garden turning two [more photos on flickr]. We just wish that Ty, Cynthia and Robert could have been with us and the event would have been perfect (but we did raise our glasses to those who remained behind in Jersey).
We are also celebrating our anniversary by announcing that Karen Klapperstuck of Bradley Beach Public Library will be returning to the blog team. Karen blogged with us in our early days before taking a blogging sabbatical. We are so thrilled that she will be joining us to once again share her insights on running a small public library.
I also want to extend my gratitude to all the members of LG, both past and present, for so richly enhancing my life for the last two years with thought-provoking posts, professional support, timely advice and (most importantly) friendship and fun.
Happy Birthday Maryland AskUsNow! Statewide Virtual Reference Service
On Wednesday March 19th I traveled south to the newly built and beautiful Anne Arundel Public Library for the gala 5th birthday celebration of Maryland AskUsNow! This festivity brought together an impressive turnout of librarians, state government representatives, and dignitaries such as the Maryland Assistant State Superintendent for Libraries, Irene M. Padilla, and Nancy S. Grasmick, State Superintendent of Schools. Everyone came together to recognize the accomplishments of this highly successful and widely admired statewide live chat and e-mail reference consortium. I happily braved the traffic of the spring break holiday getaway mob heading south on highway 95 to give the keynote address, to facilitate a workshop on chat reference service excellence, and to share in this wonderful and historic event.
I first met Joe Thompson (click here and scroll down this page for a picture of the energetic and forward-looking Project Coordinator of Maryland AskUsNow!) at the Virtual Reference Desk conference in 2003 (btw, the forerunner of our highly anticipated Reference Renaissance conference) when I was just getting started in researching interpersonal communication in live chat reference. During my VRD presentation, I made a plea to the audience for some transcripts to analyze. Afterwards Joe approached me, introduced himself, and said “I have 10,000 transcripts, when do you want them?” A bit stunned, I replied, “Well, I don’t need all 10,000. How about pulling me a random sample of about 250-300 transcripts?” Thus began an incredibly cordial and productive collaboration which has resulted in shared conference presentations and panels, the publication of two journal articles on virtual reference (VR) in JASIST and Scan, with more to come, I’m sure.
Joe and his statewide VR team of librarians at Maryland AskUsNow! have worked incredibly hard to forge the service’s success with a total of over 200,000 reference questions answered and counting. They continually reach for the highest quality standards in VR, which I strongly admire and find inspirational. Joe’s willingness to allow an outsider (like me) to have access to transcripts (suitably made anonymous, of course, to protect user privacy) and to the AskUsNow! user population (assisting me in recruiting participants for focus groups, online surveys, and phone interviews) demonstrates his keen interest in research into user behaviors, and commitment to discovering how to make live chat a better experience for both users and librarians. He is ever open to new ideas and continual improvement. I was also very impressed by the number of AskUsNow! librarians who attended my afternoon workshop as well as by their positive attitude toward customer service.
I must also add that I am proud of the amazing Julie Strange, Maryland AskUsNow! Operations Supervisor, who was my student and research assistant at Rutgers, SCILS on our “Seeking Synchronicity” grant project. Tech savvy Julie also shares an incredibly strong and steadfast commitment to high quality service and a fearless Millennial approach to learning novel social software applications, embracing new ways of reaching library users, and especially to connecting with younger chat and IM aficionados.
So here’s to Maryland AskUsNow! 5 years on and looking forward to many many returns of the day!
Tootling one’s own horn
(this has been sitting in drafts for 3 weeks.)
File under, “Tootling one’s own horn” In this case mine. Hey look everyone, I’ve learned to talk good!
Yes, I am now an official Toastmasters Competent Communicator (aka CTM).
Toot! Toot!
Yes, posts about ALA coming soon (for now here are the pix.) And more on public speaking, doing improv, library futures.
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