Professional Development Annual Reports

Professional Development Committee Annual Reports

  • 2021 - 2022

    TS-SIS Professional Development Committee Annual Report 2021/2022

    Submitted by Jen Mart-Rice and Lauren Seney

    This year Jennifer Mart-Rice extended her time as co-chair of the committee and will serve in this capacity for the 2021-2023 term. Lauren Seney is completing the second year of her term as co-chair. With the continuity of both chairs, the committee continued to support virtual meetings and round tables on a variety of topics.

    The Committee Members of 2021-22 were:

    • Ajaye Bloomstone
    • Jackie Magagnosc
    • Tabitha Patterson
    • Pat Sayre-McCoy
    • Barbara Szalkowski
    • Colleen Williams
    • Alexis Zirpoli

    Ex Officio Members:

    • Tania Diaz Marrero (Co-Chair Metadata Management)
    • Shawn King (Co-Chair Metadata Management)
    • Karen Scoville (Co-Chair Resource Management)
    • Elisabeth Umpleby (Co-Chair Resource Management)

    Following last year’s approach, the committee formed two prongs at the beginning of the year, one pursuing proposals for the 2022 Annual Meeting and the other working on ongoing educational opportunities. The committee continued to support the Management Issues Round Table and also hosted several Working Parent discussion groups. Additional support was also provided for a program put on by both of the TS-SIS standing committees.

    Six programs were submitted to the committee for review ahead of the deadline for Annual Meeting program proposals: Documenting for Your Successor; Wikidata: A New Tool to Enhance Access to Law Library Collections; Collection Development with a Conscience; Beyond “Change the Subject”; Marketing Sustainable Mid-Size Institutional Repositories with No Pennies; and Collection Development School: How to Build and Maintain Your Library’s Collection. The Wikidata program was accepted as the TS-SIS-sponsored program, with an additional four proposals being included at the in-person meeting in July.

    The committee continued working on webinars, producing two of its own and supporting both standing committees. All of these were well attended and when the speakers approved of it, were also recorded. Materials shared by the speakers were also shared on the TS-SIS Webinars webpage created last year: https://www.aallnet.org/tssis/education-training/webinars/ The programming was as follows:

    • Metadata Management RDA Round Table (December 10, 2021)
    • Winter Webinar: Documentation: Downloading Our Brains for the Greater Good of the Library (February 3, 2022)
    • Resource Management Webinar: Disasters from Above and Below: Planning for and Recovering from the Unexpected in your Library (April 27, 2022)
    • Spring Webinar: Self-Care Revisited: Setting Boundaries, Creating a Balance & Saying No (May 19, 2022)

    The Management Issues Round Table continued to meet virtually, on a quarterly basis with new moderator Andi Molinet. The final meeting of the year will take place in person during the Denver conference. The Working Parents discussion group, led by new coordinator Tabitha Patterson, also continued to meet and as we entered 2022 found a schedule of every other month to work well.

    The announcement of an in-person meeting this year was a change from the last two years. The committee was beginning to feel fatigue and did not feel capable of coordinating a virtual summit as well as supporting the in-person events. With that in mind, they reached out to all of the committees that had met during the previous virtual summits to determine what meetings would happen in person, and what would happen virtually. Individual meetings were then scheduled by their respective committee chairs, with the Professional Development Committee coordinating a schedule of virtual and in-person meetings to share across the listservs. The Committee wrapped up the year by putting out a call for a Hot Topic for the in-person meeting and coordinating with several individuals to develop a program for that time slot.

    On a final note, the decision at the end of the last year was to change the format of the committee and eliminate the three sub-committees. The Co-Chairs thus updated the website to reflect these changes and submitted the changes to be updated in the TS-SIS Handbook. The committee looks forward to assisting with the in-person meetings this July, and to finding a new cadence for virtual meetings in the coming year.

  • 2020 - 2021

    TS-SIS Professional Development Committee
    Annual Report 2020/2021

    Submitted by Jen Mart-Rice and Lauren Seney

    This year Jennifer Mart-Rice stepped in to serve the 2nd year of a vacant co-chair position and Lauren Seney began in the first year of service as a co-chair, to continue into the 2021-22 year. This year the committee broke from the existing structure of 3 subcommittees and decided to focus on distributing programming in the most effective manner and to take advantage of what had been learned in the previous months of remote-only work and virtual meetings.

    The Committee Members were:

    • Ajaye Bloomstone
    • Gilda Chiu
    • Jackie Magagnosc
    • Pat Sayre-McCoy
    • Anne Mellott
    • Dawn Smith
    • Victoria Sukhol
    • Colleen Williams

    Ex Officio Members :

    • Liz Graham (Co-Chair Resource Management)
    • Shawn King (Co-Chair Metadata Management)
    • Karen Scoville (Co-Chair Resource Management)
    • Alexis Zirpoli (Co-Chair Metadata Management)

    Initially the committee split into 2 primary components, soliciting proposals for the 2021 Annual Meeting and planning webinars from the upcoming year. Additionally, a round table discussion group was developed for working parents, and the committee collaborated with the coordinator of the Management Issues Round Table to coordinate quarterly meetings.

    Three programs were submitted to the committee for review ahead of the deadline for Annual Meeting Program Proposals: “Getting Started with the New RDA;” “More than the Roll of the Dice: Using Data, Wisdom, and Insight for Subject-Based Collection Evaluation;” and “Mountains Out of Molehills: How Generational Differences Can Actually Bring Us Together.” The TS-SIS voted to support “Getting Started with the New RDA” and “More than the Roll of the Dice: Using Data, Wisdom, and Insight for Subject-Based Collection Evaluation” as potential SIS-sponsored programs. “More than” and “Mountains Out of Molehills: How Generational Differences Can Actually Bring Us Together” were accepted by AMPC and offered as pre-recorded sessions during the Annual Meeting.

    The committee also produced three, well attended, webinars during the course of the year:

    • Fall Webinar – From Task Management Apps to Accessible Training and Procedures: Tools & ADA Compliant Tech for Teleworking Librarians (December 2, 2020)
    • Winter Webinar – Building Your Emotional First Aid Kit (February 12, 2021)
    • Spring Webinar – Going Up: Elevator Pitches to Promote the Value of TS (March 31, 2021)

    Webinar attendance ranged from 29 to 57 participants plus the speakers and included speakers from both inside and outside of the TS-SIS. In order to provide wider viewing to the webinars, two of the three were recorded. All three webinar materials were placed on a new TS-SIS webpage that was created under the Education and Training section: https://www.aallnet.org/tssis/education-training/webinars/.

    Additionally, there were 7 meetings of the Working Parents Round Table Discussion Group and 3 meetings of the Management Issues Round Table facilitated by the committee.

    When the decision was made that the Annual Meeting would again be held virtually, the committee began work at the instruction of the Executive Board to plan a 2nd LSRD/TS Virtual Summit. The first phase of this was to conduct a survey of the membership of both SIS’s to determine the expectations of a Summit. Then, in coordination with the LSRD Chair and Vice Chair, the committee worked to set up a virtual summit on July 7-8 and 14-15. The Summit included committee meetings, round table discussions, and educational programming.

    At the end of the year, the co-chairs requested feedback from the committee members about the format of the committee. The overwhelming response was that moving away from subcommittees was the correct decision. With that in mind, in the next year, the committee should work with the Bylaws and Handbook Committee and the Web Oversight Task Force to update the handbook and website appropriately.

  • 2019 - 2020

    TS-SIS Professional Development Committee
    Annual Report 2019-2020

    Below is a summary of activities:

    • Used AALL My Communities to solicit annual meeting programs and hot topic ideas.
    • Reviewed six program proposals for the annual meeting.
    • Submitted two programs for TS-SIS sponsorship to the TS-SIS Executive Board: “Data, Stats, Go: Navigating the Intersections of Cataloging, E-Resource and Web Analytics Reporting,” and “Facilitating Open Knowledge : The Intersection of Wikidata and Libraries.” The “Data, Stats, Go” program was included as part of the AALL virtual annual meeting.
    • Assisted with the preparation and scheduling of three programs for the TS-SIS and OB-SIS virtual summit:
      • Facilitating Open Knowledge (Clara Liao)
      • Update on Law Cataloging (Aaron Kuperman)
      • Technologies We Use (Jesse Lambertson)
    • Participated in TS-SIS Executive Board virtual meetings

    Due to personal reasons I was not able to attend the AALL Annual Meeting or the TS-SIS Virtual Summit. I appreciate Carol Collins willingness to provide back-up support to the program presenters in my absence.

    Dana Piazzon was my co-chair for part of the year, unfortunately, she will not be continuing in that capacity next year.

    Respectfully submitted,

    Julie R Stauffer

  • 2018 - 2019

    Professional Development Committee
    2018-2019Annual Report

    Submitted by Trina Holloway and Julia Stauffer, Co-chairs

    Trina Holloway and Julia Stauffer Co-Chair the PDC; Julia will continue for a second year and Trina will rotate off as Co-Chair. The Committee continued with its three Subcommittees, each with a Subcommittee Chair, to investigate, plan, and ultimately present TS-related opportunities in the following formats: eForums committee was inactive this year, Webinars (see report below) chaired by Elizabeth Outler, and Annual Program (see report below) chaired by Dana Deseck-Piazzon. Each Subcommittee’s membership was composed of TS members who had volunteered to serve in addition to TS Standing Committee Chairs (or their designate). Conference calls between the Co-Chairs and Subcommittee Chairs were held a few times over the year, and all of us were in constant contact via email.

    The Committee consisted of three Subcommittees: E-Forums, Webinars, and Annual Program. Each committee included the following members:

    Webinars Annual Program eForums
    Elizabeth Outler, Chair Dana Deseck-Piazzon, Chair No members
    Sharon Bradley Ajaye Bloomstone
    Aaron Kuperman Iris Garcia
    Victoria Sukhol Patrick Lavey
    Morgan Stillo

    Professional Development Webinars Subcommittee
    2018-2019 Annual Report

    Submitted by Elizabeth Outler, Subcommittee Chair

    The members of the Webinars Working Group (Sharon Bradley, Aaron Kuperman, Victoria Sukhol, and chair Elizabeth Outler) met twice by teleconference in the fall of 2018. The working group was charged with documenting procedures for TS-SIS webinars, and with producing two webinars during the year. The working group began its work by trying to identify at least one webinar topic and speaker to develop in the fall. The working group reviewed the Ideascale “must-have” program ideas in an effort to find topics of interest to TS-SIS members. This yielded a connection with Diana Koppang, who was interested in presenting her proposal about Knowledge Management as a webinar, and that she would be able to bring in an expert speaker. Around this same time, the chair contacted Celeste Smith, AALL’s Director of Education, and learned that November had no AALL webinars scheduled. Diana Koppang was able to develop the program in the relatively short time available (approximately one month), and the AALL webinar “Knowledge Management in Practice — From Drawing Board to Action” took place on November 15, 2018.

    The chair sent email outreach to TS-SIS members soliciting webinar proposals in January 2019. Conversations with several members about possible webinar topics took place in the few weeks that followed; however, no webinar proposals were received from those members. The last suggested webinar content was a report from the liaisons to the ALA cataloging committees, but this also did not come to fruition.

    Recommendations for next year:

    • Repeat the exercise of reviewing the “must-have” topic proposals in the Ideascale in August to find ideas and speakers for webinars.
    • Consult with AALL staff about their plans for webinars in the coming year so that the working group does not duplicate efforts and can incorporate suggestions.
    • Work to develop a structure whereby the liaisons to the ALA cataloging committees annually schedule with the TS-SIS Webinars Working Group to set up a webinar for their report to the membership and to field questions.

    TS-SIS Webinar Working Group — suggested process for the year

    • August/September:
      • Conduct first working group meeting.
      • Look at calendars and lay out a proposed schedule of months in which to hold webinars.
      • Review the proposals in the AALL Ideascale and identify potential ideas/speakers to recruit for webinars.
      • Contact Celeste Smith, Director of Education to discuss AALL schedule for webinars.
    • October-December:
      • Send email outreach to the TS-SIS membership to solicit webinar ideas.
      • Schedule first webinar — it need not take place during this time frame but it would be best to have at least one formally in development and scheduled to take place between October and February.
      • Contact ALA cataloging liaisons to begin planning for producing webinars for their reports after the Midwinter meeting and the Annual meeting.
    • January-February:
      • Send email outreach to the TS-SIS membership to solicit webinar ideas.
      • Schedule second webinar to take place between March and June.
    • March-June:
      • Develop and produce at least one webinar.
      • Update procedures as necessary.
      • Write annual report in June.

    TS-SIS Webinar Process
    The information below describes the guidelines and requirements for a webinar proposal. Members are encouraged to submit proposals at any time. The TS-SIS webinars subcommittee reviews proposals on an ongoing basis and will notify proposers within 30 days of submission.

    The TS-SIS Webinars Subcommittee can produce webinars in two ways. First, webinars can be proposed by any member to be produced by AALL as part of its monthly webinar series for the entire membership. TS-SIS will assist members in submitting webinar proposals to AALL. If AALL does not select the webinar proposal, or if a proposer does not wish to submit to AALL, a webinar proposal can be submitted to TS-SIS for its members only.

    Proposers should consider which venue they would prefer before submitting a proposal. For example, AALL-produced webinars are recorded and made available via AALL2go; if speakers do not wish to be recorded, or if they want the recording to be made available more widely, then an AALL webinar is not a viable option.

    Proposals should relate directly to topics valuable to law librarians and to specialists in technical services fields. Proposals should address issues, raise important questions, solve problems, or provide practical knowledge and innovative approaches that deliver results. After reviewing your proposal, the committee may ask you to modify it to meet specific objectives of the webinar.

    Webinars generally last one (1) hour (a presentation of 40 minutes with 15 minutes for questions). AALL webinars are scheduled monthly from 12pm to 1pm Eastern time on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. According to AALL, it takes about three months to produce a successful webinar. After the topic, program date, and speaker commitment are established, AALL will develop a timeline and work with you to finalize the title, description, learning outcomes/takeaways, and speaker bios, and will review the webinar outline to ensure a successful program.

    AALL will handle webinar registration and assist with promotion through established channels. AALL will assist with coaching the moderators/speakers on the use of the webinar software and provide best practices for webinar delivery and webinar technical support. A practice run is held about a week before to ensure a smooth production.

    For TS-SIS webinars, scheduling can be a bit more flexible, but the committee will partner with the presenters in the same manner as an AALL webinar: establishing scheduling, setting up registration, conducting promotion, and running the practice session.

    Guidelines
    Your proposal should address the criteria below. Submit it as an email attachment (MS Word document) to chair of webinar committee.

    1. Title. It should pique the reader’s interest enough to encourage them to read more. Preferably, something catchy, but if you don’t have a title, please provide the webinar topic.
    2. Takeaways. Provide the 2-3 key points the audience will take away from this session and be able to put into use. They should reflect the topic’s importance to the industry and apply to attendees in a real and practical way.
    3. Describe the content and goals of this session (in approximately 100 words, please). What’s the problem/opportunity/scenario/challenge that makes the takeaways relevant? Your description should sell the session.
    4. Who will benefit the most from attending this session? Be specific, but think outside the type-of-library box, too.
    5. Length. Recommended lengths for webinars range from 30-75 minutes.
    6. Speakers. Have specific speakers been identified – or at least a type of speaker, one who can address one or more components of the webinar? Briefly describe what qualifies the speaker(s) to deliver content related to the webinar topic. Is this speaker a good presenter? Has speaker presented on a webinar or program in the past? Ideally, any proposed speakers are already committed to participate. Do you anticipate any speaker expenses? How much?
    7. Audience Engagement. What participant engagement strategies have you considered to keep the audience engaged during the webinar (i.e. poll questions, eye-catching slides, big ideas, case studies, learning to-do’s, etc)?
    8. Coordination. Who would be putting the program together? Would the person coordinating the webinar also moderate it? Work with your colleagues to ensure successful support for the program.
    9. Which platform? Tell us whether you wish to submit your proposal to AALL, or to TS-SIS only.
    10. Submission: Send by email as an electronic attachment to chair of webinar committee.

    Professional Development Annual Program Subcommittee
    2018-2019Annual Report

    Submitted by Dana Deseck-Piazzon, Subcommittee Chair

    The Annual Program Subcommittee proactively serves as resource to Technical Services Special Interest Group (TS-SIS) members for the 2019 Annual Meeting & Conference program proposal process. Through regular posts to the TS-SIS listserv and direct communication with TS members, the Subcommittee provided guidance throughout the proposal process, encouraged members to contribute TS-related topic ideas and proposals, and kept members apprised of the latest developments and deadlines. The subcommittee received the following proposals for review:

    • Proposer: Ajaye Bloomstone- Building A Bridge Between Generations and Getting Over the Divide in the Workplace
    • Proposer: Yolanda Jones- How to Solve a Problem Like Replacing the Acquisitions Librarian
    • Proposer: Ajaye Bloomstone- The Key to Quality FCIL Collection: Collaboration Between FCIL and TS Librarians
    • Proposer: Clara Liao- The Things You Need to Know Before Moving to a New ILS.

    The subcommittee conducted a conference call on April 9 to discuss the submitted proposals and concluded by recommending two proposals. Members of the committee discussed the merits of each of the four proposals, particularly how they would be relevant to TS-SIS. One member who submitted two proposals abstained from the selection discussion for sponsorship. Two proposals were submitted to the TS-SIS Board for consideration. Committee members voted to recommend Clara Liao’s proposal, The Things You Need to Know Before Moving to a New ILS, and Ajaye Bloomstone’s proposal, The Key to Quality FCIL Collection: Collaboration Between FCIL, for TS-SIS sponsorship. The Board accepted the Committee’s recommendation and selected both proposals as TS sponsored programs for the 2019 Annual Meeting. The proposal submitted by Clara Liao was accepted as the TS-SIS sponsored program for the 2019 Annual Meeting and Conference. No VIPs were asked to the conference this year due to budgetary constraints. The Subcommittee invited Jesse Lambertson, Head of Cataloging and Metadata from Georgetown Law Library, to lead this year’s hot topic program, Making the Case for Structure – Bringing Order to the Magic: Structured Data as a way of advocating for cataloging and metadata.

  • 2017 - 2018

    Professional Development Committee
    2017-2018 Annual Report

    Submitted by Ajaye Bloomstone and Trina Holloway, Co-chairs.

    Ajaye Bloomstone and Trina Holloway Co-Chair the PDC; Trina will continue for a second year and Ajaye will rotate off as Co-Chair. The Committee continued with its three Subcommittees, each with a Subcommittee Chair, to investigate, plan, and ultimately present TS-related opportunities in the following formats: eForums (see report below), chaired by Gypsy Moody, Webinars (see report below) chaired by Christina Tarr, and Annual Program (see report below) chaired by Caitlyn Lam. Each Subcommittee’s membership was composed of TS members who had volunteered to serve in addition to TS Standing Committee Chairs (or their designate). Conference calls between the Co-Chairs and Subcommittee Chairs were held a few times over the year, and all of us were in constant contact via email.

    The Committee consisted of three Subcommittees: E-Forums, Webinars, and Annual Program. Each committee included the following members:

    • E-Forums
      • Gypsy Moody, Chair
      • Jackie Magagnosc
      • Lauren Seney
      • Kayla Reed
      • Aaron Kuperman
    • Webinars
      • Christina Tarr, Chair
      • Ian Kipnes
      • Aaron Kuperman
      • Elizabeth Outler
    • Annual Program
      • Caitlyn Lam, Chair
      • Julie Stauffer
      • Aaron Kuperman

    Eforums

    Submitted by Gypsy Moody, Subcommittee Chair.

    The E-Forums Subcommittee assisted with three projects this year, a survey in August, an online discussion in September and more e-voting in March. Throughout the year, I have posted about several outside educational opportunities on My Communities, but I haven’t received any responses from those posts.

    While Cat & Class was having internal discussions about the reorganization of TS-SIS advisory working groups, I was contacted because they were considering an e-forum or conference calls. I did some research on conference calls and online polling. In the end, I was tasked with setting up a survey. I created a survey using my access to Qualtrics. I sent the mock-up to Keiko Okuhara, who approved the platforms use and sent me survey edits. After I updated the survey, I sent the final link to Keiko for distribution and reported the results when concluded. I believe this process went well and produced the desired data. Below are the contents of the survey.

    Reorganization of TS-SIS Advisory Working Groups

    Thank you very much for those of you participated in the one week discussion on the reorganization of the TS-SIS Advisory Working Groups. Now we are in the voting period, 8/7-8/14. Please cast your vote to get to the next discussion if the reorganization would happen.

    1. Would you support the current structure of the three TS-SIS Advisory Working Groups?
      Yes (please go to No. 3)
      No
    2. A suggestion was made to retain the Vendor-Supplied Records Advisory Working Group. Would you agree with that suggestion?
      Yes
      No
    3. If any, please provide your suggestions on what topics we may need to discuss as a group in the Cat & Class Standing Committee. We appreciate your ideas! At this point, the following areas are suggested:
      a) RDA/BibFrame (to include both DCAG and CSCAG topics)
      b) IR/database metadata/Linked data (working closely with IR Caucus, LISP, RIPS, CS)
      c) Vendor-Supplied Records

    After the annual business meeting, the TS Chair, Lauren Seney, wanted to give TS members more time to discuss the Committee on Standing Committees Report. By email we worked out a plan to have three online discussions on My Communities during the month of September.

    The topics were as follows:

    September 13: Structure of TS-SIS Standing Committees

    • First Question: What is still relevant and what should be updated?
    • Second Question: Should the Standing Committees function as discussion forums or should there be desired work product?
    • Third Question: How often should a membership call for working groups go out?
    • Fourth Question: Are there any standing committees that should be sun-setted, suspended, or merged? Are there any standing committees that would function better as an administrative committees?

    On this day there were 17 different participants and 39 posts.

    September 20: Membership and Promotion of TS-SIS Standing Committees

    • First Question: Should membership to the standing committees be open, so that any member of AALL can join at any point in time?
    • Second Question: How should the standing committees be promoted? Should calls for membership go out annually or more frequently?
    • Third Question: How should discussions that fall outside of a standing committee, or that would involve multiple committees, be addressed? Would “interest groups” with open discussion forums that can be advertised broadly be a solution to this? Would an interest group only be for a short term discussion?

    On this day there were 7 different participants and 15 posts.

    September 27: Administrative Committees, Standing Committees, & Roundtables: What do we need?

    • First Question: What purpose do the Standing Committees really serve? Is the work really only done by working groups?
    • Second Question: Do members view the Standing Committees as mostly a discussion forum/extension of roundtables from annual meeting? Would the Standing Committees benefit from the suggestion of using the main listserv for all conversations (with standards for how topics are identified)?
    • Third Question: The current voting members of the TS-SIS Executive Board are the elected members and the Standing Committee Chairs. If committees are merged or sun-setted, who serves on the Executive Board?
    • Fourth Question: How should new TS librarians be mentored? Should there be a buddy system?

    On this day there were 5 different participants and 9 posts.

    This effort did not produce the amount of discussion I expected. I agree with the Executive Board’s consensus that the membership had subject fatigue with the online discussions. Looking back, I also wonder if only one question should be presented at a time.

    As an aside, I found myself in a quandary with the e-forum. I was a member of the committee that created the report and also the moderator. I wasn’t sure what (if anything) I should comment on. Since it felt weird, I didn’t say anything outside the official questions Lauren approved. I think it could be valuable to have some type of protocol about how much the moderator should interact with the subject matter during an e-forum.

    After the decision was made to go forward with the reorganization of the standing committees and a name change was suggested, I volunteered to create surveys for e-voting on the new committee names. I followed basically the same procedure as I did for Cat & Class in August. I mocked-up two distinct surveys one for Cat & Class and one for Acquisitions, Serials and Preservation. After a few minor revisions I sent the final links to all of the standing committee chairs. Both of those surveys ran for one week each. Here are the e-voting results I reported. Cat & Class received 14 total responses with the top choice as Metadata Management. Acquisitions, Serials and Preservation received 20 total responses, that top choice was Resource Management. I believe using surveys for e-voting worked very well.

    Webinars

    Submitted by Christina Tarr, Subcommittee Chair.

    On Thursday, February 22, the Webinars Subcommittee put on an AALL Liaison Debrief. Due to complications involving the other liaisons, the only speaker was Jean Pajerek, the AALL Liaison to the MARC Advisory Committee using the ZOOM platform provided by the University of Georgia. The ALL-SIS Education Committee and the TS-SIS Webinar Subcommittee were very pleased to offer this opportunity and appreciated Jean’s willingness to experiment with this communication format. By all accounts, this debrief was a great success, and provides a model going forward to share the reports of the liaisons with a greater audience while not requiring time at the Annual Meeting. The video of the webinar is available on the TS-SIS website, here — https://www.aallnet.org/tssis/ [website manager note: i.e., https://youtu.be/lNpAjxnTfwY]

    Given the success of this webinar, and the fact that many libraries have subscriptions to ZOOM, we can consider using this platform whenever the Association’s webinar service is unwilling to support a webinar that we think our membership would be interested in.

    Annual Program

    Submitted by Caitlyn Lam, Subcommittee Chair.

    The Annual Program Subcommittee proactively serves as a resource to Technical Services Special Interest Group (TS-SIS) members for the 2018 AALL Annual Meeting & Conference program proposal process. Through regular posts to the TS-SIS listserv and direct communication with TS members, the Subcommittee provided guidance throughout the proposal process, encouraged members to contribute TS-related topic ideas and proposals, and kept members apprised of the latest developments and deadlines. The Subcommittee received the following proposals for review:

    We worked with other PDC members to review and provide feedback for each proposal. All three proposals were submitted to the TS-SIS Board for consideration. Committee members voted to recommend Karen Selden’s proposal, Data Mining for Meaning: The Law and Corpus Linguistics Project, and Ajaye Bloomstone’s proposal, FCIL Basics for Metadata Professionals: Collaborating to Ensure Access to Foreign and International Legal Materials, for TS-SIS sponsorship. The Board accepted the Committee’s recommendation and selected both proposals as TS sponsored programs for the 2018 AALL Annual Meeting.

    The Annual Program Subcommittee began soliciting hot topic ideas from the TS membership in November of 2017. The Subcommittee conducted a conference call on March 22 to discuss submitted ideas and concluded by narrowing submissions down to two recommended hot topic options. A draft of the recommendations was discussed with the PDC chairs and recommendations were submitted to the Board for this year’s hot topic program and potential VIP guest. Based on these recommendations, the Board invited Kathy Glennan, chair-elect of the RDA Steering Committee, as the TS special VIP guest and hot topic speaker on the RDA Toolkit Restructure and Redesign (3R) Project. In addition, the Subcommittee invited Jesse Lambertson, Head of Cataloging and Metadata from Georgetown Law Library, to chair this year’s Cataloging Roundtable at the TS-SIS Roundtables meeting on Tuesday, July 17.

    The Subcommittee will send out notification to the TS-SIS membership leading up to the Annual Meeting time, announcing the hot topic program and identifying programs and committee roundtable meeting topics of interest.

  • 2016 - 2017

    Professional Development Committee
    2016-2017 Annual Report

    During the Committee’s second year, we reviewed and redeveloped an organizational structure, came up with a variety of continuing educational opportunities, and presented them to TS-SIS members.

    Chris Tarr and Ajaye Bloomstone continued to Co-Chair the PDC; Ajaye will continue for the third year and Chris will rotate off as Co-Chair, replaced by Trina Holloway for 2017-2018. The TS-SIS Executive Board opted for this retention schedule so that one Co-Chair will be able to retain institutional history and the other Co-Chair position will open to an interested TS-SIS member. It was decided that these two and three years terms would be beneficial, at least at the onset of the Committee’s existence, to get the Committee established, organized, populated, and productive. The Committee continued with its three Subcommittees, each with a Subcommittee Chair, to investigate, plan, and ultimately present TS-related opportunities in the following formats: eForums (see report below), chaired again by Suzanne Graham, Webinars (see report below) chaired by Hollie White, and Annual Program (see report below) chaired by Jackie Magagnosc. Each Subcommittee’s membership was composed of TS members who had volunteered to serve in addition to TS standing Committee Chairs (or their designates). Conference calls between the Co-Chairs and Subcommittee Chairs were held a few times over the year, and all of us were in constant contact via email.

    The Committee’s second year offered a number of CE opportunities to the membership; see below for the year’s accomplishments of each Subcommittee.

    Going into the second year, the PDC reviewed Committee and Subcommittee membership, and restructured slightly. We continued with two Co-Chairs, three Subcommittee Chairs, and three at large members. Within this revised structure, all members of the PDC worked in concert, although each educational initiative was be “chaired” by the Subcommittee responsible for the particular format for the continuing educational opportunity in development. We hoped that fewer members would facilitate better ease in working together. “At large” members of this past year’s PDC include:

    • Shyama Agrawal
    • Gilda Chu
    • Rachel Decker
    • Trina Holloway
    • Diana Jaque
    • Aaron Kuperman
    • Laurel Moran
    • Ashley Moye (AMPC Liaison)
    • Eric Parker
    • Rachel Purcell

    Ajaye Bloomstone, who also serves as the ALA ALCTS Liaison to AALL, was granted permission during the first year of the PDC’s existence by the TS Board to contact the ALA ALCTS Chair and Board with a proposal to promote AALL TS educational opportunities to the ALCTS membership and to promote ALCTS professional development offerings to TS members. Throughout this past year, our Professional Development Committee eForums Subcommittee has kept the TS membership informed of ALCTS’ continuing education opportunities (there may or may not be a charge depending on if one is an ALCTS member). Norm Medeiros, Chair of ALCTS, and Keri Cascio of the ALCTS Board both welcomed the idea of posting AALL TS-SIS PDC continuing educational opportunities on ALCTSCentral, though we’ve not yet taken advantage of it. They also suggested that in the future our committees might work together to present a joint CE offering!

    A push by the Committee resulted in getting a number of TS members on AMPC, which we hoped would result in a better understanding by AMPC of the programming we need.

    The fact that programs are not actually submitted by the TS Education Committee to AMPC, but rather by individual members, has made it difficult for the Committee to keep abreast of TS-oriented programs proposed for the annual meeting. As it turns out, however, several programs will be offered at AALL annual of particular interest to TS members, and a TS-sponsored workshop “Not Pie In the Sky” has surpassed registration estimates even before the early-bird registration period ends for the 2017 annual conference. Instrumental in the workshop’s popularity was the fact that we worked early to be able to hold it off-site at the University of Texas, Austin — this made the cost affordable.

    Respectfully submitted,

    Ajaye Bloomstone
    Chris Tarr
    AALL TS-SIS Professional Development Committee Co-Chairs

    Eforums

    E-Forums experimented with re-creating the live conference experience for our members who cannot attend Annual Meeting. The Subcommittee hosted two online discussions of conference programs of interest to TS members during the fall. Attendees were invited to watch recordings of the sessions in advance and come prepared to participate in broader discussion and ask questions of speakers. Both sessions had good conversations and the technology (freeconferencecall.com) worked well.

    September 23 featured Crowdsourcing a Skill Set to Manage the Legal Information of the Future. A dozen participants, along with speakers Melissa Beck, Mark Giangrande, and Wendy Moore, engaged in a lively discussion of what we need as information professionals. We shared ideas on the importance of maintaining enthusiasm and professional curiosity throughout our careers. We talked about Sara’s recipe for finding initiative, and we considered the craft of pitching your value with some great slides by Wendy. Mark and Melissa discussed the value of good organizational communication and the importance interpersonal skills and high emotional intelligence.

    Friday, October 21 featured Are People Even Using This Database?: E-Resources and Statistics. Three of the original speakers (Anna Lawless-Collins, Jacob Sayward, and Dan Rosati participated to recap and answer questions. Discussion was very good and covered COUNTER statistics from both a library’s and a vendor’s perspective.

    Laurel Moran intermittently posted notices of educational opportunities of interest to the TS community on behalf of the committee.

    Suzanne R. Graham
    Part-time Metadata & Analytics Librarian
    Alexander Campbell King Law Library
    University of Georgia School of Law

    Webinars

    The webinar subcommittee was quiet this year –we lost our chair halfway through the year. We hope to be more active next year. One thing we did do is to decide to rely on the AALL webinar platform, as it seems unnecessarily complicated to implement our own and we’ve so far had good luck getting all our proposed webinars accepted.

    Chris Tarr

    Annual Program

    Annual Program Subcommittee

    The Technical Services SIS Education for Annual Meeting Committee met via conference call September 16 and 23 and conducted the balance of our discussion via e-mail. We mined the “must have” and “Data & Content Management” submissions in AALL’s IdeaScale implementation, contacted the individuals who submitted ideas, and tried to ensure that programs were submitted based in the topic suggestions in IdeaScale. The committee used Google Drive to share program submissions and comments.TS-SIS members were invited to share the program proposals with the committee for feedback. Twelve program submissions were shared with the committee.

    Two programs, From authorities control to identities management and FCIL basics for catalogers were recommended to the TS-SIS Executive Board for sponsorship.

    Proposals were submitted by TS members for the programs listed below. Program names highlighted in bold were accepted by AALL for the conference:

    The following programs of interest to TS-SIS members were approved for Annual Meeting 2017. Those reviewed by the TS-SIS Education for Annual Meeting Committee are indicated by a *.

    • *Workshop 2 – Not pie in the sky: practical strategies for embracing change in technical services
    • *Linked data, your library, and you (OBS-SIS sponsored program)
    • *Deep dive: You’ve hear the jargon, now play the game: linked data on your laptop
    • *From authority control to identity management: managing – not controlling
    • Disaster planning in an hour
    • The power of the cloud: crowdsourcing metadata for library materials
    • Digital repositories, law libraries and the future of open access
    • Digitization is done – now what? Understanding metadata, online delivery, and user experience

    Jackie Magagnosc

  • 2015 - 2016

    Professional Development Committee
    2015-2016 Annual Report

    The Committee’s first year was productive. We developed an organizational structure, came up with a variety of continuing educational opportunities, and presented them to TS-SIS members.

    Chris Tarr and Ajaye Bloomstone were asked to Co-Chair the PDC and will continue for the second year with one of us rotating out for the Committee’s third year. The TS-SIS Executive Board opted for this retention schedule so that one Co-Chair will be able to retain institutional history and the other Co-Chair position will open to an interested TS-SIS member. It was decided that these two and three years terms would be beneficial, at least at the onset of the Committee’s existence, to get the Committee established, organized, populated, and productive. PDC Co-Chairs were responsible for setting up three Subcommittees, each with a Subcommittee Chair, to investigate, plan, and ultimately present TS-related opportunities in the following formats: eForums (see report below), chaired by Suzanne Graham, Webinars (see report below) chaired by Wilhelmina Randke, and Annual Program (see report below) chaired by Jennifer Noga. Each Subcommittee’s membership was composed of TS members who had volunteered to serve in addition to TS standing Committee Chairs (or their designates) on the Subcommittee rosters as ex-officio members. Conference calls between the Co-Chairs and Subcommittee Chairs were held several times over the year, and all of us were in constant contact via email.

    The Committee’s first year was not without expected growing pains, but we managed to offer a number of CE opportunities to the membership; see below for the first-year accomplishments of each Subcommittee. Highlights include a spring webinar that was very well-attended, the acceptance of 2 programs and 2 workshops by AMPC, and a very active and growing use of eForums, especially by the New Catalogers Roundtable and the Acquisitions Committee.

    Going into the second year, the PDC has reviewed Committee and Subcommittee membership, and we would like to restructure slightly. We plan to go forward continuing with two Co-Chairs, three Subcommittee Chairs, and three at large members. Within this revised structure, all members of the PDC will work in concert, although each educational initiative will be “chaired” by the Subcommittee responsible for the particular format for the continuing educational opportunity in development. We hope that fewer members will facilitate better ease in working together.

    Ajaye Bloomstone, who also serves as the ALA ALCTS Liaison to AALL, was granted permission by the TS Board to contact the ALA ALCTS Chair and Board with a proposal to promote AALL TS educational opportunities to the ALCTS membership. Throughout this past year, our Professional Development Committee eForums Subcommittee has kept the TS membership informed of ALCTS’ continuing education opportunities (there may or may not be a charge depending on if one is an ALCTS member). Norm Medeiros, Chair of ALCTS, and Keri Cascio of the ALCTS Board both welcomed the idea of posting AALL TS-SIS PDC continuing educational opportunities on ALCTSCentral. They also suggested that in the future our committees might work together to present a joint CE offering!

    A fall push by the committee also resulted in getting a lot of TS members on AMPC, which we hope will result in a better understanding by AMPC of the programming we need.

    The fact that programs are not actually submitted by the TS Education Committee to AMPC, but rather by individual members, has made it hard for us to keep track of the registrants for workshops. Low enrollment caused the cancellation of one rather suddenly. Had we realized that enrollment was low, we might have been able to make a push for more attendees. This is something to be aware of in future.

    Respectfully submitted,

    Ajaye Bloomstone
    Chris Tarr
    AALL TS-SIS Professional Development
    Committee Co-Chairs

    Eforums

    EForums Working Group had three main goals this year: (1) to provide technology support for our roundtable and committee chairs to encourage more year-round meetings, (2) to coordinate and facilitate professional conversations on hot topics, and (3) to promote free (or low fee) online professional education opportunities from all sources to our membership.

    Suzanne Graham assisted Diana Jacque in the hosting of two online meetings of the Acquisitions Committee, and she coordinated the first two meetings of the New Catalogers Roundtable. Both groups continue to hold regular meetings online without our support. Next year, the committee should reach out more directly to the Preservation, Cataloging, and Serials Committees.

    With Alan Keely’s assistance, the committee offered an eForum on EDS through MyCommunities in November (with Jeffrey Gabel). Twelve participants signed up for the week-long conversation, but we generated very few postings. We also offered online meeting debriefing space in Google Hangouts following the PDA/DDA webinar in August and Lawmageddon program in October. These spaces allowed our members to discuss their main take-aways from the sessions and process how they might playout at their library. Both of these initiatives are worthwhile and high-impact for members that engage. We should continue to try different topics and platforms for our eForums.

    Laurel Moran has done an outstanding job compiling timely alerts of upcoming professional development programs of interest to our membership. She posted messages (at least bimonthly) highlighting about seven opportunities in each.

    Suzanne R. Graham
    Part-time Metadata & Analytics Librarian
    Alexander Campbell King Law Library
    University of Georgia School of Law
    706-542-5082

    Webinars

    The AALL February 2016 webinar was on “What You Need to Know About 21st Century Cataloging Standards”, covering RDA, Bibframe, and Linked Data.

    Goals which weren’t done were to put together a listing of recorded presentations or webinars relevant to law library technical services, and to note upcoming webinars relevant to law library technical services and promote those to membership. These could be done for future.

    Technologically, webinar software was an issue.

    AALL provides software, an archive of video recordings, and some advertising for the official AALL webinar series. Those are free of charge to AALL members who are logged into aall.net. But, there is a per webinar fee for non-AALL members, and recordings cannot be posted elsewhere. This potentially limits reach.

    I think that long term, software for webinars is available through two good widely available options. Blackboard released Collaborate Ultra, which is widely available to academic librarians. Collaborate Ultra allows participants to join without installing any software on their computers. Another option is available to anyone. That is freescreensharing.com, which requires participants to install software, but then works fine.

    I think that this should be continued for next years, with more of a focus on promoting webinars or recordings by other groups to membership. A good goal for next year would be for TS-SIS to submit and present one official AALL webinar, and also for TS-SIS to post on the membership forum about once a month about a recently posted recording of a webinar or presentation relevant to members.

    Wilhelmina Randke

    Annual Program

    Annual Program Subcommittee
    2015-2016 Annual Report

    Members of the 2015-2016 Subcommittee:

    • Jennifer Noga, Chair
    • Rachel Decker
    • Angela Hackstadt
    • John Hostage
    • Diana Jaque
    • Maxine Wright
    • Gilda Chiu

    Activities and Accomplishments

    The primary purpose of this subcommittee being to foster needed educational programming for the annual conference, the subcommittee focused its efforts on: 1) gathering feedback from members about recommended programming and 2) coordinating submission of programming ideas by members.

    In August of 2015 the subcommittee sent out programming ideas that were suggested in the larger Professional Development meeting held in Philadelphia to the larger TS-SIS community as a starting point for developing programming for the 2016 conference. The subcommittee later promoted the AALL IdeaScale website for collection of program proposals that was launched in September. Numerous messages were sent to the TS community advocating for members to submit their ideas with reminders about the site and programming ideas. Once the submission deadline passed, similar advocacy efforts were made to encourage TS members to vote on proposals submitted by other members and those of interest to the section. Ultimately, three of the top five vote-getters on the AALL site were programs that were highly relevant to TS-SIS educational needs.

    Proposals were submitted by TS members for the programs listed below. Program names highlighted in bold were accepted by AALL for the conference:

    • BIBFRAME and Linked Data In Action: From Theory to Practice
      (1/2 day workshop)
    • Hugo-a-thon (RDA cataloging) (1/2 day workshop) *
    • Promoting the Value of Technical Services Librarians at
      Budget Time
    • Crowdsourcing a Skill Set to Manage the Legal Information of
      the Future
    • Using Data in the Electronic Resource Lifecycle
    • Ensuring Access to Foreign and International Legal Materials: FCIL
      Basics for Catalogers

    * This program was later cancelled by AALL due to low enrollment

    The subcommittee also helped to coordinate the TS Hot Topic Program for the 2016 AALL Conference. Coordinating with the Co-Chairs of the Professional Development Committee and with input from other members, a session was organized with several, informal roundtable discussions about various TS content areas. The tables are organized loosely around Standing Committee topics, and each table has a facilitator and a list of questions to get the conversation started.

    2015-2016 was the inaugural year for this subcommittee in its current incarnation. With the exception of the chair, the subcommittee is populated by chairs of other standing committees. In truth, it was challenging to coordinate the activities of this subcommittee with so many members, especially when those members have demanding responsibilities with their own committees. The Chair recommends that the makeup of the subcommittee be reevaluated with an aim to reduce the number of members with emphasis on close communication with the standing committee chairs as a way of informing the work of the subcommittee.

    Respectfully submitted:

    Jennifer Noga
    Chair, 2015-2016 TS-SIS Annual Program Subcommittee

  • 2014 - 2015

    Professional Development Committee
    2014-2015 Annual Report

    2014-2015 Members: Ajaye Bloomstone, Ian Kipnes, Pat Sayre McCoy, Stephanie Schmitt (chair), Christine Tarr.

    New Professional Development Committee Charge: Throughout 2014-2015, the TS-SIS Professional Development Committee worked with the TS-SIS Board to revitalize the committee charge and structure. Beginning with the 2015-2016 appointment year, the new Professional Development Committee is designed to be an integral part of the educational work of the TS-SIS.

    AALL Bloomberg CPE Grant: The Professional Development Committee applied for and received an AALL Bloomberg CPE Grant funding for a webinar.

    Soft Skills: Professional Indicators of Success Webinar
    Date: January 29, 2015
    Moderator: Patricia Sayre-McCoy
    Speaker: Jack G. Montgomery

    Employers recruit librarians and staff based on hard and technological skills. However, “soft skills,” those personal attributes which drive our interactions on the job, are prized as key indicators for professional success and organizational effectiveness. Employers are increasingly looking for staff who understand when to push forward or let others lead, can analyze the politics of the workplace, and respond effectively to difficult managerial and interpersonal situations. These intangible skills are important for career growth and organizational success. Learn how to harness these important skills to gain confidence and long-term professional effectiveness.

    Educational Technology: The committee worked to explore and assess educational and professional development technologies and resources provided through AALL. From e-forum platforms to conference call and webinar software, the committee provided the TS-SIS board with feedback and advice.

  • 2010 - 2011

    Professional Development Committee
    2010-2011 Annual Report

    While initially Aaron Kuperman and Emerita Cuesta were to have been co-Chair, Emerita had to resign as Chair shortly after the 2010 annual meeting due to her promotion.

    Plans for utilizing the TS table as a help desk have been made. I’ve also arranged for some Law specific LC training materials to be made available for general use.

    Aaron Kuperman
    Baltimore, MD

  • 2009 - 2010

    Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Development
    2009-2010 Annual Report

    The Professional Development Committee (whose name was changed from the Ad Hoc Committee for Professional Development this year) was unable to develop a continuing education webinar this past year. There was some interest in using an unaccepted proposal by Rhonda Lawrence concerning preparing for RDA, but, with all of the vagueness about just when it was being made available, this was abandoned.

    The committee met via conference call in February, and some ideas were discussed, among them having Pamela Bluh give a webinar on digitization, but she was booked up for the rest of the year. A committee member attended a GPPLA presentation on digitization projects and law libraries, but this, too, never got off the ground.

    All together, a frustrating year for this committee.

    Submitted by Karen Nuckolls

  • 2008 - 2009

    AD HOC COMMITTEE ON PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
    2008-2009 ANNUAL REPORT

    Members:

    • Chair: JoAnn Hounshell
    • Janet Camillo
    • Pamela Deemer
    • Jason A. Eiseman
    • Donna Lombardo
    • Barbara Ost
    • Liaison: Linda Tesar

    The TS-SIS Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Development was established in September 2007 by the Executive Board to address the continuing education needs of the membership outside of the American Association of Law Libraries annual meetings.

    The AALL/BNA Continuing Education Grants Program (CEGP) awarded a $2,000 grant to TS-SIS for the web seminar Redesigning Technical Services: Working in a Hybrid Environment which was held August 14, 2008. Mary K. Dzurinko, Principle of MKDzurinko Associates, and a TS-SIS member was the speaker for the seminar which focused on workflow redesign for libraries transitioning from a print to electronic collection. There were 153 registrants for the program.

    Recommendations for future seminars that could be accessed at a librarian’s convenience from a desktop, iPhone or other mobile device were discussed. Pam Deemer submitted an excellent idea for expanding on a seminar on managing from the middle which would include segment on social network communications. Another recommendation was to work more closely with the other Special Interest Sections to develop and co-sponsor programs.

    Submitted by: JoAnn Hounshell

  • 2007 - 2008

    AD HOC COMMITTEE ON PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
    2007-2008 ANNUAL REPORT

    Members:

    • Chair: JoAnn Hounshell
    • Janet Camillo
    • Pamela Deemer
    • Jason A. Eiseman
    • Donna Lombardo
    • Barbara Ost
    • Liaison: Linda Tesar

    The TS-SIS Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Development was established in September 2007 by the Executive Board to address the continuing education needs of the membership outside of the American Association of Law Libraries annual meetings.

    The committee’s first order of business was to conduct a survey of the TS-SIS membership. The survey was launched in November 2008, and the membership was asked to provide feedback on the continuing education topics that they would find the most useful. The top five most requested program topics were

    • workflow redesign,
    • cataloging electronic resources,
    • FRBR,
    • Open Source, and
    • metadata systems.

    Based on the membership’s response, the committee drafted a program proposal for a web seminar. Mary K. Dzurinko, Principle of MKDzurinko Associates, and a TS-SIS member agreed to be the speaker for the web seminar. Mary assisted in the development of the program grant proposal which was submitted to the AALL/BNA Continuing Education Grants Program (CEGP). The CEGP awarded a grant of $2,000 for the TS-SIS web seminar Redesigning Technical Services: Working in a Hybrid Environment to be held August 14, 2008. The seminar will focus on workflow redesign for libraries transitioning from a print to electronic collection.

    Submitted by: JoAnn Hounshell