Please make sure everyone sees Weekly Digest
Supervisors: if you have staff who don’t use email and don’t see blog posts on the website, please print Weekly Digest and post in a staff area where everyone can see it. Thank you!
Mark Your Calendars! No, Really! Do!
(from Leah)
- Everyone-Paloozas (for all library workers and directors, too)
- Thursday, September 24 in Eau Claire
- Friday, September 25 in Rice Lake
Details
- Opening session: AI from a Library Perspective with Crystal Trice
- Breakout sessions include: circulation troubleshooting; building inclusive, welcoming, and accessible spaces; collaborations and partnerships; training patrons on digital tools; and plenty of opportunities for discussions and interactive activities.
- Free lunch
- Closing session: Communication Styles with Crystal Trice
Registration Information Coming in Early August!
Policy of the Month Club goes live!
(from Katelyn) Policy of the Month Club is not releasing an email for July but is INSTEAD hosting a Q&A session! We realized how much we benefit from talking over the self-audits each month and thought a Q&A or discussion event would be great for all our friends in libraryland.
I would love to see you there at 1:00 on July 14 🙂. If you have any questions about a policy, if you have feedback or suggestions on how to make the monthly emails better, if you have policies you want to see us cover (programming policy coming up in September!), or if you just want to listen and lurk – I hope you can make it. Details are on the IFLS calendar.
ILS Demos coming up!
All the details were in this week’s TWAM. You can see the dates on the IFLS calendar.
We have resources for that!
There are a lot of resources on the IFLS website. Periodically, we’ll post a reminder to help you make the best use of all the great stuff we have on the website. This reminder is from Leah.
Summer is busy, programming is wild, and still the regular, year-round challenges of library collection development persist. One of these is dealing with the fear of challenges or other concerns, which can sometimes lead to what we call self-censorship in the biz. Nearly every library worker responsible for collections struggles with this sometimes. Here are some resources to help:
Collection Management Confidence: Confronting Self-Censorship webinar with Teresa Schmidt and Tessa Michaelson Schmidt, originally aired 10/3/25
- Recording:This one is worth re-watching even if you saw it last year!
- Collection Management Confidence: Confronting Self-Censorship slides
- Collection Management Confidence web resource handout (also attached to this email)
Opening Up About a Quiet Practice: Self-Censorship in Collection Development webinar with Jennifer Cook, Monica LaVold, Rebecca Puhl, and Laura Turpin (all library workers from the IFLS area) originally aired 10/9/25
Another vital tool: One of the main things that Tessa and Teresa stressed in their webinar is the need for a community of library workers to support each other as we think about these issues and work with them in our own specific situations. Please reach out to Cecelia or me if you would like to talk about this with one of us, or if you would like to participate in a discussion group about this topic, or want some help finding one other person to talk with about this issue and how it is playing out in your library.
Thanks for the important work you are doing every day!
Passport update
At the beginning of the program you all received the number of printed passports that you handed out last year. So far, Reb has sent out more than 300 additional passports, so it’s going gangbusters!
Please check your supplies and let Reb know if you need more of something. Remember that she is not in the office on Fridays, so if you send a request late Thursday it won’t go out until the following Monday. Submit a HelpDesk ticket to request more supplies, or send an email to [email protected].
I shared an Instagram short video from an intrepid Explorer on the IFLS Facebook Page this week. Feel free to grab that and use it on your own social media. There’s a facebook header for you to use on the toolkit page.