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Conference Details

12:30 Welcome and Housekeeping 

12:40 – 1:20 Launching a Library of Things

Dania Souid, Assistant Director and Young Adult Services Librarian, Baldwinsville Public Library
Discover how a to start a Library of Things to expand access and connect with your community members and community organizations. Learn how to pitch the collection, budget, package, promote, and more to best share these new resources with patrons.

1:20 – 2:00 Partnerships and Sustainability

Laura Burrows, Director, Caldwell-Lake George Library

Laura will tell the story of how Caldwell-Lake George Library partnered with the Southern Adirondack Audubon Society (SAAS) to create a unique, hands-on lending experience that gets their community outside and engaged with the natural world. She’ll walk through how the partnership came together, how they collaborated with SAAS to design and build the backpack contents, and what the lending experience has looked like in practice. If you’re looking for a low-barrier, community-driven way to grow your Library of Things, this session will give you practical insights and inspiration to take back to your own library.

Ruth Owens, Associate Librarian, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry

The Moon Seed Library was recently started to further SUNY ESF’s sustainability efforts and the library’s goal of being a resiliency hub on campus. Ruth will explain how the seed library has not only provided seeds for free to ESF’s community, but also inspired exciting opportunities for collaboration with student clubs, campus organizations and experts, and community partners through programs on seed saving and starting, native plants, pollinators, and ecosystems. This presentation will talk more about resiliency and how it relates to the seed library, these collaborations, and related sustainability efforts at ESF.

2:00 – 2:40 Behind the Scenes

Casey Hobbie, ILS Specialist, Southern Tier Library System

Learn about the Southern Tier Library System and the work they’ve been doing to make their shared Library of Things collections more accessible for their patrons. Casey will talk about her experiences developing a LoT in the consortium, the cataloging work and planning that’s gone into it, and how STLS is working towards increasing the visibility of their collection.

2:40 – 3:20 LoT Show & Tell 

Amy Bader, Circulation Supervisor, and Chantal Rothermel, Marketing & Outreach Coordinator, Onondaga Free Library

Amy and Chantal will provide a show-and-tell of Onondaga Free Library’s LoT, which includes a kit system that allows patrons to experience a wide variety of activities. Examples include birdwatching, ghost hunting, hiking, jewelry making, and knitting.

Maggie Smith, Genealogy & Local History Librarian, Chemung County Library District

The Chemung County Library District has been steadily building its Library of Things collection over the past several years. Maggie will go over their collections, from cake pans to ukuleles, and review what she’s learned about their different collections.

3:20 – 4:00 Accessibility

Zachary Alexander Cirone, Weekend/Evening Supervisor and Technical Services Assistant, Lauretta Jean Dolch, Public Services Assistant III, and Emily Rose Meyers, Access Services Assistant, Cornell University Library

Zachary, Lauretta, and Emily will present about how the Cornell University Library Access Services Accessibility Steering Committee has been collaborating with Neurodiversity@Cornell and the Loanable Equipment Steering Committee to integrate and distribute Neurodiversity@Cornell’s Sensory Lending Library into the Cornell University Library System. This session will highlight the range of sensory-support items in the collection, the goals behind bringing them into the library system, and the steps involved in making it happen. They’ll also share insights from the implementation process, including challenges, solutions, and what we’re still figuring out.

4:00 Closing Remarks

Questions? Please contact co-chairs Christine Brown (SCLRC) at cbrown@sclrc.org or Sophie Friedman (CLRC) at sfriedman@clrc.org.

 
Sessions will be recorded and made available to all who register. The full conference recording will also be posted to the CLRC and SCRLC websites.

 
This event is free and open to all ESLN members. Hosted by CLRC and SCLRC.

All participants will have the option to request a certificate of attendance for 3.5 contact hours

All attendees are expected to follow CLRC’s Code of Conduct.