*Cross posted to multiple lists.*
ALCTS e-Forum: Emergency Planning: Lessons from COVID-19
August 11-12, 2020
Moderated by Kristi Howe, Valentine Muyumba, and Mary Beth Weber
Please join us for an e-forum discussion. It’s free and open to everyone!
Registration information is at the end of the message.
Each day, discussion begins and ends at:
Pacific: 7 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Mountain: 8 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Central: 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Eastern: 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
This e-Forum will be an opportunity to reflect on what we learned from the COVID-19 situation, and how to use the information in planning a response to future emergencies. The impact and magnitude of the pandemic caught us off guard, leading to library closures and displaced staff. Many libraries struggled to pull together work at home plans for staff and provide the equipment and services necessary for them to do so. Issues faced by managers and staff faced included personnel policies regarding leave time to care for sick relatives or children with daycare centers and schools closed, engaging and managing staff working remotely, identifying projects, documenting work time and progress, addressing emotional and mental needs of staff, and preparing to return to work on-site. Additionally, ALA has produced a pandemic preparedness page, and this is an opportunity to promote it and other resources that participants can discuss and share.
Moderators
Kristi Howe is the Executive Director of the Vigo County Public Library – an Indiana library system with 2 facilities and nearly 90 employees. Howe is an elected member of the Executive Board for the Indiana Library Federation where she leads legislative advocacy initiatives. Locally, Howe chairs the COVID Emergency Relief Fund grant committee and engages with organizations like the League of Women Voters, the Terre Haute Economic Development Corporation, and the Vigo County School Corporation.
Valentine Muyumba is Chair of Technical Services at Indiana State University’s Cunningham Memorial Library (ISU/CML). The department has 6 full-time employees, including one Metadata and cataloging librarian, and one part time processing support staff. Technical Services at ISU is composed of Acquisitions, Cataloging & Metadata, Government Documents, Inter-Library Loan, and Processing & Preservation/Mending.
Mary Beth Weber is the Head of Central Technical Services at Rutgers University Libraries. She oversees a department of twelve full-time employees, including librarians and staff, and two part-time catalogers, who provide MARC and non-MARC cataloging for libraries on four geographically separate campuses.
What Is an e-Forum?
An ALCTS e-forum provides an opportunity for librarians to discuss matters of interest, led by a moderator, through the e-forum discussion list. The e-forum discussion list works like an email listserv: register your email address with the list, and then you will receive messages and communicate with other participants through an email discussion. Most e-forums last two to three days. Registration is necessary to participate, but it's free.
For information about upcoming e-forums, please visit http://www.ala.org/alcts/confevents/upcoming/e-forum
How to Register
You must register your email address to subscribe to or access an electronic discussion list on ALA's Mailing List Service. Once you have registered for one e-forum, you do not need to register again, unless you choose to leave the list. Find instructions for subscribing and unsubscribing online. (http://www.ala.org/alcts/confevents/upcoming/e-forum/sympa)
If you have any problems, please contact alcts-eforum-request@lists.ala.org.
*Posted on behalf of the ALCTS Continuing Education Committee.*