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On Friday September 22, the CT State Library celebrated the unveiling of our new outreach van at the Middletown Library Service Center! Connecticut State Librarian, Deborah Schander and State Library staff were on hand to welcome and present the new vehicle to state partners, librarians, and members of CT State departments including the Department of Administrative Services, and the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

Funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) America Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the CT State Library's state-of-the-art library-on-wheels will be used for outreach, programs, special events, professional development, library programming support, and pop-up exhibits for all State Library divisions and units, including the Division of Library Development, the CT Library for Accessible Books, Archives, the Museum of CT History, and more!

The outreach van will be at the Waterford Harvest Festival on Saturday, October 7, and CT Lit Fest in Hartford on Saturday, October 14. More events are being scheduled so keep your eyes open for us at one near you!

With funding from CT Humanities, the Calvanese Foundation Green & White Fund, and the KAWFY Memorial Fund at the Main Street Community Foundation, the library partnered with Sea Tea Improv Comedy Theater to offer a workshop series to diverse community groups and ages -- including children, veterans at the John E. DeMello Sr. Veteran's Coffee Hour at the Calendar House, the patrons at Bread for Life (the local Southington food pantry), and the ARC of Southington (a group of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities).

Sea Tea Improv's 100% participatory experiences were designed to introduce participants to the basics of improv, or unscripted theatrical performances - and of course, brought out lots of laughs!

CT Pages is a channel for sharing community engagement success stories by libraries with and for their communities. We partner with CT libraries to create and release short video conversations with the library staff who make things happen.

Do you have a creative program, service, activity, partnership, or project that you want to share with your library neighbors? We are always seeking submissions for consideration – Submit your idea!

CT LAB staff will be happy to schedule an in-person or virtual visit to your library to share information about CT LAB and demonstrate use of its equipment.  

Digital equity is the condition in which all individuals and communities have the information technology capacity needed for full participation in our society, our democracy, and our economy. To advance toward this place in Connecticut, libraries and partners are engaged in helping residents sign up for internet service via the Affordable Connectivity Plan (ACP), helping residents become computer owners, and offering digital skills training.

This work is being carried out in parallel with the development of a Connecticut State Digital Equity Plan that will grant future funding for digital inclusion work to anchor institutions around the state. 

Read our DIW Media Advisory from September 26 for more information, including a list of libraries participating in Digital Inclusion Week.

OFFICE HOURS

Drop-in virtual office hours will take place on Tuesday, October 3 | 10:00 am-12:00 pm to answer any questions you may have as you complete the report.

Please refer to our Library Statistics LibGuide for more information about the report and past years’ data.



In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn about the Canva environment and design elements. Participants will work on their own designs during the workshop and will finish the class with projects they can use at their library.

This is a beginner class for those who have little to no prior Canva experience. Participants should sign up for a free Canva account before the workshop.

Hands-on professional learning workshop in which educators will design and plan programs for their community, as well as share, and receive feedback on the approaches they take to their space.

The goal is to help librarians leverage GIANT methodologies in their practices.

Learn to make book trailers to promote your collections using the WeVideo online site with this hands-on workshop. Learn about the WeVideo environment, then mix images, music, and text to make a quick and easy book trailer.

This is a beginner class for those who have little to no prior experience with WeVideo or movie making. Participants will receive info about signing up for a free WeVideo account before the workshop. 

We'll use these interfaces to discover journals, magazines, newspapers, and primary source documents available in EBSCO databases, and review custom functionality like Lexile limiters, curriculum standards, and COPPA-compliant personal folders to organize student research. 

Related LibGuide: researchIT CT - Information by Brad Bullis

We'll cover funding categories, application process, grant application evaluation, timeline, grant contract, starting and managing the project, state requirements, and advice.

Who should come? Anyone considering a public library renovation or construction project, including library directors/administrators, library board chair and members, municipal leaders, procurement officers, and building committee members.

Grant Requirement: Attendance at a construction grant information session is a requirement for all applicants. 

Whether you’re excited about the opportunity or not, your position as middle manager provides a unique platform to show meaningful value to your organization and your team. It’s also an opportunity for you develop your own leadership skills.

This training will focus on many of the essential competencies Middle Managers need to be successful in their work including Decision-Making, Performance Management, Creativity and Visioning and Leadership.

Whether you are currently in a middle management position or aspire to be in a management position in the future, this course will provide an invaluable opportunity to sharpen your skills in managing yourself and others. 

Follow up sessions will be held via Zoom on November 2 @ 10-11 am, November 9 @ 10-11 am, and November 16 from 10-11 am and 2-3 pm.

Get the “Knowledge Before the Need” by learning ways to help you better manage yourself and others. You will leave this workshop with techniques and phraseology that you’ll begin using the very next day at work! Whether you have been managing others for 10 years or 10 days, you’ll benefit from attending this workshop!

Participants will learn and begin to master:

• How to calmly and proactively work with difficult employee situations
• The ability to work with employees who see things differently than you do
• Quickly establishing credibility and authority with their employees
• Successfully developing employees through coaching
• Working with employee attitude and performance problems
• Giving constructive feedback to employees positively and confidently
• Building high performing employees

This workshop is an invaluable investment for supervisors and their organizations.

Follow up session will be held via Zoom on November 7th from 2-3 pm.

Visit our calendar

The eGO CT Program for Academics

We have begun working with Lyrasis to rollout the Palace Project app to academic libraries. This is a pilot program and the first phase goal is to add 18 academic sites into the eGO CT program.

We continue to connect with the few remaining libraries that are not yet fully configured in the Palace Project app. So far, 139 libraries have gone live in the app and are sharing content with over 2,800 patrons.

We also continue to work with Baker & Taylor to bring the eGO CT Community Share Program to Connecticut schools. This program allows DLD to deliver eBook and eAudio content, including Nutmeg, Charter Oak, Summer Reading, and All CT Reads titles from eGO CT directly to schools in Connecticut. To date, we have 118 sites that are active in the program.

During the month September, we added a total of 392 items for both platforms and there are now over 29,000 items provided for free to participating institutions. This includes 18,424 open access titles provided by Lyrasis in the Palace Bookshelf.

So far in FY24 there have been 3,094 checkouts of titles from the Connecticut State Library eGO ebook collection. Some of our highest circulating items are displayed below.

New eAudio Titles Now Available in the Palace Project app!

 Check out all the book bundles offered at MLSC.