Staff Development

Drawing upon my own experiences with mental illness, my presentation will focus on these key topics: • Mental health “red flags” - how to tell when you’re at risk. • Self-awareness - knowing yourself well enough to recognize warning signs.

• Reaching out - considering your options, including removing personal stressors and seeking out help.
• Facilitating your recovery - how to take care of yourself following a mental health low.
• Talking about it - how to discuss mental health, and the importance of discussion for both mental illness sufferers and their supporters. In the spirit of "talking about it," questions are welcome (and encouraged)!

MOLLY HUTCHINSON is a second-year student in the Library Information Technology program at SAIT in Calgary. She is a passionate mental health awareness advocate and has been fighting the good fight against her own depression and anxiety for over a decade. When she's not focused on her studies, she can usually be found in the garden (weather permitting).

Over the past few years, I have worked on making staff evaluations meaningful, but have fought against the tediousness of them. By incorporating competencies and moving towards a format that can be reused year after year, staff know what to expect and can use the evaluations for goal setting and self evaluation. By creating an atmosphere of joy, staff evaluation sessions have a stronger, more positive impact on staff, supervisors, and the library as a whole.
CAROLINE VANDRIEL has been the Library Director in Sylvan Lake for over five years. Born and raised in Ontario, she travelled the world teaching before getting her MLIS at Western University and moving to Alberta. She has two cats and a dog and enjoys gardening and looking at old houses.

The library is one of the last free public spaces that is open to all. However, often those considered “undesirable” are kept away from the library in order to make others feel welcome and safe. While we do sometimes see problematic behaviours in the library, this does not mean that we cannot strive to ensure that we as library workers provide excellent customer service to all who enter the library.
 
 

This preconference session will help participants find a way to develop staff’s data literacy by leveraging Library Carpentry training (https://librarycarpentry.org/). Library Carpentry’s goal is to create a community of learners who embrace technologies & software to get work done more effectively. This session will begin with an explanation of Library Carpentry & how the presenters have applied it at the University of Alberta Libraries. Participants will then learn tangible & scalable ways they can use Library Carpentries at their libraries to break down barriers for library staff’s professional development around coding & data analysis. Following these discussions, participants will take part in a hands-on Intro to Data workshop demo (https://tinyurl.com/yasz3n2n), highlighting pedagogical techniques that help demystify key-tech concepts & support learners at all levels.

Office talk can lead to inspiring ideas, and promote growth and change. This participatory session features lightning presentations on core library values and services designed to spark ideas and conversation. Participants will collaborate in re-imagining these values and services in the contexts of their own work lives and experiences. Featured Topics: Access. Diversity. Professionalism. Social Responsibility. Service. This session will feature real-time feedback.

Melanie and Adrienne worked together as managers in the same regional public library system for five years. Having learned from their various management experiences, they offer participants insights into best practices and the importance of creating a collaborative workplace to help respond to increasingly complex community needs. They will discuss management's evolving role and why it is essential to develop the manager-employee relationship. Join them as they highlight the important principles that guide them as managers.

As managers and supervisors, we often blame individual employees when they disengage or seem to lack motivation. But what if it's not them? What if it's us: the systems, practices and management techniques we use that cause the problem? Awareness of our role in employee disengagement is key to improvement and a happier, more engaged workplace. This conference session will introduce participants to the underlying philosophies that have helped to forge current workplace systems and practices. The session will contrast those philosophies with what we understand now about motivation and employee satisfaction from the latest research on healthy workplaces, and uncover the seemingly innocuous workplace and management practices that demotivate staff and fuel employee disengagement. By understanding what lies at the heart of employee disengagement, we can become better managers and advocates for our departments, our libraries, and ourselves.

Find out how to serve your clients in your community with free legal information resources and services from Legal Services Society (Legal Aid BC)!
Legal Aid has free print publications, written in plain language, and translated into different languages.
Areas of law covered include family law, criminal law, welfare, abuse & family violence, child protection, and Aboriginal law. Legal Aid also has legal information websites that cover family law, Aboriginal law, foreclosure, and wills & personal planning.
Lastly, Legal Aid has in-person and phone services in communities around BC which provide legal information and referrals, do community training, can take legal aid applications, or connect you to legal aid.
http://legalaid.bc.ca/
http://familylaw.lss.bc.ca
http://mylawbc.com
http://aboriginal.legalaid.bc.ca