Welcome Deanna Regan • Hayward Library Grand Opening • Communicating Your Library's Value • Social Networking Behavior • Internet Safety Bookmarks • Useful URLs • Reflection

June 12 Library Directors Meeting, 10:00 a.m. - 2:30 p.m., Land O' Lakes

June 14 Library Directors Meeting, 10:00 a.m. - 2:30 p.m., Webster

July 21 NWLS Board of Trustees Meeting, 10:00 a.m., NWLS

June 21-27 American Library Association Annual Conference, Washington, D.C.

July 26 Merlin Consortium Meeting, 10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m., NWLS

Summer 2007 UW-Madison SLIS Continuing Education Courses in Madison (If you have questions please contact Anna Palmer, ahpalmer@wisc.edu or 608-263-4452. Visit the School of Library and Information Studies for course descriptions and registration information. Continuing Education Courses in Madison:

• June 4-7 Grant Writing, Instructor: Jane Pearlmutter
• June 25-29 Summer Camp by the Lake: Public Library Administration, Instructor: Kelly Krieg-Sigman
• July 14-25 Travel Opportunity-Librarians' Tour to Scotland, Tour Director: Jane Pearlmutter
• August 13-17 Summer Camp by the Lake: Cataloging, Instructor: Debra Shapiro
• August 20-24 Puppets in the Library, Instructor: Susan Santner

Online Graduate Credit Courses June 18 - August 12: Cataloging and Classification, Collection Management, Digital Libraries

Online Skills Courses: In cooperation with a national network of educational institutions, we offer online courses on a variety of technical topics and a few non-technical topics. While the courses do not have a library focus, they may be useful to anyone who needs to develop these skills.

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Welcome Deanna Regan
From Michael Sheehan, NWLS Assistant Director

Northern Waters Library Service welcomes its newest employee, Deanna Regan, who began work as Interlibrary Loan Assistant on May 26. Deanna returns to the Northland after working the last eight years as an analytical chemist in Plymouth, Michigan.

As her previous work exemplifies, Deanna’s analytical and organizational skills will be useful for her direct involvement with the ILL and resource sharing tasks as well as backup database maintenance work.

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Grand Opening for the New Library in Hayward

This Saturday at 10 a.m. will be the grand opening ceremony at the new Sherman and Ruth Weiss Community Library on Highway 77 West in Hayward. The new library offers spaciousness, inviting color-coordinated bookshelves, and comfortable reading areas with fireplaces for adults and children. Large windows overlook a butterfly garden, pond and forest. Lining one wall is a bank of ten Internet access computers, each in a cubicle to give users some privacy. Beside the entrance to the library is a community meeting room, and located near the check-out desk are two study rooms and a Friends of the Library used-book room. The library will be open for business Saturday with tours and refreshments. The address for the new library is 10788 State Hwy 77 West, P.O. Box 917, Hayward. The telephone number (634-2161) and email contacts have not changed.

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Communicating Your Library’s Value
From The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

No community can afford to lose its public library and the technology services it provides. To help, we’re making available two new tools, entitled Keeping Your Community Connected, that can help advocate for libraries. The video is an eight-minute DVD to launch conversations with local government and community partners. The brochure is related to the video and includes persuasive statistics, library patron stories, and a call to action for community members and leaders.

You can order a free DVD and 10 brochures, by emailing USlibraries@gatesfoundation.org. Please provide the following information in the body of your email:

• Your name
• Your job title or role in the community (e.g. librarian, city council member)
• Your mailing address (Please note, we cannot ship to post office (P.O.) boxes)
• The name of your public library
• Your phone number

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Social Networking Behavior
From the March 2007 article in Progress on Point by Adam Thierer, a senior fellow at the free market technology think tank The Progress and Freedom Foundation

Today social networking sites are among the most-trafficked on the Internet, prompting concerns about how youngsters use these services, underage access to objectionable material, and child predators. This generation of children is growing up online and the kids are expressing themselves far more openly than did past generations. Today’s grandparents will recall that when they were teenagers in the 1950s and 1960s, their parents worried about their hanging out at burger joints and roller rinks. Today’s parents will remember that in the 1970s and 1980s, their parents were concerned about their hanging around shopping malls and video arcades. Those places were the social networking sites of their eras, and so it continues with the networking sites that today’s youngsters enjoy: digital, interactive websites.

Workable Internet safety solutions could take years to emerge—and there is no guarantee of their long-term effectiveness—but basic Internet safety education can begin today. Ron Teixeira, executive director of the National Cyber Security Center promotes a holistic approach to digital age parenting, “Education is the way you teach children to be proactive, and that will stay with them forever.” Parry Aftab of Wired Safety says, it’s about teaching our kids to “use the filter between their ears” and “make responsible decisions about their use of technology.”

Although it is true that many parents do not fully understand the modern, interactive technologies that their kids use and love, parents do know quite a bit about the importance of good behavior and proper etiquette. Talking to kids about online dangers or proper digital etiquette is essential, and it should be done in an open, understanding, and loving fashion. Parents and policy makers can provide protection for children within online environments by embracing a “3-E” solution: Empowerment, Education and Enforcement. Empowerment refers to the tools and methods available to parents for guiding their children’s online behavior and activities. Education refers to the need for industry, government and parents to do more to teach children about online risks and proper online etiquette. Enforcement refers to the need for legislators and law enforcement officials to do more to weed out and adequately prosecute the real bad guys looking to prey on our children.

Here are a few lessons children need to be taught as they begin using interactive communications and computing technologies. To begin, kids need to learn to assume that everything they do in the digital, online world could be archived forever and will be available to future employers, romantic interests, their children and grandchildren, and so forth. This admonition needs to be repeated frequently to remind minors that their online actions today could have profound consequences for them tomorrow. Beyond this warning, children need to be encouraged to follow some other sensible rules while using the Internet and other interactive technologies:

• Treat others you meet online with the same respect that you would accord them in person;
• Do not cyber-bully or harass your peers;
• Do not post negative comments about your teachers or principals online;
• Do not post or share inappropriate pictures of yourself or others;
• Avoid talking to strangers online;
• Avoid using lewd or obscene language online or in communications;
• Do not share your personal information with unknown parties;
• Talk to parents and educators about serious online concerns and report dangerous situations or harassing communications to them.

Dozens of online safety websites offer parents excellent advice about how to begin this conversation with their children:

• GetNetWise.org • Internet Keep Safe Coalition • Net Smartz Workshop • Project Online Safety • StaySafe.org • i-SAFE Inc. • WebWiseKids • Wired Safety • Wired Kids • Teen Angels • Net Bullies • Net Family News
• ProtectKids.com • SafeKids.com • SafeTeens.com • BlogSafety.com • ChatDanger.com
• Cyberbully.org • StopCyberbullying.org • StopTextBully.com

Also, excellent examples of how other countries are dealing with the same issues can be found at:
• BeWebAware.ca (Canada) • BeSafeOnline.org (Europe) • NetAlert (Australia).

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Internet Safety Bookmarks
From PLA Blog, Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 by Kathleen Hughes

The Illinois Library Association (ILA) and MySpace.com have partnered to develop a series of Internet Safety Bookmarks designed tol help educate youth and parents to make safe and informed decisions online.

The three Internet Safety bookmarks are:
• Dealing with Cyberbullies: Tips for Kids
• Safe Blogging: Tips for Teens
• Social Networking: Tips for Parents

The bookmark files are available on the ILA website for libraries to download and print locally. In addition, they are available for sale in sets of 100 of each of the three Internet Safety Bookmarks for $6 plus shipping and handling.

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Great Web Sites for Kids

Great Web Sites for Kids is an Internet guide of child-safe sites selected by a committee of the American Library Association. A (pdf) brochure is available to distribute at your library.

Best Books for Young Adults 2007

The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) provides lists of books recommended for teens. The Young Adult Library Services Association is a division of the American Library Association.

Mostly We Eat

Mostly We Eat is a book group of friends that has been meeting to discuss books over a tasty meal for several years. Their site opens with a quote from Francis Bacon, "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." Check out the books they've read and the food they've eaten.

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"A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there... Your whole life has the same shape as a single day."

From Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

Contact NWLS for subscription services to the Streams news: newsletter@nwls.lib.wi.us

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