NEFLIN Webinar: Equity, Access & Community Engagement, Oct 27, 10-11:30am

If you wish to participate, notify JPLTraining@coj.net and we will register you

 Cancellation Deadline is 9:00 am on Friday, October 23rd

Otherwise, no show fees may apply

Library Services to Patrons Experiencing Homelessness

Providing equitable library services means reaching out to patron groups that experience barriers. As a free institution open to all, public libraries offer enormous potential to be a gateway out of poverty and to help individuals & families surmount the obstacles that prevent them from engaging with their community and reaching their fullest potential.

So how can we best engage & assist our patrons experiencing homelessness? This will be the topic of conversation as I share my experiences:

• Advocating for equitable policies & services
• Connecting patrons to community resources
• Partnering with community organizations to deliver targeted programming both inside & outside the library
• Leveraging the library’s potential as a social mixing pot to start dialogues about community issues like homelessness

Participants are invited to share their experiences, concerns, and questions in what is sure to be a lively and empowering discussion.

Virtual Trainer: Amy Mars

Amy Mars is a librarian at St. Catherine University & Hennepin County Library in Minnesota.  She authored a March/April 2012 feature article in Public Libraries entitled, “Library Service to the Homeless,” coordinated a grant that Hennepin County Library received from the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation to enhance library services to the homeless, and is currently co-chairing a system-wide work group that leads training for library staff and providing targeted programming and outreach to patrons in suburban and urban libraries experiencing homelessness.

This is an online class. Access information will be emailed one week ahead.

Cancellation Deadline is 9:00 am on Friday, October 23rd. Otherwise, no show fees may apply. See all NEFLIN CE policies at http://www.neflin.org/training.

Ryan Dowd: "A Librarian's Guide to Homelessness"

Ryan Dowd of Hesed House in Aurora, Illinois, speaks on "A Librarian's Guide to Homelessness"



This video gives viewers a profound sense of how exhausting, frustrating and dangerous the personal experience of homelessness is.

Dowd describes some essential person-to-person concerns for us to keep in mind when dealing with our own homeless library customers.

Public Libraries and the Homeless: Legal Issues (archived webnar)

The September 18th Public Libraries and the Homeless: Legal Issues webinar is now available from the free InfoPeople archive (see Access below).

Note: Some content about court rulings may become outdated over the next year, as newer cases are settled.

Presenter: Mary Minow

Speaker's slides

ppt [7mb]

pdf (Full slide) [2.3mb]

pdf (3 slides per page) [656kb]

Handouts: doc [124kb] - pdf [44kb]

Because courts give greater latitude to library rules that are behavior focused, and a tighter scrutiny to rules based on status or speech, it’s important to know the how to frame your policies, especially when dealing with specific populations such as the homeless.

The one-hour webinar looks at the movement for Homeless Persons’ Bill of Rights and Fairness, and the current legal rights and professional ethics as they apply to public libraries.

Note: Have the JPL Library Code of Conduct handy during the webinar, so that you can compare our policies with Mary Minow's recommendations.

It will also discuss specific issues such as oversize parcels, behavior issues, and qualifications for library cards for customers who don’t have a permanent address.

At the end of this one-hour webinar, participants will:

• Know about the rights that homeless patrons have and rights they are striving for
• Review library ethical statements on service to the poor and the freedom to read
• Understand some legal nuances between rules that target behavior versus rules that are focused on user status

This webinar will be of interest to front line public staff, administrators, trustees – particularly in public libraries, but the analysis applies to all publicly funded libraries.

Access

• Click the View Archive button (or, if you do not see that button, the click here link)
• Complete the registration form (free) and click the Register button
• The Adobe Connect webinar should begin.