Southeastern NY, Library Resources Council, offers ongoing professional development opportunities. These come in the form of in-person classes, workshops, lectures, and webinars. These classes help to enrich our members’ professional experience and can be used to fulfill some requirements needed to maintain public librarian certificates.
Are you looking for information about a past event? Click here for an archive of recent Southeastern events.
Are you looking for similar events? Click here for a calendar of all Empire State Library Network events.
Southeastern welcomes people of all abilities to programs. If ASL interpreter services, captioning or audio description are needed, contact Carolyn Bennett Glauda – carolyn@senylrc.org or leave a message in the notes field to request those services when you register. Please register as soon as you know you will be attending. Requesting accommodations as early as possible is critical. Requests made at least one week in advance will help to ensure availability.
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Webinar: Ultimate AI Policy
Webinar: The Ultimate AI Policy for Your (Public, Academic, Museum, etc.) Library
Presenter: Stephanie “Cole” Adams
Date: Thursday, September 11, 2025
Time: 10:00 am – 11:30 am
Location: online via Zoom Webinar – the webinar will be recorded
Artificial Intelligence is on the rise, and it is impacting everything from information science to disability accommodations.
As centers of information access and media literacy, libraries must be places where trustworthy AI is used with confidence. But how does a library evaluate, monitor, and continually re-assess AI tools?
Join us for an interactive session where we will review the reasons, risks, priorities, and a template policy for using AI tools at your library.
Registrants will be able to submit questions in advance and during the session.
Please join us as New York’s libraries continue to lead the way in becoming strong, confident, trusted users of AI.
WHO SHOULD ATTEND: This session is for any library, museum, or archive. Directors, reference librarians, trustees, academic officers responsible for libraries, public relations workers, library workers, general counsel, risk managers, sustainability-related personnel, procurement specialists, IT team, and anyone nervous that AI is about to take their job.
About the presenter: Stephanie “Cole” Adams is an attorney who represents libraries, educators, students, and creative professionals. Cole provides the Ask the Lawyer service that New York State’s nine library resource councils provide to each library in the state. She is a member of the ALA Lawyers for Libraries faculty, the Vice Chair of the Erie County Bar Association’s Labor and Employment Law Committee, and served as the General Counsel of Niagara University for over ten years. Cole is a proud graduate of SUNY Buffalo School of Law and Hampshire College.
Leadership and Management Skills SIG
Date: Thursday, September 18, 2025
Time: 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
Facilitator: Laura Wolven, Finkelstein Memorial Library
Location: Southeastern NY Library Resources Council
Topic: Leadership and Trauma Recovery
In a new iteration of this group, we will talk about working in post-traumatic situations. Whether a traumatic situation was experienced by the collected staff or individually, on the job, or after hours, we can learn ways to adapt our management style to lead. At a time of turmoil and threats to libraries, leadership can feel lonelier than ever. This meeting is an opportunity to share collective experiences and brainstorm about solutions.
This group is for library workers of all library types who handle administrative tasks and are becoming leaders in the field. If you aspire to or are currently working as, a: director, assistant director, manager, program manager, trustee, or serve in a leadership role within a professional organization, this meeting is for you! Topics we will cover in this meeting may include:
- Supervising other staff, volunteers, and/or interns
- Introducing and running programs and services at the library
- Onboarding new employees
- Getting professional development for management skills
- Doing advocacy work on behalf of the library
- Creating and maintaining a budget
- Work/life balance in the light of growing work responsibilities
- Networking with other library workers who may become future colleagues
- Staying committed to social justice issues
- Working within union structures
- Influencing the culture of the library from within
- Deciding when and if to apply for different positions
The nature of the conversation will be based on the interests of the people who attend and may change from meeting to meeting. You can view the notes from previous meetings here.
At the end of October, the SEAL website will be moving web platforms from Drupal to WordPress. The site will function the same, so there should be no interruptions to SEAL service. However, there will be some minor changes in the site’s appearance, and users will need to reset their password once we move to the new site. We are hosting a SEAL User’s Group on October 1st from 1-2 p.m. to show SEAL users the updated website and demonstrate how to reset passwords. Attendees will have the opportunity to ask Southeastern staff any questions they might have about the website platform migration.
All library staff using SEAL are invited to attend the meeting.
Join us for the next Resource Sharing SIG, in-person at the Town of Ulster Library. In addition to a tour of the library, the agenda will be determined by the attendees. We will have plenty of time for open discussion on any and all resource sharing topics.
This SIG provides a friendly space for resource sharing professionals to meet, discuss workflows, and share resources. The Resource Sharing Special Interest Group (SIG) meets to discuss issues of Interlibrary Loan, delivery, union catalogs, and other related topics. The members of the group are a mix of full-time and part-time, degreed and non-degreed librarians, and come from all library types. Registration for this event is free and open to all.
Reference Special Interest Group
Date: Tuesday, October 21, 2025
Time: 11:00 am – 1:00 pm
Facilitator: Lara Sibley, Goshen Public Library
Location: Online via Zoom
The Reference Special Interest Group is open to library workers who provide reference services or want to learn more about it. The group is not limited by library type and comprises academic, special, public, school, and hospital library staff. You do not need to be a degree-holding librarian to attend. The facilitator will bring an agenda, and attendees are welcome to share their thoughts, ideas, experiences, and questions.
This month’s topic is: Reference Stats: Why we keep them, How we keep them, What we do with them!
That will be our starting point for the conversation, and the details can be refined and amended by the participants as needed. Bring any stats you have handy!
We will also follow up on the conversation from the August SIG: https://libguides.senylrc.org/SIGs/20250429Reference