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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Recruitment and Retention (ESLN Academic Leadership Series)
Join us for the next event in this series, Recruitment and Retention! This session will focus on the strategies libraries have used to attract staff members at all levels and on strategies our libraries and institutions have implemented to help retain employees.
Topics discussed may include:
– Strategies to recruit a diverse pool of job candidates
– How to work within limitations institutions may place on recruitment efforts
– Successful interview strategies
– Managing virtual versus in-person interviews
– Effective elements of onboarding plans for new employees
– Implementing plans or programs aimed at retaining or incentivizing employees
Panelists: Liz King (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute); Elaine L. Westbrooks (Cornell University); Andrea Falcone (Binghamton University)
Facilitator: Cara Howe (Colgate University)
This series of six 90-minute panel discussions will feature academic library leaders from across New York State discussing various topics relevant to new and emerging leaders. Panelists represent a wide variety of academic institutions and provide a diverse set of experiences. As part of each session, participants will have opportunities to network with other new and emerging leaders through breakout rooms and small group discussions in addition to the larger panel discussion. These sessions will not be recorded.
All attendees will receive a certificate of attendance for 1.5 hours of CE credit.
Free to Southeastern & ESLN Members. This event will be held on Zoom Meeting; registration is required.
Live transcription will be available. We are committed to offering inclusive, diverse, and equitable services to all of our members. To request specific accommodations, please contact ESLN at least five business days ahead of this program.
This event is sponsored by Empire State Library Network.
Volunteer: Turning The Page for Pollinators
Friday, May 30, 2025*
9:00 am – 11:00 am
at Southeastern NY Library Resources Council’s office
21 S. Elting Corners Rd., Highland, NY
*Rain date: Friday, June 13
Calling all garden volunteers! Join us to dig in the dirt and help establish a home for pollinators at our project kick-off event.
We’ll start the day with a brief talk about why we’re using native plants and how you can do this at your library or organization. Next, we will pull weeds, dig holes, and put plants in the ground! Attendees will receive a set of gardening gloves, a packet of wildflower seeds native to the Northeast, and good vibes from doing something positive for our local ecosystem.
You must be 18 or older to participate. Space is limited.
Why are we doing this? Our goal is to rehabilitate the landscape at Southeastern with native plants that support pollinators. The Turning the Page for Pollinators project is supported by an Ecological Restoration Grant from Partners for Climate Action.
Partners for Climate Action Website: https://www.climateactionhv.org/
Turning the Page for Pollinators website: https://libguides.senylrc.org/pollinators/main
Note: This will be an outside event with light physical activity: bending, kneeling, digging, raking, etc. We will provide bathroom access, water, and light snacks.
2025 Annual Meeting
Date: Friday, June 6, 2025.
Time: 8:30 am – 12:00 pm
Location: The Wallace Center at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum in Hyde Park, NY
Cost: Regular registration: $35, Friends registration: $15, Livestream Free
Topic: Sustainable Thinking: Ensuring Your Library’s Future in an Uncertain World
The meeting program includes a brief membership meeting, an update on yearly activities, a catered breakfast, and a keynote delivered by Rebekkah Smith Aldrich.
About the Keynote: Sustainable Thinking: Ensuring Your Library’s Future in an Uncertain World
While change is inevitable, most would agree that the pace at which we are experiencing disruption of all kinds is faster than ever before. Sustainability was named a core value of our profession in 2019 in response to the emergence of climate change as a top threat to global health that is also impacting our environment and economy. How will the library community respond? Rebekkah Smith Aldrich, Co-Founder of the Sustainable Libraries Initiative, explores the challenges and opportunities for libraries and shares how many in our field are already answering the call for leadership on sustainability. Learn how a mindset that uses the triple bottom line definition of sustainability can change how you see the world around you and shape your future decision-making at home and at work to ensure a more hopeful future. This session focuses on actionable, practical ideas to address climate change that will help you to contribute to a future that goes far beyond “going green,” to create more resilient communities.
About the speaker: Rebekkah Smith Aldrich, MLS, LEED AP, is the Executive Director of the Mid-Hudson Library System, a cooperative public library system working with 66 member libraries in New York State. Rebekkah is also the Co-Founder and Board President of the Sustainable Libraries Initiative, a worldwide award-winning project to empower library leaders to advance environmentally sound, socially equitable, and economically feasible practices to intentionally address climate change and co-create thriving communities. Rebekkah is the principal author of the award-winning Sustainable Library Certification Program, the Resolution for the Adoption of Sustainability as a Core Value of Librarianship, and the recently released National Climate Action Strategy for Libraries and its companion implementation guide. Rebekkah is Library Journal’s Sustainability columnist and has authored three books on the topic of sustainability: Sustainable Thinking: Ensuring Your Library’s Future in an Uncertain World; Resilience (ALA Library Future Series); and Libraries & Sustainability: Programs and Practices for Community Impact. Rebekkah is also the author of the Handbook for New Library Directors in New York State and co-author of both the Handbook for Library Trustees of New York State and the Public Library District Toolkit: Strategies to Assure your Library’s Legal and Financial Stability for the New York State Library.
Resource Sharing SIG
Join us for the next Resource Sharing SIG, in-person at the Sojourner Truth Library at SUNY New Paltz. Our topic for this SIG will be inter-library loan policies. We will touch on some of the elements that are common in ILL policies for both library patrons and borrowing libraries. We will also have plenty of time for open discussion on other 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, July 8, 2025
Time: 11:00 am – 12:30 pm
Facilitator: Lara Sibley, Goshen Public Library
Location: Southeastern NY Library Resources Council, 21 S. Elting Corners Rd., Highland, NY
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: Promoting database selection and use in reference interactions
We will discuss how we talk about and encourage specific databases while working with patrons. To take advantage of the in-person format, we will do a group activity so that everyone can participate. The meeting is open to library workers from all types. We will discuss issues relevant to both academic and public librarians.
We will also follow up on the conversation from the April 29, 2025 SIG: https://libguides.senylrc.org/SIGs/20250429Reference
Is AI on the Test? A Symposium for Educators Who Weren’t Ready for Robots
Online via Zoom: July 11, 2025
9:30 am – 3:30 pm
Free for all ESLN members and affiliate members in NYS
The PILLARS Symposium: Preparation, Information Literacy, Libraries, Academic Resources, and 21st Century Skills for Transitioning from Secondary School to College
This is a virtual one-day symposium that will bring educators and librarians together to share knowledge on the topic of student readiness for college and beyond.
This symposium is designed to introduce educators to a wide range of teaching and learning resources for practical use in the 21st-century classroom. This year’s theme, Is AI On The Test? A Symposium for Educators Who Weren’t Ready for Robots, focuses a critical lens on Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) in the classroom, including creating policies, practical methods, evaluating AI tools, user privacy, and legal issues.