Our intrepid events team organizes webinars to grow your skills, online panel discussions to keep your mind sharp, and networking calls to keep you connected.
Programming is curated by METRO staff and our interest groups. Registration is required for participation in our workshops, meetups, and symposia.
Please review our Code of Conduct. Also, see our Statement on Viewpoints and details on Interpreter Services.
Current and Upcoming Events
Displaying results 1 - 7 of 7
PLIX Creative Learning: Summer Mind-Body Connection
Online/Virtual Event
Let’s simulate summer break with creative learning! In this workshop, we’ll explore the mind-body connection and create a wearable (that may not yet exist) to express, communicate, and track your summer aspirations. You’ll learn about the creative learning spiral, and how to celebrate your patrons’ process AND product. In creative learning, there’s no “one right way.” Just like how we’ll encourage you to explore and tinker, we hope that you’ll do the same for your patrons.
Participants will:
Experience a hands-on creative learning activity that emphasizes the mind-body connection
Explore the creative learning spiral, and recognize yourself and your patrons in it
Learn strategies for celebrating the process of creative learning, not just the product
This workshop comes with a mini activity kit that gets shipped to you via snail mail, so we’ll need your mailing address. Space is limited to 20. If you register but then know you will no longer be able to attend, please let us know by February 22nd so we may open your spot to someone on the waitlist.
This is the second of two workshops on creative learning with the Public Library Innovation Exchange (PLIX) at the MIT Media Lab. You can attend this workshop without attending the first.
About our presenter:
Ada Ren-Mitchell loves playful learning. As the Learning Programs Designer of the Public Library Innovation Exchange (PLIX) at the MIT Media Lab, she can't believe her job involves hanging out with amazing librarians around the world! Over the past 13 years, she juggled professional development in STEM education, STEM education research, multi-modal gesture research, and web and graphic design. Ada likes to wrap her brain around complex systems, and tries to make sense of it all through community co-creation, visual information design, and prudent science communication. In her spare time, she enjoys sending snail mail, carving stamps, sewing clothes, and crafting interactive finger-foods for her friends and family.
RESCHEDULED: Climate Change Exposure For The METRO Region, Part 2: What Can Libraries Do?
Online/Virtual Event
NOTE: This webinar was originally scheduled for Tuesday, January 23, but has been rescheduled to a new date.
In the second webinar of a two-part series, Eira Tansey (Memory Rising) will discuss a recent study carried out for METRO to contextualize and understand climate change exposure for the region. New York City and the state of New York have some of the most ambitious climate action plans in the country. We’ll discuss examples of actual strategies libraries are already using to reduce their environmental impact and adapt to climate change, as well as emerging areas of climate action collaboration between librarianship and other sectors.
Participants will:
Learn how to locate existing climate change policy resources in their sector/geographic area
Understand ways of embedding climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies into library work
Be able to identify areas of potential collaboration with professionals from other fields
Find more info about Part 1 here.
About our presenter:
Eira Tansey is an archivist, researcher, and consultant based in her hometown of Cincinnati/the Ohio River watershed. She is the founder of Memory Rising, which provides research, consulting, and archival services with expertise in climate change, environmental and labor movements, and Ohio Valley regional history. She previously worked as an archivist at the University of Cincinnati and Tulane University. Eira’s research on archives and climate change has been profiled by Yale Climate Connections, VICE, and Pacific Standard, and has been honored by the Society of American Archivists. Her most recent publication is A Green New Deal for Archives.
Please review our Code of Conduct, our Statement on Viewpoints, and details on Interpreter Services.
Bibliometrics For Librarians
Online/Virtual Event
Bibliometrics, also known as an analysis of scientific literature, is one of the most popular data analysis techniques used among librarians. Although it originated in the library and information science field, these days it is commonly used among many others to assess and evaluate certain literature or trends within a specific context, helping researchers measure the impact a work has on academic literature as a whole. The proliferation of web-based indexes, particularly Scopus and Web of Science, has made it easy to retrieve and analyze large volumes of bibliometric data. This workshop will introduce major bibliometric techniques that make use of such indexes, and will showcase some examples of published work that demonstrates its use in LIS.
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
Evaluate individual author's, institutions’, or countries’ scientific productivity
Examine the scientific growth or trend of any given research field
Investigate the scientific impact of any given publication
About our presenter:
Selenay Aytac, PhD., MA, MBA, MS is Professor of University Libraries at Long Island University, New York. She received a Senior Fulbright Scholarship to conduct research at the Bogazici University Telecommunication and Information Technologies Research Center in Istanbul. She was a library research fellow at the Princeton University Library for the AY 2019-2020. She was the recipient of 2007 ALISE/Bohdan S. Wynar Research Paper Award with the paper Recent Library Practitioner Research: A Methodological Analysis and Critique.
Please review our Code of Conduct, our Statement on Viewpoints, and details on Interpreter Services.
Tour & Social Hour: Grolier Club
Community Conversation
Join us to tour the Grolier Club and learn about its current exhibition, Judging a Book by Its Cover.
The Grolier Club’s international membership has its home at 47 East 60th Street, where book collectors, booksellers, librarians, and other book professionals have converged to research books and revel in bibliophily since the building's opening in 1918. The Clubhouse holds various rooms for members' use, a library, two exhibition galleries, and walls covered in bookshelves, prints, and works of art celebrating the history of books and collecting. During her "Books and Crannies" tour, Grolier Club member Eve Kahn will guide us through the warren of charming idiosyncrasies on every floor.
Judging a Book by Its Cover highlights selections from seven centuries of the Grolier Club's collection of bindings, largely donated and built by the Club’s members over the course of its 140-year history. The exhibition explores the history of decorated bindings, book bindings as three-dimensional art objects, what makes a binding collectible, and the Club's investment in commissioning fine bindings through the present day. Highlights from the 15th century to the present are on view, including a silver filigreed and jeweled miniature Book of Hours (1673); a gilt maroon goatskin binding from a Vatican bindery, presented to Cardinal Basadonna (1674); and a bright green silk and floral embroidered binding created by May Morris, daughter of William Morris (ca. 1888). Judging a Book by Its Cover is curated by Grolier Club member H. George Fletcher, the former Astor Director for Special Collections at The New York Public Library and former curator at The Morgan Library & Museum.
Following the tour, we will gather at a nearby space to connect with colleagues.
Please note: Space is limited, so if you’ve secured a spot but then find you’re unable to join, please let us know so we can open your spot to someone on the waitlist.
METRO’s Digitization Project Grant: Information Session
Online/Virtual Event
This webinar will be facilitated by METRO’s Digitization Project Grant Program Managers, Allison Sherrick and Traci Mark. Allison and Traci will review the main components of the grant process, including:
The program’s information sheet
Eligibility
The application process
There will be a Q & A period at the end of the session. Please be sure to review our grant documentation before you arrive and bring any questions you might have.
This session will be recorded.
Teaching Strategies For Librarians
Workshop
When it comes to teaching information literacy to patrons, librarians offer a variety of instructional techniques to help them optimize and enrich their research activities. These include various teaching strategies and multiple instructional tools, from collaborative learning to utilizing audiovisual aids to story reenactments. This interactive workshop will introduce a wide range of teaching strategies, providing examples of lesson plans that work with each one. Participants are encouraged to bring their own lesson plans or topics they are planning to cover to discuss what teaching strategies might work best for them.
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
Identify multiple types of teaching strategies
Understand which strategies work best for different topics
Utilize these instructional tools in their lesson plans
This two-hour, in-person workshop will take place at the Brooklyn Public Library's Central branch in the Info Commons lab.
About our presenter:
Selenay Aytac, PhD., MA, MBA, MS is Professor of University Libraries at Long Island University, New York. She received a Senior Fulbright Scholarship to conduct research at the Bogazici University Telecommunication and Information Technologies Research Center in Istanbul. She was a library research fellow at the Princeton University Library for the AY 2019-2020. She was the recipient of 2007 ALISE/Bohdan S. Wynar Research Paper Award with the paper Recent Library Practitioner Research: A Methodological Analysis and Critique.
Please review our Code of Conduct, our Statement on Viewpoints, and details on Interpreter Services.
On The Importance Of Personal Narratives: An Approach To Academic Reference Interviews
Online/Virtual Event
As a form of conversation, reference interviews are uniquely positioned to facilitate relationship building, collaboration, and community care. This can be especially salient in academic settings where productivity, efficiency, and achievements are built into the community’s expectations. In this webinar, Tricia Clarke, PhD, explores the relevance of personal narratives as part of the academic reference interview.
By embracing practices that view academic reference interviews and research appointments as more than mere transactions, librarians can create spaces for patrons to share personal narratives, which fosters a sense of belonging and well-being among students, faculty, and staff and helps to encourage healthy interpersonal relationships among librarians and patrons.
Attendees will gain:
Insight into the power of personal narratives
An understanding of the transformative potential of encouraging personal narratives
during reference interviews and research appointments
A look at best practices which can contribute to building a more inclusive and
supportive learning environment in the academic landscape
About our presenter:
Tricia Clarke is the Community College Engagement Librarian at the University of the District of Columbia, a historically Black land-grant university and the only public university in Washington, DC. She has loved libraries throughout her entire adulthood and much of her childhood, which was spent growing up on the English-speaking Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago. She has a doctorate in Folklore and her research and professional interests include cultural heritage, community engagement, and supporting and contributing to diverse and inclusive communities. She is passionate about fostering literacy and cultivating a rich cultural learning environment.
Please review our Code of Conduct, our Statement on Viewpoints, and details on Interpreter Services.