System Spotlight

By Christopher Dressler

Kearny Co. Library

Wood Burning Art

Teens and adults did wood burning on charcuterie boards. These are some pictures of our class. Cesilia then showed them how to set the food out on the boards and they had a great class and snack!

Dodge City Public Library

Adult Crafting @ DCPL

DCPL had a great turn out for their crafting program which was held Friday 7/7/23.

Pickleball Courts @ Stevens Co.

The Stevens County Library is so excited that the Hugoton Recreation Commission installed outdoor pickleball courts! As part of the Summer Literacy Program, we arranged for the rec center to teach pickleball to 6-11 year olds on Tuesday afternoon. Nearly 40 kids and caregivers attended the event! There were so many kids present, they had to fill time by choosing between tennis, basketball, card games, and birdwatching stations while other kids played pickleball. It was a great outdoor activity that encouraged lots of library patrons to hurry to the library to check out birding backpacks, board games, and pickleball sets! Due to popular demand, we already plan to hold an adult pickleball lesson in the future.

Future Dates & Training Opportunities

July 12, 2023, 1:00 pm CT – Niche Academy “Managing Difficult Conversations”, Registration Link

Sept 20 – 23, 2023 – ARSL Conference/Wichita, Hotel Booking/Conference Registration

Nov 1 – 3, 2023 – KLA Conference/Wichita

Consulting

By Richard Brookman

Congratulations to Sara and Casandra

Join me in congratulating Sara Koehn, Director of Haskell Township Library, and Casandra Norin, Director of Seward County Community College Library for being part of the Association for Rural & Small Libraries 2023 Conference. Sara is part of a panel on Thursday entitled, “United Against Book Bans: Ignite Support for First Amendment Rights in Rural Communities” on Thursday from 2:45 pm – 3:45 pm. Casandra is part of a two person panel entitled: “MARC 101 to 210: Your Key to Circulation” on Saturday from 8:30 am – 9:30 am.

We encourage members that are attending the ARSL conference this year to support our two Member Director’s on this National Stage. If you haven’t registered for ARSL yet you can do so at this link. To view the whole schedule for the conference you can do so at this link.

Kansas State Librarian Question

You will have received an email from Ray Walling, State Librarian, concerning State Aid. This question was on last year’s State Library Survey Report, however not many librarians answered the question. This is a second attempt by the State Librarian to gather this information.

The question is asking how much your library truly needs in State Aid to be of a better assistance in augmenting your yearly budget. This is part of Ray working on getting a number to utilize to visit with the State Legislatures on possibly raising the State Aid for public libraries. Please take the time to thoughtfully consider this question and respond back to Ray.

Ray, through the System office wants to thank everyone for doing this for him.

Possible CE opportunity in Cimarron City Library

Cimarron City Library is holding a two part training on “Uncommon Customer Service Process”, presented by Joe Coles Consulting Services.

Candi thought this could be of interest to your patrons or even your library staff.

The first part will be on Thursday July 20, from 8:30 am to 11:30 am, and the second part will be on September 14, from 8:30 am to 11:30 am, at the Cimarron City Library.

“Uncommon Customer Service builds “Trust!” Trust builds “Relationships!” Relationships is the key to it all! This is not being better than your competition; it is being the best you can be with your internal and external customers because it is the right thing. Controlling what you can control!

When you attend this training, you will walk away a better person in both your business and personal life. Your excitement will be contagious with your teammates and your family. Common sense strategies will be taught in an uncommon way from over 20 years of working with businesses and schools in leadership!“

The deadline to register for both classes is July 18, 2023. If you are interested in attending these classes please contact me at the System office and I will forward you the registration form to enroll. Cost is $50.00 per person ($40.00 per person per organization with 5 or more).

Cataloging, Collection Development, and ILL

By Sara Wilson

Collection Development Inspiration

Adult Fiction

Children’s & YA Fiction

In Literary News

Authors vs. Robots: A Lawsuit

The makers of OpenAI, the company behind AI chatbot ChatGPT, are being sued. Two authors claim that ChatGPT was trained on their copyrighted material without their express permission. The forthcoming lawsuit brings into question the legal and ethical use of intellectual property to train robots. To read more about the lawsuit – and the identity of the authors bringing it – click here.

Recent Book Challenge Issues Making the News

Libraries are feeling the impact of book challenges across the country. Here are some recent news reports involving book challenges and bans across the United States. (Special thanks to Sara Koehn, Director of Haskell Township Public Library and Sean Bird, Interim Dean of University Libraries at Washburn University for their contributions to this list!)

Former Sterling Library Director Claims Board Fired Her to Censor Decisions on Books, Displays

N.J. Town Proposes Book Banning Rules, But Some Parents Say They Don’t Go Far Enough

How New State Laws and Book Ban Movements Have Made the Teaching of US History Contentious – 5 Essential Reads

Target Blasted for Refusing to Sell Anti-Democratic Party Book: ‘Pathetic’

After Heated Testimony, California Democrats Proceed With Bill to Block Book Bans

ALA OIF Blog 06.30.23: https://www.oif.ala.org/intellectual-freedom-news-06-3 0 –2023/

First Amendment Coalition: https://firstamendmentcoalition.org/news-opinion/first-amendment-news/

Empowered by Reading (Unitedagainstbookbans): https://uniteagainstbookbans.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Empowered-by-Reading-final.pdf

Methods to Weeding Madness

Is your collection in need of weeding? Don’t know where to start? What if I told you that there’s a method to the weeding madness? Many of you may be familiar with the MUSTIE method, in the CREW Manual (the definitive source on weeding, created by the Texas State Library & Archives Commission), but to those who are new to this document, it’s a wonderful, detailed guideline to help you decide what stays and what goes.

MUSTIE is an acronym for 6 negative features that make books good candidates for weeding. It stands for: M – Misleading, U – Ugly, S – Superseded, T – Trivial, I – Irrelevant, and E – Elsewhere (as in, the information can be easily accessed in another way, such as a different format, ILL, etc.). For more information, elaboration on the MUSTIE guidelines, and a deep dive into the hows and whys of weeding, please see the link referenced above! As always, if you have questions or need help with weeding, give me a call or email me at swilson@swkls.org. I’m always happy to help!

What is DDoS?

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic.

DDoS attacks achieve effectiveness by utilizing multiple compromised computer systems as sources of attack traffic. Exploited machines can include computers and other networked resources such as IoT devices.

From a high level, a DDoS attack is like an unexpected traffic jam clogging up the highway, preventing regular traffic from arriving at its destination.

DDoS attacks are carried out with networks of Internet-connected machines.

These networks consist of computers and other devices (such as IoT devices)which have been infected with malware, allowing them to be controlled remotely by an attacker. These individual devices are referred to as bots (or zombies), and a group of bots is called a botnet.

Once a botnet has been established, the attacker is able to direct an attack by sending remote instructions to each bot.

When a victim’s server or network is targeted by the botnet, each bot sends requests to the target’s IP address, potentially causing the server or network to become overwhelmed, resulting in a denial-of-service to normal traffic.

Because each bot is a legitimate Internet device, separating the attack traffic from normal traffic can be difficult.

Always feel free to contact me for training requests, library cards, or technology issues at cdressler@swkls.org or (620)225-1231. – Christopher Dressler – 7/7/2023

Weekly Wrap-U.P.! July 7, 2023