WebJunction

The Rural Library Sustainability Project now involves participants from 43 states across the country and continues to build momentum, collecting great strategies for sustaining the great work you do in your communities! Visit us often at WebJunction.org/Rural to tap into best practices, strategies, and stories. Thank you for your participation!

In Focus Webinar: Social Software and the Rural Library

Each month the Rural Library Sustainability Project is presenting an hour-long webinar focused on a particular topic of importance to the work of sustaining Rural and Small libraries. Join us next on February 28 10:00 AM PST/1:00 PM EST for Social Software and the Rural Library: Blogs, Wikis, IM, and more! How are these tools being used in libraries? What is the potential? What might the future hold? Information on joining the webinars, upcoming topics, and all archived sessions are available at Rural In Focus (http://webjunction.org/do/Navigation?category=13496).

Course Highlights

In addition to our webinar, there are a number of online learning opportunities to highlight this month. Our newly refreshed site has a new tab called Courses. Here is where you can access courses available within WebJunction's Course Catalog and via the ever-growing E-Learning Clearinghouse. Each month we like to highlight a few of these great learning opportunities relevant to your work in rural and small libraries including the Course of the Month which is available for the low price of $10! (WebJunction Community Partners may enroll in this course and all others in the course catalog at no cost, thanks to their state libraries). February's Course of the Month is Visio and coming in March, we'll feature Time Management Fundamentals. And remember, any course you purchase through WebJunction will be made available to you for one full year! One more exciting learning opportunity, a perfect follow up to this month's webinar, is the program Five Weeks to A Social Library (http://www.sociallibraries.com/course/). The goal of this free program is to provide staff with the tools needed to develop a proposal for implementing a specific social software tool in your library. Forty participants have already started the program, but all the materials are available for free to anyone who wants to learn at their own pace.

Congratulations Scholarship Winners!

Synchronous on-line meetings, courses and events are one way to lessen the sense of isolation so often felt by rural and small library staff, and provide training and resources in a convenient, cost-effective format. In an effort to broaden the use of this technology and experiment with its application in several settings, the Rural Library Sustainability Project is proud to announce its two scholarship winners for this spring's Synchronous Learning Expert Online Program, which started on February 8th: Colleen Eggett (Utah) and Cindi Hickey(Kansas) were both able to articulate innovative approaches for applying synchronous learning to delivering information to rural and small libraries in their respective states, and we are happy to have them on board.  Congratulations, Colleen and Cindi!

ALA Midwinter Reception Recap

And finally a big thank you to those of you who joined us at the Rural Library Sustainability Project Reception on January 20th during ALA Midwinter. It was great to see some project participants, trainers, and coordinators as well as you special friends to Rural libraries! Thanks to all for your support and for those of you who were unable to join us, here are a few  pictures of the festivities!

Rural Message Board Highlights

Refreshed WebJunction!

Since the last update, WebJunction has taken on a new look! A few resources to get you oriented include this quick tour and Getting Around WebJunction Rural, with instructions on posting to the discussion boards.  

Please send an email to rural@webjunction.org either to subscribe or unsubscribe to the Rural Updates. Thank you.