By Amber Spratlin
You may have noticed that the Technical Services Interest Group (TSIG) has been very busy this summer, developing and hosting a series of training webinars. According to Linh Uong, TSIG Chair, the idea for this series originated in 2019. Uong reiterated the idea at GLA Midwinter 2020, and the Workshop Subcommittee (consisting of Linh Uong, Rachel Evans, Rebecca Hunnicutt, Bernard Buleme, and Kelly Ansley) was formed. TSIG developed a survey to GLA members asking about topics of interest, and the results dictated the topics for the series.
Recordings of two previous webinars are available now at the links below:
Linked Data for the Real World – May 19, 2020
Customizing the Connection Client to Work for You (Slides also available here) – July 14, 2020
The next webinar, Big Data: Managing large-scale metadata projects in a teleworked environment, will take place on September 1, 2020.
Another webinar, Updating Local Holding Records (LHR) for Serials, is tentatively scheduled for September 29, 2020.
The webinars have been extraordinarily successful thus far. Uong states that while the COVID-19 environment has had a small role in the large attendance, freely-available training materials are in high demand, especially for librarians with little access to travel or professional development funds.
The New Members Round Table will publish a spotlight article about TSIG in their August newsletter, so be on the lookout for that article as well for more information.
If you are interested in developing a training webinar for TSIG, please contact Linh Uong (linh.uong@ung.edu) for more information.