ALA offers a range of free webinars and videos

I letting you know about each of the upcoming AL Live episodes-- the recently introduced free streaming video broadcast from American Libraries (information and archives atwww.americanlibrarieslive.org). But ALA, its divisions and its offices offer many other free webinars and training videos. You can find out more by visiting the ALA website (ala.org) and checking specific division, office, and other pages to see what’s available. Many of the events also offer archives for registrants.

Examples

Free Booklist webinars take place almost weekly and cover top-of-mind topics in collection development and readers’ advisory for all age groups. Moderated by Booklist editors and special guests, the broad range of topics includes struggling readers, books for boys, series nonfiction, reaching reluctant readers, what’s new in audiobooks, the new face of reference, graphic novels, YA announcements, the Common Core State Standards initiative, book group-related topics, new cookbooks and more. Sign up or access archives at www.booklistonline.com/webinars.

Guide to Reference (www.guidetoreference.org) and RDA Toolkit (www.rdatoolkit.org) both offer regular free “Essentials” webinars that help you discover how to get the most from the products. In the Guide to Reference webinars, you can see how to integrate it into your reference and collection development work, as well as teaching and training, and how to browse the taxonomy, customize searches, create lists of resources, add notes to titles, save searches, share your work, and connect to local holdings. And for those relatively new to RDA Toolkit, the RDA Toolkit webinars offer a useful introduction to the cataloging website. The webinars cover the basics of navigating and searching RDA Toolkit and include tips on how to use RDA Toolkit for RDA: Resource Description and Access training. Free and regularly updated how-to videos from RDA can also be found on this page: www.rdatoolkit.org/videohelp.