Monday Briefing - August 30, 2021

E-Waste Recycling Drop Off at PLS from Adam

Starting Friday, August 27th until September 17th, you can bring your old Library computers, monitors, and accessories to the PLS main office in Canandaigua on Wednesdays and Fridays between the hours of 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM where we will gather it for an e-waste pickup. You can also bring the equipment with you to the System Meeting on September 17th. If you need help getting the equipment to our office, please reach out to us by opening a ticket by emailing support@pls-net.org and we may be able to help. If none of these days/times work for you, reach out to us and we may be able to set up a time to drop off that works for you.
When dropping equipment off at PLS, please bring the equipment in the door by the large meeting room.

During this recycling, some of the computers and monitors that are brought in to be recycled may be used for some System-wide programs instead of being scrapped. If you would prefer your hardware to go straight to scrap versus recycled for programs, please let us know by email or during drop-off.

Please DO NOT send this equipment through delivery.

DMCA Takedown Notices from Bob

Over the past few days, we have received a number of fake DMCA takedown notices and one real "Notice of Claimed Infringement." While it is important to respond to real DMCA notices in a timely manner, care must be taken. Real notices almost always have details of the claimed infringement in the body of the email so you shouldn't have to dig too far to find them. If the email is trying to direct you to a link or download then it is likely a phishing scam.

Legitimate claims often come from your Internet Service Provider. In our case Spectrum or FirstLight. These claims should be investigated and a response given in a timely manner.

If you receive one of these claims and are unsure of its validity, please forward it to support@pls-net.org and we will investigate.

Adult Services Workshops this Fall from Suzanne

Do you work with adults at your library? Are you looking to expand programs and services to older adults? Do you want to start offering one-on-one or group, technology classes? If you answered "Yes!" to any or all of these questions, then check out the virtual workshops being offered through PLS this fall:

• Mission-Critical: The Digital Skills Divide and What to do About It Tuesday, September 14 @ 3pm
• The Continuous Improvement Cycle: Creating and Sustaining Momentum as a Digital Literacy Instructor Tuesday, October 5 @ 3pm
• Teaching Adults and Seniors Tuesday, October 26 @ 3pm

These two-hour train-the-trainer classes will focus on technology and digital literacy and will be conducted by Nate Heyer, Digital Literacy Coach and Librarian at the William K Sanford Town Library (Upper Hudson Library System). The classes can be taken as stand-alones, but the information builds sequentially so staff is encouraged to attend all three. Each class is worth 2 CEUs.

Visit https://pls-net.org/events to learn more and register.

Sending Items Through Delivery

Now that delivery has normalized a bit, we are happy to announce that you may once again start sending documents (i.e. Owwl2Go commitment forms) through delivery to the System office (please put documents in manilla envelopes or something similar). As always, thank you for everyone's support as we bring back past services.

Question of the Week

Some of our internal policies have sensitive information (i.e. positions who have access to the safe or certain parts of the building), how can we protect this information when posting them online to comply with NYS Minimum Standards for Libraries?

Great question. If policies contain sensitive information option one would be to leave them off of your website altogether. The intent of the standard is to make sure the library is operating under written, board-approved policies. As long as your external policies are available on your website, I would say that you can make a reasonable argument to leave off sensitive internal information.

Option two would be to redact that sensitive information from the policy and add a note explaining the rationale for the redaction.

Option three would be to rewrite your policy without the information and transfer all sensitive details to internal procedures.

The Trustee Handbook has a list of recommended policies .

RERUN: Pop-Up Vaccine Clinics @ Libraries from Suzanne

If your library is interested in hosting a COVID-19 Vaccination Clinic, please read the following information from Nancy Buffum-Herman, PCMH Manager, Finger Lakes Performing Provider System, Inc.: