Key Notes Blog

Bringing you weekly posts on conference planning, happenings at Keystone, or how better to put KLAS to work for you!

COVID-19 and the Florida Braille and Talking Book Libraries

Details: Category: Key Notes; Last Updated: Friday, 15 May 2020 15:57; Published: Tuesday, 28 April 2020 15:32; Written by Maureen

Our KLAS Users' Group officers contacted some KLAS users to ask them to share how their library / organization is faring and what policy, service, or other changes they may have enacted in response to library closure or limited staffing related to Covid19. We welcome submissions from any KLAS user who wants to share their experience during this time. Please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you're interested in contributing a post.

Our next guest blog post in response to this request is from Maureen Dorosinski and the various regional librarians of Florida.

COVID-19 and the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library

Details: Category: Key Notes; Last Updated: Friday, 24 April 2020 15:08; Published: Tuesday, 21 April 2020 14:58; Written by Danielle Miller

Keystone Quarantine Kitchen

Details: Category: Key Notes; Last Updated: Wednesday, 15 April 2020 12:31; Published: Tuesday, 31 March 2020 16:22; Written by Andrea Callicutt

With the Governor of North Carolina's stay at home order going into effect, all Keystone staff are now working remotely. We're extremely happy to be able to continue you providing the support and services you have come to expect from us even during this challenging time. Our past few blog posts have been focused on tips and tricks to help you continue working and providing as many books to your patrons as possible depending on your library's current status. This week we'd like to share something a bit lighter, so here's some recipes from Keystone staff we like to cook when we're stuck at home.

Read on for our Keystone Quarantine Kitchen Recipes including:

Sour Cream Pound Cake
Margon's Brownies
Crawfish Etouffee
Homemade Chex Mix
Mac & Cheese Pizza
Sweet Potato biscuits
Greek meatballs, burgers, or meatloaf
Butternut squash and sausage soup

A Note from James, plus Tips & Tricks part III

Details: Category: Key Notes; Last Updated: Wednesday, 15 April 2020 12:31; Published: Tuesday, 14 April 2020 21:30; Written by Katy Patrick

First, we'd like to share a note with you from James Burts, Keystone Executive Vice President,

"Dealing with the new realities of Covid-19 has certainly been a very strange time. At Keystone, we began having staff wanting to work from home and self-isolate on March 12th, and over the following 2 weeks had increasing numbers of staff opting to work from home. As of March 30th, our local county mandated that we all self-isolate and work from home. I certainly hope you’ve not seen a change in our ability to support you all.

Fortunately, we’d already taken the steps necessary to allow all our staff to work from home effectively— steps we’d taken expecting that it would help us in the event of a snowstorm or hurricane that made roads unsafe. Instead, the road are nearly empty, but it’s simply getting people together that’s unsafe. Who would have thought??

We continue to be available to help you and your staff in anyway we can. Whether that’s helping create new workflows to quarantine materials, or helping your staff work on record cleanup while they are working from home without access to your collection— we are here for you all. We have provided some ideas for managing these strange times on KlasUsers.com, and are always interested in hearing other ideas you may have. If you have any questions, or any ideas that you would like to implement, please reach out to us. We’ll be happy to help talk through your thoughts, and help address your needs."

Next up, as part of our ongoing work to support you, a few more tips and tricks, this time for:

Strategies for serving patrons when you have a restricted card run
Blocking service to prisons or other institutions

Or you can follow these links for our previous suggestions:

Working Remotely - Tips & Tricks part II

Details: Category: Key Notes; Last Updated: Wednesday, 15 April 2020 12:31; Published: Tuesday, 24 March 2020 19:19; Written by Katy Patrick

As we continue to answer questions and work with libraries to handle this challenging situation, I wanted to share some additional tips gleaned from our inbox and experiences working with your fellow users.

Do I need to shut off Nightly?
WebOPAC Notice
Emailing your newsletter
Record clean-up

If you have any other inquiries, please continue to contact Keystone Customer Support--we're still here to help!

Finally, because we know these are stressful times, make sure to check out the Off-Topic section of the forums to "meet" our Work-From-Home coworkers (formerly known as pets).