Are you looking forward to the next in-person KLAS conference? Or would you prefer to keep things online? Either way, I have some hopeful news: planning for the 2023 KLAS Users’ Conference is underway and picking up steam!

Barring still more “unprecedented events,” UC 2023 will be held July 17-20, 2023 at the Tennessee School for the Blind in Nashville, TN. For those who can’t attend in person, we are looking into options for hybrid sessions, and plan to offer as much of the conference to you as possible. To facilitate this, we will likely be changing up the conference schedule, allowing in-person-only, hands-on content to occur in the mornings, and hybrid sessions to occur in the afternoon (when they will be reasonably timed across more time zones). Our goal is to ensure those attending in person get as much value for their travel as possible and provide a valuable experience for those who can’t join us in Tennessee, while ensuring both groups will be able to justify the expense to their funding agency.

While we do not yet know what the registration fees will be, we will try to keep them as low as possible and still deliver a quality conference. Our top contender for the conference hotel has quoted us a nightly rate of $179 / night, which is below the 2022 government rate. We are researching transportation options to get everyone from the hotel to the school and back, and catered-in lunches will help keep daily meal costs reasonable. For online attendees, a minimal registration fee will help cover whatever equipment or software costs we incur to bring the afternoon sessions to you.

Helping us to close in on the specifics, we just completed a site visit, checking out what has changed at TSB since 2019, investigating possible reception venues and caterers, and making sure the hotel is up to par.

We have excellent Programming and Logistics Committees assembled who are digging into all the challenges of our first hybrid conference, as well as all the usual conference minutiae, but of course we need your help as well. How many people should we expect in-person or online? What precautions need to be in place to ensure everyone’s health and safety?

Have a look at our proposed conference schedule, read on for a few teasers from our site visit, but also don’t miss completing our Pre-conference Planning Survey. With so much uncertainty, change, and opportunity for an amazing new conference format, we need your input this year more than ever!

Site visit photos: 

Allen Huang, Director of the Tennessee Instructional Resource Center, shows us the school's atrium, which is excellent for general sessions with its comfortable chairs, large projection screen, and monitors set up to mirror the front screen. 

The school librarian shows Keystone staff Katy and James their conversation area, which is a good fit for casual networking or just decompressing between conference sessions.

The hotel has plenty of hang-out space split between the interior lobby and the outdoor courtyard. The pool will be a welcome amenity come July, and there is an indoor gym, hot breakfast, all-day coffee, and a bar. There are a couple restaurants and convenience stores within walking distance, or biking distance on one of the hotel's bicycles. 

James and Katy trying out the food at a possible reception venue, Monell's at the Manor, which is a family-style restaurant in a historic mansion. If we move forward with this venue, we would have exclusive access--only Users' Conference attendees and restaurant staff would be present, and there is a ton of room to spread out and for air to circulate. They serve fantastic Southern food in a unique and fun environment.

I hope you enjoyed this sneak preview! As we get further along planning the conference we'll have more to share, but for now, please tell us about your plans and preferences by answering the Pre-conference Planning Survey!

Reports are always a popular topic as a KLAS Users' Conference session, so we thought they'd be a great pick for our next Keystone-presented webinar! I may not be an Intrepid Reporter (like so many 80s heroines...), but I'll be demonstrating some of the powerful reports built into KLAS, fielding questions, and hosting a discussion on what new reports you may like to see added in future versions of KLAS. All are welcome; I'll be aiming to show and discuss reports for both IRC and LBPH users.

Is there a specific report you want to know more about? A reporting or statistics question you want to ask? I'm very happy to receive requests and questions ahead of time! In addition to giving me the chance to research your question, it also ensures I can answer your question for the recording -- even if you aren't able to join us live.

Of course, you're also welcome to do your best to stump me during the webinar itself. If you do, I'll be sure to get an answer to you afterwards.

You'll find all the info you need to attend in the Webinars & Roundtables article. Once the webinar is over, the article will be updated to include a link to the recording. Finally, you may notice on that page that our December webinar is going to be a TBL Users' Roundtable on Duplication Updates! We've assembled a great panel of both Scribe and Gutenberg users ready to share their experiences with you--watch for more info about this on the KLASusers listserve in the weeks to come.

I look forward to "reporting" to you next Thursday, November 19 at 3 PM Eastern Standard Time!

Now that we have several confirmed attendees, we have scheduled the first online IRC / IMC Administrator's Training!

Upcoming Session

We're exited to announce to announce our first KLAS Administrator Training for Instructional Resource / Instructional Materials Center users in quite some time will be held Monday, November 28 - Thursday, December 1, 2022.

Prerequisites for attendance:

• Attendee must have a KLAS Administrator role in their local system
• Attendee has authority to change records and policies for their KLAS system

Training Structure & Content

The training is scheduled across the afternoon's of four days, allowing users from various time zones to comfortably attend, and allowing time for you to absorb and practice in-between sessions. Exact session topics and order is subject to change, but the current schedule is as follows:

Monday
1:00-2:30 PM ET: Catalog-focused Settings
3:00-4:30 PM ET: Patron-focused Settings / APH Census

Tuesday
1:00-2:30 PM ET: Materials Requests
3:00-4:30 PM ET: Acquisitions

Wednesday
1:00-2:30 PM ET: WebOPAC / WebOrder
3:00-4:30 PM ET: Other Administrator Controls

Thursday
1:00-2:30 PM ET: Security Control / User Permissions
3:00-4:30 PM ET: Reports / Query / Excel

For more information, please see the Administrator’s Training – What to Expect article.

Training Cost

The training still costs $600 per attendee, which covers the staff time needed to prepare for and run the training sessions. It comes with an Administrator’s Reference manual, which will be mailed to you (or provided electronically if that’s more accessible for you), pre-class worksheets, and recordings of each session.

Registration Form

To register for the upcoming session or express interest in another date, please fill out the following form:

• KLAS Administrator's Training Registration Form

If you have any trouble accessing the form or if you have questions, please let us know! We hope to see you soon.

How are you training your new staff to use KLAS—and how can we help?

We will continue to post Key Note blog posts and weekly tips, tricks, and questions on the discussion forum, and we hope these posts will be both a resource for you and a jumping-off point for you to share and collaborate on resources and methods with each other. But there’s more coming!

I have a lot of ideas about different materials and resources that I could create, but I want to make sure that I’m putting my time into the projects that will benefit you. A few of the possibilities are listed below, but I’m very interested to hear your ides as well! Have a look through the list, then please chime in on the forums.

How do you train your staff? What materials do you already use or what materials would you like to have? What are your needs or wants in terms of evaluation, continuing education, certification?

Idea 1: Video Series relaunch

KLAS staff have created instructional videos before, but there are a lot of challenges for this kind of project. It takes a lot of time and work to create even a short instructional video, and they aren’t easily customizable for different libraries the way a text How-to document is. Every library and other institution that uses KLAS is unique, and has unique settings, workflows, and standards—this is a strength of the software, but it makes it hard to provide generalized instruction.

Because of these challenges, a renewed effort to provide an instructional video series would probably keep a high-level view (i.e. “What is in this module” and “How to use the screen” but not step-by-step instructions for specific tasks or processes such as “How to check out a book”) meant to introduce staff to the different parts of KLAS and how to use basic controls standard throughout the system.

Idea 2: Assemble-your-own KLAS Scavenger Hunts

The KLAS Scavenger Hunt is a skill evaluation method we have used in the past. As context, the 2014 Scavenger Hunt and answers are available for download at the end of this post.

Because these are text documents, I could create various sections addressing different common set-ups and procedures. Then, from the “Master Test,” individual libraries could pick and choose the questions that apply to their situation. This would help to share the work of customization and would hopefully be flexible enough to meet many needs and remain sustainable through upgrades.

Idea 3: Online Evaluations

These would face many of the same challenges as the Video Series. Depending on what platform I find to help me create them, some customization would hopefully be possible, but a significant re-do for each interested library and IRC would be unlikely except as part of the subscription below.

These would essentially be an augmented, self-contained version of the Scavenger Hunt, though they would need to remain at least a little more general. They would facilitate evaluation of staff skills, and potentially even a certification if such a thing is of use, without needing a supervisor to grade the test themselves.

Idea 4: Training Subscription

Finally, this is an idea that Drea has been mulling over. A training subscription would be a paid, annual service which would allow us to provide customized training targeted directly to your needs. The subscription could potentially include a series of webinars (either quarterly or scheduled as needed), which would be recorded and available to your staff from then on, as well as one or more custom Online Evaluations.

Our current price list for our current training services is attached below; several of you have been taking advantage of these options, and they are still available. However, we recognize that training is often an ongoing need, rather than a one-time event. Our thinking is that an annual subscription could help you build training into your annual budget, while also helping us to plan out what we will need to provide through the year.

Wrap-up

Remembering that these are ideas for brainstorming and not formal offerings: which would you most like to see? Do you have your own ideas? Would you be interested in a paid training subscription, and if so, what would you like to be included?

We also want to hear what you are doing for training now—and we know your peers will be interested as well! So whatever your situation, drop on by the forum and join the conversation.

Please Note: The scavenger hunt questions and answers are included for context purposes, and are not considered "ready to use" at this time.

Please be sure to login to download content. Thanks

We're dedicated to supporting each type of organization that uses KLAS. Here are a few examples of our ongoing efforts to connect with and serve our IRC / IMC users:

• Keystone staff attends the American Printing House for the Blind Annual Meeting where we host the IRC KLAS Users' Meeting.
• The KLAS Users' Conference Program committee makes it a priority to seek out / provide KLAS content that appeals our talking book library, resource center, and association users as well as content specific to each.
• In late October, Keystone is hosting an IRC Symposium at our office in Raleigh.

I wanted to take a few minutes today to highlight two upcoming IRC / IMC KLAS user events.

KLAS IRC / IMC Users' at 2019 APH Annual Meeting

On October 10th, Nancy and I will host the KLAS IRC / IMC Users' Meeting at the 2019 APH Annual Meeting. We invite you to join us at 8 AM in the Hialeah Room of the Hyatt to hear the latest updates about Keystone and KLAS, see new features being demonstrated, and provide us feedback about possible future development. Please let us know if you plan to attend before September 30, so we can have enough breakfast and (most importantly) coffee available.

Current meeting agenda includes:

• Welcome & Introductions
• Update on Keystone over the past year - news, new projects & customers, etc.
• Demonstration of new features in KLAS
• Question & Answer session - open discussion of what you need / want from KLAS

If there is anything in particular you want to ask about or to have us cover, please let us know! Your shared experience helps guide future development of KLAS (especially for IRCs / IMCs), and we value your input.

We will also offer four one-hour one-on-one consultation meetings on Thursday, starting at 1:00 PM. To sign up for one of these time slots, please contact me and let me know your preferred time (Ex: 1:00-2:00 PM). Meetings will be scheduled on a first-come, first-served basis.

IRC Symposium

Want an opportunity for even more in-depth training, round-table discussions, user feedback opportunities, and networking with Keystone staff and other IRC / IMC staff? Then make plans to attend the two-day KLAS IRC Symposium on October 29-30 at our office in Raleigh, NC.

We ask that all attendees have a KLAS Administrator role in their local system and authority to change records and policies for their KLAS system.

Interested? 

Here's the planned agenda:

Please be sure to login to download content. Thanks

We're offering this specially focused training workshop for $300 / attendee. Check out the "KLAS IRC Symposium" article for further details including travel and accommodations and the link to register.

I sincerely hope to see you at one or both of these events.

Hello, KLASusers! Although we are in an off-year between full KLAS Users’ Conferences, we still want provide opportunities for you to keep up-to-date on KLAS New Features, provide feedback and development requests, and network with each other. With that in mind, just like our last non-conference year, we are working with the Programming Committee to facilitate monthly webinars and will be hosting a “bite-sized” mini-conference this summer.

This began with last month’s Keystone-presented webinar on Cataloging for Duplication, and will continue following a pattern of one LBPD user-presented, one IRC user-presented, and one Keystone-presented webinar per quarter.

APH Roundtable Webinar

For this quarter’s IRC webinar, we have a Roundtable on the APH Census, with discussion on how you go about the census process and how KLAS can better support that work. That roundtable is scheduled for Tuesday, February 22^nd, at 3pm Eastern Time, and will be moderated by Jared Leslie, Director of Media and Development at the Foundation for Blind Children in AZ, along with Sally Shreck, Specialized Media Coordinator at the Maryland School for the Blind IRC, and Allen Huang, Director of Accessible Instructional Materials and Outreach Services, and Kathy Segers, Educational Consultant, at Tennessee Resource Center for the Visually Impaired. We hope you’ll be able to join in, learn from their approaches, and provide your own perspective!

Connection details will be posted about one week before the webinar.

Save the Date: KLAS Mini-Conference

Like 2020’s mini-conference, we plan to take an afternoon in early May to share Keystone Updates and KLAS New Features. This year, we are also adding a second afternoon, which will include a Users’ Group Meeting to review and vote on a bylaws change, and a few user-led Birds-of-a-Feather sessions.

We plan to stagger IRC, General, and LBPD content as much as possible to ensure you get as much out of this as possible with the least time investment. While the exact schedule is still to be determined, we currently have the week of May 9^th(the week before the NLS Conference) earmarked for our two-day, bite-sized, online mini-con.

Admin Training

While broader webinars and networking events are great, sometimes you need a more specific, hands-on, deep dive into KLAS and how to make it work best for your specific situation.

A fantastic way to do that is to join us for Administrator’s Training! 

This year’s dates for Admins at LBPD libraries are:

• June 6-9, 2022
• September 12-15, 2022

We want to host a session for IRC Admins as well, but we need you to help us set the dates! If you can commit to a session, please let us know so we can work with you to set up dates.

Our Online Administrator's Training article has more info about training structure, pricing, and a link to register. Because of the significant time investment needed from Keystone staff to host Admin Training, we will need at least two confirmed attendees for any session to proceed.

Hoping to learn something new or touch base with Keystone staff? We've got some great training and networking opportunities on the calendar, with more in the works! Let's take a look at what we have coming up:

Online KLAS LBPD Administrator Training - March 27-30

The next online session of KLAS Administrator training for staff of Libraries for the Blind and Print Disabled will be held the afternoons of March 27-30. If you act as the KLAS Admin for your library and have never taken (or it's been a long while since you've attended) KLAS Admin Training, we encourage you to join us!

This training is done via Zoom, sessions are recorded and provided to attendees for later review, and allows you to get down and dirty in parts of KLAS aimed to help you improve service for your patrons and give you the knowledge to better support your staff and library as they use KLAS. Cost is $600 / attendee and each must have the authority to change records and policies for their KLAS system.

Find out more and then register for a session via these articles:

• Online Administrator's Training
• Administrator’s Training – What to Expect

E-Braille Circulation Roundtable - Date TBD

During the year of a KLAS Users' Conference, the Program Committee focuses their efforts on eliciting sessions for and building the agenda for the conference, instead of offering an online program every month. However, we still aim to host one webinar each quarter (other than the one in which the conference takes place) to address more timely concerns and help keep everyone in-touch and up-to-date. 

For our first quarter offering this year, we're seeking panelists for a Roundtable discussing the best ways to prepare for the NLS refreshable braille devices and manage E-Braille circulation. The session will be scheduled based on panelist availability.

If you want to participate, please contact our session organizers, James Gleason at Perkins Library and Katy Patrick at Keystone Systems. We'd also love to hear what questions you might have, topics you want to see discussed, or tips you have to share!

National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled Regional Conferences

We're excited to have the opportunity to again attend NLS conferences in person to see and connect with you. Keystone will send two staff members to each of the three regional conferences this year. In addition to hosting the KLAS Users' Meetings, we hope to attend conference sessions, be available for informal discussions, and learn about your challenges, new initiatives, and more!

Dates / times of each KLAS User meeting:

• WesternRegional NLS Conference - Wednesday, April 26, at 5 PM
• Northern / SouthernRegional NLS Conference - Wednesday, May 3, at 11:30 AM
• Midlands Regional NLS Conference - Tuesday, May 16, at 2 PM (tentative; final schedule pending)

2023 KLAS Users' Conference - July 17-20

This one's a no-brainer, but you know we can't help it. This is the biggest opportunity we've had for in-person training and networking since our 2019 conference and it will offer even more ways to connect with other KLAS Users' since it's our first HYBRID conference! The KLAS Users' Program Committee and Keystone staff are working hard to plan learning experiences for all types and levels of KLAS Users.

We hope you will help us make it excellent by joining us in-person or online, submitting an in-person or virtual session proposal, or sharing a session topic suggestion! 

More conference info:

• KLAS UC2023: Preliminary Conference Info
• KLAS UC2023: Call for Session Proposals
• 2023 Conference Session Ideas Forum Post - reply with your suggestions or requests for session topics!

We hope to see you soon at one of these training & networking opportunities! 

Let’s talk training!

We try to have lots of resources available for everyone, and of course our Customer Support team is always happy to answer questions, but we think the availability of online webinars and other training opportunities are also incredibly valuable. That’s especially true between conferences, as we are now on a biennial schedule.  

With that in mind, let’s take a look at what’s coming up, and what other opportunities are available for you.

Upcoming Webinar

Our next Keystone-presented Webinar is scheduled for Thursday, August 19^th at 3pm Eastern Time. I’ll be covering New Features released since the conference, so if you haven’t been keeping up with those Release Lists (or if you have questions about any of the new features) please make sure to join us!

As usual, if you can’t make it, the session will be recorded and posted here on KLASusers to view at your convenience as well. I’m always happy to take questions or requests ahead of time if there’s something specific you want me to address.

Possible Future Webinars

We plan to continue regular New Features webinars, but what else would you like to see in terms of Keystone-presented webinars?

We’re likely to do the occasional open Q&A Session and perhaps a dedicated Duplication Q&A. We’re also discussing a webinar series specifically for new users. Would these be valuable for you? What other topics would you benefit from the most?

Please let us know in the comments section or send us an email describing what you hope to see from us!  

Custom Webinars

Of course, while webinars open to the full Users’ Group have their advantages, sometimes you need something more specific for your staff or organization. Customer-specific webinars can get deeper into just your questions and provide answers and training tailored to your settings and workflow.

To support the transition to Duplication, we're offering Duplication Training webinars to each library as they get their duplication equipment. But, we also know one-hour likely isn't enough to learn everything you need to know. If you need a refresher or follow-up session, please let us know and we'll get something scheduled. 

Need something else? There's the option of arranging custom webinars or a webinar series on whatever topic you need--whether it's new staff training, review, or something in-between. This is a paid service, so let us know if you're interested and we'll send our current online training rates.

Other Training Options

Want to be sure you have regular training built in the budget? You can include a set number of Training Hours in your contract to be scheduled as needed during the year. This is a great option for libraries with a lot of turnover or special projects, or who have a harder time getting one-off expenses approved. 

Finally, with vaccinations widely available we can start offering In-person Training again. Like custom webinars, in-person training is flexible for your needs with the added benefit of introducing us to your space and helping us learn your workflows and systems a whole lot better. This is our preferred option for Assistive Technology Training since it allows us to set up the AT user's workstation and software in addition to talking them through using it. 

I hope this breakdown has helped you understand how Keystone can help you and your organizations keep up to speed! Please let us know what Webinar topics you'd like to see from us--and get in touch if you need a quote for something tailored to fit.