Keystone Systems wishes to recognize the support that volunteers and staff provide to their organizations. We do so with the Julie Klauber Award. Each organization may nominate one staff member or volunteer. Please use the Julie Klauber Award Nomination form to do so.

Nomination Deadline: Friday, May 21

Award nominees should:

• Work with KLAS in their daily job functions
• Show an outstanding service to their organization and / or their community in the spirit of Julie Klauber during his / her time with the library.

The Julie Klauber Award Recipient will be honored as part of an online award ceremony held Tuesday, June 7 during the 2021 KLAS Users’ Conference and receive a personalized plaque to commemorate their achievement. For 2021, we especially wish to recognize someone who went above and beyond during the last year’s challenges.

Award finalists will be selected from all nominated individuals by a selection committee¹. James Burts, Keystone Systems, will determine this year's recipient after consulting all the finalists' supervisors.

Printable flyer and online award nomination link:

• 2021JulieKlauberAward.pdf
• Julie Klauber Award Nomination Form

Who was Julie Klauber and why is this award named after her?

Valerie Lewis sent the below text in an email to the klasusers listserv on January 24, 2011:

It has been more than eight years since Julie passed away. Her name comes up every day.....truly, it does. I work with 5 other people who worked with Julie for many years. I sit in the office that was once hers. Her husband and sons are often in my home. I work with her husband Avery, to continue the important work that she and he started many years before I was lucky enough to meet them.

Julie was a librarian, but more she was the truest advocate for access to library programs, services and materials for all, particularly people with disabilities.

In addition to being the librarian for the sub-regional library that served Long Island, NY, Julie and her husband established a non-profit organization that provided information and referral resources for librarians, service providers and individuals living with disabilities.......long before and into the earlier days....of the internet.

Julie spent truly all of her time making sure that people with disabilities had access to information.....all information. She created partnerships with local and national corporations that brought assistive technology to local libraries. She created library resources in alternative formats and worked with libraries and librarians across the country, to promote accessible library services.

It has been my honor to be a member of the Julie Klauber Award Committee. It has given me the opportunity to read about lbph staff and volunteers who create new and innovative ways of making library materials, services and programs accessible to their patrons. Something still so difficult to do, even in these technologically advanced times.

You may think that the daily practices and procedures of operating a library for the blind and physically disabled are hum-drum and nothing out of the ordinary, but think again. It is through the work and creativity of each and every member or your organization, that people with disabilities have access to information....something we treasure so dearly and take so for granted.

On that note, we encourage you to think about how the wheels of your organization turn and who are the people turning it.

With warm regards,

Valerie Lewis, Director
Long Island Talking Book Library

 2021 Julie Klauber Award Committee Members include:

• Teresa Kalber, Colorado Talking Book Library
• Lisa Nelson - Utah State Library Program for the Blind and Disabled
• Chandra Thornton, Palm Beach County Library System
• Kimberly Tomlinson, Wisconsin Talking Book and Braille Library
• Pepper Watson - Oklahoma Library for the Blind, Accessible Instructional Materials Center
• Andrea Ewing Callicutt - Keystone Systems, Inc.

As announced yesterday (and clearly visible from visiting the site) KLASUsers.com has undergone a pretty big redesign and refresh. We've added new features and functionality, but also reassessed how we organize content to make it easier to find and use. Some of the most important things to know about the redesign are:

1. The new Knowledge Base & KLAS News menu items
2. Logged-in users can now comment on articles
3. Using article tags to find what you need
4. The site's enhanced search functionality
5. The log-in function is now available from every page, and won't redirect you from whatever you are currently viewing
6. A Support button on all pages gives you a quick shortcut to contact Keystone Customer Support anytime you need help

Today I want to talk about the first four on the list... 

Knowledge Base & KLAS News

All still-relevant articles from the old klasusers.com are still available, but the old menu items have been collected under the new overarching categories of Knowledge Base and KLAS News.  This simplifies the Main Menu, and should keep you from needing to guess whether the info you need is in a document or a recording.

The main page for each of the new menu items will display the most recent articles in that general category, and a link to the related subcategories can be found at the bottom of the page.

Under Knowledge Base, you will find two subcategories:

1. Recordings, including general and customer specific training and webinars
2. Documents, including MARC Record Updates, Release Lists, and quick reference

KLAS News' subcategories include:

1. Key Notes Blog posts
2. Events
3. KLAS Users' Group info

The five most recently added or updated articles in each category are also listed in the site's footer, so you can easily jump to the new content from any page. We hope this reorganization will help you get to the content you want quicker and easier, without needing to remember where things are filed away.

Article Commenting

We're excited to see how this new feature adds to our site! Logged in users now have the ability to comment on any article on KLASUsers.com.

If you aren't logged in, you can still view any posted comments, but to add a comment you will need to log in, either from the comments section or the link at the top of the page. All comments can be viewed from the article page itself, or in the forum, so it's easy to find the latest discussion! New comments are visible right away with no approval necessary, although our site administrators can moderate comments if needed.

We hope you will find this a great new way to ask for more information or provide feedback--we'd truly love to hear when you find an article interesting or useful, or if there's something you'd like to add to the discussion. We challenge you to make this the first article you comment on!

Article Tags

You will now see subject Tags listed on all article previews and at the top of all full articles. These words or phrases are ways of categorizing articles and such with similar content. For, example you can select the "duplication on demand" tag to see a list of all articles with that tag applied.

We have actually been tagging articles all along, but the new site puts them "front and center" so you can easily spot them or quickly click through to a category you want to browse more of. We've also reviewed the tags we used previously to streamline them and make sure we're using the feature in the most useful way. If you find examples of misapplied or missing tags, please let us know. Also, don't be afraid to speak up if you feel we need to add a new tag!

Enhanced Search Capabilities

This might be the thing I am most excited about (unless it's article comments... we're really excited about the comments). I love when I can easily create and execute a search to find just what I'm looking without any muss or fuss. The search bar allows you to seamlessly search for anything from anywhere with a simple keyword search.

You can also choose to employ additional Search Options such as looking for all (or any) instances of the word or the exact phrase as typed to narrow down the results to exactly what you want to see. You can also choose how you want your results displayed. Options include: Newest or oldest first, most popular, alphabetical, etc. If you only want to look in a certain area of the site, there's also options to limit your search that way. Finally, you can also control how many results you see on each page using the "Display #" drop-down.

We know y'all are busy, so the faster and easier it is to find what you need, the better. We hope the new site search will allow you to jump right to the info you need.

Final Notes

We've put a lot of thought and effort into the refresh, but with increasing "technical difficulties" from the old site, we went live before we had the chance to test the site as well as we would have liked. If you encounter any problems with the new site or spot something we missed! In particular, if something is not accessible, please let us know! The reorganization and the big changes to the look and feel of the site may take a little getting used to, but we hope you'll all agree that this is a big step forward for KLASUsers.com.

Upcoming Webinars & Roundtables

New Webinar & Roundtable Platform: In an effort to provide a better experience for online training, webinar, and roundtable participants we are moving from join.me to Google Meet. You will NOT need a Google account to join a Keystone hosted Google Meet. We hope this change will address some of the bandwidth and other issues we know some attendees have experienced with join.me. As an additional bonus, Google Meet offers auto closed captioning.

2/18/2021 KLAS New Features with Katy

3 PM ET / Noon Pacific Thursday, Feburary 18

During this session, she will describe and demonstrate new features and functionality added to KLAS. If there's something specific you wish her to discuss or demonstrate, feel free to email your question to  

Google Meet Link: https://meet.google.com/rwk-bpmz-oco
Join by phone: +1 314-226-1417‬ PIN: ‪769 402 631‬#‪

Previously Held Webinars & Roundtables

Recordings and / or PowerPoints from the below previously held webinars and KLAS Users' Roundtables are available. You must be logged into klasusers.com to access any of these articles.

• 12/15/2020 KLAS Users' Roundtable: Duplication on Demand Updates
• 11/19/2020 Keystone Webinar: Reports
• 10/22/2020 KLAS IRC Users' Roundtable
• 09/17/2020 KLAS Users' Roundtable: Virtual Programming
• 8/12/2020 KLAS New Features Update
• 05/19/2020 KLAS Online KLAS Users' Group Meetings
• 4/23/2020 KLAS IRC Users' Roundtable
• 03/19/2020 KLAS Users' Roundtable: Duplication on Demand
• 02/20/2020 KLAS Q&A with Katy

"Duplication" is the word of the day / week / month / year for National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled network libraries. Whether you've already made the fundamental shift to providing duplication on demand materials for your patrons or are still trying to make decisions about how to shift your library to a duplication on demand service model, there's many questions, decisions, and challenges faced during the process.

With this in mind, the KLAS Users' Group Program Committee is providing another opportunity for KLAS Users' to come together in a session focused on this topic. Go ahead and mark your calendar now for the upcoming KLAS Users' Roundtable: Duplication on Demand to be held on Tuesday, December 15 at 3 PM Eastern / Noon Pacific.

Note: We expect this session to last two hours rather than the usual one. Also, we plan to record this roundtable and post it to klasusers.com for later reference.

During this roundtable, three representatives of libraries using Gutenberg and three representatives of libraries using Scribe will each discuss their experience implementing duplication equipment, decisions regarding policy and staff changes, and more! After each shares a brief description of their process, there will be an opportunity to ask questions, discuss issues they've brought up, etc.

Gutenberg Panellists:

• Hope Williams, Nevada Talking Book Services
• Elke Bruton, Oregon Talking Book & Braille Library
• Ricardo Cisneros, San Francsico Public Library - Talking Book and Braille Center

Scribe Panellists:

• Connie Sullivan, South Dakota Braille & Talking Book Library
• Angela Fisher Hall, Alabama Regional Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped
• Nancy Holt, Idaho Talking Book Library

Before the roundtable...

To help you prepare for this roundtable we encourage you to review Duplication Info Quick Reference page where you will find articles, quick tips, how-to documents, and more related to using either Gutenberg or Scribe. Several of the documents have just been updated to reflect changes in recent versions of KLAS, so make sure to check those dates to make sure you have the most current info!

You can also help our panellists prepare for this session by posting questions to this KLASUsers Discussion Forum post. Of course, day-of questions are also welcome, but posting your questions ahead of time will ensure that we get to them (even if you can't make the session itself) and that the panellists will be able to consider their answers.

Access Info:

Tuesday, 12/15/2020 @ 3pm Eastern Time / Noon Pacific

To connect:
Google Meet Link: meet.google.com/rmv-fgvs-eba

Dial-in audio option:
‪US‬ ‪+1 575-459-0037‬
PIN: ‪950 920 249#‬‪

Drea and I are in Washington, DC exhibiting at the ASAE TEC 2019 trade show, meeting Association KLASusers and potential users. We'll be back with a regular blog post next week!

Join us next Tuesday for our regularly scheduled Key Notes blog posts.

Why do you attend the annual KLAS Users' Conference? Here is what some our of conference attendees had to say:

• "I attend because it's my one opportunity to share face-to-face my issues and triumphs with others in a way that email and online just can't." - Craig, NC
• "I attend the KLAS Users' Conference to network with other Talking Books Libraries, which provides me with new ideas to serve the visually impaired." - Sarah, FL
• "Through collaboration with colleagues and Keystone staff, I learn new, better, and more efficient ways to utilize KLAS that I can bring back to my co-workers." - Teresa, CO
• "Learn about new features in KLAS. Network with other users and discover functions you have not tried before." - Edith, CA
• "I go to talk to the other attendees and see what's going on at their libraries." - Erin, OK
• "I like to attend the conference because I like to hear about the different ways other libraries handle their workflow. Always come back with some good ideas to shake things up." - Sharon, IL
• "As the only staff librarian in Oregon, I often feel like I work in isolation. The work LBPH libraries do doesn’t translate very well to other library work and relating to my in-state colleagues leaves me unfulfilled. The KLAS Users’ Conference is a great way for me to recharge my batteries and other professionals who can relate to the joys and challenges of LBPH work." - Elke, OR
• "Attending the KLAS Users' Conferences provides me the opportunity to encounter awesome ideas and tips...tangible ideas I can take home to improve my library's services...from Keystone staff and personnel from other libraries for the blind." - Andrew, OK
• "The KUC is a chance to get together. We gather to discuss issues technical, and mundane. We laugh, we confer, and we hear from the staff at Keystone. Moreover we are exposed to new places (new to some), new ideas, and new ways to do things." - James, MA
• "The KLAS Users group gives us an opportunity to learn more about our ILS. We can do a better job for our library patrons if we can make the best use of the catalog." - Pat, GA

We hope you join us for June 3-6 for the 2019 KLAS Users' Conference hosted by the Palm Beach County Library Talking Book Service in West Palm Beach, FL!

1. Be quiet. Your job is to help the conversation happen.
2. Be firm. Let them know you are the leader and hope to make this worthwhile.
3. Be prepared. Know the subject. It is hard to steer a discussion that you don't understand. Have ready possible questions, or whatever conversation starters you think will work.
4. Be able to multitask. This is a biggie. You will need to listen to the current discussion, while watching the time, how long the current discussion has gone on, and how to move on.
5. Be deferential. You're not the star. The audience is. You're just there to keep things moving along.
6. Keep on track. While you're not the star, you need to be the audience's advocate on time, answers, and issues. Cut off chatterers. Cut off discussion if it is going on too long or off track. Indicate that maybe this topic is something to bring up at the end of the session or in another venue.
7. Be timely. This is so important. Get the session started on time, keep it moving, and get it done on time. Let people see you confidently keep the discussion moving.
8. Be fun. If you don't have fun, your panel won't have fun, and your audience won't have fun. The world does not need more unfun conference panels.

Suggestions:

• Have two moderators. Depending on the group’s size split the group for a period of time and then meet together as whole for a group wide discussion.
• Have something to give to those willing to participate. It doesn’t have to be much or expensive, e.g. penny candy, pencils, bookmarks, etc. Reward those who are willing to talk.

Adapted from: 10 Rules for Being a Great Panel Moderator (Accessed: December 4, 2008)