August Course Promotions

National Wellness Month

National Wellness Month

Course Date: On Demand

Duration: 7 min

Description: In this course, you’ll get an overview of the significance of National Wellness Month. You’ll also explore how health practices and the wellness movement led to a month dedicated to enhancing well-being. By the end of this course, you’ll be able to identify ways to participate in the observation and improve your personal wellness. The OpenDoors Celebrations Series builds opportunities to learn about, recognize, and celebrate a diverse range of holidays and observances. These courses help foster and support belonging, empathy, and allyship in both your work environment and community.

Click here to register for the course.

Building Good Habits

Course Date: On Demand

Course Duration: 6 min

Description: Habits are behaviors that you consistently and regular engage in. Some habits can be great, whereas others can be detrimental to your life, health and career. In this course we’re going to look at some simple ways to gain new good habits.

Click here to register for the course.

How to Break Bad Habits

Course Date: On Demand

Course Duration: 13 min

Description: Who Is The Course For? Anyone looking to break bad habits and form new ones in their place, Professionals wanting to create positive, helpful habits that promote productivity and efficiency, Anyone wanting to better themselves through their actions and behaviours, Anyone looking to change their identity through effective habits

Click here to register for the course.

The Unselfish Act of Self-Care

Description: 8 min

Description: When your role in life centers around helping others, “self-care” probably sounds like the last thing you have time for. But this important practice actually serves as the backbone to a well-rounded life and helps you show up better for others. In this course, you’ll learn how to refute the common misconception that self-care is selfish and develop an understanding of its significance in your life. You’ll explore how self-care improves your confidence, productivity, and relationships. And finally, you’ll discover steps you can take to begin integrating more self-care activities into your life. After this course, you’ll have the knowledge and tools to take care of yourself as well as you take care of others.

Click here to register for the course.

Create a Daily Habit Tracker in Excel

Course Date: On Demand

Course Duration: 15 min

Description: This lesson is a guide to building a habit tracker using Excel. You can add checkboxes for each day of the week, allowing you to visually mark off completed daily habits and receive a percentage update. Whether you want to track your fitness routine, study habits, or any other daily activities, this tutorial is customisable to suit your needs. Learn essential tips, such as hiding unnecessary information for a clean look and using formulas to calculate the percentage of completed tasks for the week. By the end of this lesson, you'll have a functional Daily Habit Tracker – ideal for supercharging your productivity – that you can adapt to monitor your progress.

Click here to register for the course.

Stress Management & Self-Care: How to Worry Less

Course Date: On Demand

Course Duration: 14 min

Description: Do you often find yourself caught in the grip of relentless worry, unable to escape the cycle of anxiety and stress? Would you like to regain control over your thoughts and discover practical strategies for reducing worry in your life? This course will empower you with proven strategies to help overcome worry and reclaim your peace of mind. Don't let worry hold you hostage any longer. Enroll now to embark on a path to greater peace of mind.

Click here to register for the course.

Habits of Highly Effective and Successful People

Course Duration: 12 min

Description: Throughout this course, you'll discover that habits are the essential building blocks of life, driving success and fulfillment. Learn the importance of a consistent daily routine, how to set clear and inspiring goals, and develop proactive time management skills. Adapt continuous learning, networking, resilience, and effective communication. Embrace mindfulness and well-being, and reflecting and celebrating success will round out your toolkit for success.  

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Simplify Your Life with Self-Care Strategies

Course Date: On Demand

Course Duration: 14 min

Description: Simplify Your Life With Self-Care Strategies is an audio-only course. Does your life often feel complicated and unmanageable? This course is part of the Black Girl Burnout series, a collection of podcasts dedicated to helping Black women manage the stress of daily living and preventing the detrimental effects of burnout. In this course, licensed therapist, social worker, and burnout expert Kelley Bonner offers four self-care strategies to simplify your daily life and refocus your attention on rest, relaxation, and joy. While some of life’s challenges are impossible to avoid, Bonner believes that simple exercises like practicing gratitude, prioritizing rest, and avoiding comparison can create a greater sense of ease, even in times of hardship. You’ll leave this course with four self-care strategies to improve your day-to-day experience.

Click here to register for the course.

Database Training

Creativebug - Online Arts and Crafts Classes

Course Date: On Demand

Course Duration: 10 min

Description: Creativebug is a collection of arts and crafts video tutorials, giving our guests on-demand access to expert instruction in drawing, painting, sewing, knitting, crocheting, quilting, baking, and more. Take this training from Niche Academy for an overview of creating an account and how to use on the computer, Androids and Apple products.

Click here to register for the course.

AncestryLibrary – Access Genealogical Records of Billions

Course Date: On Demand

Course Duration: 20 min

Description: AncestryLibrary gives our guests access to more than 9,000 databases and 200 billion images from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Europe, and Australia. 

Click here to register for the course.

Programming

Niche Academy Webinar – Passive Library Programming

Course Date: On Demand

Course Duration: 1 hour

Description: Passive programming is so much more dynamic than the name might lead you to believe! It is a budget-friendly way to make every library user feel seen, welcomed and important – without putting pressure on their stretched schedules or overloaded attention spans. It works its gentle magic by soliciting opinions, fostering creativity, encouraging humor, and establishing a library community defined by engagement and empathy. Paula Willey and Andria Amaral, authors of The Passive Programming Playbook: 101 Ways to Get Library Customers Off the Sidelines, show how to turn your high concept goals into inclusive reality with practical examples of passive programming that works, taking a problem-solving approach to space, time, and money limitations - including how to create interactive programming when the doors to the library are locked.

Click here to register for the course.

Niche Academy Webinar – Relighting Your Programming Fire

Course Date: On Demand

Course Duration: 1 hour

Description: In this webinar, Chelsea Price, tiny library director and author of 209 Big Programming Ideas for Small Budgets, offers up strategies for combatting burnout and feelings of job-related guilt, helpful resources for relighting your programming fire, and awesome program ideas to fit any budget. Attendees of this webinar will learn how to handle a bad case of the "shoulds" and how to rethink productivity during these trying times. In addition, staff from libraries of any size should leave this webinar feeling invigorated and inspired, with a long list of resources and ideas!

Click here to register for the course.

Bilingual Storytimes: Reaching Through the Language Barrier

Course Date: On Demand

Course Duration: 1 hour

Description: As our library clientele becomes more diverse, so must our programming. The good news is that you already have the skills and access to the resources you need to research, plan, and deliver targeted programming in languages other than English. In this webinar, we'll focus on how to adapt your current storytimes for Spanish/English storytimes. You can use this same process to deliver storytimes in any language.

Click here to register for the course.

Maximizing and Measuring Virtual Programs​

Course Date: On Demand

Course Duration: 56 min 

Description: This on-demand webinar from Niche Academy is designed to help libraries develop targeted outcomes to use when designing online programs to maximize the learning opportunities and measure the resulting value of them from attendees.

Click here to register for the course.

Ryan Dowd Training Highlights

Backup: How coworkers SHOULD provide back up during conflict

Course Date: On Demand

Course Duration: 1 hour

Description: In this training we will discuss: How most people do backup (and why it is wrong!) The three things a coworker providing backup should do (and one they should NOT do!) How and when to switch roles (e.g., the situation is escalating)

Click here to register for the course.

Supervisor Training: Tips for Managers

Course Date: On Demand

Course Duration: 1 hour

Description: This webinar was originally presented in October 2019 as part of Ryan Dowd’s ongoing monthly trainings. You will learn how to coach your staff, the different between “red” rules and “blue” rules, and after incident reviews.

Click here to register for the course.

Homeless De-Escalation 401: Managing Your Own Emotions During Conflict

Course Date: On Demand

Course Duration: 1 hour

Description: This webinar was originally presented in April 2023 as part of Ryan Dowd’s ongoing monthly trainings. You will learn how two strategies for staying calm when conflict starts, how to know you’ve passed the “effectiveness threshold” and how to exit the situation, plus much more! 

Click here to register for the course.

People First

Niche Academy Webinar – New Services for Patrons with Intellectual Disability

Course Date: On Demand

Course Duration: 1 hour

Description:) This presentation addresses the issue of library services to those with intellectual disability (ID), the subject of a recently published book by Matt Conner and Leah Plocharczyk. Library service to those with ID is at once a pressing problem in great need of attention and a great challenge to the library profession which, in a time of heightened awareness of diversity, has implications for our entire professional identity. 

Click here to register for the course.

Customer Service 101

Course Date: On Demand

Course Duration: 30 min

Description: This resource from Lethbridge Public Library discusses a welcoming mindset, the powering of listening, and dealing with angry customers.

Click here to register for the course.

Identifying and Understanding Patrons with Autism

Course Date: On Demand

Course Duration: 40 min

Description: This Niche Academy training by the Monarch Center for Autism includes a presentation on understanding autism and how libraries can be welcoming. 

Click here to register for the course.

Niche Academy Webinar – Soft Skills: The Tools Every Librarian Should Have

Course Date: On Demand

Course Duration: 1 hour

Description: Being a successful librarian means more than knowing how to catalog, read a MARC record, or find resources for a student writing a paper. It means having soft skills that fill in gaps when theory and technical knowledge don’t answer patron questions or tell you how to be a team player. In this webinar, Melissa Lockaby will address some of the knowledge, skills, and abilities that aren’t covered in a classroom, why they are important, and how they can make you a better librarian.

Click here to register for the course.

Niche Academy Webinar – Assisting Patrons with Legal Questions

Course Date: On Demand

Course Duration: 1 hour

Description: In this webinar, Deborah Hamilton will focus on how to handle legal questions from patrons. We will look at how to do a legal reference interview and what types of information you can provide; how to connect with legal service organizations in the community so you can make good referrals; and discuss possible ideas for legal programs that you can offer to your patrons.

Click here to register for the course.

Niche Academy Webinar – Family Homelessness and Libraries

Course Date: On Demand

Course Duration: 1 hour

Description: In this webinar, librarian Vikki Terrile provides an overview of family homelessness in the United States and how libraries can support children and families in homeless situations.

Click here to register for the course.