North Carolina Library Association

Candidates for the NCLA TNT 2019 Election

Vice-Chair

Kate Hill, UNC Greensboro

I am running for Vice-Chair/Chair Elect of Technology and Trends.  I am currently is the electronic resources librarian at University of North Carolina Greensboro, where I have been for the last five years.  In this position, I manage all aspects of the electronic resources life cycle, from purchasing to discovery.  I am also actively involved in implementing usability and user experience methodologies to improve discovery systems.  Before that I was a Library Fellow at North Carolina State University, where I split my time between Electronic Resources and User Experience.  I have been the treasurer/secretary for Technology and Trends for  four years, helping design conference programming and their webinar series.  I am also a graduate of and currently mentor for the NCLA Leadership Institute and an Interest Group chair for the NCLA Resources and Technical Services Section.

I am running for Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect because I believe that I can bring a unique perspective to Technology and Trends.  As an electronic resources librarian who also does usability and liaison work, I have an awareness of the many threads that make up this conversation.  This means I have the expertise to guide the section's offerings in unexplored and emerging directions  But  more importantly, I also am very experienced, through my previous committee work at NCLA and especially through the Leadership Institute, with building community across public and academic libraries.  I have organized webinars and presentations featuring the voices of librarians from adult services in a public library to the head of collections at a large research university.  I also have mentored and been mentored by librarians from all types of libraries across the state of North Carolina through the NCLA Leadership Institute, and I will bring the understanding they have shared with me to Technology and Trends.  Finally, I care deeply about hearing the voices of our members.  I hope to provide space for all members to share what information and topics are important to them, what kind of services they want to have provided by this section, and will work with Chad to continue to build a potential networking/mentoring program for librarians working with technology across the state.  

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Treasurer/Secretary

Adrian Zeck, Cabarrus County Public Library

I am currently a Senior Library Assistant and head of Teen Services for the Concord branch of the Cabarrus County Public Library System. In my role, I recently started a teen volunteer-led reading tutoring service for students age 5-12. We plan on continuing this program every summer with possible opportunities to expand the program to include tutoring during the school year. I also revamped our Teen Advisory Board to give the teens more ownership of the club, which has resulted in teens developing programming for teens. In my previous position in Children's Services, I started our reoccurring Google CS First program for patrons age 7-12. I serve as the defacto secretary of the Circulation and Acquisitions Committee in the Cabarrus County Library System. I have been a member of NCLA for a little more than one year and have attended TNT workshops. Currently, I am a part-time Masters student in Library and Information Studies at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro. I am also a member of the 2018 NCLA Leadership Institute cohort. 

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Director 1

Megan Bowers, High Point Public Library

My name is Megan Bowers and I’ve been working at the High Point Public Library as a Library Associate for the past 8 years. In my time here, I’ve performed many duties such as teen programming, collection development for young adult fiction, and delivering library materials to homebound senior citizens. Currently, I assist the volunteer coordinator with all incoming volunteers, make edits and add material to our library’s webpage, and do collection development for adult fiction and graphic novels/manga. 

One of my biggest responsibilities is to train both the public and the staff on new technology such as digital reading, online marketing tools, how to easily make changes to the webpage, and our library system with RFID. I used the knowledge I had gained through the process of switching to RFID to create a webinar for TNT titled, “The Top 10 Things I Wish I Had Known Before RFID” which I presented as a poster session at NCLA in 2015. I hope to bring to this position my enthusiasm for learning new technology and my drive to make it seem as simple as possible for those who are unsure of their technology abilities.

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Director 2

Barbara Halbert, UNCG School of Education

Barbara Halbert has been the Program Coordinator for the Teaching Resources Center in UNC Greensboro’s School of Education for two years. Building community outreach through using social media to reach students, faculty and community members is part of her responsibilities as well as supporting School of Education students and faculty with new technologies to enhance their learning and research.  Last year she was awarded an LSTA grant to improve access to resources for the high school and preschool located on the UNC Greensboro campus.

While new to NCLA and the TNT Roundtable, Barbara was a member of the Texas Library Association for a number of years and earned her MSLIS from the University of North Texas. She is looking forward to working with NC colleagues across the state on topics of interest to the TNT Roundtable and NCLA members.

Jennifer Hatcher, Cumberland County Public Library

Jennifer Hatcher has recently accepted a position with the Cumberland County Public Library and Information Center as the West Branch Library Manager. The West Branch provides weekly science and technology after-school programs for middle school students and conducts science and technology programs throughout the year for the elementary school. In her previous job as the Learning and Innovation Coordinator for the Cumberland County Public Library and Information Center, Jennifer was in charge of staff training and was the chair of the Innovation Review Team. As the Innovation and Review Team chair, she was responsible for researching new technologies and determining if they would be a good fit for the Cumberland County system. Jennifer was also responsible for ensuring that the library's Tech Tuesday Posts were relevant and that deadlines for posting were met. She also tracked the number of likes and shares that each post generated to determine which posts were of the most interest to customers. She is a regular reader of tech blogs and keeps up with developing technologies. 

Jennifer has written several technology-based grants, including a Best Buy Grant that provided a 3D  Printer, a laser light lab, and several circuitry kits for the library system, and a Cumberland Community Foundations grant that provided keyboards for Surface Pros and enabled staff to teach coding and movie-making skills to teens at the Juvenile Detention center and alternative high school. In her former life, Jennifer taught middle and high school English, Creative Writing, and Music Appreciation. She regularly incorporated technology in her lesson plans and student projects. Organization is one of Jennifer's greatest strengths. She served as the project manager for Librari-Con, the library system's annual comic book/manga convention,  for three years and organized staff development days for the library system. She was also part of the team that organized and designed the Cumberland Coding Camps for Cumberland County middle and high school students.