Leadership Project Descriptions

Laura Armstrong

Volusia County Public Library

Create a program that supports K-5 STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) initiatives in local elementary schools, involves community experts, and partners with other county libraries. It will involve active and passive programming led by library staff as well as talks and demonstrations by local experts in their fields. This will allow families to see how they can encourage learning at home and give them the opportunity to interact with other community members.

Raishara Bailey

Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library System

Implement a series of career-oriented workshops within the library for disadvantaged or at-risk individuals. These workshops will help develop important skills by providing information on how to search for jobs and write resumes, interview etiquette, and proper attire for the workplace.

Clayton Cassella

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Hunt Library

Revamp the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Hunt Library's graduate library instruction program using face-to-face marketing and discussions with potential faculty. Graduate library instruction sessions will be renewed with both old graduate program partners (Human Factors and Aeronautical Science) and new graduate program partners (Business-MBA). Efforts to reach out to new graduate instruction partners will continue.

Christine Culp

Manatee County Public Library System

Develop a garden area at the library that will be fenced in with tables where patrons can enjoy materials, explore, and use Wi-Fi in a natural setting. The garden will serve as an educational space with an emphasis on plants, recycling and nature. It will include a sensory and butterfly garden, a compost system, a water collection system and edible plants. It will also be a gateway to the literacy trail the county is building to attach the library to an adjacent park and sports complex.

Lila Denning

St. Petersburg Public Library

Create specific, targeted patron and staff education materials, focusing on circulation policies. Staff training on circulation policies and procedures designed to create a culture of “yes” in our interactions with patrons will accompany these materials.

Alyssa Diekman

Lee County Library System

Celebrate our patrons’ cultural diversity during National Caribbean-American Heritage month in June 2016 by providing programs to highlight various Caribbean countries, including Haiti, Jamaica and Trinidad. Identify and cultivate partnerships, outreach opportunities and resources for our library’s Caribbean-American population.

Jonathan Dolce

Lake County Library System

Create a six-week series of discussion and storytelling sessions based on illustrated children’s books. Each weekly session will last 1.5 hours. This series is designed specifically for under-served families with children aged 6 to 10, but pre-reading activities will be available for preschool aged children. The program will help low-income, low-literate families bond around the act of reading and talking about books. It models and encourages family reading and discussion of humanities topics and aids parents and children in book selection and increasing public library usage.

Kerry Dowd

Alachua County Library District

Develop an annual creative writing contest for tweens and teens that includes short-story fiction and poetry. Entries will be judged by two local yet nationally recognized writers. Winners will be announced at a reception and will receive a bound anthology of the winning entries. Copies will be cataloged and added to the library’s permanent collection. All participants will receive certificates.

Dawn Dvorak

Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library System

Create an online collaborative space where librarians and staff across the Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library System can share program ideas. The space will allow for easier and more efficient program duplication while giving branch staff a platform to share their successes and solicit feedback. It will encourage more communication among libraries in the system and – as the space expands – with the community.

Robin Etter

Lake-Sumter State College Library

Create a six-part nutrition series entitled "What's Cookin' at the College?" Presenters will include faculty from Lake-Sumter State College as well as nutritionists from area hospitals. The series covers the benefits of plant-based diets, protein, calcium, dairy alternatives, fiber and organic food. The project successfully combines the resources of the college, the public library and the local community health agencies at this joint-use facility.

Kristina Holt

LeRoy Collins Leon County Public Library

Create an adult program series focused on using the library's Gates Lab, which has 21 computers and can be closed off. Different themes, such as job placement and social media, will be featured each month. A minimum of three staff members will help teach each class and help one-on-one at the computers.

Ellen India

Sarasota County Library System

Re-establish the roving-staff service model across the nine libraries in the Sarasota County Library System. Managers and staff will work together to facilitate a system-wide proactive customer service model that offers patrons more points of service.

Mary Beth Isaacson

Highlands County Library System

Coordinate the development of additional training opportunities for Heartland Library Cooperative staff with two primary objectives: providing cataloging training and problem-solving skills and chairing the planning committee for the cooperative’s annual in-service day.

Catherine Keating

Maitland Public Library

Select a new ILS for the library.

Kalleen Marquise

Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library System

Create a supervisory plan to prepare librarians for in-charge roles and further their professional development as well as provide on-the-job training with a focus on building leaders and readying staff for promotions.

Cyndy Moore

Volusia County Public Library

Develop a system-wide intranet trespass database where administrators can quickly access and append pictures, incident reports and other supporting documents about patrons trespassed from any system library location. Also, adapt a one-page pocket response plan for staff to reference when faced with emergency situations or disasters. Continue to develop partnerships and training opportunities with local first responders.

Tonda Morris

Bruton Memorial

Library

Identify initiatives to provide library users wellness programs, classes and resources.

Freda Mosquera

Broward County

Libraries Division

Create, produce and publish a professional video in Spanish that promotes Broward County Libraries Division’s BCL WOW mobile application. Through this video, the library will reach out to the Latino population in Broward County, increasing customers’ awareness of the library’s digital services and empowering Spanish-speaking customers to use the library. This video will be created with the support of the library’s E-Services department and will be broadcasted through the library’s YouTube channel.

Vanessa Neblett

Orange County Library System

Develop a series of programs and opportunities to prepare customers for finding jobs and advancing their job/career skills. Topics include finding job openings, creating/updating/improving a resume, and using professional development resources to improve interviewing and employability skills. This career academy will partner with CareerSource Central Florida to provide seminars and job search assistance.

Kate Neff

St. Johns County School District, Pedro Menendez High School

Provide coding instruction to high school students through more lessons, a club and dedicated time in the library for coding on a regular basis.

Jennifer Parsick

Osceola County Library System

Start partnerships with multiple homeless advocacy groups in Osceola County. Future events, both seasonal and on-going, are planned where the library will be able to be more hands-on in reaching the most under-served populations in the county.

Michelle Petrin

Jacksonville Public Library

Coordinate a how-to festival. Community partners, customers and staff will hold sessions on topics as varied as how to make a rain barrel, how to fix a bike, how to tie a tie, how to Photoshop a photo and many more.

Annmarie Powell

Osceola County Library System

Create a series of inclusive STEM programs geared toward children with autism spectrum disorder. Introduce the series to the youth team in hopes of creating a system-wide group of programs for this target audience, and partner with University of Central Florida Center for Autism and Related Disabilities (UCF-CARD) to receive training as well as host parent groups at the library.

Ingrid Purrenhage

Pasco-Hernando State College Library

Create a library referral system for faculty to use to refer specific students to the PHSC libraries for individual help. This system will work across all five campuses and serve both face-to-face and online students and faculty.

Nora Rackley

Lake-Sumter State College Library

Develop outreach activities meant to draw users to the library for engaging activities. Hopefully this will empower users to ask questions about the library and approach librarians when they need research assistance.

Debbie Reilly

Citrus County Library System

Develop a three-part program to educate and prepare people for a successful job search. The program will partner with CareerSource to facilitate resume writing, interview skills and job search classes. There will also be practice interviews with local business managers.

Steve Roberts

Nova Southeastern University Library

Revamp and create new procedures and policies regarding safety and security at the Nova Southeastern University Health Library.

Kristen Sakmar

University of South Florida Library

Provide and promote ORCID training to faculty and staff so that it is easier to locate/identify faculty publications and research at our university.

Holly Satterwhite

Palm Beach County

Law Library

Make the Palm Beach County Law Library more accessible and user-friendly for the judges/staff of the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit and the Palm Beach County public. This includes weeding and shifting the entire law collections of both locations, purchasing new furniture and redesigning the layout of the main law library, creating an online catalog, establishing a partnership with the Palm Beach County Legal Aid Society to offer general information classes for the public, installing Internet access in both law libraries and establishing a law library at the North County Courthouse.

Cat Silvers

University of North Florida Library

Revamp the new student orientation tours at the University of North Florida library.

Heather Snapp

Florida Gulf Coast University Library

Implement a library-student ambassador program, in which students will work as peer educators in the Reference, Research and Instruction (RRI) department. Ambassadors will help at the reference desk, assist with teaching and develop and participate in special projects and events in an effort to reach more students. Project duties include creating the guidelines, procedural documents, training materials and activities, and evaluations for this program as well as supervising the ambassadors.

Jennifer Taylor

LeRoy Collins Leon County Public Library

Provide effective secure services to patrons by scanning prior library card applications and incorporating signature-capture software for future card applications. This would result in a system-wide ability to instantly retrieve applications and reduce the time it takes to get a library card.

Melissa VandeBurgt

Florida Gulf Coast University Library

Manage the initial pilot of the author identification system, ORCID. The ORCID initiative will serve as a primary step in the library’s strategic plan to create a robust scholarly communications program at FGCU.

Annie Wagner

Lee County Library System

Create a collaborative, reciprocal relationship between the Lake Kennedy Senior Center and the NW Regional Library to provide programming and services to senior adults within our community. Integrative marketing and programming will increase exposure and the customer base for both departments, while customers will receive information about new and established programs, services and facilities.

Tracey Wehking

Brevard County Library System

Re-evaluate the Brevard County Library System's staffing plan with feedback from individual libraries in order to possibly edit the plan prior to its final implementation. This will help the library determine the appropriate levels of staff at each location, which will result in better internal and external customer service.

Mary Whiting

Volusia County Public Library

In collaboration with administration, set and guide inter-department, inter-library and inter-region challenges, providing opportunities for staff to build relationships, communication skills and a group consciousness that will translate into more effective professional teamwork and increased staff morale.

Jeremy Yates

Putnam County Library System

Develop and promote STEAM, coding and maker workshops to better utilize and promote the library's new mobile makerspace; work toward a county-wide science festival.