Touchpoints Group Meeting

Friday, November 7th
9-5

This was a chance for our group to meet in person, the first time since the Boston training in March. Our team -

Flint, Suzanne
Genevieve Feldman
Patrick Remer
Heather Tovey
Madeline Walton-Hadlock
Edward Koetitz
and me

- met with Dr. Joshua Sparrow and our consultants from the Touchpoints Center - Jackie Muniz and Lisa Desrochers.

New to our team were Carolyn Brooks (El Dorado County) and Suzanne's sister whose background experience includes teaching, health care, systems training, and even work with Leap Pad.

We started off with introductions and a discussion about why we "do what we do" - what wakes us up in the morning and our visions for libraries. Very good questions and always a reminder that it is so important to do what you love.

We then moved into discussing the specifics of unveiling "a taste" of Touchpoints at the ELF summit, reactions, lessons learned, where to go.

Next, we started working on what specific areas we needed to change from our original Touchpoints experience and how it would be customized for libraries.

Suzanne also revealed that she had applied for a Laura Bush IMLS grant and she would be interested to know who would like to continue pursuing Touchpoints beyond. She also talked about how our current place in Touchpoints had expanded a bit beyond what she originally thought and promised us. We have some more phone calls, development, scenarios to develop - 3 "group" calls are still scheduled (more may be needed). The official pilot training is scheduled for April/May (with May being more likely). Suzanne said that any of us interested in being more involved, if "resources" (such as time) are the only things stopping us from participating more/continuing, she would like to know so she can talk to the state librarian.

We ended on a good note, but wishing we had more time to keep going!