In 2021-22, NEFLIN offered its members eleven interest groups: Academic Libraries, Children’s Services,  Gaming, Genealogy, Makerspaces, Leadership, Marketing and Outreach, Public Libraries, Technical Services, Technology and Teen Services. The groups were led by library staff representing nine separate library systems.

Throughout the year, a total of 28 Interest Group meetings were held with 259 attendees. Due to the weather event the week of September 26-30 (Hurricane Ian), four group meetings were postponed until the Fall 2022 quarter. The average attendance for meetings was nine attendees per meeting. Groups that held meetings that were especially well attended included Marketing & Outreach (16), Academic Libraries (17), and Gaming (18).

2021-22 highlights included presentations by outside guest speakers at the following group meetings:

Academic (Contemplative Pedagogy with members of ACRL Contemplative Pedagogy Interest Group)

Technical Services (Writing DEI Policies for Technical Services with Liza Campbell of the University of West Florida)

Marketing & Outreach (Innovative Marketing with LJ’s Marketer of the Year with Nicholas A. Brown; Public Relations 101 with Jackie Johnson)

Gaming (Gamers’ Advisory:  Connecting Players with the Right Games with Dr. Christopher Harris)

Genealogy (Florida Prison Register with Matthew Storey of the State Archives of Florida)

In their respective group meetings, facilitators led discussions on relevant topics such as:

Sphero Bolt Robot/Robotics Projects; Using and Loaning Sewing Machines; Podcasting (Makerspaces)

ILS Implementations Lessons Learned (Technology)

Employee Engagement and Recognition; Leadership Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them (Leadership)

Alternative Programming and Partnerships (Public Libraries)

Summer Projects:  Rethink, Review, Repurpose (Technical Services)

2023 CSLP Theme:  All Together Now (Children’s Services)

In a return to some face-to-face meetings, the Academic Libraries Interest Group also held two gatherings on the campuses of St. Johns River State – Orange Park Campus and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

To assist the facilitators, a training that focused on leading successful online meetings was held in January 2022. 

One challenge during 2021-22 was the loss of some facilitators due to changes in staffing at NEFLIN regional  libraries.

Through the 2021-22 Interest Group program, many meaningful connections were made among and between staff from a broad spectrum of libraries.

The following quotes from the 2022 NEFLIN Annual Survey provide a snapshot of the value of NEFLIN Interest Groups (survey methodology does not allow us to properly attribute these quotes):

“The interaction and the exchange of ideas in the Interest Groups and during conferences have helped me tremendously.  It is the only way I can stay current and "plugged in" to the always changing world of libraries, technology and terminology.”

“Any opportunity for staff to interact and network with colleagues helps us to improve services to our patrons.  We are very grateful to NEFLIN for facilitating these interest groups to the betterment of our Library System and all those other Systems surrounding us in the North Florida area.”

“I'm excited to participate in the Teen Services Interest Group this year!”

NEFLIN offers two avenues of self-paced learning: The NEFLIN Lending Library and On-Demand Learning.

The NEFLIN Lending Library consists of both print books and eBooks. We began adding eBooks to the collection late last fiscal year. Our eBooks are available via Overdrive. We added 16 titles to the Professional Development eBook collection in the recently concluded fiscal year. Eleven library staff have requested and been granted access to the collection. They viewed nine eBooks. The print collection circulation has not yet recovered from pandemic-era lows. People are checking out books when they attend in-person training at our office, but we are just now ramping those back up. Changes to the statewide delivery system may have hampered circulation as well, as it is somewhat harder for some libraries to send books back and forth. Nine print books circulated this fiscal year and six new titles were added to the collection.

Our ever-expanding collection of pre-recorded on-demand courses are primarily provided by Niche Academy. 206 people have partaken of 177 of our on-demand courses. A total of 15,631 segments were viewed (many courses have multiple parts and some are viewed more than once if the user does not pass a quiz at the end of a course). Some member libraries (notably Jacksonville Public Library and Volusia County Public Library) have added selected on-demand tutorials to their onboarding process for new hires.