Webinar Description:

Digital technology is a conduit to many critical services (such as health, financial, and residential support systems), but not all people are able to use it. To ensure digital technology is a path rather than a barrier to service, CLRC is developing a Digital Navigator program to connect library users to assistance from library staff. In this workshop participants (library employees) will be trained to be Digital Navigators so that they may provide digital technology assistance with due attention to legal compliance, privacy/confidentiality, and data security. In this session Attorney Stephanie “Cole” Adams will engage participants in a hands-on training where they will gain the knowledge and skills they need in order to offer and handle requests for digital technology assistance to library users, in a way that minimizes risks for all parties and promotes optimal encounters for this type of service.  

About the Presenter:

Stephanie A. Adams, Esq. (Nickname: Cole), is an attorney practicing from her own law office in Buffalo, NY. Adams chose a career in the law so she could focus her professional life on the law’s impact on creativity and communication.  She has also worked as a print and broadcast journalist. Adams’s extensive writing on legal issues facing today’s libraries, including issues impacting the freedom to read, can be seen regularly on the “Ask the Lawyer” service hosted by the Western New York Library Resources Council.

Adams’s focus on speech-related legal issues started with her final project at her alma mater, Hampshire College in Massachusetts.  While completing her B.A., Adams also had an internship at the Northampton-based Comic Book Legal Defense Fund in 1996, an experience she would reprise while working on her J.D. the summer of ’98.  She was a page during high school at the New Hartford Town Library, worked in the Hampshire College library transcribing archives, and worked in the library at her law school.

Prior to working at the firm she founded in 2017, Adams spent over 10 years serving as an in-house counsel at Niagara University, where her work demanded consideration of not-for-profit, risk management, student, and labor law issues, along with deep respect for academic freedom. At the University, she also worked on ADA issues, including adaptive technology, universal design, and accommodations requests.  Prior to that, (as “Stephanie Cole”) she was a partner in the firm of Bloom, Cole, & Shonn, LLP. 

For more information on Adams’ experience, visit the website for The Law Office of Stephanie Adams (LOSA), PLLC.

Live captioning will be provided.

This webinar will be recorded and a recording will be shared with all registrants afterward.

Register via Zoom

**All participants will have the option to request a certificate of attendance for one contact hour.**

All Attendees are expected to follow CLRC’s Code of Conduct