For 2025, the Association of Rural and Small Libraries (ARSL) held its annual conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. As always, this conference was jam-packed with quality presentations from libraries similar to ours, serving communities in towns and cities ranging in population anywhere from 200 to 20,000 with attendees from all over the United States.
I attended a session with librarians from Nebraska and Iowa on their proven tactics to help welcome new immigrant members of the community to the library such as finding community leaders to connect with and assess the community to find the needs the library can meet. I attended various sessions on programming on a small budget and came away with fun ideas to add to after-school programs as well as new programs like Toddler Prom and self-directed programming like polls to get the community talking and involved. A great session I attended was on connecting the community as a whole and gave great ideas on how to bring all the organizations and businesses together to better serve the community. She walked us through how she gathered everyone together and started a new organization so that everyone could share ideas and resources and more easily collaborate on events. Instead of five different places organizing Easter egg hunts, the town can now collaborate and have one great big Easter Egg Hunt. This allows the community to better pool resources or allocate them to new areas if one is already covered. There were many other sessions and keynotes that provided a wealth of ideas and resources to bring back to the library and push our programming and services even further. This is always a great event to attend and a great organization that supports small and rural libraries.