Prairielands

Scheduling conflicts made it such that I couldn't attend any live MLA sessions (besides the one our Library Director, Michele Leininger and I presented), so I am grateful that the recordings were made available for viewing at more convenient times. I plan to watch and review some more over the next few weeks. Lots of [...]

Over the month of October, I attended the ALA eCourse “Genealogical Research for Librarians”. Each week, I was given the opportunity to explore a number of public records as well as free and proprietary resources that help people uncover the past and make connections in their family trees.One of the most interesting things that the [...]

Look What I Found at the Library: virtual merchandising ideasThe librarians at Scott County shared what they have learned during the pandemic on how to do a wider variety and different types of displays. They started with reminding us to think about what we each like and are attracted to when we are out shopping [...]

 This was a great three-week course presented by Library Journal and School Library Journal. The presenters came from both school and public libraries and described how their successful partnerships came to be. It was inspiring to hear how libraries worked together to create special programs that connected children in the community to resources. Following are [...]

My 3 Fav Sessions: Minnesota Author Project: Celebrating the 2021 winners, I love, love, love listening to authors talk about themselves, their work, and this session did not disappoint. It was thrilling to listen to each and every one. Look what I found at the Library was full of all sorts of marketing and display [...]

I attended the three days of the fully virtual MLA 2021 conference. Since I attended many of the class sessions, I will highlight a few sessions that stood out to me.The MLA Public Library Division Meeting: Since I am currently not an MLA member, I typically have not attended the board meeting sessions. However, since [...]

As part of my coursework towards my MLIS, I took a semester long class on social media use by information organizations with a focus on libraries. I learned a lot in this brief class about best practices in using social media, and how to get the most out of it. One of the most important [...]

This was an immensely valuable event overall, and it highlighted a lot of important topics and discourse specific to libraries in rural settings — something I've found to be difficult to find in the larger conferences and webinars put on by the American Library Association, or other such monoliths in the profession.The topics of community [...]

As a continuation of my path to obtaining licensure in School and Library Information Sciences, I took a semester-long course focusing on selecting and evaluating both print and multimodal media materials that are appropriate for students in grades 7-12. I became more knowledgeable about issues facing secondary school librarians: book challenges, selecting the right ebook [...]