I am grateful for the opportunity to attend this informative 2-day event, meet new people, and enjoy a beautiful setting. All of the sessions offered good insights, and I especially appreciated Valerie Horton's talk on innovation. "Promote secure vulnerability": admit failure, get rest, ask questions, and build an environment where concerns are voiced. One of [...]
Our retreat was held at Shetek Lutheran Ministries Retreat Center. What a beautiful place! I had a wonderful time attending sessions, networking with my fellow colleagues. It's nice to get to know each other more and bounce ideas off each other. The sessions were very informative! Valerie Horton, from Minitex informed us of projects going [...]
I thought MLA this year was one of the best I have attended for a very long time. The diversity issue is very popular right now and I was glad to see the sessions on it. I attended the session "Engaging With the Dakota Access Pipeline Protests as a Librarian/Archivist". As we are very close [...]
Thank you so much for providing funding to attend the Minnesota Library Association Conference in Rochester October 5 and 6, 2017. Below are the sessions I attended that resonated with me and the work we are currently doing at the Marshall Lyon County Library. Minnesota Public Library Structures – Simplified While I already knew much [...]
Shetek Lutheran Ministries Retreat Center was a beautiful place to hold a retreat. I had a FABULOUS time attending sessions, networking with colleagues, and just enjoying the beautiful location. We had a couple of very informative sessions from Valerie Horton, Director of Minitex who informed us of all the innovative "pilot" projects going on at [...]
The retreat delivered everything they promised - a comfortable setting, challenging information and time for collaboration with colleagues. I especially appreciated the presentations by Valerie Horton that addressed trends and changes in library services. It was empowering and motivating and I feel more confident about taking risks and making mistakes. I also was pleased to [...]
Some ideas and concepts I gleaned from this year's MLA Conference were: Project Management - make even tedious internal projects such as inventory fun by adding small celebrations at the half-way point, handing out silly reqrd stickers, having a contest to guess how many items have been inventoried at certain points. Locked Box Challenges--I'd heard [...]
Enjoyed the conference. Well organized and stayed on schedule. Lunch on Thursday - not the best.
My favorite session was a surprise to me, the PLD meeting. Once they finished discussing business, the board members did a round robin discussion. In general, I'm not fond of round robins. Too often, I hear things that could be shared in a simple e-mail, or found on a Facebook page. In this case, I [...]
MLA 2017 Annual Conference: I always find it so important to attend library conferences, which gives me an opportunity to meet with other librarians in the state, connect with other librarians in similar sized communities/libraries, and learn what is going on in other areas of the state. I attended numerous sessions, and learned practical strategies [...]