It’s always good to know that your hard-earned life lessons are best practices and the things you suspected are true. Valerie Horton from Minitex reinforced the former; library services are changing as time goes by and it’s important to react and adjust on the fly. I remember, many years ago, as a young librarian that everyone was saying that bookstores and the Internet would kill libraries. Now Borders is gone, B&N may as well be, and the Internet is less free than it was in 2002. And yet libraries continue. I am also impressed with the amount and quality of resources provided by Minitex, compared to other states I’ve worked in.
These themes were revisited on day two during the discussion about SAMMIE. As a society, I think we are in for a very interesting time for the next 10-15 as demographics shift.
Michelle Leininger spoke on leading people and advocacy. I was very pleased to note that a lot of what she covered reaffirms the lessons I learned from the School of Hard Knocks.
Meredith Vaselaar covered a lot of ground on fundraising, and, as someone who hates asking for things, I am inspired to be a lot more fearless when asking strangers for money.
Overall, it was an incredibly worthwhile event and the conference location was fantastic.