2016 Annual Member Conference

What do a floating raft, a satellite, a packet of seeds, an RFID robot, and 10,000 years have in common? If you guessed libraries, you’d be right! We are lucky to live in a remarkable library era where a collection can be composed of anything imaginable. However, the difference between a thriving library collection and a pile of stuff is the relationship that is built with the community sharing it as a useful resource. In this session, we will connect the dots between active library collections and community participation, working together to figure out how this happens.

Aging library facilities present unique challenges as community needs and expectations change. St. Louis County Library (SLCL) recently embarked on an ambitious facilities master plan to improve 19 of its 20 library buildings that averaged 35 years old. SLCL successfully incorporated community needs as it transformed the aging libraries into vibrant libraries and community spaces that are positioned to serve the region for decades to come. Join us as we explore the process from concept to opening day and beyond.

Home school families remain very active and intense users of their public libraries, but sometimes feel overlooked or unappreciated. How can you directly impact this specific community and make them into supportive vocal advocates for your library system? Cline will present several strategies that have worked for her rural and not-so-rural libraries.

The staff of the Reference Services Department at the Thunder Bay Public Library have been seeking different opportunities to branch out of the library and learn about the informational needs of their community. Over the last several years, they have built partnerships with local agencies that assist entrepreneurs with developing their businesses. Library staff have provided informational sessions, both in and out of the library, that teach business owners about the free resources available to them, including information to help them complete a business plan, find a target market, or expand an existing business. In 2015, library staff conducted presentations for 62 people at numerous organizations, and worked one-on-one with 58 individuals. Long's presentation will discuss the steps taken to develop these partnerships, the outcomes of working with this segment of the community, and the challenges of bringing reference services out of the library.

Communities with universities and public libraries have a unique opportunity to collaborate on programs and services for students and local residents. In this small university town of 10,000, two academic librarians have successfully collaborated with the public library to provide a civil rights lecture series and summer reading programs. While informative programs are often held on university campuses, by collaborating with the public library on grant programming, these activities were taken into the community to reach a broader and more varied audience.

Likewise, summer reading programs are a significant programming component of the public library. Hosting additional programs on the university campus allows for children to visit a university campus and participate in educational and fun programs that coordinate with the public library's programming. Crucial to this type of collaborative programming is setting up points of primary contact between the university library and public library.

Regular meetings and communication are essential to build programming that coordinates content and exemplifies the services provided by the two types of libraries. This session will describe these collaborations and provide guidelines for approaching this type of collaborative programming.

Many libraries have discovered social media can be an amazing way to distribute information about resources and services, but these channels are designed for two-way communication.

Bringing your social media efforts to the next level with engagement can be both challenging and intimidating. When patrons actually engage with your accounts the stakes are higher, but so are the rewards. In this session, Cain-Wood will talk about the decision-making process behind who to follow and when to reply. She will also present strategies to find conversations when it seems like no one is talking to you.

This program will describe the planning, development, and implementation of expanding public library services within a hospital campus.

In October 2015, the Springfield-Greene County Library District and Mercy Hospital in Springfield, MO launched a new partnership, making it more convenient for the public and Mercy hospital co-workers to use the library district’s services. The hospital campus offers pick-up and return of public library materials and can register new public library patrons.

The hospital's Van K. Smith Community Health Library also began allowing its library materials to be picked up and returned at public library branches. This new partnership builds upon a 15-year partnership between the two entities sharing an online library catalog.

Adult coloring books have recently become very popular as a method of stress relief and artistic expression.

They can also be engaging tools for connecting communities to historical resources through a treasured pastime. Libraries and digital repositories are also getting in on the trend with #ColorOurCollections, an online event that highlights materials from historical and special collections with downloadable coloring pages. Discover how surprisingly easy it is to create a coloring book from your existing digital archival materials and reach your community in a whole new way!

View the Houston Area Digital Archives coloring book. By the date of the conference, Sewell will create at least two more coloring books featuring circus posters and glass plate negatives.

For too long library collections have focused on the interests of what collection development librarians have declared worthy or valuable for the education of students. This stifling stance is the antithesis of the notion that librarians can be transformative agents of change. After taking six months to study the Janice and Charles Drake Library's collection, speaking to students about their reading interests, and surveying faculty on how they request students to use the library's collection, it became apparent to Woltjer that not only was the library collection outdated, it was also lacking titles of interest to today's readers. With this information in hand, he created a graphic novel collection, a graphic novel reading group, and asked students to submit titles they would like to see included in the library's collection. Since this initiative, overall circulation numbers have increased, even in areas outside of graphic novels.

This session covers the first stages in the process of starting a graphic novel collection and how to use these materials to create interests in the "classics," mainstream novels, or non-fiction.

As our society and communities change and grow over time, the organizations that are best prepared to address those shifting needs and desires will be the most successful. This is especially true for organizations that are seen as community assets, like libraries. Learn about approaches and tools leveraged by professional futurists - specifically scanning - to get a glimpse into what trends are coming so that your library can best prepare for the future of your community and your organization.