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Each year, Amigos Library Services supports professional development by offering scholarship awards to help members attend conferences and grow in their roles. This year, three Amigos members received the Amigos award to attend the Electronic Resources & Libraries (ER&L) 2025 Conference virtually and shared their reflections on the experience.
Over the past year, Amigos has been diligently working on a new service for libraries, a repository solution that uses Hyku.
Throughout the past decade, Amigos has been working in the open-source space as member libraries have sought easier ways to host digital files, assets, and objects in ways that are open and available to their users.
Several Amigos staff attended this year's ALA conference in San Diego, California. Below, two of them share their notable conference activities, takeaways, and insights.
On Wednesday, May 22nd, the Amigos Association Management Department (AMS) debuted its Library Association Leaders Learn & Share series, with the first session, “The Future is Now: Association Succession Planning,” moderated by Missouri Library Association Past President Otter Bowman. Nine association leaders representing five organizations attended the event. They discussed various topics such as growing future association leaders, passing along institutional knowledge, and dealing with burnout at the association board level.
One of the Goals and Strategies in the Amigos Strategic Plan to 2025 is to focus on Libraries and Library Staff by supporting and promoting member libraries and the growth and development of library staff.
Amigos' partnership with NISO extends Library Standards Alliance membership to all Amigos libraries and adds to a full schedule of free continuing education available to all member library staff. Members are invited to attend the May 8th webinar on Indigenous librarianship. NISO makes it easy for Amigos members to receive notice of webinars. Register to be the designated webinar contact for your institution and automatically receive Zoom sign-on information directly from NISO for all webinars and then share the information with staff and colleagues.
Amigos Library Services is pleased to welcome Gwendolyn Prellwitz as our new Continuing Education Services (CES) Manager. Amigos’ CES team coordinates a full schedule of online workshops, free Know & Go sessions for member libraries, our popular Online Conferences, and customized on-request trainings for libraries and organizations. Gwendolyn has already begun working with member instructors to support new offerings and improved learner experiences.