PLA Blog

Susan Hildreth, president of the Public Library Association (PLA), is pleased to announce that Mary Baykan, Library Journal’s Librarian of the Year 2007, will present the keynote address at the Opening General Session of the PLA Spring Symposium. The session, scheduled for March 1, 2007 at the Fairmont San Jose, is open to all Symposium attendees. Baykan is the director of the Washington County (Md.) Free Library and executive director of Western Maryland Public Library. In 2003, when facing a major fiscal crisis in the state of Maryland, Baykan spearheaded an initiative to conduct a survey on the perceived value of libraries. Librarians across the state were able to use the results of the survey to demonstrate the value of libraries to key community leaders, resulting in the largest increase in library support in the state’s history, including $35 million in new state funding.

The Opening General Session will be followed by a dessert reception, which is open to all attendees. Other special events include the Author Luncheon featuring Po Bronson, which is available for an additional cost. PLA thanks Random House for their support of the Author Luncheon.

Registration is still open for selected workshops. For more information on the PLA Spring Symposium, including pricing and registration information, contact the PLA office at 800-545-2433, ext. 5PLA, or visit PLA’s Web site at www.pla.org.

Tags: conferences, PLA Blog, PLA Symposium 2007

This entry was posted on Friday, February 2nd, 2007 at 12:02 pm and is filed under PLA Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.