The PLA Blog | Official Blog of the Public Library Association
Shanachies at Queens Library
Here’s a guest post from Jennifer Thompson, Young Adult Specialist at Brooklyn Public Library Greenpoint Branch. Recently, I attended a program at the Flushing branch of the Queens Library titled “Innovation in Libraries by the Shanachies.” The two presenters, Erik Boekesteijn and Jaap van de Geer, consider themselves “shanachies,” a Gaelic term meaning storytellers. They [...]
WPA Library Posters
Found via @elloyd74, these WPA posters are wayyyyyy too good for PLA Blog readers to miss. In fact I cannot believe I’ve never seen the before! Clearly I’m not reading something I ought to be reading. Check out the full flickr set via user marklarson here. He got them from this Library of Congress [...]
Turning the Page– Wrap Up
By the conclusion of the Turning the Page workshop in Nashville, I was full of good ideas and loaded with lots of advocacy resources. My posts summarizing a few of the sessions don’t do justice to the range and organization of the information presented. The workshop was a wonderful opportunity for libraries, especially those that [...]
Turning the Page–It’s all about you (and the money)
Two sessions I attended at the Nashville PLA Spring Symposium Turning the Page workshop: ” It’s all about You” and ” Show Me the Money.” It’s all about you: How to Make a Lasting Impression Renee Cole modeled the best and the worst public speaking and personal style examples for our group in an entertaining [...]
Turning the Page –Public Perceptions of Libraries
It was a busy 2 days in Nashville and by mid-day Friday I started getting behind on my blogging. So many interesting sessions, so little time! I left beautiful sunny Nashville Saturday afternoon vowing to write a wrap up and now that I’m back home in snowy Chicago (yes, sigh, I did say snowy) I’ll [...]
PLA welcomes Ann Patchett
Author Ann Patchett, winner of both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award welcomed PLA to her hometown of Nashville, starting first with an apology for Thursday’s rainy, tornado-producing weather. Seeking refuge from the storm turned out to be a theme of Ms. Patchett’s talk as [...]
Collection Development – Just in Case v Just in Time
We had a spirited debate this morning over whether or not there is any one title that every public library should own. The suggestions ranged from The Very Hungry Caterpillar to the Bible. For every title suggested someone came up with a type of public library that might not carry it. So is it our [...]
Day 1 in Nashville
A great day in Nashville. Generally, I try to let intensive workshops like today’s percolate in the brain a little while before I write much about them. My mind was turned to mush today after this event. Larry Nash White was a particularly good presenter. Here’s a few side notes I took that got me [...]
Turning the Page: Dream Big
The PLA Spring Symposium Turning the Page workshop continued this morning with PLA Executive Director Greta Southard reviewing for the group the definition of advocacy. For the purposes of our workshop, advocacy is defined as: The process of acting on behalf of the public library to increase public funds and ensure that it has the [...]
Service Responses – Criteria
What criteria do you use to determine the activities you do in your library? All things are possible with time and money. The problem is we don’t have enough time and certainly not enough money to do everything we want to do. With a defined set of criteria we can determine which activities are successful [...]
