The PLA Blog | Official Blog of the Public Library Association
Choose Civility Webinar – Registration Ends Today
Last day to register for PLA’s upcoming webinar, “Implementing ‘Choose Civility,’ a Community Wide Campaign”; Weds, March 28, at 1:00 p.m. Central. Learn how your library can be integral to fostering a civility movement in your community. Get more information here.
A Conversation about PLA 2012
Facebook Forum – PLA 2012 Conversation Some of the best parts of PLA 2012 Conference are all the things you bring home like galley books, relevant learnings, new contacts, and memories. We want to hear what’s on your mind after returning from Philadelphia. Any questions you still need answered? What was your favorite program? How [...]
Implementing “Choose Civility,” a Community-wide Campaign
A PLA “Public Libraries at Work” webinar Join Howard County (Md.) Library System (HCLS) CEO Valerie J. Gross, and guests, as she details ‘Choose Civility,’ an ongoing community-wide initiative that aims to enhance respect, empathy, consideration, and tolerance in Howard County. Nearly 100 Howard County businesses, government agencies, nonprofits, educational institutions actively and passionately support [...]
Friday Sessions: Teens, Jail Libraries and Budgetary Woes
On Friday morning I stopped briefly in at the “Successful Partnerships to Serve Immigrant Communities” session to hear about how libraries can partner with non-profits to meet the needs of immigrant communities, then headed over to “Beyond Booktalking: Innovative Readers’ Advisory Approaches for Teens” to support my panel of colleagues from The Seattle Public Library. [...]
Home again
While PLA 2012 was definitely a great experience, it also feels great to be home. And it’s time for me to return to my blogging home, too. I reported here on all the sessions I attended this week, so my final post, which is mostly a wrap-up of the “fun” stuff like the All Conference [...]
Library-To-Go: Putting Your Library Virtually Anywhere
In multi-county libraries across the country, there is a concern for the patrons who are far from the main or branch libraries. Looking for lower cost alternatives than building more branches, two Missouri libraries have established what they call the Library-To-Go (LTG). Melissa Carr of the Daniel Boone Regional Library and Steven Potter of the [...]
Thursday Sessions: Romance, Reference, Funding and Federal Digitization
While the PLA Conference program helpfully lists sessions by “Program Tracks” (Administration/Management, Facilities, Serving Youth, Technology, etc.), I ignored this and approached my first day of the Conference with the unsurprising strategy of dabbling in a variety of, well, everything. My first session of the day at the ripe hour of 8:15 a.m. (5:15 a.m. [...]
Denmark, Joyce Carol Oates, and one great macaroon
This morning I attended Transforming Public Libraries from Institutions of the Industrial Age to Change Agents for the Networked Society presented by Rolf Hapel, director of citizens’ services and libraries, Aarthus, Denmark. It was an inspiring look at the new models for development and innovative practices implemented in and for the Danish libraries. The natural [...]
iPad Uses for Libraries
Thursday morning we went to a heavily attended session “iPads in the library: from Tech Programming to Staff Productivity” presented by Joel Nichols. The challenge was to integrate mobile devices (smartphones, ereaders, tablets) into the libraries work. Research shows that mobile phones have become the most popular way to access the internet. (At our own library [...]
