OLA Conference 2018

Do you want to start a Kindergarten Readiness program for the preschoolers at your public library? You will leave this session armed with an easily adaptable, grab-and-go curriculum for a six-session series of enhanced story times designed to help get preschoolers and their caregivers ready for a strong start in Kindergarten. The Ready, Set, Kindergarten curriculum was originally created by the Brooklyn Public Library and we have adapted it for our community. We will share our own experiences of hosting the Ready, Set, Kindergarten series both at our library and offsite with community partners. We will help you develop strategies to successfully adapt and run this program in your own community. Every child deserves a bright future and this workshop will give you some of the tools you need to make your library a valuable partner in early learning education.

Join the Pacific Northwest Library Association’s President and invited guests who will share their leadership stories using visual storyboarding. The presenters will share the challenges, successes, and critical incidents that have shaped their view of library leadership. Participants will have the opportunity to develop and storyboard their own leadership stories. Sharing our leadership journeys with others creates opportunities to better understand the skills and experiences necessary to be a strong library leader.

Join us as we explore emotional labor and mental load on library staff. Emotional Labor is the extra labor put on people by the emotional demands of their work. It is particularly common in the service industry where the emotions portrayed by service providers are likely to not match what they are really feeling. And mental load is the excess work by marginalized groups to fit into the cultural norms of the dominant group. Both can have a big and hard impact on workers in libraries. In this program we will explore these issues and discuss possible organizational solutions.

Ever wonder why OLA has Public Library Standards? After all, they are not enforceable, so they don’t mean anything, right? And admit it, looking at all those Standards makes your head spin. But Standards can be the wind beneath your wings! Attend this session and get the scoop on public library standards in Oregon. Learn how we can use them to not just tell our story but help people understand how valuable libraries are. Learn how the Standards allow us to be unique libraries while encouraging the high achievement of agreed upon best practices. You will discover how your library can be a point of light with one bright future by harnessing the power of Standards!

Your library embraces the values of free access to information, protecting patron privacy, and other tenets of intellectual freedom. Are all of your front line staff, including volunteers and student workers, familiar with these values? Are they prepared to uphold your library policies when conflicts arise? Come to this session to learn about a range of training options, many of them free and online, for preparing your staff to uphold your library’s intellectual freedom values.

You know ‘community engagement’ is important, but what do those outdated, old-fashioned service organizations have to do with that? Hear what several library directors have learned from serving in their local Rotary and Kiwanis Clubs. Learn why they encourage involvement in community service organizations for other library staff in addition to library directors.

Are you curious about ALA’s Libraries Transform Communities project and the Harwood Institute Turning Outward process, but not sure how you could implement it at your library? Are you wondering:
-What logistical details should you think about before starting this process?
-How could you partner with groups or other libraries to use these tools locally?
-What happens when you try to talk to people about topics beyond what the library traditionally does?
-How can you analyze the input you receive from community members?
-What does it look like to shape your library programs and services around what matters to your community?

Attend this hands-on workshop to practice some of the Harwood techniques and think about how this could work in your own community--be it small or large, urban, suburban or rural. Staff from Multnomah County Library will share the lessons they learned from engaging community members in broader conversations about their aspirations. Come discuss these questions with peers who’ve made some mistakes and learned a lot from their community.