Looking for a quiet(er) spot to sit, breathe, and maybe attempt to put a dent in my inbox in between sessions, I ended up sitting on a bench in a corner at the end of a hallway next to a librarian from Hawaii who was eating a quick lunch. Not fifteen minutes later, I was delighted to have learned a handful of fascinating things about what makes Hawaii’s library system unique, not the least of which was that they’ve had paid library positions for teens/students for years!
One of the things I enjoy about library conferences is the opportunity to talk with my colleagues from all over. I’m consistently reminded of two things at the same time during these precious conference conversations. The first is that we are all working incredibly hard to do good work in the world. And the second is that we are all experts in our own communities. The good work that you are advancing and the good work that I am advancing may be conceptually similar within our shared profession, but may look completely different in practice because our communities look different and have different needs. And we know it.
Over the first two days of #PLA2024 I’ve talked with a lot of different public library folks from a lot of different communities all over the United States. One topic that keeps coming up is the nature of our relationships as public library folks with our local school library professionals. People’s experiences vary widely! In some places there simply are no school libraries left; which is a crisis in and of itself. In those communities, public library professionals are engaged offering what library services they can to their community’s teachers and students. In other places it seems like it’s tricky to build sustainable, mutually beneficial partnerships because while public library folks want to support their community’s schools, there is also a risk decision-makers might look at successful public/school library partnerships and decide they don’t need to continue to fund and staff the school library because the public library do it all instead. Encouragingly, I’ve also gotten to hear about thriving partnerships between public library professionals and teacher librarians to serve children in both the public and school libraries together in complimentary ways.
Conversations in which I get the opportunity to say “Tell me more about that!” abound in a conference environment if I am open to them. They offer me the privilege of listening deeply to a colleague’s expertise in a low key way, which in turn gives me a better sense of the broader library landscape, challenges me to consider what I know (or don’t know) about my own stakeholders, and encourages me to reflect on how I might refine my own professional praxis.
Sessions can be hit or miss. Sometimes a session I thought was going to be highly relevant to my work just isn’t and that’s ok. But I think I can actually honestly say that I’ve never walked away from a conference conversation with a fellow library professional that I didn’t learn something from or that didn’t invite me to think about something I do in a different way. So the next time you have the opportunity to attend any sort of in-person library learning, I highly recommend you embrace the chance for spontaneous conversation with folks who live, work, and practice in communities beyond your own. Those moments might lead to some of your most important and most actionable takeaways!
Kate Brunner (she/her) is Youth & Family Services Principal Consultant at the Colorado State Library. At PLA, she is looking forward to facilitating a roundtable discussion session on Friday about Colorado librarians’ work developing early literacy library services for informal/licensed-exempt childcare providers. Having been engaged in a seven-year project called Growing Readers Together has led to learning a lot about Colorado’s informal providers, their information needs, and how libraries can better support them. A fun fact about Kate is that, although it wasn’t until mid-life that she consciously realized her dream job was in public libraries, she created her own classification system for her personal library when she was in elementary school. She only let friends borrow her books if they signed them out in her lending ledger. Kate’s little Beatrix Potter books still have penciled “call numbers” inside their front covers! The opinions expressed in this blog post are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect those of her employer.
This post addresses ALSC Core Competency VII: Professionalism and Professional Development
Please note that as a guest post, the views expressed here do not represent the official position of ALA or ALSC.