What happens when you gather a group of people who love books in one room? They talk about books. What happens when those people work in school libraries? They talk about how exciting it is to share books with kids!
About 40 library staff from 22 school districts across Eastern Oregon gathered for a Regional Library Conference on April 11th in Pendleton. Sponsored by IMESD, the conference was organized by Christie Boen, Library Media Specialist for IMESD.
Boen said the purpose of the conference was to bring together library staff from around the region to learn, connect and share with each other. She said most library staff work alone in their spaces without having colleagues to collaborate with; to meet people in similar positions, they have to attend a library conference.
“It has been years since there has been a library conference in Eastern Oregon,” said Boen. “We wanted to provide professional development that was affordable and designed to instruct, encourage, inspire and provide opportunities for networking.”
The free conference was attended mostly by classified library staff. Boen said it’s rare that they have the opportunity to attend professional development, and employees in these positions do not receive robust training on how to develop and maintain their collections, how to use reviews and selection criteria in purchasing books, how to manage classes or how to create activities to engage students in the library.
One of the conference sessions featured Jen Maurer, School Library Consultant at the State Library of Oregon. She discussed having a variety of books in your collection for all types of readers and tips on how to cull your collection. Maurer emphasized having updated policies for your school library, using reliable industry book lists and talked about what to do if a book is challenged. “A defensible collection is developed with intention, aligns with school policies and is backed up by industry experts when possible,” Maurer said.
Conference attendees also attended sessions about book repair, Canva and “Ideas you can use tomorrow” for elementary and secondary school libraries. Ideas included student activities like a two-sentence writing contest, random checkout prizes (i.e. you are the 100th checkout of the year), Pi Day coloring contest and having high school students write their own book reviews to share.
Boen said a few of her favorite things about the conference were seeing how excited attendees were as they were talking about their libraries, seeing their faces light up as they were listening and taking notes in sessions and hearing their overall gratitude for being able to spend the day with people of similar interests. Several attendees shared that the conference was valuable.
“It was my hope that attendees would have at least one take away that they are excited about using in their libraries, that they were inspired and motivated to share books with students and that they’ve met new friends who they can bounce ideas off of,” Boen said.
She is looking forward to planning next year’s Regional Library Conference, as IMESD plans to have it annually.
