News - MLA
Written by Ryan Wieber, MLA President   

Letter From Ryan

Michigan library friends,

Ryan Wieber headshotThis time of year is about refreshment, regrowth, and renewal. After two-plus years of a pandemic, signs of encouragement grow stronger with each return of a familiar library program or activity, and with each return to our spaces by a patron. MLA is leading the charge to both welcome back and introduce anew to our communities, the value of recent additions to our spaces and collections through the MI-83 project where libraries, courtesy of ARPA funding, received new technology and digital content. The MI Library is Now marketing campaign can be utilized by all of us as another tool to welcome back folks to Michigan libraries. Take advantage of these resources and modify the message uniquely for your community.

I also challenge you to visit MiRightToRead.comcreated and coordinated by MLA and join the coalition to ensure intellectual freedom and access to library materials are better understood and supported as we continue to face friction in upholding the rights of readers. Encourage that your colleagues, volunteers, and library supporters are aware of current issues, and how MLA and the library profession in Michigan are ready to lend a hand when needed.

Just this week, we have been hit again with the god-awful news of yet another mass school shooting. That, in addition to the racist and hate-motivated killing of innocent lives at a Buffalo supermarket last week, reminds us with blunt, searing forcefulness, of the broken state of our laws, politics, and priorities. Things have to change. The lives of children, students, friends, and families have to be given value over perceived rights and political blindness. Enough is enough. 

In times like this, may we all exhibit courage like the children’s librarian yesterday at the Uvalde, Texas Public Library who somehow had the ability to stand before 10 children, singing and reading, and encouraging joy, and hope. Things can change, and librarians can be part of it.

 

 


Ryan Wieber
MLA President

 


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