President's Update - July 10, 2015

My term as President has begun! I look forward to meeting as many of you as possible as we collaboratively work toward our shared goal of helping libraries and library professionals succeed. As a united and seamless educational association we can do this!

When I considered running for President of MLA, I realized that one of my major focuses must be to assure that opportunities and resources that MLA provides were congruent with what members wanted and needed. As the former chair of the Professional Development and Networking Committee, it was clear to me that what was needed from its volunteers had changed. No longer does the Association need us to engage in tasks such as creating web sites or picking up authors, but rather, helping us stay true to our vision and mission; identifying professional development needs based on needs assessments and feedback from you; understanding who the experts are and what we need to do to advance our careers and further support our respective libraries.

Through consistent and honest communication, there are plenty of opportunities to identify solutions to the issues presented by the proposed new association MI-ALA within the Michigan Library Association as MLA continues to support library professionals including academic librarians and academic libraries. Specifically, the MLA Board of Directors, established a taskforce to respond to MI-ALA’s concerns. Our hope is that MI-ALA would be willing to discuss and collaboratively seek ways to address their concerns within MLA. FAQs are available on the MLA Website.

I am looking forward to MLA addressing and resolving all issues that may preclude us from moving forward as a progressive, contributing, unified and professional organization.

Make it an outstanding day!

Asante

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