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President's Update - October 8, 2015

The MLA Annual Conference is just around the corner. I am registered, I have my hotel reservation and I downloaded the conference mobile app (text MLA 57780). All ready then, right? Well, not so much.

Now comes the hard part – deciding which sessions to attend. Seriously, this is not going to be easy. Have you seen the schedule?

I tend to ask myself several questions when choosing what sessions to attend. Does the topic have immediate relevance to my job? Have I heard good things about the speaker? Will I learn something that I wouldn’t learn anywhere else? Is the session going to make me smile?

Take a look at the first time block, 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, October 28. I can answer yes to at least one of the questions for almost every session.

  • Executive Exchange. Immediate relevance to my position as a dean at Northern Michigan University.
  • Gaming in the Library. Fun topic that I don’t know much about.
  • How to Ban a Book. The presenters are the authors of Unshelved, which I read every day. How could it not make me smile?
  • Online Learning Environments: Collaborative Tools. I live in the Upper Peninsula. Tools to support collaboration at a distance are always relevant.
  • Taking a Sledge Hammer to the Librarian Stereotype. Double points – Dion should be a great speaker and I don’t have too many chances to learn about sledgehammers and librarians in the same program.
  • The Redesigned SAT® for Michigan's High School Juniors. Definitely relevant. The students taking this test will be my students in a couple years.

I managed to exclude only one presentation, Growing as a Public Library Trustee, only because I’m not a trustee. Whoohoo, my decision is now down to picking one out of six instead of one out of seven. Now it’s *much* easier.

So thank you very much, MLA 2015 Annual Conference work group. This is going to be difficult. I hold you responsible.

In all seriousness, many thanks to the conference work group, the MLA staff, the presenters, our sponsors and everyone else who has given so much to make this happen. This is an amazing program and I’m honored to play a part in it. Thank you.

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