Dear ASCLA Members,

The annual conference is just a few days away and I’d like to invite all ASCLA members and potential members to attend the ASCLA board meetings in Chicago. The board meetings, whether you attend all or part of them, are great places to get involved with ASCLA and its concerns, and to let the ASCLA leaders know if you are interested in leadership positions on the board, committees or within the interest groups. Bring a friend who you think might be interested – we love visitors and welcome everybody! The board meetings take place:

ASCLA Board of Directors I  Saturday, 4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.  McCormick Place Convention Center, S505b

ASCLA Board of Directors II  Monday, 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.  McCormick Place Convention Center, S503b

Meeting documents are forthcoming and will be posted publicly to ALA Connect here (be sure to check the ALA online conference scheduler for room updates at conference).

Once again, small but mighty ASCLA has some terrific programs and preconferences this year! All of our programs are amazing, but I want make special note of:

ASCLA President’s Program: Storytelling Mojo: Creating the 21st Century Library Narrative, Sunday, June 30, 10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Stacey Aldrich, ASCLA President, and her team are bringing an amazing program and speaker to Chicago this year with the theme of telling your story:  how do we share the excitement for how libraries are evolving and innovating as a community institution? Learn storytelling strategies specific to the unique opportunities and challenges faced by libraries today. Michael Margolis, CEO of Get Storied, has worked as a story architect for over a decade and collaborated closely with both the California and Pennsylvania State Libraries around this issue. This program promises to be fun and innovative – please join us! Add the program to your conference schedule.

Appealing Programs! Attend our cutting-edge programs with topics that range from “Easy and Affordable Accessibility” and  “Do Those Evaluation Statistics Mean Anything?“ to “Beyond Brainstorming: Making More Effective Decisions.” For the complete lineup and full descriptions go here.

Skill- and Knowledge-Building Preconferences: In addition to our program lineup, we have 3 excellent preconferences, including:

  • a very timely one on positioning your library to help your community by serving as a disaster recovery center (“Ports in a Storm: Your Library as a Disaster Recovery Center”)
  • how to cultivate strong loyalty from employees and library users with the concept of servant leadership (“Servant Leadership in Your Library”)
  • and a gathering of discussions about trends in both physical and virtual delivery of library materials to users (“Discovery to Delivery: Rethinking Resource Sharing”)

Hang out at a Party! Last but not least, please join us for some fun, hang out  with ASCLA colleagues and celebrate this year’s award winners at the ASCLA/COSLA Reception and Awards Presentation, scheduled for Saturday, June 29, 5:45 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. All members and non-members are invited to this event! Add the reception to your schedule.

Don’t forget to stop by the ASCLA table in the ALA Office and pick up some ribbons – we have lots of different ones this year.

Have a wonderful time in Chicago; if you can’t make it this year, I hope to see you in Las Vegas in 2014!

Best Wishes,

Susan Hornung, ASCLA Executive Director, shornung@ala.org