Conference Updates
Program Spotlight from the Reference SectionMar 26 2018 - 10:44am
I know I am personally very excited for this year’s NJLA Annual Conference, and in particular the many networking and sessions opportunities where we can all speak freely, share ideas, address challenges, and explore areas of our work that may not always be the most comfortable.The NJLA Conference is a time for us to connect, reflect and embrace each other’s ideas and differences, while challenging the status quo in moving our profession forward. With that in mind, the NJLA Reference section is excited to be sponsoring a few opportunities where we can examine, discuss, and think critically about the issues we face. Transformative Conversations with "Problem Patrons" (Friday, June 1, 9:00-9:50AM) will consider how expectations, labels, and behaviors impact communication. The discussion will further consider strategies for transforming conversations within the context of being culturally sensitive . This discussion will use the lens of social services to analyze the impacts of our expectations, labels, and behaviors upon our own communication. From that perspective, we'll learn new strategies for transformative conversation.
Reference Librarians Speak Freely (Friday, June 1, 11:30AM-12:20PM) is yet another opportunity for all of us to come together, discuss and consider how the role, responsibilities, and nature of reference work (and for that matter the reference librarian), is changing. This particular discussion truly is for any librarian who has an interest in exploring what it means to be a librarian in 2018, and what it may mean in the future.
Find Your Niche: How to Establish and Run Your Niche Book Club (Thursday, May 31, 4:10-5:00PM) In considering the standard format our many of our library book clubs, here is an opportunity to talk about and examine the book club model for more niche genres and titles. How can we organize and provide quality book discussion experiences for those books further off the beaten path, and serve the needs of those who may have interest in these titles? This panel will consider those questions and provide potential models for making books clubs like these a success.
Click here to view the full schedule of programs co-sponsored by the Reference Section. We hope to see many of you during these sessions, passing in the halls, or maybe for a cocktail or other social event! -Doug Baldwin and the 2018 NJLA Conference Committee |
Program Spotlight from the Professional Development CommitteeMar 22 2018 - 11:08am
If your answer to any of these questions is “YES!”, the Professional Development Committee has you covered!
One thing that I always appreciate about the Professional Development Committee is that their programs offer practical and instantly transferable skills for librarians and library workers regardless of job title or setting. The Professional Development Committee understands that it can often be difficult to get out of your workplace to attend Conference and training events so we make sure to offer programs that will give attendees the content that they need. One unique aspect of the Professional Development Committee is that we serve ALL NJLA members equally; we don’t have a unique population or title that we focus on and our program offerings this year clearly reflect those broad goals. I contacted John Daquino, Professional Development Committee Co-Chair and Head of Reference at Union Public Library, to learn a little more about this year’s program selections and this is what he shared:
We hope that you join us for one or more of our programs at this year’s NJLA Conference. Here is our lineup: Library Instruction Palooza, Pre-Conference Wednesday, May 30, 2-5 PM, Wildwood 14 & 15 Positive Assertive Communication, Thursday, May 31, 3:10-4:00 PM, Wildwood 23 & 24 Advanced Employee Discipline Strategies for a Win-Win Work Environment, Friday, June 1, 3:40-4:30 PM, Wildwood 6 & 7 Career Corner Thursday, May 31, 12:30 - 2:30 PM, Wildwood 25 & 26 Looking to get feedback on your resume? Interview tips? Or maybe some advice on how to advance in your career? Stop by the Career Corner where MentorNJ representatives will be onsite to meet with you one-on-one to answer all of your professional development questions. MentorNJ is supported by LibraryLinkNJ and the NJ State Library. Portrait Booth Friday, June 1, 12:30 - 2:30 PM, Wildwood 25 & 26 Take time out of your busy conference schedule to get a headshot taken by a professional photographer at the Portrait Booth! Whether used for your social media channels or your employer’s website, a professional headshot will help you put your best foot forward. Note, headshots are free of charge as-is and will be made available online following the conference; retouching can be provided at a fee determined by the photographer.
- Theresa Agostinelli, Reference & Instruction Librarian, Middlesex County College Library
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Program Spotlight from the Emerging Technologies SectionMar 19 2018 - 11:55amCheck out the exciting slate of programs sponsored by the Emerging Technology section at this year's #NJLA18 Conference:
Thursday May 31
9 AM Building it Better: Inspiring Teens through STEM, Making and Entrepreneurship 11:30 AM Technology: Speak Confidently 12:30 PM Feast on This: Show & Make Lunch 3:10 PM Want More Tech? No IT Department? No Problem!
Friday June 1
11:30 AM Full STEAM Together: Social Justice in Programming 2:30 PM Technology Innovation Forum 2:30 PM Securing Your Digital Life 3:40 PM We Go Way Back: Libraries & Community Web Archiving
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Program Spotlight from Diversity & Outreach SectionMar 14 2018 - 11:35amAs a section formed in 2013 from the Special Populations Section, Bookmobile Roundtable, and GLBTI Roundtable, the Diversity & Outreach Section tries to bring programs to the NJLA Annual Conference that empower our peers to consider and engage underrepresented communities. In previous years, we have offered Conference programs focused on services to patrons with disabilities, LGBTQ patrons, immigrants, and more. We aim for our program attendees to walk away with renewed energy to serve their community in unique and meaningful ways. One of our programs this year is called Let’s Listen: Presenting Diverse Oral Histories. Oral histories capture and preserve the stories, experiences, and memories of living people. It’s a way for communities to shape their own histories and narratives by sharing stories might otherwise be forgotten or erased. Our program will explore how public librarians can work with public historians to collect and preserve oral histories in the communities they serve!
We’ll hear from Kristyn Scorsone of the Queer Newark Oral History Project (QNOHP), founded in 2011 with the goal of preserving the history of Newark’s LGBTQ community. Just a sampling of their work includes recording interviews with queer Newarkers about their lives, conducting research into Newark’s LGBTQ past, and publishing online public history. For the past few years, QNOHP has been actively involved in the Telling Untold Histories Unconference, which brings together scholars, students, librarians, archivists, and community members for a day of listening and learning. 
In addition, we’ll hear from two NJ librarians who will share the rewards and challenges of presenting oral histories in our libraries. Deena Caswell, Supervisor of Outreach and Diversity at Cherry Hill Public Library, will discuss the Trans Oral History Project and her signature program series “Pride @ the Library.” Kathleen DiGiulio will discuss her experience coordinating a Human Library project at Paterson Free Public Library, which was focused on highlighting the varied perspectives of those involved in war or personal, political, or social conflict. Bring your questions, ideas, and energy as we discuss potential partnerships and practices with the goal of elevating the diverse voices in our libraries. Let’s listen!
With our friends in Urban Libraries, Reader’s Advisory, Reference, and more, we are also co-sponsoring the following programs: Wednesday 5/30:
Thursday 5/31:
Friday 6/1:
-Ally Blumenfeld, Diversity & Outreach Section |
Program Spotlight from the Administration & Management SectionMar 12 2018 - 10:49amAttention Library Administrators & Managers! Do not miss this program!Engaging Staff in the 21st Century LibraryThursday, May 31; 11:30 AM - 12:20 PM Once upon a time in libraries, the primary focus was collecting print to create warehouses of information. Over time, it has become clear that libraries have evolved, whether intentionally or not, to realize that learning can occur in many ways; traditional interactions, as in the circulation of books, still occur. But, libraries also teach information literacy, technology applications, support early literacy, assist in areas once under social service agencies, and explore evolving technology.
Few libraries have planned this evolution in a methodical way, but libraries that have paid attention to the changing needs and expectations of their community have reacted and, in some cases, anticipated what was occurring in their communities. Successful libraries have either attracted staff who embrace these new challenges or identified who among existing staff are open to and even anxious to shake things up. In some cases, the way to begin is to listen to current staff and find out what makes them excited about their work - and make it possible to do that. In other cases, a need is identified and a search for the perfect fit begins. With the evolving roles of libraries in each community, as libraries move away from information gatekeepers to community engagers, diverse programmers and information literacy advocates, the importance of an engaged, flexible and energized staff is more critical than ever. From each new employee to the highly experienced, each employee determines the success or failure of your library.
In this program, sponsored by the Administration and Management Section, you will hear from two of New Jersey’s great administrative leaders: Cindy Czesak, Interim Executive Director of BCCLS, and James Keehbler, Director of the Hunterdon County Library System. They will share a framework for increasing staff engagement at your library based on research and field experience, answer questions, and lead a discussion on how to engage the 21st century library employee. Other programs of interest co-sponsored by the Administration & Management Section:
Preconference: Maximizing Communication in the Library Workplace Wednesday, May 30, 2PM - 5PM Visualizing Funding for Libraries: A New Data Tool from Foundation Center Friday, June 1, 11:30 PM - 12:20 PM Self-Care and You: How to be Awesome while Staving Off Burnout Friday, June 1, 2:30 PM - 3:20 PM Advanced Employee Discipline Strategies for a Win-Win Work Environment Friday, June 1, 3:40 PM - 4:30 PM
-2018 NJLA Conference Committee |
Everything you need to know about PreconferenceMar 6 2018 - 10:29amThis year Preconference will be bigger and better than ever! Here's what you need to know:
The NJLA Annual Preconference day will take place on Wednesday, May 30, 2018. We are offering FIVE exciting Preconference sessions in TWO time slots on Wednesday. The cost to attend each session is $50; attendees who register for two sessions will receive a complimentary boxed lunch.
Preconference Schedule: 10 AM - 1 PM 2 PM - 5 PM
Early Bird Registration deadline is May 2, 2018. Registration information can be found here and the registration form here. We are very pleased to offer attendees five preconference options, and look forward to an exciting Wednesday in Atlantic City! |
Why School Librarians should attend the #NJLA18 ConferenceFeb 28 2018 - 6:15pmGuest post from Media Specialist Darby Malvey
The NJLA Annual Conference is soon approaching, and librarians of all types are welcome to attend. But if you’re a school librarian, like I am, you may be wondering why you’d go. What does the NJLA Conference offer New Jersey’s media specialists that makes it worth our precious time? As a school librarian, and a long-time conference attendee, I can honestly say that attending the NJLA annual conference has true benefits for new and veteran media specialists alike.
School librarians across the state know how difficult it can be to get true, valuable professional development within their districts. While some of us are the sole librarians in our districts, many others are part of small or undervalued departments that don’t often see professional development aimed specifically at their needs. In-service days and PD opportunities at our building or district levels don’t always provide us what we need, but conferences designed specifically for librarians are an ideal way to develop professionally. The NJLA conference allows media specialists to leap beyond the boxes to which school-provided PD often confines us - like lesson planning, rubrics, and standardized testing - and brings us quality development in areas that we and we alone can turnkey to our students and colleagues. Many of us spend a lot of time trying to take what we learn in school-focused sessions and rework it to make it appropriate in the library setting. Attending NJLA’s annual conference provides us with an opportunity to do just the opposite by taking library-focused development and reworking it to fit the needs of our schools.
Beyond an abundance of valuable PD and training sessions, the NJLA Annual Conference also provides a unique opportunity for school librarians across all grade levels to network and build relationships with their public library counterparts. NJLA’s Children’s Services Section and Young Adult Services Section are heavily represented at the conference. We all know that media specialists struggle, due largely to scheduling conflicts, to participate actively with these groups. Yet often the librarians who make up these sections are serving our own students as their patrons. Attending conference gives us a chance to see what these librarians are up to and to find ways to participate in initiatives - like the Garden State Book Awards or Read Across America activities - that can be implemented at both public and school libraries for the good of our students. Likewise, it gives the children’s and YA librarians of our state’s public libraries a chance to learn from us, finding out what they can do to better support our needs and efforts, and helping to improve library service to young people all around.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I find tremendous value in attending the NJLA annual conference simply because I believe it’s important that school librarians have a presence and a voice within the association. It’s true that New Jersey’s media specialists are lucky enough to have NJASL, an organization with its own valuable conference and unique set of goals. But NJLA represents librarians and libraries of all types, all over the state. In recent years, NJLA has taken great steps for school libraries: forming a School Libraries Taskforce, founding the Unlock Student Potential initiative, instating the I Love My School Librarian campaign, and fighting for legislation that would put qualified media specialists back in schools where they belong. But without input and participation from media specialists, these initiatives can’t grow or flourish.
While we may not all have the time to become more active participants in NJLA, one or two days of attendance at the conference can be a small way for us not only to show our support for the initiatives already in place, but to speak up to active NJLA members and association leadership about what else school librarians want and need. Attending a session, signing up for an email list, sharing our stories with members of sections and roundtables, or simply networking with different types of librarians at conference social events - all of these small actions can lead to big changes and big opportunities, but they are actions we can only take if we show up.
As it is every year, the NJLA 2018 Annual Conference is sure to feature valuable educational sessions, abundant networking opportunities, riveting keynote speakers, and fun social events. Each of these can be beneficial to New Jersey’s school librarians, if only we show up to take advantage of it all. Will you be there?
Darby Malvey is a Media Specialist at Clayton Middle School and High School, where she serves 6th-12th grade students in Gloucester County. Prior to becoming a school librarian, she worked as a youth services librarian in New Jersey’s public libraries for several years. Darby is Co-President of the NJASL Tri-County School Librarians affiliate group, a member of NJLA’s School Libraries Taskforce, and a Member at Large of NJLA’s Executive Board. |
Why Academic Librarians should attend the #NJLA18 ConferenceFeb 21 2018 - 10:53pmNJLA College and University Section/ACRL-NJ President Leslin Charles, Instructional Design Librarian at Rutgers, is looking forward to another great NJLA Conference in Atlantic City. Leslin is usually a presenter at the Conference, but this year she will be focused on some of the duties associated with being CUS President, such as presenting the Distinguished Service Award during the Honors and Awards ceremony and serving as the host of the CUS Luncheon. So why not join in the fun?
Leslin is pleased to announce that ACRL President Cheryl Middleton, University Librarian for Research & Scholarly Communication at Oregon State University Libraries, is this year’s speaker at the CUS Luncheon. The opportunity to have an ACRL officer speak at the Conference only happens every five years or so and it provides a great way for NJ academic librarians to learn more about our national association and its initiatives and for national leadership to learn about members’ interest at the chapter level. This is an opportunity you don’t want to miss, so be sure to register for the lunch when you complete your registration form!
As a past presenter, Leslin knows firsthand how much time and effort goes into the presentations at the conference and she is looking forward to attending as many sessions as possible. Leslin is especially excited about attending the revamped Research Showcase, sponsored by the NJLA/CUS-ACRL-NJ Research Committee, which will highlight and promote research by NJ librarians. We hope you are also excited to celebrate and support the outstanding work of your colleagues. Attending the NJLA Conference presents an opportunity for all librarians in the state to come together and network, speak freely, exchange ideas, and learn more about the terrific programs that are happening in all types of libraries. The Conference dates, May 30-June 1, work well for many academic librarians, and Leslin hopes that many of her academic colleagues will be joining her in Atlantic City for the 2018 NJLA Conference! - Nancy Weiner and the 2018 NJLA Conference Committee |
8 Reasons Why Library School Students should attend the #NJLA18 ConferenceFeb 13 2018 - 8:41pmConference Committee intern and Rutgers MI student Kristen Crepezzi fills us in on 8 compelling reasons why library school students should be at the #NJLA18 Annual Conference in Atlantic City from May 30 - June 1, 2018:
Kristen Crepezzi is a current student in the Rutgers MI program and Teen Librarian at the South Brunswick Public Library. She currently serves as intern for the NJLA Conference Committee through the NJLA Committee Intern Program. Last year at NJLA she won a chair playing vendor Bingo, proving that dreams really do come true. |
Program AnnouncementsJan 18 2018 - 1:48pmThank you for your patience! We know that you are anxiously awaiting news of accepted program proposals. Over the next week or so, the Conference Committee will be sending correspondence to all those who submitted program proposals for the 2018 Annual Conference to provide further information! (Note: This post has been edited and updated. The original post lives on the Conference Blog.) Over 125 fantastic submissions were received this year for all types of events -- regular sessions, double sessions, engaging preconference sessions, social events, lunch opportunities and more! Especially since we opened proposals up to individuals and groups outside of the NJLA membership for this year, we're really excited about the lineup of events! In the meantime, we want to share some of the behind-the-scenes details so that you know what the committee has been working on, and know what's coming up next . . . First, to get it out of the way, we understand that it stinks when your program proposal isn't accepted. Please know that there is a lot of thought and discussion that goes into each program when deciding upon acceptances. The Conference Committee met for a full day in December to go over the nitty-gritty of each one. With only 8 program room and 4 time slots per day, that's only a maximum of 64 TOTAL regular session programs plus less than a handful of preconference sessions. We were excited to see program submissions from almost every NJLA section or committee this year, and the committee strived to choose programs that reflected the diversity of our association. If your program was not selected for this year's conference -- because of competition of similar topics, cost, diversity, or insufficient detail -- please consider the many other professional opportunities within NJLA and our library community to present! Your colleagues work tirelessly on a calendar of events that appeal to library workers of all types, including the Adult and Youth Services Forums, Makerspace Toolkit, NJASL, VALE, and the NJLA Commons virtual keynotes. Information will also be coming out soon about Poster Sessions at this year's event, which could be the perfect place to showcase your topic to a broad audience. At the very least, you are encouraged to continue to develop these submissions and propose them again for the 2019 Conference! In going through all 125+ submissions, we always uncover details in program proposals that need further clarification or confirmation. It often takes some time to nail down all of the specifics that we require to not only confirm acceptance of programs, but also to be sure that we have everything we need in order to post full program details on the schedule of events on the website in order to successfully open up registration! We extend a great "thank you" to all of our program organizers for not only submitting thoughtful and rich programming, but also for being so diligent in answering our questions and providing clarification or changes as necessary for program approval. Once we are sure that we have a strong list of completed, accepted programs from the committee, the chairs met to create the grid, which includes dates, time slots, and room assignments for each room. This took another entire day to accomplish and a whole pad (at least) of post-it notes! This is something that needs to be finished before we can get acceptance notices out to all of you! The whole process definitely takes some time and the entire committee genuinely appreciates your understanding and patience. The following are many of the things we need to consider when creating a schedule:
As we begin to communicate with each program organizer individually with details about their accepted proposals, the next steps for the committee are to triple-check for speaker conflicts (let us know if you find any!) and confirm the schedule. Then we can finally upload all of the programs, including social events, keynotes and luncheons, to the conference website (you'll see a new tab for Schedule fairly soon). We'll also be sharing information on the website about room rates and hotel registration. Plus stay tuned: We'll be communicating more details about keynotes, PROMOTION (starts now!), taking care of and making arrangements for speakers, AV and room setup, reimbursements and more any day now. We anticipate opening registration in early February. Everything you need to know will be posted at http://njlaconference.info as well as in your email (if you are an NJLA member). If you are not an NJLA member, now's the time! NJLA offers rolling membership, so you can join anytime for discounted conference rates. To register for Conference at a member (NJLA, NJASL, ACRL, NJLTA or other state associations) rate, you must be a current member at the time of registration AND conference. Kate Jaggers and the 2017-2018 NJLA Conference Committee For more information about how Conference is put together, take a look at the Conference Blog.
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