New York Library Association Conference
November 2020
Thanks to a Professional Development grant through CLRC, I was able to attend the 2020 New York Library Association Annual Conference virtually. This conference offered a wide variety of professional development programs to attend and I am looking forward to trying some of the things I learned and ideas I got at my library.
I was able to listen to the Keynote Speaker, Rebecca Miller. It was so interesting listening to her speak. It was especially interesting listening to her talk about the timeline of events that took place as the Covid shutdown started back in the Spring up until now. While I realized the impact the shutdown had on everyone and everything, I didn’t realize just how much went on during that time. It also made me grateful to be working at the library I work at and the support that our Library Board gave us during the time we were working from home.
I also attended several other sessions:
- Teen Esports and Your Library- this wasn’t quite what I expected it to be. It seemed more like it was geared towards school librarians looking to start a gaming club. I was hoping to get some ideas for a virtual gaming program at my library but didn’t get any real great ideas on how to get it started, especially considering we are not doing any in person programs.
- Grassroots Community Organizing for Socio-Economic Development- this was a very interesting session to attend and it was presented by OCPL librarians. This was basically about trying to provide programs that meet the needs of the people in the community. Some surprising things I learned was Syracuse has the highest rate of extreme poverty concentrated among blacks and Hispanics out of the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas and 80% of kids in the SCSD are in poverty. While my library doesn’t see a lot of inner-city patrons, this was still interesting to hear. It also made a lot of sense as the Village of Camillus and surrounding areas that my library serves also has a fairly large population of people living in poverty.
- Social Media for Small Libraries- this was an informative session. Up until right before everything shutdown, we always had a clerk or someone who was responsible for posting on social media for our library. The person who was doing this left for another job and I got sort of thrown into doing the posting on Facebook and creating events. While I am more comfortable with it, I still take every opportunity to learn more about this.
I am hoping to listen to a few more sessions before access to the NYLA portal is taken away. I really did miss the in-person conference. I get so much out of physically being there so that I can network and talk to other librarians to get ideas of things to try. I also like the social aspect of the physical conference as well. However, I did like that fact that being virtual, it seemed like I had more access to more of the sessions. I’m able to go back and listen to some that I wanted to see but didn’t, which you can’t really do when the conference is in person.
Thank you again CLRC for this great opportunity! Unfortunately, due to the conference being virtual, I didn’t take any pictures while I was at the conference.
Melissa Lewandowski
Youth Services Librarian, Maxwell Memorial Library
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