The CAFÉ at American Library Association (ALA) Conference 2010 in Washington DC

Tuesday, September 14, 2010 by KRL Cafe

Here is a brief report of CAFÉ members, Christina Nofziger, Suzie Christman and Rachele Deininger’s experience at the ALA conference this year as they were honored to present the CAFÉ model for staff led library advocacy that has been developed here at Kitsap Regional Library. Many thanks to KRL for supporting their trip, to Carol Schuyler for recommending their presentation to the Public Library Association and to PLA for sponsoring and inviting them to come present. They are also quite excited to be presenting at the WLMA/WALE annual conference this October in SeaTac, Washington!




Christina
I am extremely grateful to have been given the opportunity to attend ALA and share what KRL and the CAFE have been doing to advocate for the library in Kitsap County. It was encouraging to meet library workers from across the country and world and share stories and ideas. I enjoyed meeting authors and talking to vendors who might offer ways for KRL to improve it's services to the public. I attended sessions on a variety of topics related to programming, youth services, human resources, and library advocacy and I am bursting with new ideas for the CAFE to tackle as we work toward showing our community how valuable we are and hopefully passing our next levy! I also really enjoyed just being in Washington DC and taking in the sites and culture and am seriously considering what route to take to end up working at the Library of Congress one day!




Suzie
Attending my first national conference as a non-librarian was a daunting experience! That being said I tried to take advantage of all the opportunities I could. I attended sessions on marketing, library advocacy, staff communication, innovative library community programming, and youth related topics. I have begun sharing some of the information and tools I gathered at the conference and am eager to do more. Looking at library work from this perspective really helps reset my goals and dreams for what is possible here at Kitsap Regional Library.



Rachele
It was very exciting to be attending ALA for the first time if not a little daunting. It’s totally different that WLA (Washing Library Association) Conference for sure. The sheer size of the conference center and the city itself was overwhelming. However, I was thankful for my WLA experience because it helped me be more prepared for ALA as far as having a basic idea of what to expect and how these conferences tend to be run and organized. It was thrilling to have such a vast array of learning and networking opportunities at our fingertips. It was also wonderful to be surrounded by so many people with many of the same passions/common goals as us. There are a lot of library systems out there experiencing many of the same struggles and challenges as us which is encouraging but I was most excited to hear how other libraries have made meaningful and lasting connections with their communities. Last but definitely not least, we truly enjoyed sharing the CAFÉ concept with other library professionals not only from across the nation but from all over the world! We had people from the UK, Germany, Mexico and Romania attend our presentation. We had great questions and comments from our audience and look forward to hearing from some of them through this blog!

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If you were there, you would have overheard the PLA assistant who collects the program Evaluation sheets scurrying over to catch our KRL CAFÉ presenters before they left, to be sure they knew that one of the attendees had written on the evaluation: “This is the very best program I have attended all year – I mean it – these three!” (meaning our very own Rachele, Christina and Suzie). She told me that the most frequently used description in the evaluations was the word “inspiring”!


Special thanks to out to Reference Librarian Peggy Branaman, who graciously came to the CAFÉ presentation to support and help the presenters with logistics.

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