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

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!