MLA 2021 Virtual Conference Archives

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Find Your Way in ALA

Whether or not you are a member, the American Library Association is YOUR association. MLA is an ALA chapter, and ALA represents libraries at the national level. Join MLA's ALA Councilor to learn the latest ALA news, how ALA and MLA interact, and how you can get involved.

The MLA Mentorship Program Helped Us Both

Have you thought about participating in the MLA Mentorship Program? Sarah used the experience to check her career progress and explore using her skill set to contribute to the profession outside of her current work space. With her mentor, she took four MSUE wellness courses and the two wrote a blog post about self-care in the workplace that they published in California. By the end, Sarah was writing original copy to promote academic eResources in the MeL Maven Badge. Hear from this pair!

Out of the Office and Away from Home: Tips for Working Just About Anywhere

If you are one of the professionals that is working away from the office or even away from home, this session will focus on tools and tips to continue working smoothly with your laptop and your smartphone. With that being said, lessons learned on how to deal with lost/stolen devices that are used for work will also be covered. Some of the tools and tips that will be covered will include:

Working away from the office
What tools to use to get your message across when you can't connect in the office
How to keep task focused
Working away from home
Tethering: Using your smartphone's data plan in addition to a laptop to conduct your work from just about anywhere
When your mobile device is lost or stolen: How to prepare for this and what steps to take afterward

Thinking Like a Journalist in a Library Setting

It isn't getting any easier to compete for attention spans. More than ever, we need to get to the point quickly and coherently. A library's staff does quite a bit of writing on a daily basis--from social media posts to newsletters, to press releases and blogs--we tend to have a lot of "news" to "report." If we think like a journalist, it helps us structure our writing and effectively tell our library's story, while also improving our chances to get some good press from local reporters.

Bringing Battle Back: Virtual Battle of the Books and How It Changed Everything

Battle of the Books has been a popular annual program of the Northville District Library for 15 years that draws in hundreds of patrons to participate and watch the event unfold each year. When NDL converted their Battle to an online format they brought in both old and new participants and changed the program for years to come. The NDL team will talk about planning, working with patrons to promote social distancing, dealing with technical and personnel hiccups, and looking towards the future. Participants will also gain access to the open-source scoring software specifically developed for both virtual and in-person Battle of the Books events.