Maya, Lukas, Liam, & Librarian

Maine Library Association

Report to MLA Council & Membership

November/December 2009

Respectfully submitted by Sonja Plummer-Morgan, President

Once again it is my pleasure to report activity on behalf of the Maine Library Association during the month of November and part of December as your president. It is my hope that this finds you and your families well during this holiday season and your libraries bustling with season’s greetings! Visiting libraries and developing our coffee sleeve project are two primary activities that I’ll mention and then other points are bulleted. The burgeoning website is another that is still underdevelopment, but we expect to unveil it soon.

It was good to visit libraries over the past several weeks. At every traveling opportunity, a few libraries are visited. Some include Rockport Public Library, Camden Public Library, Searsport, Winterport, Pittsfield, and a few others that were closed, but I could at least peer at and appreciate their existence even in the smallest of Maine towns.

It feels important to see, visit, and speak with library staff to understand our profession more deeply and to build upon the good work before us within the Association so that the future of MLA is prefaced upon the people that we serve…our members and our constituents. When I or our officers visit your library, we take photos and promote your library on myriad online social networks. We are proud of Maine libraries and the people who comprise them.

Our new MLA coffee sleeves are promoting Maine Libraries in a new way. Associations from around the Country, within our State, and on various social networks are finding the project intriguing and worthy of consideration for their own Associations. Starbucks of Maine is distributing the sleeves, libraries can request sleeves, and I’ve personally delivered boxes to Bangor Public Library, Camden Public Library, Rockport Public Library, and Waldoboro Public Library. The sleeves promote our new logo, website, and Maine libraries in general.

Our new website will remain www.mainelibraries.org. However, it has an entirely new look. Ben Greeley, web developer from Colby, was chosen to design and build. We’ve worked many hours discussing the Association and I really appreciated Ben’s insights that our Association is about people; the people we serve, the people we work with, and the people who comprise our membership. People are the philosophic foundation for our website. As such, the design incorporates our information on the present site, with our 2.0 social networks, photos offered by our membership, and is both easily navigated and logically arranged to save members’ time. We have guest bloggers lined up, a photo gallery, are updating information, creating new membership invitations, and I believe that this new site will be pleasing to look at and inviting. Now onto the bullet points and additional activities:

We continue work on a Strategic Plan. Our Strategic Planning Committee reports that the diversity of the types of libraries that we serve creates an enormous barrier to a Plan that represents the entire Association, but offered some solutions to that.
President and Immediate Past President, Molly attended the Juice 2.0 Conference in Camden and was honored to be part of a panel that talked about economic development and the future of libraries.
President will attend Midwinter to represent our Association and will provide membership with a full report of things learned.
The MLA to Z Newsletter is hot off the press and will be available soon.
The Nominations Committee is working filling the new Member-at-Large position added at the Annual Meeting. This position is appointed by the Council and they serve until June when we’ll elect a two year position.
Conference plans continue with a theme, date, place, and some very exciting ideas on keynotes! It’s going to be a terrific conference. Our new website will have information very soon.
Thank you to everyone who has sent pics for our Flickr account and potentially our new Website.
The next MLA Council meeting will be held at the Maine State Library on December 18^th at 1:00pm. Anastasia Weigle will discuss the long term plans for the MLA archives (it needs a permanent home).
On Saturday, December 19^th, the President of MLA, our VP/Pres Elect Andi Jackson-Darling, and the President of the Maine Association of School Librarians will meet with incoming LIS students in the New England Cohort for the University of South Carolina. Very pleased to welcome these scholars and meet them.
Membership and new members is the focus for December and January. Please help us by renewing your membership and encouraging your staff, friends, and colleagues to be part of our Association!
Our newest online social networks are Flickr and LibraryThing. To view our photostream, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/mainelibraryassoc/ for our LibraryThing Group, please go to http://www.librarything.com/groups/mainelibraryassociat
We are also in LinkedIn, Goodreads, Cafepress, Twitter, Facebook, and in ALA Connect. Trouble finding us? Just email me and we’ll connect virtually.