Before I attended this year’s Lake Superior Libraries Symposium, I was told repeatedly how much fun I would have and how much I would like my fellow attendees. I was suspicious: maybe I wouldn’t have fun, and after getting my hopes up, maybe they would be crushed a little extra.
Fortunately, that was absolutely NOT the case – it was great!
I have been to a lot of conferences, all over the place; and I inevitably spend what seems like hours driving around the venue looking for a place to park where I can be reasonably sure my car will still be there when I get back. Then I discover I missed a pre-conference event, or I can’t find the registration area, or any number of other disasters caused by poor planning
NONE of that happened here! Not only was everything easy to find, but the organizing committee kept us well informed – even sending out maps of the parking area where we could park, stationing people to wave signs at us, and providing a constant series of directions and information before, during, and after the conference! It was wonderful! Continue reading Thanks to the Lake Superior Libraries Symposium!→
“The organizers of the Lake Superior Libraries Symposium (LSLS) invite lightning round presentation proposals for the sixth annual conference to be held on Friday, June 9, 2017 at the University of Minnesota Duluth Kathryn A. Martin Library. The lighting round sessions will be held after lunch and presented to the entire group — sessions will be 8-12 minutes in length.
This year’s theme, Beyond Neutral, invites attendees to challenge the traditional stance of libraries as neutral spaces. Possibilities for presentation topics include:
Breaking Barriers, Opening Doors: What steps have you taken to make your library welcoming and accessible to your community? Have you connected with community partners or altered the physical space of your library?
Reflecting Our Communities: How have you used programming, collection development, displays, or services to support diversity and inclusion?
Starting the Dialogue: How can we best address challenging questions within our professions, like lack of professional diversity, the pace of change, and the library’s purpose?
Successful lightning round presentations will be applicable to many types of libraries and showcase effective and innovative practices. All presenters will receive a discounted registration rate of $25.
To submit a proposal, please fill out the form here: https://goo.gl/forms/kQ9oZ67GgjuboWeJ3. All proposals should be submitted by Friday, April 28, 2017. Presenters will be notified of acceptance in early May.
The following post was submitted by CMLE scholarship recipient Maria Burnham, Library Media Specialist at Sauk Rapids – Rice High School.
I attended the Lake Superior Library Symposium (LSLS) on the campus of the University of Minnesota Duluth on June 5, 2015 thanks to a scholarship from CMLE. A friend of mine from high school is a librarian at UMD and is one of the planners for the conference. He asked me to attend the conference as well as present on what I’ve been doing with my school library MakerSpace. I had not heard of the conference before, but I am certainly glad I made the journey north to attend.
I very much enjoyed the LSLS (as well as all of the social gatherings before and after the conference). The conference numbers are quite small, making it easy to spend time connecting with other professional librarians, particularly those who are academic or public librarians. And although I may have been the only K-12 professional at the conference this year, I learned a great deal because many topics that pertain to public or academic libraries also pertain to my media center.
The keynote speaker for the morning was Char Booth, a fierce library advocate. She challenged us to think about reframing our narratives of our library, to make sure that people don’t just see us as a container of content, but rather a place of experience for patrons. Char focused on advocacy and outreach, and it got me thinking about how I show people what the SRRHS library is and does for my school community.
Following the keynote, I attended several breakout sessions including one about privacy literacy, one about using data to paint a better picture of our libraries, and one about planning around community needs. From these sessions, I gathered many ideas on how I can better keep data on my library activity, how I can set library goals to ensure library efficiency, and how to go about strategically planning for the goals I set forth as a result of the needs of my community.
I am hoping to attend the LSLS again next year, and if any K-12 librarians want to attend with me, I’m game for carpooling! From this conference, I feel inspired to continue to grow professionally and in ways that will benefit my patrons.
As a bonus, I heard about a few professional book titles that I will be looking into. I wanted to share these with you as well:
Angwin, Julia. Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2015. Print.
Heath, Chip, and Dan Heath. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. New York: Random House, 2007. Print.
Jarvis, Jeff. Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2011. Print.
Nissenbaum, Helen. Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford Law, 2010. Print.
Registration for the fourth annual Lake Superior Libraries Symposium is now open! LSLS15, “Sharing Our Stories,” will be held on Friday, June 5, 2015 at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Library staff, administrators, trustees, and students from the Upper Midwest and beyond are invited to attend and participate. Register today!
For just $49, you’ll experience:
• Keynote by Char Booth, Director of Research, Teaching, and Learning Services at the Claremont Colleges Library, and a faculty member of the ACRL Information Literacy Immersion Institute
• 16 inspiring presentations on learning from our successes and failures, and crafting stories to demonstrate our impact and advocate for change
• Lightning round and networking time
• A Deluxe Taco Bar, featuring two types of salsa: midwestern and mild(er)
• A Thursday evening pre-conference social event featuring library pub trivia at Bowery Brothers Pub
• A Friday evening post-conference social event hosted by At Sara’s Table Chester Creek Cafe
PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP
For an additional registration fee ($25 for Minnesota Library Association members/$30 for non-members), attendees can participate in an optional pre-conference workshop on student learning assessment facilitated by Char Booth on Thursday, June 4 from noon-4pm. Registration is limited to fifty participants and lunch is included. This workshop is sponsored by the Minnesota Library Association and Minnesota Library Association Instruction Roundtable. Find more information and register here: http://lakesuperiorlibrariessymposium.com/lsls15-pre-conference-workshop/
LOCATION & ACCOMMODATIONS
Our conference is located in beautiful Duluth, the gateway to the North Shore of Lake Superior. The region features world class breweries, restaurants, and outdoor activities.
A block of rooms is reserved for LSLS15 at the Radisson HarborView Hotel in Duluth at a special rate of $85 per night. Call 218-727-8981 and ask for the Lake Superior Libraries Symposium room block. Please make reservations before May 15th.
ABOUT US
The Lake Superior Libraries Symposium is a conference developed by library staff members from Northwestern Wisconsin and Northeastern Minnesota. The Symposium was created to promote resource sharing and communication between organizations and to help librarians develop enhanced professional networks. Our continued operations are thanks to the in-kind and monetary contributions of our supporters.
The Lake Superior Libraries Symposium recently announced their 3rd annual Mid-Winter Unsymposium will be held January 9th from 1:00pm-4:30pm.
At the Unsymposium the informal conversations that pop up along the sidelines of the conference are the best part. Topics for discussion will be “determined in a bottom-up, democratic manner, rather than being handed down from on high.”
And the best part? Its FREE! The Unsymposium is free, but registration is capped at 60 attendees.
“The organizers of the Lake Superior Libraries Symposium (LSLS) invite lightning round presentation proposals for the sixth annual conference to be held on 
