MLA 2024 Conference

Intended audience: All

Presentation about neurodiversity in the workplace, covering how neurospicy folks can connect with staff, advocate for yourself and engage in your workplace. What kind of issues ND folks face in the workplace, and how to seek accommodations and make your space work for you. FAQs, facts, myths and destroying stereotypes. Also, will discuss some of the steps the Neurodiversity subcommittee at Mayo Clinic is taking to create a more inclusive culture where neurodivergent people thrive. The goal is to make your workplace more ND friendly.

What are the kids reading? These superhero librarians will share some of the most exciting young adult books published in the past 12 months. Come learn about new titles and resources, plus enter a raffle to win a book! This session is led by Lisa Howes, Patron Experience Supervisor - Hennepin County Libraries, and Sara Swenson, Media Specialist, Edina High School.

As artificial intelligence (AI) technologies evolve at a rapid pace, it's essential that school librarians, serving as technology and digital learning leaders, know how to guide teachers and students toward the leading tools, best practices, and resources for staying current. In this session you will learn up-to-date information about using AI for lesson planning, curriculum writing, research, and student work. We will share examples of how to work with instructional design and curriculum planning tools, how to find sample AI use policies to use with students and teachers, and how to incorporate AI tools in your daily work so that you can guide staff and students as they use these tools in their teaching and learning.

This session will demonstrate how you can use Titlewave to analyze, weed, and build a library collection.

Titlewave is an online collection development and curriculum support tool for librarians and administrators, and it features professionally curated content and support tools that help you find the best educationally relevant materials.

This session will provide a deep dive into Titlewave and will provide time for questions.

Intended for the general information of any library staff or stakeholder, this session will provide an overview of Minnesota's regional public library systems including key differences between consolidated and federated systems in structure and operation.

How do you prepare Storytimes and early literacy focused programs? Learn how to cultivate collaboration in the planning and reflection stages of program development to create and sustain impactful youth programs.

In Storytime P.R.E.P., you will explore methods to:
• Plan engaging storytimes: Develop effective planning strategies to create interactive storytime sessions using tools like Google AppSheet.
• Reflect on best practices: Explore how to identify and share successful storytime techniques through self-evaluation and peer observation.
• Engage all ages: Learn about resources for exploring books and other materials and how to encourage parents and caregivers to join in the discovery of early literacy components.
• Program with confidence: Leave empowered to build connections with other librarians and educators to enhance your storytime practice.

For many librarians, we cultivate compassion and emotional intelligence for the people who walk into our spaces and utilize our services or programming. This presentation is going to turn compassion and emotional intelligence inward, to reframe how we engage in our workplaces and treat each other. Informed by critical librarianship and culturally responsive theories, this presentation will invite the audience to practice compassionate communication, critique absurd library bureaucracy, and contemplate what a psychologically safe workplace might look like. We are going to move beyond teamwork and friendship to a more nuanced view of collegiality that critiques library workplaces in productive ways. Engagement with reflection, compassion, and culture moves library workers toward building authentic relationships and imbues their work with meaning and purpose without demanding selflessness and burnout.

Intended audience: special libraries, general library staff. Our goal is to educate and share what we do in technical services in a medical library setting. In the session we will discuss our diverse patron types and how the Technical Services work unit supports the 16 branches of the Mayo Clinic libraries in serving the staff and patients of the Mayo Clinic. We will highlight our Mayo Authors database and what that involves, our subject-, clinical-, and nursing- guides tailored to our unique users, medical students, history of the clinic, etc. Our tech services team works to share various types of resources available at the library.