Highlights of PaLA 2022 Poster Sessions

Posted on behalf of Delia Tash – delia.tash@temple.edu

The Pennsylvania Library Association just held the 2022 conference in Harrisburg. While attending the conference I had the pleasure of viewing a number of posters. In “Moving Out!: Preparing the Community for a Total Library Renovation” librarians Sara Kern of Juniata College and Jacob Gordon of Penn State Altoona said the biggest takeaway from the experience was that hiring professional movers is worth it! Meg Massey of Penn State presented “The Benefits of Penn State’s New Interlibrary Loan Copyright Policy” and shared the success that can be derived from reviewing the copyright policy at your institution.

Dr. Stephanie Thompson of Millersville University and Dr. Jessica Jordan of Slippery Rock University shed light on the importance of informing collection development with DEI Award winners. With diversity audits being so popular these days, this is a concrete way to get started right away. Presenters emphasized the fact that these awards are decided by people representing their groups and are therefore more credible than a lot of other alternatives for finding diverse books. It is one small step to take to tackle a large problem of collections lacking materials that reflect our many patrons.

The theme of collaboration with campus partners stood out in Marleen Cloutier and Jennifer Galas of University of Scranton’s poster. The buy-in of campus collaborators helped make their orientation sessions a success. They concluded that unexpected roadblocks can come up when planning library programming and stressed the importance of flexibility and that the overall goal is to “provide a sustainable positive engagement experience that improves student confidence and make it more likely that students will visit the library, reach out to libraries, and use the libraries resources.” The possibility of students making connections with each other while learning about the library was also explored, highlighting that these types of events can have multiple positive outcomes.