President's message - January

Welcome to the New Year!

By now I’m sure your campus has kicked off the new year with new students and new energy. With all our new year’s resolutions in place – and hopefully sticking this time! – I invite you to add a new resolution to your list and get engaged with your colleagues at MiALA!

There are numerous happening in the coming months where you can get involved:

The Conference Planning Committee is hard at work, with this year’s event themed “Our Value: Communicating, Promoting, Visualizing” happening at the Conference Center at Saginaw Valley State University on May 13 & 14th.  Breakout session proposals just closed on Jan 11th, but there are still plenty of ways to get involved.  The call for poster sessions will be sent shortly, and the committee is still looking for volunteers.

Coming up on March 8th we have TWO great programs happening, a Data Literacy Bootcamp hosted at Michigan State University Libraries, and a collaborative event with the Academic Library Association of Ohio titled “Practical Assessment: From Beginner to Expert” co-hosted by the University of Toledo Libraries.  The Data Literacy Boot Camp will be sending out a call for lighting talks soon, and the Practical Assessment Workshop is accepting proposals until Jan 18th

There is also a workshop scheduled at beautiful Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City on March 29th, 2019 titled, “Take charge: Communicate value and foster success at your library through ACRL Standards assessment.”  The call for proposals for this session is open until February 15th.

I do want to thank the many individuals and institutions for their hard work putting on these events.  The strength of MiALA is its grassroots ability to bring likeminded professionals together to provide opportunities for professional development, leadership, and committee service for all librarians, library staff, and library students working in higher education. My thanks to all of you – this is going to be an exciting spring!

If you have ideas on other topics or events for the coming months, it’s not too late!  If you have interest in developing a workshop, program, or pop-up conference, we can help with the organizing and provide sponsorship.  Don’t hesitate to reach out if I can help: president@miala.org

Paul Gallagher