I’d like to start by thanking all the generous people that have donated to the Syed Maghrabi scholarship fund. Your donations via the membership form and through the silent auction are a lifeline to HSLI members lacking institutional travel support. The fund exists to keep everyone actively involved in the organization. Don’t let lack of travel funds keep you at home! Apply for a scholarship if you don’t have institutional support.
For many years I have served on the HSLI conference planning committee. This year you may have seen me serving as the A/V elf. And we learned that while I’m good with projectors, sound systems are not my strong suit. Apologies for the squealing feedback. Either I’ll get better next year or we will contract with the hotel for house sound.
I also helped with behind the scenes work, running the conference website. Thanks to all presenters that sent in their handouts and posters. I also ran the conference evaluation, and I’m happy to say that everyone rated the conference Excellent or Good. It’s great to see that the work of putting the conference together is valuable to the HSLI membership.
The CE sessions I attended on user experience and assessment were very helpful to me. Both altered how I think about my library, which for me is the sign of a great CE session. Once I got home I summarized the parts of the sessions that were most pertinent to my library’s situation and shared them with my colleagues. Being able to bring new strategies home is one of the best parts of CE for me.
Networking is another critical part of the HSLI conference experience. Hearing stories from other librarians about the state of their nursing programs gives me insight and perspective when working with my own nursing faculty. Being able to see everyone in person once a year also helps when we need to reach out to colleagues. It’s great to be able to put a face with a name when we need to ask a question or put something on the list to get advice.
I was also happy to see so much networking between library organizations this year. Presentations and exhibits from RAILS, IHLS, the GMR, IACRL, and the State Library were a welcome opportunity to learn about what other groups offer. After the conference, HSLI was also invited to provide updates to CARLI and CARLI will provide updates to HSLI as well. I’ve added links to all these organizations on an HSLI website page.
I hope everyone that attended the conference found it as productive as I did, and I hope everyone that was unable to attend in 2016 can join us in 2017.
See you all next year,
Stacey