ILA Conference: How to Take Your Friends From Drab to Fab

Today is the last day of the conference, and later this morning, I will be presenting a program that has to do with the other hat I wear at the BPL-- the Friends Liaison.

Along with my colleagues Nikki Zimmermann and Carmen Higgins, we will be giving a pep talk to all of the other Friends Liaisons in Illinois.

Entitled, How to take Your Friends from Drab to Fab, our program is an attempt to organize this diverse group of librarians.  All of us have other job duties besides working with FOL groups, and often, our FOL work is forced to come second.  Obviously, for me this is 100% true.

We are fixing to end that today.  Our program will focus on how the three of us have made positive changes to our groups in three different libraries [click here for the link to see it for yourself].

But the main outcome we are hoping to achieve with this presentation is to start a community of Friends Liaisons.  We are leaving time for discussion in our program and, if you go to the last slide of the presentation, you will see that I have set up a listserv for all Friends Liaisons so that we can keep the conversation going.

Click through and go to the last slide for the link.  RAILS [our library system] has graciously set this listserv so that anyone, from anywhere can sign-up.  I am the moderator, and would like to encourage anyone who works with friends groups to join us in a positive, supportive environment where we hope to share our successes and work together to get through failures.

I know this is a RA themed blog, but if you could let your FOL Liaisons know about our attempt to build a community, please pass this link on.