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Library workers at every stage of their career
Students and emerging professionals
Library leaders and decision makers
Anyone who believes in the power of libraries
Advocacy Is Everyone's Job
Advocacy doesn’t only happen at the legislature, in a board meeting, or behind a podium. It happens every day, in conversations with patrons, colleagues, community members, and the people who make decisions about your library.
Rebekah Cummings and Jennie Pu share practical ways to talk about your library’s value, build support, and speak up with confidence. You’ll come away with a clearer sense of how advocacy fits into your own role and how small, everyday interactions can help strengthen support for your library.
Rebekah Cummings
Digital Matters Director,
University of Utah J. Willard Marriott Library
Jennie Pu
Director, Hoboken Public Library
Advancing a Core Value
Sustainability is now one of ALA’s core values, but what does that actually mean for library work?
Rebekkah Smith Aldrich connects the big-picture idea to the everyday choices libraries make about programs, services, spaces, resources, and the communities they serve. You’ll see why sustainability matters across every role and how it can become part of the way libraries plan, work, and make decisions.
Rebekkah Smith Aldrich
Executive Director,
Mid-Hudson Library System
Whose Story Gets Saved?
Libraries don’t just preserve history. They help shape which stories are remembered, whose experiences are documented and what future generations are able to find.
Mariella Colón and Derek T. Mosley explore how everyday library decisions can influence which histories are preserved, shared and made visible. Through examples from collections, archives, programming and community engagement, they show how library workers in many different roles contribute to community memory and can help make space for stories that have too often been left out.
Mariella Colón
Librarian and Unit Manager for Civic, Cultural and Literary Engagement, Chicago Public Library
Derek T. Mosley
Archives Division Manager, Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History
Education Imperatives
School librarians are navigating intellectual freedom challenges, tighter budgets, rapid technology changes and growing expectations around teaching and student support.
Amanda Kordeliski and K.C. Boyd bring two distinct perspectives on what that looks like in practice. Together, they examine the pressures shaping school library work today and what those pressures mean for access, learning and the ability to serve students well.
Amanda Kordeliski
AASL Immediate Past President
Director of Libraries and Instructional Technology, Norman Public Schools
K.C. Boyd
School Librarian
2022 SLJ School Librarian of the Year
Leading at All Levels
Leadership shows up in everyday decisions, conversations, relationships, and the way we respond when things change. Felton Thomas shares what he has learned about building trust, shaping culture, and keeping people moving in the same direction, with lessons that apply whether you’re running the library or working your very first shift.
This conversation is about the influence we all have, and how to use it well.
Felton Thomas
Executive Director,
Cleveland Public Library
