I attended my first Maryland Library Association (MLA) Library Managers Division meeting this afternoon. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. I've been interested in becoming involved with MLA for awhile, now, but hadn't taken the time to really explore it. When I became a branch manager two months ago, pieces started fitting together and I started thinking more about how to become involved. I received a notice about today's meeting from the general MLA e-mail list I subscribe to and decided to put it on my calendar.
I thought it would be a much larger group than it was and that I'd feel pretty overwhelmed by it. Or something. I'm not sure I knew WHAT to expect. But it was a smallish group and our discussion was really quite useful. I'm going to become involved. It feels like a place where I can make a place for myself and actually do some good things. And it's really nice to be able to sit around a table with people from other library systems in the state to talk about things like dealing with behavior problems (patrons, not staff) and what the economy has done to our budgets and to our programming. We made a list of topics for future meetings that sounds great!
Thursday I'm taking a couple of hours off in order to go to a presentation at school being given by a couple of entrepreneurs who are doing cool things. And this week in my marketing class, I'm getting feedback from other students in the class on the marketing plan I and the rest of my group (four of us) wrote for an organization (with made-up facts, I learned by looking at the organization's REAL website). Accounting exam by the end of the week. Books to read for a Great Books conference at the end of March.
Mostly it feels a little overwhelming, but this week it feels exciting. Sometimes I question whether or not getting an MBA was a worthwhile thing as a librarian. Today I believe it absolutely is. I'm never bored and I stay up late a lot of nights, but I already think this is making me a better library manager - and I'm not even finished with the foundational classes yet!
