Category: President

Our conference in March was a great success and has steadily grown over the past several years. Past president Sarah Herron with the help of many wonderfully dedicated conference committee volunteers, did an amazing job pulling it all together!  We are ever grateful for the longstanding service of Larry Jeppesen, our retiring Executive Director, who has kept our organization financially sound to be able to continue our mission. Hopefully you gained valuable information and skills that you were able to implement in your library. UELMA is already working on next year’s conference with Selena Campbell at the helm our current Past President, lining up several great authors as keynotes.  Stay tuned!

With the close of celebrating School Library Month in April, I hope you had the opportunity to showcase how your library is Future Ready and that you reflect on all the connections you make in your libraries everyday.  Often we don’t necessarily acknowledge the many ways we are connecting with students, teachers and the community to create meaningful academic opportunities, encourage critical thinking and support the emotional and social growth and development of students. Our libraries are no longer just quiet areas but collaborative spaces where we can create  personalized learning which is key to a Future Ready Library. The primary mission for UELMA is to support you in reaching that goal in “providing professional support, leadership, and enrichment for school library media personnel and those who support library programs.” The board is continually working on ways in which we can best serve you and the work you do in your libraries that impact students.

Our newly redesigned website at UELMA.org and more consistent use of social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter are ways in which we want to connect with you on a more personal level to provide a more robust professional learning network(PLN) to share expertise, resources, ideas, encouragement and dialog with each other, not only during the annual conference.  One of my goals as president is to begin a discussion board on UELMA’s website and use social platforms like Twitter to have a monthly live UELMA twitter chat (#UELMAcxn) that anyone who supports Utah school libraries can join .  If you are not sure about the basics, information and some examples can be found here. Currently the  #TLChat hashtag is used by school librarians as one of the main hashtags for targeting school library tweets and once a month, it becomes a live chat, now on the first Monday of the month at 8pm ET.  More and more regional school library associations are using live twitter chats. If you have participated in the Edtech twitter chats run by UEN or UCET, you know that they can be stimulating, informative, and a great chance to interact in real time with your peers and discuss a topic of interest.

We want to make UELMA an important resource for you year round whether you are in a public, private or charter school and either a certified teacher librarian or classified personnel.  I hope that today’s digital tools can help us to stay in touch while continuing to empower you to transform teaching and learning for yourself and in your libraries.  Be sure you join our UELMA Facebook group and follow us on Twitter. The dates and times of live twitter chats will be promoted there. Please let us know how we can better focus our mission to support your school library needs and professional development goals.  Reach out to the UELMA board from the contact page on our website, via email(uelmaboard@gmail.com) or via social media platforms. I hope to connect with you online soon!

Lorraine Wyness- UELMA President 2018-2019

lwyness@graniteschools.org

@ledwyness

It’s hard to believe that our annual UELMA Conference is right around the corner on March 9th! We are excited to welcome you to another conference at the beautiful Utah Cultural Celebration Center.  Please remember to register at UELMA.org.  Our dedicated and talented conference committee, chaired by our past-president Sarah Herron, has been working hard to bring you a great event!  

This newsletter is dedicated to our upcoming conference and it is full of useful information to help you prepare for a wonderful, fun and educational experience. We encourage you to invite your administrator, supervisor or even a teacher that you work closely with to attend with you.

 Don’t forget to enter our fun conference book art competition.  The book art “Turkey” went viral on social media around Thanksgiving last year so search around for a fun project or be original. You can win a $50 gift certificate from King’s English! We are excited to see what you’ll create!

This year we hope that you have found new ways to stay connected locally and nationally. Did you know there’s a Face Book group for Future Ready Librarians (14k+ members)?  There is also one called “Fellowship of High School Librarians” (645 members and growing). I have gleaned a lot of helpful information from networking on social media, blogs, websites and more. Whether we are in a public, private or charter school, these online resources help to supplement our professional development and library programs.

Our new UELMA.org website has been launched.  We are so excited to bring you a more streamlined look and navigational experience! Thank you to Chris Haught, our Southern Utah Liaison board member, and our UELMA Webmaster, Liz Petty, for helping us to make this smooth transition and to the UELMA board for their suggestions and input.  

The UELMA board wants to continue to strengthen connections with our membership. We recognize that in every part of our beautiful state, you work tirelessly to support student literacy and learning.  We have found a wonderful conference service project that will support a rural Utah school library with adequate and safe book shelves!

Finally, I’d like to thank all of you for supporting UELMA for the 2017-2018 year.  As my UELMA presidency comes to an end, I am able reflect how my journey started, and it was simply because I wanted to serve you. I started as a UELMA board member when I was only a 3rd year teacher librarian over three years ago.  Wow!  But, I can attest that I have grown professionally and personally and most importantly I’ve been privileged to work with the best people on the UELMA board and I consider them my friends. We would like to extend heartfelt farewell to our wonderful Executive Director, Larry Jeppesen, who will be retiring.  He has tirelessly kept UELMA functioning in the background with unwavering dedication and expertise.  We need you to serve with us! Please consider being a future board member or president-elect. If I can do it, so can you!

Next year I will be the 2019 UELMA Conference Chairperson and Lorraine Wyness who is our incoming 2018-2019 UELMA President will bring her talent and dedication to lead us onto to great things.  

UELMA is striving to be Future Ready!  

Selena Campbell

UELMA President 2017-2018

We hope this latest edition of the UELMA Newsletter will capture your interest in our upcoming 2018 Annual UELMA Conference!

Please consider sharing your knowledge and talents with us as a conference session presenter! Looking back thus far, it has been an exciting year with the Future Ready Librarians model going full steam ahead along with the introduction of the new AASL (American Association of School Librarians) National School Library Standards.

The UELMA board has been busy working on our online web presence and we look forward to unveiling our new website at our conference in March 2018. We felt it was important to streamline the accessibility to our website and social media sites to align with current professional organizational trends.

We are also working on providing a repository of conference presentation videos, increasing UELMA membership and improving membership benefits, establishing stronger community, school and professional partnerships.

We have meticulously gone over the UELMA Constitution to clarify verbiage, organizational structure and purpose. We will present the UELMA Constitution to you 30 days prior to our March 9th conference for a membership vote of approval.

UELMA could not grow and evolve without your support and membership. We appreciate all those who serve on additional UELMA committees because you are the dedicated busy bees behind the scenes! Working together has helped our organization move forward with the momentum to change and improve each year. I personally would like to thank our UELMA board members, liaisons and executive board. I am amazed at the talent, skills and effort that each one of them voluntarily puts into our organization. Together we are a force for good as we try our best to represent you, your library programs and students. We serve because we believe in and love what we do. It’s as simple as that! Please consider serving in any capacity on the UELMA board or committees in the future. We need you!
A robust and effective school library cultivates a reading community, engages students and teachers to use print and digital resources, and encourages a global citizenship. I have encouraged you to make one small change this year, and I hope you are seeing that change grow into many possibilities and positive outcomes. With that in mind, I’d like to leave you with something to ponder.
Each day you are making a change in the life of a student. Students often thank us for acquiring the latest and greatest books in the library and a host of other things we do.

However, author Jason Reynolds, one of the keynote speakers at AASL17 in Phoenix, AZ reminded us when it comes to young people:

“(to) remember when was the last time you thanked a young person?”
“It’s okay for us to disagree, but not disengage”
“Be humble enough to connect with young people and admit what you don’t know about them.”
“If a student says a book makes him finally feel seen, look for the places in his life where he feels unseen.”

Have a safe and wonderful holiday season!
Selena Campbell
UELMA President 2017-2018