Welcome to the 2025 Tennessee Library Association Conference #tnla25! We’re glad you’re here. Build your schedule below, and be sure to check the More Info page for additional conference details.
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During this presentation, hear a lively conversation from the entire Tech Services team about the importance of streamlining, empowerment, and teamwork in creating a fun, proactive, and dynamic environment that stands in stark contrast to the traditional reputation of Tech Services departments. We will discuss seven years of collaboration and transformational changes ranging from incremental to fundamental while reviewing successes and failures. Engage with us in a candid discussion on a variety of topics from mundane Tech Services tasks to fun team building. Hear how team-oriented leadership empowers everyone to "get stuff done” while also making time for bling, capes, cookies, and regular outings.
In the summer of 2024, I combined my work as an academic librarian, my commitment to open-access publishing, and my amateur mushroom hunting antics by creating Fungi of Lambuth: A Field Guide on our Digital Commons at the University of Memphis Lambuth. This guide features photographs of mushrooms I found entirely on our campus, along with information to help students, faculty, and staff learn about my finds and begin their own mushroom hunts. In this session, I'll share why I wanted to create this resource, what the process was like, and how you can use open-access publishing to create your own campus nature guides and get your colleagues and students out exploring nature!
Norris Community Library and Rocky Top Public Library discuss the planning and implementation of their seed library and community garden. Get tips and tricks on how to find community partners, manage the budgeting and deal with any unexpected issues along the way.
After almost four years of trying to figure out how the Chattanooga Public Library could help bring free rides to children in our community, Read & Ride was born! Read & Ride, the pilot partnership between CPL and CARTA, ran from June 1-July 31 in conjunction with the Summer Learning Program at CPL with the express intention of facilitating free bus rides for children 6-18. It has been so successful that CARTA is publicly speaking about the possibility of year-round free rides for minors. There are very few of the 19 urban and municipal transit systems (or the 9 rural public transportation systems) that currently provide free rides to children 18 and under, so opportunities to increase access to transportation for their young patrons are out there! Session attendees will hopefully learn from CPL’s failures and successes to leave with at least one strategy with which to approach a collaborative project with their own transit system.
Youth Services Supervisor, Chattanooga Public Library
Children’s and YA books & programs, public & school library collaboration, serving the whole person/whole child, intellectual freedom, and library advocacy
Learn about a teen program used in a public library to explore primary sources. Help teens explore local history and investigate a murder from days gone by. Have your teens ever wanted to solve crimes? Do they have what it takes to be a librarian or an archivist? Learn how to put their deductive skills to the test in this spooky historical investigation.
