NLA/MPLA Joint Conference

Drawing on the Plains women’s tradition of addressing community issues through conversation at knitting circles and quilting bees, Patty Collins and Maribeth Shafer will facilitate an interactive craft-based discussion on complex challenges in librarianship.

With more than 40 years of combined experience, the facilitators will introduce real-world scenarios to spark meaningful dialogue. Participants are encouraged to bring their own difficult topics, questions, and works-in-progress (WIPs) to keep their hands busy as they contribute to the conversation.

As attendees engage in hands-on crafting, drawing, or coloring they will also engage in thoughtful discussion—creating a relaxed, collaborative environment that supports multiple learning styles. This format lowers barriers to participation, encourages reflection, and fosters authentic connection among peers.

In a time when professional disagreements can quickly become polarized, this session offers a structured yet informal space for constructive dialogue, shared problem-solving, and community building. Participants will leave with new perspectives, practical strategies, and strengthened professional connections.

Library Directors, especially in small and rural libraries find themselves dealing with situations and knowing things they never could have imagined when they started working in libraries. This panel will share stories of lessons learned, advice on dealing with the unexpected, and answer questions. What is something you have had to deal with or wondered how others would address? Questions can be submitted prior to the session or asked during the discussion.

Explore innovative and low-cost youth services programming designed to inspire curiosity and creativity, support early literacy, connect with the community, and build lifelong readers. Participants will learn practical and cost saving strategies for implementing engaging programs for children, teens and families, including ideas on reusing materials, promoting through free marketing, engaging activities, and community partnerships.

Want to add readers services into your adult programs? This session will spark ideas for building engaging, reading-based programs that fit your capacity and inspire your community.

We’ll highlight two successful adult programs, sharing practical tools, lessons learned, and creative strategies for designing, scaling, and sustaining programs that deepen community connection through reading.

You’ll leave this session with new ways to think about program design and actionable steps to turn resources into powerful, people-centered programs.

What’s happening in technical services right now? In this fast-paced session, four librarians each spotlight a project, initiative, or area of expertise from their technical services work. Topics will range from collaborating in a consortium to cataloging and metadata remediation to a discovery catalog to and an ILS evaluation. Attendees will discover practical strategies and new ideas they can apply in their own institutions.

The partnership between the Great Plains Black History Museum and UNO Criss Library is preserving and more widely sharing the museum’s archival collections. This session will explore how partnerships can transform technical services like archival processing into opportunities for community engagement. By combining archival description with active outreach, libraries can play a vital role not only in preserving community memory, but also in ensuring those stories remain visible, meaningful, and part of the community’s identity.

The programmable Reachy-Mini robot from Hugging Face is an open-source robotics platform designed to support the embodied deployment of large language models (LLMs). Because it can operate without cloud-based computing, it also offers a reduced-impact approach to deploying artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Equipped with auditory and visual sensors, the platform can interact with patrons and respond to prompts in real time.
A team in our student-driven Makerspace has programmed our Reachy-Mini, named Robin, as a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) system that is responsive to queries within limited bounds while maintaining sensitivity to patron privacy. Robin is being deployed as a greeter to provide a unique and engaging way for patrons to discover our services. Rather than automating librarianship, Robin serves as a novel service interface that expands patron engagement while giving Makerspace staff an opportunity to explore and develop practices aligned with the AI Competencies for Academic Library Workers issued by the Association of College & Research Libraries.

Local history programming is one of the most powerful tools for successful adult programming. This presentation explores how a public library and a local historical society can build a rich, sustained partnership that brings community history to life and deepens patron engagement.

Co-presented by a public librarian and the Vice President of a local historical society, this session draws on real examples from a thriving collaboration: a monthly book club exploring community history through curated reading selections, an annual poster exhibit celebrating influential women from the county's past, special programming tied to city milestones, and programs highlighting the library's own history.

We will share replicable program models that work across a range of library sizes and budgets, as well as tips for sustaining momentum and keeping the partnership mutually beneficial over time.

Whether you serve a small rural community or a mid-sized city, local history is a programming goldmine waiting to be tapped. Come learn how to make your library the heart of your community's story.

In 2024 Lincoln City Libraries launched a staff innovation grant program funding by our Library Foundation. A committee representing all levels of staffing was put together and created an application, rubric and reporting mechanism. It was so successful, we did it again! Come hear how staff have learned to write grants, track expenses, work with partners, create amazing programs, and even learn something when their application wasn't selected.

What happens when your personal beliefs collide with your professional duty to provide access to information? Join the Central Kansas Library System ladies for a lively and practical session on balancing professional and personal ethics. We will share some of the ethical situations we have found ourselves in, how to recognize when personal discomfort makes work responsibilities a challenge, and how to find the balance between personal beliefs and providing access to information.

Join us for updates and news from members of the NLA Advocacy Committee. Members will share information on advocacy activities and plans for the coming 2027 Legislative Session. The association lobbyist, the Nebraska ALA Liaison, director of the Nebraska Library Commission, and other advocacy leaders will be on this panel.