2011 Professional Development Grant Award

Congratulations to Melissa Gold who was awarded the 2011 LCLA Professional Development Grant!

Melissa used the funds to attend a March 30th pre-conference at the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) 2011 Annual Conference in Philadelphia. The pre-conference was titled "Using Anthropology to unite with users: How hands-on experiences can connect you with faculty and students." Melissa is the Science Librarian at Millersville University.
She described the value of her attendance at this event: "This pre-conference was very relevant to my current professional development as it relates to Millersville University Library’s current renovation. The renovation requires that we exist without a main library building for two years....While it is always important to study and understand our students’ needs, it will be even more important to do so proactively while we are distributed and have no building as a draw for students. Instead of the students coming to us, we may have to go to them. I think that the ethnographic techniques described at the pre-conference are much more in-line with meeting students where they are, instead of expecting them to come to us."

Undoubtedly librarians at all types of libraries can benefit from this perspective.