The Southeastern Pennsylvania Library Association’s annual conference was held on December 1 at the Upper Merion Township Building in King of Prussia. The conference’s theme this year, The Library As Place, received great interest and because of the overwhelming response, no more registrations were permitted two weeks before the conference.
Librarians and friends of the library attended from as far as Altoona and from Bloomsburg. The keynote speaker, Josie Parker, Director of the Ann Arbor Library System in Michigan, spoke of the library as a place and destination for patrons. She described her hometown library in Mississippi and the nice red, silk covered sofa that made her feel at home in the library. She went on to describe the efforts in her libraries to make all patrons feel welcome, from parents coming in with young children to telecommuters coming in to use the library’s wireless network for their laptop. Their libraries have offered special services such as lounge areas away from the main library with vending machines where teens often come to study or work together on schoolwork. The main branch in downtown Ann Arbor hosted a controversial program where teens had a graffiti art contest and many of the teenage boys (whom Parker pointed out as an audience difficult to reach) were able to make sales on their art. By implementing these programs and making the libraries a destination, the Ann Arbor Libraries have been very successful in getting patrons into their libraries.
