Welcome to District 9! Our district’s membership includes librarians, staff, trustees, full-time library students, and other interested individuals representing school, public, academic, and special libraries. We are located in Northwest Texas.

 

Volunteer

District 9 includes 29 Texas counties: Andrews, Bailey, Borden, Cochran, Crane, Crosby, Dawson, Dickens, Ector, Floyd, Gaines, Garza, Glasscock, Hale, Hockley, Howard, King, Lamb, Loving, Lubbock, Lynn, Martin, Midland, Motley, Terry, Upton, Ward, Winkler, and Yoakum.

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Announcements

Applications for the Jeanette and Jim Larson Mystery Grant are due Friday, January 22nd, 2021. Don’t miss this opportunity for your library.

More information here.

TLA District 9 2020 Meetings

Fall Meeting via Zoom. Recordings will be provided.

Our Fall Meeting was held virtually on Zoom on Thursday, October 29th from 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM. 

Agenda and Presentations for D9:

9:00 AM – Remarks from TLA President: Christina Gola

9:30 AM – Welcome and remarks from TLA District 9 Chair: Stacy McKenzie

Session 1 – 10:00 AM – Graphic Novels in the Library: Presented by Amber Shelfer, Lubbock Public Library

Description: This presentation will cover a brief history of Graphic Novels followed by an
overview of the significant figures, terms, genres, audience and major publisher
and distributors. This will be a good introduction to begin a focused
development of using Graphic Novels in your own libraries.

Applicable for Public, School, Academic and Special Libraries.

11:00 AM – Breakout Sessions (both sessions will be recorded so that if you miss one and want to view it later, you can!)

Session 2A: 11:00 AM – Digital Newspaper Program: Preserving History by Building Access

Presented by Ana Krahmer, University of North Texas

Description: This presentation will discuss how to build digital newspaper collections via
the Texas Digital Newspaper Program (TDNP) on The Portal to Texas History.
In particular, it will highlight grant opportunities that are available to support
libraries in building access to their newspapers and will also demonstrate
how to use the digital newspaper collections.

Applicable for Public, School and Special Libraries

12:00 PM – District 9 Business Meeting and Lunch Break

This hour will be an overview of administration details and news about the
District 9 region with comments from the TLA Executive Liaison, Mark
Gottschalk. The meeting will serve as our annual meeting for the district and is
expected to last 20-25 minutes. A lunch break will be from the end of the
business meeting to 1:00 pm.

Session 3 – 1:00 PM – Empowering Frontline Staff within an Access Services Department

Presented by Liliana Sanchez, Carmelita Pecina and Joel Chirinos, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley University Library System.

Description: The “Empowering the Frontlines” program was created in March 2019 by the Access Services Department after our current library administration restructured the organizational chart. The purpose of commencing this training was to provide the essential service tools and techniques to our library staff tasked to transition our Circulation Desk into a more vibrant Multiservice Desk model within The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
University Library System. Attendees will be presented with applicable
examples derived from my own professional experience of managing two
Access Services Departments within The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
University Library at both the Brownsville and Edinburg campuses.

Applicable for Academic Libraries

Session 4 – 2:00 PM – Public Service Mindsets in the Library: Models from Parks and Rec

Presented by Stacy McKenzie, Lubbock Public Library

Description: Inspired by a blog post from David McKenna, this presentation will talk about a
model of public service mindsets as illustrated by the characters from the
popular TV show Parks and Rec. Where do you and other staff fall in the grid of
public service mindsets and how can this knowledge help you? Are you a 9 to
5/independent? Is your potential hire a service oriented/activist? Does your
committee need a corporate/compliance mindset? Find your mindset and use
this model to help you in the hiring process and to form the best committees
and work groups.

NOTE* A knowledge of Parks and Rec is not required to
understand and enjoy this program.

Applicable for all libraries.

Session 5 – 3:00 PM – How the NNLM Can Help Improve Your Community’s Health

Presented by Jennifer Ortiz, UNT Health Science Center in Fort Worth

The Network of the National Library of Medicine, or NNLM, is the field force
for the National Library of Medicine. We’re federally funded to assist libraries
and community organizations to improve health literacy and access to health
information. Join us for an introduction to the NNLM South Central Region
office, located at UNT Health Science Center in Fort Worth, and some of the
many resources we provide at no cost, such as staff training and
programming grants.

Applicable for Public, Academic, Special Libraries and Community
Organizations

Breakout Session

Session 2B: 11:00 AM – Riding the waves of change: how to lead your team through the unexpected

Presented by Howard C Marks, Midland College, and Cynthia Peterson, Unger Memorial Library

Description: We can’t always plan for changes, but we can certainly be prepared for when unexpected changes come. Library leaders in West Texas share how they weathered pivots within their organizations and what they learned from these experiences.

Applicable for Public, School, Academic and Special Libraries.

TLA Thanks Our District 9 Fall Meeting Sponsors:

Request a trial or Learn more

ALA President Julius Jefferson’s “Holding Space” Tour – Texas School Librarians

“Holding Space” was a virtual tour over the summer where ALA President Julius Jefferson embarked on a series of discussions around the country about Covid-19 and the response of our Libraries. Kristi Starr from our TLA District 9 community introduced Julius to West Texas (virtually) and presented in the 6th video on this link, introducing her colleagues around Texas to share what they are doing. We’re so happy to be able to watch this video with all of the tour stops included. Thank you Kristi for sharing with us!

Past Recorded Meetings

The District 9 officers held a virtual business meeting via Zoom at 2:00PM on Thursday, June 11th, 2020. Follow this link to view the recording of the virtual meeting.

TLA 2020 Virtual Conference Information

The TLA Virtual 2020 Summer of Learning Conference began back in April and continued on July 7th with the final LIVE sessions taking place on August 4th.  You can view a schedule of the pre-recorded sessions here. Recordings of the sessions were available on demand to attendees until August 31st, 2020 along with the exhibitor information. What a great conference experience!

Congratulations to our 2020-2021 officers

(EB = executive board)