Welcome to the Michigan Library Association

Joshua Bernstein works as a Teen Services Librarian for the Grandville branch of the Kent District Library.  He has been in this position for about 4 years and worked in a variety of positions at the Capital Area District library for about 3 years before that, while working on his MLIS from Wayne State. 

In his current position he loves being able to establish relationships with the youth in the community, be it over books, video games, or something else.  He has been fortunate enough to establish strong ties within the local school system and have been able to really use that to help make local teens aware of the library and all it have to offer.  One current project that he is rather passionate about is a Guys Read initiative that he recently helped develop for his library system.  You can check it out at www.kdl.org/teens/go/GuysRead.

He has been volunteering at MLA for 4 or 5 years now.  In that time he has been on the Spring Institute committee 3 times.  This will be his 4th year and he will be chair.  He also spent a year on the Thumbs Up committee and a year on the Fran Pletz award committee.

Beth Johns is the E-Resources Librarian at Saginaw Valley State University, Zahnow Library. She began working at Zahnow in 2006, shortly after receiving her MLIS from Wayne State. As an electronic resources librarian, Beth manages access to the library’s online journals and administers the library’s link resolver software. She troubleshoots access problems with these resources and is called upon almost daily about some sort issue—there is never a dull moment where e-resources are concerned! Beth has also recently initiated a “roving reference” service at SVSU, which is currently in a pilot stage. She hopes to extend that service outside of the library in the future, perhaps as far as the housing areas of the campus. As is expected of most academic librarians, Beth does a significant amount of bibliographic instruction, which she finds very satisfying personally and professionally. Beth’s history with MLA goes back to her student days starting in 2002 when she joined MLA. She volunteered as a student during Annual Conference a few times and then began serving on committees and work groups once she received her degree. She has served on the MLA Awards twice, Michigan Author Award, and most recently Academic Libraries 2010 (member) and 2011 (co-chair).

To allow additional planning time for the following four workshops and conferences in 2013 -Literature, the Child and the Teen, Academic Libraries, Spring Institute and Summer Reading - MLA is implementing a new annual Fall Call for Volunteers. Volunteer Sign Up is October 15- November 18, 2011. Develop your leadership and team building skills, create professional development opportunities, create networking and best practices opportunities, strengthen service delivery statewide, build a unified library community, lead a work group and build your resume.

See the Call for Volunteers for more information.

As my year as President comes to a close, there is much to celebrate.  Thanks to all our dedicated volunteers and staff MLA has made progress in professional development, advocacy, communications and membership.  Year-end highlights include: