Please join us for the 2022 Annual Meeting and Conference. This will be our first in-person conference since the fall of 2019, and we would love to see you!
For full details and the conference schedule, visit the main conference page here.
We chose this year's theme because as trust in institutions, in information, and in professional expertise wanes in the culture, we remain Trusted. In order to maintain that trust, we must tend to our gardens. This conference will have a strong focus on intellectual freedom, which we hope will appeal to all types of librarians and library workers. Our sessions will cover lots of other topics as well, but this focus is so important for us right now, as we all know.
This is an in-person conference. While we would love to be able to offer hybrid/virtual sessions, this is not feasible for us this year, in terms of workload and costs.
The MLA Annual Business Meeting will be held at the end of the day, on Tuesday, May 24th. This meeting is where new board members are announced (terms begin July 1), board members present annual reports, and any proposed bylaws changes are discussed and voted upon.
The Maine Infonet Pre-conference event will be held on Sunday, May 22nd. This event has separate registration. If you are registering for both events, please select the discounted registration type, when registering for the pre-conference event. Click to register for the pre-conference event here.
Keynote Speakers:
Monday, May 23rd: Deborah Caldwell-Stone
Deborah Caldwell-Stone is the Director of ALA'S Office for Intellectual Freedom and Executive Director of the Freedom to Read Foundation. For nearly two decades she has helped libraries, librarians, and trustees address a wide range of intellectual freedom issues, including the censorship of books and other library resources, library policies, and the privacy of library users' records. She advises ALA member groups on law and policy concerns and has done presentations for lawyers, trustees, and librarians addressing First Amendment and privacy law. She is a former appellate litigator.
Tuesday, May 24th: Bill Roorbach
Bill's new book Lucky Turtle will be available for online presale for pickup and signing at the conference, thanks to Devaney, Doak and Garrett Booksellers.
Bill Roorbach is the author of Lucky Turtle, newly released by Algonquin Books. Previous fiction includes The Girl of the Lake, the Kirkus Prize finalist The Remedy for Love, the bestselling Life Among Giants, and the Flannery O’Connor Award–winning collection Big Bend. His memoir in nature, Temple Stream, won the Maine Literary Award in nonfiction and is available in a companion edition with Into Woods from Down East Books. Roorbach has received fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He held the William H. P. Jenks Chair in Contemporary American Letters at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. His craft book, Writing Life Stories, has been in print for twenty-five years. His writing has appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, Ploughshares, Granta, Ecotone, New York Magazine, and other publications. He lives in Farmington and Scarborough with his family.
LODGING:
For group rates on rooms at Sunday River Grand Summit Hotel, click here to book your room: https://sundayriver.com/booklodging?Group=86347F&resultFilterValue=S&Checkin=5/21/2022&Checkout=5/25/2022&pid=23190Our group rate is $139/night.
COVID protocols:
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Attendees will be required to show proof of full vaccination at registration check-in. This can be your vaccination card, or a picture of it on your phone. The CDC defines fully vaccinated as "a person has received their primary series of COVID-19 vaccines." We strongly recommend attendees are "up-to-date", which the CDC defines as "a person has received all recommended COVID-19 vaccines, including any booster dose(s) when eligible."
- MLA recommends wearing masks during indoor conference activities. We will follow the current CDC guidelines and/or local mandates on masking, at the time of the event. MLA cannot require Sunday River staff or other guests to wear masks, if the facility is not requiring it at the time of the event.
- In order to keep meals as safe as possible, we have opted to order continental-style breakfasts and boxed lunches (sandwiches or salads) instead of the usual buffet-style meals. Please understand that this does limit our options, particularly for those with dietary restrictions/allergies.
Schedule, Sponsors, and Fun:
We will be using the Whova app for our conference schedule, so schedules, event and session descriptions and all of that will be found there. After you register, you will receive an invite to this conference from Whova, within a few days.
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