New Webinar: A Friend's Guide to Minnesota Library Basics

In any community lucky enough to have Friends of the Library, it’s safe to assume that group members are among that library’s more active users and most ardent boosters. However, even committed Friends are likely to be fuzzy on the funding and operations mechanisms that underpin library service in their community.

As a clearinghouse for information about Friends and the libraries they support, MALF routinely fields questions like:

  ✔  What is a library advisory board, and why was I asked to join one?
  ✔  Why does money we raise go to supporting the library in the next community over?
  ✔  How does interlibrary loan work, and who pays for it?
  ✔  Who decides which books are purchased and when they are “weeded”?

Questions like these rarely have a single answer. Public libraries across the U.S. are operated in accordance with a patchwork of funding paradigms, governance structures, and local policies. Minnesota is as complex a state as any.

MALF’s next webinar will offer a beginner’s primer on how Minnesota’s more than 350 public libraries function. Please join us over the lunch hour (12:00-1:00 p.m. Central) on Wednesday, August 14 for a webinar we are calling “The Full Story: A Friend’s Guide to Minnesota Library Basics.” 

Our guest speakers will be Richmond Kinney, MLIS and David Katz, MLIS from Library Strategies Consulting Group (LSCG). LSCG is the in-house consulting enterprise of The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library and a long-time partner of MALF. Its growing bench of consultants assists libraries and library support organizations all across the country with fundraising, long-range planning, and in-depth community assessments.

MALF’s webinars are free to attend, but you must register prior to the session date. Click here to reserve your seat – and to submit any burning questions you might have about library funding, governance and operations.