More than 90 librarians from Indiana public libraries gathered at The Flagship in Anderson, Indiana, on August 9 to attend The Future of Indiana Public Libraries Conference co-sponsored by IPLA, ILF and MCLS. This conference marked the first step in planning for the successful future of public libraries in Indiana. IPLA will continue the planning process this fall at the ILF annual conference in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

The day began with IPLA’s Peg Harmon’s welcome and opening remarks, followed by Randy Dykhuis of MCLS who introduced the keynote speaker and facilitators.

Cathy DeRosa of OCLC gave the keynote presentation, based on OCLC’s Report, Perceptions of Libraries.

Following the keynote, Joe Mika of Hartzell-Mika Consulting facilitated a whole group “idea blitz” to identify major external and internal issues affecting public libraries in Indiana.  The participants then voted to select the top eight external issues and the top eight internal issues to focus on in the afternoon breakout sessions.

The participants were divided into four breakout groups. Each breakout group was given two external issues and two internal issues and was asked to develop strategies and action steps for each. At then end of the breakout sessions, each group was asked to vote on its top strategy to present to the whole group.

For links to presentations, photos, and documents detailing output from the breakout sessions, please see Planning the Future of Indiana Public Libraries on the MCLS web site.