ULA Annual Conference 2025

This session will highlight how The Salt Lake City Public Library supports teens transitioning to adulthood. We’ll explore partnerships, resources, and programs designed to help teens prepare and build confidence. Participants also will have the opportunity to share what their libraries and communities are doing to assist older teens. Together, we'll discuss the most common "adulting" needs and brainstorm ways libraries can better equip young people for success as they move into this challenging (and exciting!) phase of life.

Lego Serious Play is a facilitation and problem-solving method where participants use Lego bricks to model and brainstorm solutions to complex problems by “thinking with their hands.” Emphasizing active engagement, open communication, and inclusion, Lego Serious Play is useful for making library planning and UX projects more participatory for both staff and library users. In our case, Lego building activities provided a fun and engaging way to gain insight into students’ sense of belonging and perceptions of library services, and was useful in helping kickstart more complex design conversations about the library’s homepage.

This program will explore how to leverage the unique personalities of your library staff to create more engaging, relatable marketing. Attendees will: 1) Learn ways to use your staffs' personalities to promote your library 2)Hear suggestions on how to make email marketing, podcasts, and social media more engaging and 3) Provide new ways to think about how your library communicates with your patrons.

Public Libraries collect a lot of data, but for many people, data can be abstract and fail to account for the whole story of an institution. As librarians and library staff it is important for us to tell individual stories that illustrate and elaborate on the data we collect. These stories help communicate our impact to all our shareholders, including city leaders during budget planning, granting organizations, and in our communications with the public. This presentation will include examples of innovative storytelling from libraries around Utah and the country.