Registration ends August 28th! (You can pay later)

Presenters

Lori Lieberman - Keynote Speaker - Libraries and Love

Libraries and romance books share many qualities. Libraries are a place for human connection.

Romance books are a place for human (and sometimes non-human) connection.

Love shows up in libraries with our love of books and reading. Of course, love shows up on romance novels too. Libraries have an open door and romance books have open door...scenes. Maybe libraries and romance books are more similar than you ever imagined!

Lori Lieberman Biography

Lori Lieberman is the teacher-librarian at a large public high school in downtown Portland where she runs a high school romance book club that has been featured on NPR and in the Washington Post. She's served on and chaired ORCA - the Oregon Reader's Choice Award committee for numerous years. She just completed serving three years on the NCTE's Walden Award Committee. She's worked in school libraries for over 25 years and previously worked as a law librarian for large law firms in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

She has a J.D. and a M.S. in Educational Media/Librarianship. She's presented to librarians on the topic of Romance at national conferences, including PLA, ALA, and AASL as well as at annual state library conferences including Oregon, Washington, and Texas.

She is a 2026 Library Journal Mover and Shaker.

Carolee Harrison - Basic Mending for Libraries

Does your library's collection need some TLC? Repair rather than replace (or weed)!

This presentation will cover techniques and materials for best practices in setting up and first aid until for books and quickly repairing hardcovers and paperbacks in circulating collections.

Carolee Harrison Biography

Carolee Harrison is a Library Technician at Portland State University Library. She began her library career in Technical Services as a book mender, book repair trainer, and a bindery liasison, and currently works in Special Collections and University Archives as the primary steward of the rare book collection and as a digital preservation technician.

Jeremy Skinner, Laura Kimberly and Star Khan - Creating an Improvement Plan for Your Boss

This will be a group presentation by Jeremy Skinner, Laura Kimberly and Star Khan that will actively engage attendees into thinking about the strengths and weaknesses of their supervisors and creating a plan to interact with them in ways to improve their performance and in turn allow them to be a better supervisor for their staff.

Jeremy Skinner Biography

Jeremy Skinner is Library Director at Curry Public Library, and is actively engaged in many facets of his community; he spent a lot of years in non-supervisory roles.

Laura Kimberly Biography

Laura Kimberly is the Library and City Community Engagement Director for the City of Newport, Oregon, with 20 years experience in public and school libraries. She is passionate about leadership, community engagement, and building strong, connected organizations and communities.

Star Khan Biography

Star Khan is the Outreach Services Librarian at Driftwood Public Library, where she is dedicated to strengthening connections between the library and the community is serves. Guided by a commitment to inclusivity, equity, and access to information, she has built her career around advocacy and creating welcoming spaces for all.

A proud member of REFORMA and founding member of Libros for Oregon, Star champions diverse voices in libraries and works to expand literary access and representation for Spanish-speaking residents. Through these efforts, she helps ensure that library collections and services reflect the cultures and languages of the communities they serve.

As a member of the Governor's Racial Justice Council, Star collaborates with leaders across Oregon to address systemic inequities and advance meaningful change for historically underserved communities.

In her work in libraries, Star is a passionate advocate for housing stability and homelessness prevention. She brings both professional expertise and lived experience to conversations about housing equity, access to services, and the barriers faced by vulnerable communities. She is committed to advancing policies and partnerships that support safe, stable housing and promote dignity and opportunity for all Oregonians.

Through her leadership and service, Star works to strengthen communities by advancing literacy, equitable access, housing justice, and meaningful community engagement.

Lisa Power - Roots Up Community Engagement with Seed Libraries and Library Gardens

Learn how to build a robust seed library on a small budget. A seed library can build food security in you region, increase access to produce, and expand library program offerings. Ours started with a few packets of seeds in a plastic tub. Now, our seed library has approximately 500 varieties and a digital inventory. We’ve created a library garden that supplies food for our community as well as programming opportunities. We’ve distributed thousands of seeds, many pounds of produce, and forged strong partnerships in the local food and conservation community. Join us and learn how you can rejuvenate gardening in your rural community!

Lisa Power Biography

Lisa Power is a Library Associate at a small rural library in Banks Oregon. She coordinates their seed library, publicity, library volunteers, and library garden. She coordinates many library programs across all age groups. She is a co-state Summer Reading Representative for OYAN, and has recently taken on the role of Digital Communications Specialist with OLA Support Staff Division. She will happily talk to you about gardening, seeds, and tropical houseplants!

Alyssa Donoho and Marie Felgentrager -

Frontline Intellectual Freedom: How to have hard conversations and stay grounded.

As library workers, we often find ourselves having difficult conversations about intellectual freedom with patrons, parents, volunteers, and even fellow library staff. It can be daunting to navigate these conversations while staying grounded in the principles of intellectual freedom. We will cover key information about intellectual freedom, share questions/concerns that frequently come up, and give examples of how to address them as library staff, as well as some pro tips we've picked up over the years. The conversational aspect of this session will be interactive to provide participants an opportunity to practice.

Alyssa Donoho Biography

Alyssa grew up in her parents' classrooms and her local public library which set her on a path to becoming a lifelong advocate for intellectual freedom. For the past decade, she has worked and volunteered in schools and public libraries. Her passion is at the intersection of intellectual freedom, libraries and education.

Brystan Strong - Track Your Training Update

What if there was a way to track all of your training and professional development by yourself? Professional development is an ever changing landscape and tracking your own journey is fraught with pitfalls as HR changes their software or you change jobs. The Staff Training Round Table proposed creating a standardized system (using any spreadsheet platform) that will make it easy to share your strengths, track outside of the box learning, and gain agency over your own professional development journey. This talk is to share the initial proposal for the tool (back during a lightning talk session at OLA 2025), survey results, and where we currently stand on the creation of this tool.

Brystan Strong Biography

Brystan Strong is the Programs Coordinator for Jackson County Library Services. In this role, she supports library programs for all ages in all 15 branches, guides system-wide initiatives like Summer Reading, Rogue Reads (a winter community reading program), and the Strategic Plan, provides training and guidance as it pertains to programming, connects public services to support services through programming, and branches with community partners, and creates processes, practices, and tools that assist with the program planning process. She is also Chair for the OLA Staff Training Round Table, and sits on the OLA leadership committee as the Mentor Match facilitator. Additionally, she is the current President of the Friends of the Hannon Library Board at Southern Oregon University. She writes for the JCLS Library Connect Blog, and has written for OLA quarterly. In her free time, she likes writing non-library related stuff, playing indie video games, and waxing poetic about just about anything.

Kevin Mittge - Get Outdoors! Hiking Resources for Stressed Staff and Active Patrons

Spending time outdoors lowers stres - you both you and your patrons! Enjoy an overview of resources - both in print and online - to help you and your patrons get outside to walk and hike. Books and websites from around the stat, featuring mountains, beaches, and deserts, from short walks to long treks, will be highlighted to make your next outdoor escape as easy and as well-planned as possible.

Kevin Mittge Biography

Kevin Mittge received his ML from University of Washington's Scool of Librarianship in 1994. He has been the Adult Services Librarian at the Siuslaw Public Library in Florence since 2000 and is an active walker and hiker. In addition to outdoor activities, Kevin enjoys genealogy, gardening, cats and of course, reading!

Thia Hoff - Managing and Relieving the Repetitive Stress

This interactive 3-part workshop will help relieve the repetitive stress your body endures from working in a library setting and at a computer.

Part one focuses on the eyes. Perhaps the most neglected muscles in the body are our eye muscles, yet we use them more and more as we work at computers for longer and longer periods. You will learn exercises to relax and increase the flexibility of your eyes, which will result in greater visual fitness and less eye strain.

The second part focuses on ergonomically setting up your workstation, what factors to pay attention to and ways to address issues on a small or non-existent budget.

Part three helps you relieve the repetitive and posture stress that inevitably builds up from sitting for long periods and from lifting and moving library resources. We will do effective, gentle stretches for the neck, shoulders, arms, hands, and the upper and lower back.

Thia Hoff Biography

For 21 years, Thia Hoff has worked part-time as the Electronic Resources Specialist for the Reed College Library in Portland, Oregon. During that time, she became a licensed acupuncturist and created Singing Crane Acupuncture. Helping people with self-care has always been part of her medicine bag and she has created a variety of workshops, with topics such as eye care and how to manage the stress your body endures from doing repetitive tasks. For 16 years she has taught these workshops around Portland including at dental offices, libraries, Multnomah County Social Work and Community Services conferences, and Standard Insurance Company. She holds a Master of Arts in Teaching from the University of New Hampshire and a Master of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine from the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine.

Ken Pratt - Lunchtime Speaker - A Pipe Dream to #1 Best Seller

My discussion will be about having a dream and despite lack of encouragement, and faith my friends and family had in me, I was determined to reach my dream of being a full time author who could support his family on the written word alone. I lived that life for six years even through some of life's hardest trials and painful experiences that happened along the way. My granddaughter was diagnosed with Osteoscarcoma bone cancer at nine years old, and fought for three long years of highs and lows, until she was terminal and passed away. Early on, my wife was diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer's at age 45 and given five to ten years to live. Our youngest two were fifteen and twelve at the time. We ended up losing our home and were technically homeless as we lived with our daughter and her husand for two very long years. We lived with knowing my wife's life was going to be cut short for eight long years, and then we found out she was misdiagnosed, which was a who other struggle to overcome after with years of being medicated. These are only some of our trials we went through and I could have easily given up writing for a dream that never came, as I was writing my third novel by then. - But I kept remembering what my 4th grade teacher said back in 1978 - "You should be a writer when you grow up" and her words kept me motivated.

Eventually, it happened! And my first book hit #1 on the Amazon Best Seller list - It took years to track that teacher down and ironically, for as important as she was to me, she didn't know who I was...she didn't remember me. We met up and I told her that her words had lived and encouraged me for all these years. The truth is, if it wasn't for her words, none of my books would have been written and I wouldn't be here today. It shows the power of a teacher on a child.

The talk will be about enduring to finish the race, whatever that dream may be. And not quitting even if it is abruptly ended. There is always hope, so pick up our mat and start walking back to where you fell from. Because in life, we will be knocked down, but getting back up is ket. You don't quit when hope is only a day away.

Ken Pratt Biography

I came from a very broken home, but when I was in fourth grade, my teacher said, "You Should be a writer when you grow up."

I didn't learn my ABC's until I was in seventh grade and I was the last person any of my classmates believed would write a book. In face, one of my classmates said, "When I heard that you were an author, I laughed. I thought it was a joke."

They weren't the only ones though. My mother said it was a pipedream. I'd never be able to do it. My brother was a bit more bold. He said I wasn't smart enough to write a book. So, I quit talking about it and spent the next seven years writing late at night when my wife and children slept, got up in the morning, went to work, came and after they went to bed, I'd write until I wrote those final words - The End.

Then I said. "I wrote a book." Little did I know that book would change my life. That book, titled Willow Falls, became a #1 Best Seller and started the Matt Bannister Series which allowed me to live my dream of becoming a full time author for the next six years.

I will admit that I am far more comfortable sitting behind a keyboard than standing in front of an audience, but I believe there are far greater truths to be learned from my story than just being an author. It's not about overcoming the odds, it's about having the determination, courage and strength the stand up and keep going when the world around you falls apart. Join me, let's talk about it.

On a personal note, I have written twenty-three novels and live in Lincoln City with my wife of 30 years, named Cathy. We have raised five children and now have seven grandchildren. I enjoy spending time with my family, the beach, museums and history in general. And when I am not at my day job, I tend to spend a lot of time in the fictional world of my characters, but that's what writers do.

Page updated

Report abuse