While MLA offers many opportunities for learning, one of my personal delights this year was the diversity in offerings. In my experience of past MLA conferences, MLA has offered a lot of presentations on a singular topic, evidence synthesis, and while there were a lot of great presentations on that topic, this year was balanced by presentations on other topics. This included AI as a major concept, but not in such a way as to overwhelm the rest of the conference with only AI focused research and presentations. I was personally most excited for presentations on search hedge development, burnout workshops, and the RTI presentations. The RTI presentations were in the form of posters, which were also available to see during the poster session, which I thought was a really good idea, especially as someone who had a poster session and wouldn’t have been able to hear the presentations otherwise.

Milwaukee was a beautiful city, very walkable in the downtown areas, and the convention center itself had a lot of large windows, which was allowed for a lot of natural light. We were very fortunate to arrive during some nice weather, and the food at the convention was good for a convention, although the drink choices were somewhat limited. We did learn that the next MLA conference will be in Denver, CO, although with only 600 or so attendees at this year’s conference, I’m not sure what that will look like. I was able to spend some time with our MLGSCA colleagues and speak to members of Chapter Council, which I hope will be helpful for our future as a chapter.

One of my favorite things about MLA is having the time and space to speak with and get to know librarians who I haven’t had the opportunity to meet before, and this MLA was another excellent opportunity for this, as well as the being a space where I could meet so many librarians I’ve enjoyed virtual conservations, with and worked with remotely, in person for the first time. I want to express my gratitude to the professional development committee for funding my registration to MLA this year, and to NCNMLG as a whole for the support. While I know many chapter members where not able to attend MLA this year, I hope we can see each other at MLA next year in Colorado.

– Submitted by Rachel Keiko Stark, Health Sciences Librarian