The State of Alaska granted the Soldotna Library $3,000 for furthering their librarian educations. In February the Soldotna City Council will consider approving the grant and covering any additional costs for two library related conferences.
Soldotna City Librarian Rachel Nash says furthering library employee educations is instrumental in continually bettering their public services.
Nash: “Librarianship is a profession, which many people just think of books but there’s a lot of things going on behind the scenes from the programming and early childhood development to supporting basically life needs at every stage. We just try to support people so we just try to do that better. These conferences really help us to do that better, to get ideas from others, to give ideas to others, it’s a great way to collaborate.”
Since the $3,000 was for Fiscal Year 2016, in October one employee was sent to the Association for Rural and Small Libraries in Little Rock Arkansas. The other conference, hosted by the Public Library Association, will be in Denver, Colorado, in April.
The conferences were allotted $1,500 each from the state grant and the first conference’s costs in Little Rock totaled around $2,130.
The ordinance approving the state grant for continuing education requires that the City of Soldotna pay any cost exceeding the $3,000 for those two conferences.
Nash says in the past they have cancelled conferences if the costs exceed the grant amount by too much but the conferences are very important.
The Soldotna City Council will take public testimony on the approval of the grant on February 10 beginning at 6:00 pm during their regular meeting in the Soldotna City Hall Chambers.