Conference Coordinator’s Report / Rapport de la Coordinatrice de la conférence

Conference Coordinator’s Report [PDF]

51st Annual General Meeting / 51e Assemblée Générale Annuelle

Saturday May 25 2024 / le samedi le 24 mai 2024
Virtual / virtuel : online / en ligne

The 51th OALT/ABO Conference : Libraries as lighthouses / Les bibliothèques comme phares ; was a successful conference with many first time attendees, and 48 registered attendees.

This was our first on-site conference since the pandemic and was well attended.

We had three sponsors : Carr MacLean, Mohawk College and Local 2022 Kingston Frontanac Public Library Workers.

We located ourselves at the Waterfront Conference Centre in Hamilton on the Bay.  The view throughout the conference was distracting but was successful anyways.

We started our conference off Thursday morning with a couple of vendors (Carr Maclean and the Hamilton Hospice group).  Our introduction started with Vincent Elit, President OALT/ABO and Janna Munkittrick-Colton welcoming everyone; then Nrinder Nann, City Councillor for Ward 3, Hamilton; and Lynn Coleman from Mohawk College.

We started off in a big fashion with Michelle Arbuckle, Executive Director of the Ontario Library Association (OLA) as our Keynote speaker.  Many hilarious moments  happened throughout; then led by Dolores Harms Penner a panel discussion followed with many thoughtful comments.

After a delightful lunch, SPARC brought 3 robots to demonstrate their products.

The rest of the workshops on Thursday and Friday were successful and engaging for everyone (even my interactive puppet program)!

Our Thursday night banquet was an unusual style for us but was casual with canapes being served throughout so that people could wander and have a social hour.

Vincent presented the Membership anniversaries and OALT/ABO Outstanding Student Award for Mohawk, Seneca and Algonquin Colleges.

We would like to thank the Waterfront Conference Centre for their attention to some of our special needs.

My recommendation for next year is to try to attract more sponsorships to help with the costs.

We had many students that attended the conference which might affect the costs and we did try to keep pricing on the low side with us moving to a 2-day conference.

If anyone would like to make suggestions for next year please email me at conference@oaltabo.on.ca .  I received one request so far to do a workshop for next year!  Thank you.

Respectfully submitted,

-Original signed by Janna Munkittrick-Colton

Janna Munkittrick-Colton
Conference Coordinator, Board of Directors | Coordinatrice de la conférence, Conseil d’administration
Ontario Association of Library Technicians/Association des bibliotechniciens de l’Ontario
 info@oaltabo.on.ca | https://oaltabo.on.ca/