ILOC 2025 Schedule
ILOC will be held on January 30, 2025 with the theme Assess, Adapt, Act: Making Evaluation Count.
The session descriptions and speaker bios are posted below. The day of the conference, click the link below each session description to access the Zoom link.
You may also download a one-page, printable schedule (note that you'll need to come back to this page for the Zoom link).
The Zoom links below will be live on January 30.
Morning Keynote: Erica Freudenberger (9:00 - 10:15 a.m.)
Title: Measure Up! Evaluation as a Springboard to Success
Description: Evaluation is where the strategic plan comes together, demonstrating the library’s success. By establishing clear metrics, we can assess progress. Sounds dull? It’s not!
This talk will cover the why, when, what, who and how of evaluation.
About Erica: Erica Freudenberger is a creative community-builder who works with libraries to create community-led change. She is the outreach, engagement, and marketing consultant at the Southern Adirondack Library System. She formerly led the Red Hook Public Library, a finalist for Library Journal's "Best Small Library Award." She is a 2016 Library Journal Mover & Shaker. She's been an advisor to the Aspen Institute's Re-envisioning Public Libraries pilot, OF/BY/FOR/ALL, and the American Library Association's Libraries Transform Communities: Facilitation Skills for Small and Rural Libraries. In her free time, she creates bold, joyful, and experiential learning opportunities with organizations nationwide through Thriving Libraries, LLC.
Zoom Link
Breakout Session 1 (10:45 - 11:35 a.m.)
Reducing Barriers: A Roadmap to Making Your Library Accessible
Description: Learn how to self-assess the current physical and mental accessibility of your library, solicit feedback from community partners, and implement solutions to reduce barriers, on a budget.
About the Presenters: Kate Thompson is a reference librarian at the West Des Moines (IA) Public Library and disability advocate interested in expanding perspectives around neurological difference. She is a graduate of the Iowa Family Leadership Training Institute and a former member of the Olmstead Task Force, the State of Iowa group tasked with upholding the intention of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Kate has presented to the American Library Association's (ALA) Social Responsibilities Roundtable, the Library Collective, the Iowa Library Association, KidsFirst Iowa, the Arkansas Library Association Reference and Instruction Services Community, 1st Five Health Mental Development Initiative, and the Iowa Public Health Association. She was a contributor to the book Library Programming for Autistic Children and Teens, published in 2021 by the ALA.
Susan Greenwood is Executive Assistant to the Director at the West Des Moines (IA) Public Library. Her passion for public service started with helping her mom plan, organize, and run her hometown library’s summer reading program as a tween. Her twenty-year career in local government includes sixteen years with the City of West Des Moines, starting as a college intern. Since graduating from Central College with a degree in Business, Psychology, and Art she has served the City of West Des Moines as an Accounting Associate and Parks & Recreation Administrative Secretary. She also served the Village of Flossmoor (IL) as Administrative Assistant to the Village Manager before joining the West Des Moines Public Library in 2018. She is a graduate of the Iowa League of Cities Municipal Professional Academy, she was chaos coordinator for the WDM Library’s recent renovation, and currently serves as chair of the WDM Library’s Accessibility Committee.
Zoom Link
Let’s Pivot (this time in Excel)
Description: You gathered your survey responses and now you have a mountain of data. But, where’s the information? You might need an Excel Pivot Table. Yes, they can be daunting so let’s take a few minutes to discover what they can do. Once you see your first Pivot Table built from the ground up, you’ll realize what’s been missing from your Excel skillset all this time. This is a fast-moving session that is intended for mid-level skill Excel users.
About Lauri: Lauri Thompson is the Continuing Education Coordinator for the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville, TN. She holds a MA in Teaching and Learning with Technology and has 25 years of experience teaching in person, online, and while driving. (She claims to teach people in a loud voice while driving. It’s not road rage, it’s tutoring.) Her love of Excel began the first time she opened the program and she loves nothing more than making someone else’s job easier by using a few well-placed mouse clicks.
Zoom Link
So, How’d it Go? Evaluation and the Project Management Lifecycle
Description: In this session, we’ll do a deep dive into how evaluation rears its (ugly?) head throughout various stages of a project. To do this, we’ll dig through our project management caboodle (*so* much better than a toolbox) to get a sense of what all is in there. We’ll chat about planning what we want to do, actually doing it, and figuring out if it worked or not. This will be a bring-your-own stick on earring session, unfortunately. Those are hard to distribute over Zoom, no matter how great of a caboodle you have.
About Sam: Samantha Bouwers is the consultant for Continuing Education at the State Library. Contact her with all your questions about CE, the Endorsement Program, IA Learns, or with other professional development questions. She got her Master's in Library and Information Science from the University of Iowa, and has experience in corporate, academic, and public libraries. Her two literary loves are Jack Reacher and Armand Gamache (glean from that dichotomy what you will). Her real life loves are family, garden, and baking.
Zoom Link
Noon Keynote: Jessica Hilburn (12:00 - 1:00 p.m.)
Title: Digging Into Data: Where to Find It & How to Use It to Maximize Your Impact
Description: Data is a useful tool, but only if you know where to find the good quality stuff and how to go about implementing it in your library work. Are you looking for new ways to understand your community, grow your reach, and open up new funding avenues? Getting connected with data to back up your in-library experiences is crucial to understanding your community. You might even learn something you never knew! In this keynote you will learn about where to find high-quality data on a variety of topics related to your area. This information will provide you with grant-writing talking points and tips for how to engage with your community in new and exciting ways.
About Jessica: Jessica Hilburn is the Executive Director of Benson Memorial Library in Titusville, Pennsylvania, and the CEO of the Crawford County Federated Library System. She enjoys popular culture in libraries, true crime, and audiobooks, and she is passionate about advocating for rural communities and libraries, as well as broadband equity, information access, and community development. She is a regular contributor to Information Today, Inc. and serves as chair of her county planning commission and as an elected official on her borough council.
Zoom Link
Breakout Session 2 (1:30 - 2:20 p.m.)
Using Data and State Data Center Services to Evaluate Library Services
Description: In this session, we will explore how libraries can harness the power of data and data visualizations to enhance their planning processes, improve services, and make more informed decisions. Attendees will learn how to access and utilize resources from the State Library's State Data Center, which aggregates and disseminates key demographic, economic, and community data, to understand trends and patterns in their service areas.
About Gary: Gary Krob has been the Coordinator for the State Data Center at the State Library since 2001. He is based out of the Des Moines office in the Iowa Law Library.
Zoom Link
Using WhoFi's Question Sets Organizes Library Data to Effect Change in the Community
Description: Having easy access to organized information across departments and categories can help libraries save time in data collection, organization, analysis, visualization, and reporting. This streamlined approach not only supports data-influenced decision-making and advocacy efforts but also creates a better overall experience for staff, patrons, the library and the community as a whole. In this session, Ashleigh will dive into some stories from libraries utilizing data in Question Sets to secure grants, understand community trends, advocate for the worth of the library, be heard in city and board meetings, and how the library benefits the community.
About Ashleigh: Ashleigh Matos has been a WhoFi Partner Advocate since 2020. She listens to library feedback and uses it to help design, produce, and enhance the WhoFi Question Sets feature. Ashleigh's passion is to help people make data-informed decisions to improve library processes. She graduated from Northeastern State University in 2024 with a Master's Degree in Data Analytics. In her free time, she enjoys playing board games with her husband, baking bread, exploring new places in their town to post helpful Yelp reviews.
Zoom Link
Project Outcome Panel
Description: Learn from State Library staff and Iowa librarians about a free, simple survey tool. Project Outcome gives you the resources and tools to create surveys and analyze outcome data. Hear about how you can use the information and feedback for evaluating future programs.
About the Presenters: Becky Heil, Janeé Jackson-Doering, Nick Shimmin, & Roslin Thompson
Zoom Link
Breakout Session 3 (2:50 - 3:40 p.m.)
Building a Culture of Evaluation
Description: This presentation will look at how a library that serves about 5000 patrons uses various data and tools to provide new programs/services and solicit patron feedback. Topics include using OPAC search terms for collection development, using email segments for targeted program engagement/marketing and using feedback process for our collection of ‘things’ in order to continually improve and expand our Library of Things.
About Andrew: Andrew Hoppmann has been the library director at the Lied Public Library in Clarinda, Iowa since 2008. During his tenure at Clarinda, he oversaw the development of positive community and government relations with the library, as well as expansion of funding, and services and even a few building projects! Prior to Clarinda, Andrew spent time in his hometown of Dubuque, Iowa where he worked part-time at the Carnegie-Stout Public Library and volunteered at Loras College and University of Dubuque libraries. When Andrew isn’t working, he can be found playing tennis and pickleball as well as enjoying board games and hiking with his family.
Zoom Link
Using Gimlet to Wrangle Your Data
Description: This will be a demonstration of Gimlet, a statistic-tracking software, with an emphasis on how this product can be customized with input from staff at all levels and how the data can be leveraged to make decisions about staffing, signage, and much more. Jen brings years of experience using this product in her former library and the West Des Moines Public Library.
About Jen: Jen grew up in the Chicago area and has 18 years of public library experience in Illinois and St. Louis City and has been Head of Adult Services at West Des Moines Library for 3 years. Previous to her career in libraries, she didn’t think data was that interesting. However, after 18 years, she finds it fascinating (although her favorite quote is “data without context is meaningless.”)
Zoom Link
Leveraging Library Data for Advocacy
Description: Bibliostat Connect provides states and individual libraries with data analysis, peer library comparison tools, and reporting to inform stakeholders, decision-making, and library advocacy. The State Library of Iowa subscribes to CollectConnect statewide to facilitate its annual public library report survey, and for dissemination of library data in quick, easy, and graphical output. The CollectConnect software suite makes it easy to analyze your own library, user-selected peer libraries, or nationwide performance metrics over time. See where your library stands in relation to other libraries across the state, or across the nation. Easily identify trends across hundreds of data dimensions, including circulation by audience level, digital lending growth, material expenditures, per capita rates over defined timeframes, for example. And, much more. CollectConnect helps libraries leverage library data into compelling stories for grant applications and advocacy to library boards, city councils, and other funding organizations that make decisions about resource allocation.
About Jan: Jan Anderson works in sales and training on CollectConnect Suite, and also with other statistical and data management products as part of Baker & Taylor’s collectionHQ. Jan lived most of his life in Utah, but has recently located in south central Arizona. He has worked at Baker & Taylor for over 19 years, and in the library industry overall for more than 32 years.
Zoom Link
Evening Keynote: Kevin Unrath (6:00 - 7:00 p.m.)
Title: Evaluating Your Library’s Value Beyond Cost-Benefit Analysis
Description: One popular method of demonstrating the value of a library is cost-benefit analysis, which looks at the financial benefits of shared resources versus the cost of running the library. While this analysis is valid and important, libraries add value in many other ways that can be difficult to quantify. This presentation will touch on four of those areas, looking at libraries as institutions of learning, community builders, keepers of history, and sustainable resource sharers. It will outline ways to inventory the qualitative benefits of the library and how to incorporate those benefits into the strategic planning/implementation/evaluation cycle.
About Kevin: Kevin Unrath is the Consultant for Library Operations for the Vermont Department of Libraries, where he helps trustees, library directors, and Friends groups make their library the best it can be. After earning his Master's in Library Science at the University of Illinois in 2000, Kevin has worked in library management and administration for the past 25 years. He's served as the director of two busy libraries, is a past president (2020-2021) of the Vermont Library Association, and organized the Vermont Library Conference from 2020-2023. When not library-ing, Kevin enjoys spending time with his family and all things disc golf and Disney. Don’t hold it against him that It’s a Small World is his favorite ride!
Zoom Link