The John M. Kelly Library is very proud to congratulate Manda Vrkljan for winning a scholarship and having her poster accepted for this year’s Association of College Research Libraries’ (ACRL) conference (March 22-25 in Baltimore).
Manda is a vital member of our Public Services department and is pursuing a Master of Information at the University of Toronto. USMC Chief Librarian, Sheril Hook, describes Manda as “an exemplar employee, who is creative in meeting the needs of the users of the library and the greater community. Manda has never shied from volunteering her time for various fundraising initiatives to support the College and meets new learning opportunities with enthusiasm. Simply put, Manda’s reputation at USMC is excellent.”
The scholarship for the Support Staff category was one of 168 awarded out of a pool of 385 competitive applications. It covers the conference registration fee and comes with a travel stipend of $350 USD.
Manda’s poster proposal, “Breaking Down Silos: Using Stakeholder Analysis to Improve Communication among Library Departments,” grew out of her lead role in our engaging and challenging, staff- and department-wide strategic planning exercises. Her poster will describe the development of a stakeholder matrix to visualize each of our departments’ level of interest across all departmental activities, which helped staff develop a greater appreciation for the impact their decisions had on other departments and encourages collaboration. Only 35% of proposed sessions were accepted by ACRL.
We at the Kelly look forward to the innovative ideas Manda will bring back to our library from this international conference!