Officially chartered in 1963, the New England Library Association is a regional organization whose membership represents a wide range of library‑related interests.
This past week Advantage has been at the New England Library Association Conference 2022 in Manchester, New Hampshire. We have been thankful to be given the opportunity to support this event as a silver sponsor and in a double-wide booth. This may have been our first time at the conference, but it will definitely not be our last time attending. The New England region of itself is worth visiting, and being able to connect with current and future partners makes this area that much more enjoyable.
Advantage and NELA have similar missions and visions. NELA’s mission is to lead, educate, convene, and advocate for the advancement of New England libraries and library workers. Advantage is pleased to provide A Community History Archive for many of these communities and is excited to partner with more libraries in the area and continue to preserve New England’s history and make it accessible to their communities for free. Advantage will never charge a patron to access their history.
At The NELA Conference 2022, there were over 450 attendees, and this wouldn’t happen without the strategic planning of the organization. NELA has provided its partnering institutions with such an educational experience that this is a conference that I wouldn’t want to miss if I was a library in this region.
As pictured below, you can tell that we had an incredible time at the conference. We were able to speak with so many in a short period. We also learned so much from each and every one of you. However, we want to continue the conversation with those we have spoken to. Please see our calendar link attached: Zoho Bookings. Hearing the stories of your communities was so fascinating. This region of the country has so much important history that can never be forgotten. That is the driving reason we have built the Community History Archives platform to work with a variety of mediums so we don’t just have to stop at preserving your communities newspapers.
If we didn’t get the time to speak, we are sorry that we missed you. We would like to schedule a time to learn more about your community and how we can help you. Grant will take the time to learn your community and provide you with a preservation strategy that will fit within your means. Grant is great at going the extra mile to make partnerships in the community so you will get the exact solution that you are looking for. Attached is our booking calendar so you can schedule a time to speak with Grant: Grants Calendar.
To our current partners that were at NELA, thank you for stopping by and visiting with not only Grant but all of us. We know that Grant has taken the time to get to know you and your community so it is powerful when the rest of our staff can learn a little more about the community you serve. If it wasn’t for our current partners, this trip wouldn’t have been possible. So again, we thank you and look forward to speaking with you all soon.
The Community History Archives are user-friendly and easy to learn. The Advantage team has focused on making it as simple as possible so that everyone…from students to grandparents (and everyone in between) can browse, search, view, clip, and share articles, headlines, pages, and stories recorded in the pages of the community newspaper. Users of the site are able to just type a search and hit “enter” or create a more complex search by using the query builder. There is also the ability to simply browse to a specific year, month, day, or page in any (or all) publications contained in the archive.
