#rbms26

Next year’s RBMS Conference theme is Advocacy: Finding Your Voice, and the conference will take place June 23-26, 2026, at the Hyatt Regency in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Here is the longer description: 

Special collections and archives are in a time of transition and rethinking, asking questions about who we serve, what we collect, and how we reach our communities and share our story. Change, however, often requires changes in resources, from budget to staffing. How can we bring alignment between our work and the support it needs? This can mean self-advocacy in places where slower librarianship is needed, or it can mean advocating for a concept, a vision, a unifying mission, for our colleagues.

Our work is made possible because we care deeply about what we do, and advocacy is how we make sure we can get it done. The goal is for attendees to walk away inspired, with ideas for how to make their voices not just heard but also acted upon.

The conference planning is underway, but there is still need for more local arrangements committee members. Use the "ask" on this blog, or find me by email to get connected and join the fun in planning for next year's event.

A blog in 2025? How quaint!

Tumblr in 2025? How quaint!

2025 inspires a return to quaint, I think. Remember the pre-algorithmic internet when we found things by RSS, taking the time to research and write blog posts, and compiled long lists of links on blogs for sharing? For the next year, I intend to bring it back.

What will this accomplish? I'm not sure. But for the next 11 months until RBMS 2026, I will be sharing everything I can here inspired by the conference theme, "Advocacy."

Feel free to follow my BlueSky @librarycolleen.bsky.social‬, but I intend to return to blog days of the pre-algorithmic internet and share a weekly summary of the library, archives, special collections and museums news links that I share there. I hope that it can help give us better information about the field and how we are advocating for ourselves internally in these times of scarcity, and as part of outreach to our constituents.

I know that many of you do not have control over your websites or social media anymore, if you ever did. If you do not have a place to write about your collections, feel free to reach out to me and I'm happy to host posts about any special collections or archives, or any interesting bit of research you have done about a collection item. Please use this as a space for you to share your work.

What else will it be? We'll find out as it grows.