State College, PA, October 1, 2024 – The PALCI (Partnership for Academic Library Collaboration and Innovation) community is celebrating the success of its recent Retreat & Conference, which took place from September 10-12 in State College, PA. Centered on the theme of “Healthy Collaboration Ecosystems,” the event brought together library professionals from more than 50 member organizations across the PALCI consortium for an engaging three days of workshops, presentations, and collaborative discussions. 
The conference featured insightful presentations from a range of distinguished speakers, including Dr. Deb Mashek, who led a workshop on effective collaboration strategies, Charlie Barlow, who shared resource sharing strategies from the Boston Library Consortium (BLC), and Jennie Rose Halperin, whose talk on “Libraries, Digital Ownership, and the Cloud” sparked important conversations about the future of library collections. Attendees also enjoyed dynamic Lightning Round presentations and in-depth breakout sessions, such as “Library (Re)Structure: Building Collaboration, Community, and Budget Understanding.”
Jill Morris, PALCI Executive Director, expressed her gratitude, saying, “Thank you to all our speakers and attendees for your engagement and participation. We hope the retreat helped you make valuable connections and provided new insights to take back home to your institutions.”
Many attendees emphasized the importance of the in-person networking opportunity, with several noting how it helped reduce feelings of isolation while tackling shared challenges. One attendee noted in their feedback form that [this retreat] was, “the most important meeting” they had ever attended. PALCI invites all attendees, and those who were unable to attend, to continue the conversations started at the retreat. A message board has been created on Basecamp for ongoing discussions. Attendees can pose questions, share ideas, or recap key takeaways to foster further engagement. All available presenter slides and documents are accessible on the PALCI Portal via Basecamp.
For more information, reach out to PALCI at support@palci.org.
About PALCI
The Partnership for Academic Library Collaboration and Innovation (PALCI) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization that originated in 1996 and was incorporated in 1998 as the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium, Inc. Today, PALCI’s membership has grown to include more than 70 academic and research libraries in Pennsylvania and contiguous states. PALCI’s mission is to enable cost-effective and sustainable access to information resources and services. PALCI is known for its highly-regarded EZBorrow consortial interlibrary loan (ILL) service. PALCI members collaborate to serve over 800,000 students, faculty, and staff, focusing on collaborative collections programs, resource sharing services, and innovative technology projects and approaches to library services. Visit www.palci.org for more information.
Media Contact: Jill Morris
Executive Director, PALCI
support@palci.org
