Blog post by Rita Mitchell! Moderating a table discussion at MLA ’26

Hi, this is Rita Mitchell, librarian at Aurora Sinai Medical Center in Milwaukee, WI and a recipient of a WHSLA professional development award. Back in September of 2025, I decided to reply to a call for volunteers for the MLA Living Book events organized by the MLA Community Building and Belonging Committee (CBB). I was interested in being a “book” for the live event being held at MLA ’26. The CBB committee was facing difficulties with having only 1 or 2 members able to attend the MLA ’26 conference in person, so fellow caucuses joined in to collaborate on a roundtable event. The Living Book event was not going to happen. The CBB committee decided to invite interested “books” who would be in Milwaukee at MLA ’26 to participate in the Storytelling Roundtable. This made the theme of the MLA ’26 Conference – Cultured Collaborations, very relevant. I volunteered, helped plan the details of the event, and participated as a moderator of a table.

Here is the description:

The Community Building and Belonging Committee along with Accessibility and Disability and Social Justice and Health Disparities Caucuses invite you to join us in sharing our stories of resilience, change, and confusion due to recent changes in our country and professional community. The hope is not only to have space for catharsis, but to share strategies for problem solving, working around, working through and resisting. An additional aim is to widen, strengthen or establish a network of support for members facing issues related to identity, community building, belonging, social justice, and/or accessibility.

Roundtables will have moderators to help guide conversation, some with defined topics for those that wish to focus on a particular issue, but others that are open for more mixed conversations. We will have a Padlet as a mechanism for recording discussions/reporting back which allows for both named and anonymous participation.

I was the moderator for one of the tables at the event: Later in Life Disabilities: Adapting to a disability later in life presents unique challenges. Join the conversation on how to manage this transition and provide meaningful support to others.

This allowed me a space to talk about my recently acquired disabilities – I suffered a Subdural Hematoma, a traumatic brain injury, in June of 2020. I spent June and July in the Neuro ICU and then went to a rehabilitation facility specifically for head injury patients. I didn’t return home until December and returned to work part time in January of 2021. I received exceptional support from my director, manager and teammates during my hospitalization/rehab and after my return to home and work. I thought sharing what this entailed might be helpful to others. What do you do when you or someone you work with “get hit by a bus”? Pardon the expression, but this is what we would say at a former job I had – be ready or have your job documented in case someone needs to take over when you “get hit by a bus”. Well, I did get “hit by a bus”, but I had the support of my colleagues and my family to pull me through.

I had a very engaging conversation at my “Later in Life Disabilities” table, and I hope I shared some pearls of wisdom with the participants.

Some pearls of wisdom for the manager/director of someone with a later-in-life disability:

• Be present for their family if it is welcomed – my husband appreciated the calls from my director about insurance and medical leave tasks that needed to be completed while I was in the hospital.

• Manage the person’s work email – I was gone for 7 months and having my important emails addressed and the “not so important” emails put in a folder was extremely helpful. Bonus – we didn’t lose any patrons or service requests because I was absent and couldn’t respond to an email.

• Accommodations/work restrictions – these are very important to have in place. Managers should be able to help direct the employee to the correct forms or HR contacts to have these in place.

Pearls for those living with a later-in-life disability:

• Life is too short to be miserable at work – find your support network, reach out and find those who have similar challenges or experiences.

• Ask for help when you need it and give yourself grace (Giving yourself grace means cutting yourself some slack. It’s about letting go of perfection, dropping the harsh inner critic, and allowing yourself to be human. Treat yourself with the same kindness, patience, and understanding you would offer a good friend – from Jenna Overbaugh).

• Be honest – if you are having a bad day, let it be, and let your manager know. Open communication is key to your success and happiness at work.

Helping with the planning process allowed me to meet some fantastic MLA members from different locations and different types of libraries. I get very nervous about presenting or speaking with peers, but this experience of moderating “difficult conversations” has helped me gain some confidence and provided the conference speaking engagement I needed. My biggest takeaway was that MLA is an organization for the profession, but also for people. The MLA Community Building and Belonging Committee is there to support inclusivity, fairness and belonging within the organization, at all levels. A huge thank you to WHSLA for the financial support provided to attend the conference in Milwaukee, and to the MLA CBB committee for inviting me to be part of the Storytelling Roundtable.

Note: Posted on behalf of Rita Mitchell 🌟