For Attendees

Code of Conduct

All attendees, in-person and virtual, are expected to follow MLA’s Code of Conduct.

Grants and Financial Support

Dependent Care and Accessibility Assistance Voucher

This fund, totaling $2,000, was created in order to make attending the national MLA meeting more feasible to those with accessibility and dependent care needs. Please note that this does not replace reasonable accommodations set forth by the Americans with Disabilities Act that would normally be provided by the Association upon request.

Applicants may request up to $200, and applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

Examples of allowable expenses include, but are not necessarily limited to:

Caregiving expenses at the site of the meeting. Extra caregiving expenses at home incurred because the caregiver was (virtually or physically) attending the meeting (for example, overtime at a daycare center, cost of a sitter, home health aid, etc.).
Expenses incurred in bringing a caregiver (or family member acting as caregiver) to the meeting or to their home to care for the child or adult.
Expenses incurred in transporting a dependent to the conference, a babysitter, or family member.
Expenses incurred by the national meeting attendee with disabilities to bring a family member or caregiver to the meeting to assist the attendee.

Applications will be evaluated with particular attention to the statement of need. A working group composed of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA) Committee members will review applications weekly and aim to inform applicants within 10 business days.

All MLA members are eligible to apply and should fill out an application before February 21, 2024. Submit an application for the Dependent Care and Accessibility Assistance Voucher.

Reduced Registration Program

The Reduced Registration Program provides an opportunity to qualified members of the Music Library Association to receive reduced in-person registration in exchange for work supporting meeting. Participants will work for a total of five (5) hours on one or more assigned jobs during the three and one half (3.5) days of the conference. Possible jobs could include assisting at the Registration Desk, assisting the Convention Managers, assisting the MLA Big Band, and/or providing technology-adjacent help which may include Q&A moderation for both online and in-person sessions.

See the Registration page for more information.

General Conference Registration Fund (Applications Closed)

The General Conference Registration Fund (GCRF) provides financial relief for current MLA members by offering gratis registration. All MLA members who do not already receive gratis registration from MLA are eligible to apply, though the intention of the fund is to help those members who have limited professional development support.

The application period runs until January 5, 2024. Should MLA receive more applicants than there is funding, priority will be given to applicants who have never received gratis registration due to a scholarship or grant. Recipients may elect to use the registration grant to attend virtually or in person. Applicants will receive a response no later than January 10.

Information about the fund, including FAQs for applicants and opportunities to donate, may be found here: General Conference Registration Fund.

Entrants to the GCRF are also welcome to enter the Room Lottery.

Submit an application for the GCRF (deadline January 5, 2024).

MLA Room Lottery (Applications Closed)

In recognition of the ongoing challenges our members experience with travel and conference expenses, the MLA Board has developed a strategy that provides relief to some members. For our February/March 2024 meeting in Cincinnati, MLA will be holding a room lottery that allows attendees to enter a weighted drawing to receive two gratis room nights at the conference hotel.

With the intent of providing conference attendance support to those with little-to-no institutional funding, this lottery will be weighted to improve odds for Student Members, those with Emergency Circumstances, Paraprofessional/Part-Time/Hourly, and Early Career Membership types, as well as those affected by travel bans in their state in 2023 and 2024. While members of those groups will have a greater likelihood of being selected, all current members who do not already receive gratis hotel rooms are eligible. There will be 10 recipients of these rooms, and recipients will receive 2 nights’ stay gratis at the conference hotel (entire room, not only recipients’ portion of the hotel room). Roommates are allowed.

Requirements

Entries must be received by January 5, 2024.
Entrants must have a current MLA membership as of January 5, 2024.
Recipients must register for the conference by January 17, 2024.

Weighting

All members (as of January 5, 2024) are eligible to enter the lottery. Each member should enter only once, but some members’ entries will automatically be multiplied up to three based on additional criteria.

Student members: 3 entries
Emergency Circumstances, Early Career, or Paraprofessional/Part-time/Hourly members: 2 entries
Members directly impacted by an Ohio travel ban (including those bans that ended in October 2023): 2 entries
All other members: 1 entry

More Details

Entrants to the room lottery are also welcome to apply for the General Conference Registration Fund. Notification for both programs will occur on January 10, ahead of the early-bird registration deadline of January 17. Winners must confirm interest in using gratis room nights by January 12, 2024 and provide proof of conference registration to the MLA CFO by January 17, 2024.

The entry form is brief. In addition to basic contact information, you’ll need to input your MLA membership ID (called your YM ID); you can watch a brief video about how to find that.

Submit an application for the MLA Room Lottery (deadline January 5, 2024).

Networking Opportunities

Conference Mentoring Program

The MLA Conference Mentoring Program offers opportunities for first-time attendees to be matched with mentors who will answer questions about the structure of MLA, the purposes of the conference, and how these purposes are carried out in various forums. Mentors and mentees may attend a session, interest groups, poster sessions and/or exhibits together. Other opportunities for interacting include meeting up for coffee or a meal and introducing newcomers to people at the conference.

If interested in participating as a mentor or mentee, please take the pairing survey: Music Library Association Conference Mentoring Program 2024.

New Members Forum/First-Time Attendees Reception

This event is intended for first-time MLA Conference attendees, including those who have attended virtually before and are just attending in-person for the first time (or vice versa). This event is also where conference mentors and mentees will meet up. Food will be provided, as well as introductions to various aspects of MLA, icebreaker activities, and networking opportunities. To sign up to attend, please fill out the First-Time Attendees Event registration form.

Resume and Cover Letter Review Service

Sign-ups are now open for the Resume and Cover Letter Review Service at the MLA meeting in Cincinnati! Due to high demand, we’re asking that you sign up for a review in advance of the meeting. The deadline to sign up for this service is Sunday, February 25th (or until all slots are filled). To sign up, please email Mallory Sajewski, mallory.sajewski@interlochen.org, with the following:

Your resume and/or cover letter
If applicable, a link to the job that your cover letter corresponds to
Your cell phone number
Whether you will be at the entire conference or arriving late/leaving early

Spaces are limited, so sign up now! Walk-ins will not be available at the conference, but the RCLRS is available virtually year-round.

Roommate Clearinghouse

The Roommate Clearinghouse is a voluntary service offered by MLA to help members find other members who are attending the MLA national conference in order to share room expenses. Anyone who wants to participate is invited to share the dates they’re attending and any preferences they have in a roommate or rooming situation, and the coordinator will contact them when they find someone who fits the qualifications they’re looking for. Contacting the other person is voluntary, as is rooming with them, and privacy is completely assured. The Roommate Clearinghouse coordinator will send out regular emails to the MLA Listserv in the months leading up to the conference. Anyone who wishes to submit their information is welcome to do so and will be contacted when a suitable potential roommate is found.

The current coordinator is Terry Lewis. You are welcome to contact him at any time with any questions you might have at terryle@mail.fresnostate.edu.

Slack Workspace

Join the #mla-2024-conference channel on MLA’s Slack workspace for discussion with other conference attendees.

Learn more about joining and using Slack.

Presenting and Attending Sessions

Cvent

Cvent is the main platform for the conference. It’s available as both a website and an app. We recommend using the website for most purposes. Use it to:

View the conference schedule
Add sessions to your schedule
Participate in session chat
Join virtual sessions
Update your attendee profile (private by default)

Cvent works best in Chrome, followed by Safari and Edge. We have observed the most bugs in Firefox.

The cost of high-quality live captioning for program sessions is currently prohibitive; however, captions will be available on all archived videos. If your Google Chrome is up-to-date, you should have an option called “Control your music, videos, and more” (the button looks like an eighth note on a staff). Turning this feature on will create rough, automatically-generated captions that should serve as a stop-gap before the videos are archived.

Use the Cvent Events app to check schedule details & hotel floor plans. It may also be useful for speakers to monitor Q&A for virtual attendees. If you are asked to search for an event, search for “2024 Music Library Association Annual Meeting.”

Attending Sessions

All meetings are open to attendees 5 minutes before the session begins. To join a session, click the button that says “Join session.”
Interest Group Meetings and Committee Meetings are set up to create a CVENT-powered Zoom meeting. This ensures that everyone is able to participate and doesn’t require a member of the Conference Task Force to start your meeting for you. Chairs are expected to moderate these meetings.
The CMC Town Hall, the New Business Meeting, and Business Meeting are all collaborative sessions – meaning you can join in and ask your question via video chat if you’re interested.
The rest of the program sessions will be an embedded stream on the Cvent platform; virtual attendees can participate in chat and submit questions to be answered during the sessions.

Cvent Documentation

Cvent Support

Contact Cvent’s technical support for help using or problems with the Cvent website or app. Choose “Open a case” to submit a support ticket, or call 866-318-4357 to reach their phone help line. If you’re asked to choose a product, select “Attendee Hub.”

Guidelines for Presenters

Please refer to the 2024 Guidelines for Presenters to view instructions for meeting facilitators and in-person and remote speakers.

93rd Meeting of the Music Library Association, February 28-March 2, 2024