The Circle Is A Circuit: McDonnell/Russell Protocol - Drumming with Librarians in Sioux Falls and St. Cloud

Though my colleague, Keith Russell, came up with the idea that our "percussion-based experiential exercises" maybe constitute a new protocol that builds on previous group-drumming protocols, I think it should be called "Russell-McDonnell Protocol". Keith has done a lot of work in using experiential exercises for staff development and change management at his institution, University of Kansas.

That being said, I think the two conference sessions we did in Sioux Falls and St. Cloud over the last couple of weeks went very well. Keith and I have done drumming sessions at librarian conferences together three times now (Keith has done more than that solo), and each time seems to go better than the last. It was a fun time, and the participants at each had some very neat learnings which they shared with us. They talked about their feelings, how the drumming served as a metaphor, and one person said how great it was to see people smiling and experiencing joy!

Two other highlights of the conference were a session on Mindfulness practice/meditation in the workplace, by Jenny Sippel and John Daniels of Minneapolis Community and Technical College. I was excited to learn that MCTC Library has implemented a meditation room in a room that needed to be repurposed in the library--go MCTC! A session on music-making activities with public library patrons and children's programming, as well as a presentation from a talent firm that services libraries (for cultural, art, music, and entertainment programming in libraries) reminded me that libraries are not just about books anymore!

I am excited for the next opportunity to facilitate another event like this with my colleague Keith Russell! We'll see how the evaluations for the conference session turned out.