– by Lyudmila (Lucy) Tomova

About me | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3

As the Mortenson Center Associates Program comes to an end, I find myself feeling both grateful and slightly overwhelmed – in the best possible way. It is difficult to summarize an experience that has been so rich, intense, and unlike anything I have experienced before. These weeks have been full of learning, traveling, conversations, reflection, professional discovery, and many moments that I know will stay with me for a long time.

During the first week, I began to see libraries from several angles at once: as learning spaces, research partners, community hubs, technology infrastructures, and human-centered organizations. The DiSC and change management workshops helped me reflect on myself as a leader and colleague, while the visits to academic and public libraries showed me how much impact can come from thoughtful services, welcoming spaces, and the courage to try new ideas.

The second week deepened this reflection. Human-centered design reminded me that the first step is not always to solve, but to listen. AI, VR, podcasting, and digital tools showed how technology can support learning, experimentation, and creativity when it is used with purpose. The Program Logic Model and Environmental Scanning gave me practical frameworks for thinking more strategically about activities, outcomes, and impact. Visits to public, academic, special, and professional organizations showed that libraries create value in very different ways, but always through people, purpose, and connection.

The third week helped me appreciate the work that often happens behind the scenes. Preservation and conservation, high-density storage, assessment, metadata, evidence synthesis, state-level library infrastructure, and leadership training all reminded me that library impact is not always immediately visible. Sometimes it is quiet, technical, long-term, and built through careful planning and hard work. But it is no less important. In fact, it is often this invisible work that makes visible service possible.

As I reflect on the whole experience, several words stand out and will stay with me:

• Community because every library we visited served people in meaningful and specific ways.
• Inclusion because libraries are at their best when they create space for everyone.
• Impact because our work matters most when it changes something for the better.
• Value because libraries must be able not only to do good work, but also to show why that work matters.
• Storytelling because data alone is not enough unless we can turn it into a meaningful narrative.
• Hard work because behind every inspiring library space, service, or program, there are dedicated people making it happen.

For my own professional development, this program has been invaluable. It has given me new tools, new ideas, and new confidence. It has encouraged me to think more strategically about the future of my own library, to listen more carefully to users, to involve staff more actively, and to look for evidence of impact in both numbers and stories. It has also reminded me that leadership is not only about decisions and plans; it is about communication, empathy, trust, and the ability to bring people together around a shared purpose.

Most of all, I am thankful. Thankful to the Mortenson Center team for their professionalism, generosity, and care. Thankful to all the presenters, hosts, librarians, and colleagues who shared their knowledge and opened their institutions to us. Thankful to my fellow Associates, who made this experience richer through their questions, stories, cultures, humor, and friendship.

I leave the program with many ideas to take home, but also with something more important: a broader understanding of what libraries can be. They can preserve the past, support the present, and help shape the future. They can be places of knowledge, creativity, inclusion, research, memory, and community. And they can create impact in ways both large and small, visible and invisible, immediate and long-lasting.

This has truly been a learning experience like no other – one that has helped me grow as a professional, but also as a person.