Session Description:
In academia, discussions regarding historic systems of inequality and the burdens facing women and faculty of color have increasingly gained traction. This panel of women of color librarians will examine how the process of navigating the inequities embedded within the predominantly white systems of higher education and librarianship impact the everyday work, sense of identity, and overall career advancement of librarians of color. They will discuss their experiences on the tenure track, findings from a study of women of color librarians conducted by the panelists, and the implications for the recruitment, mentorship, and retention of diverse faculty in academic libraries.

Session Description:
Awareness of accessibility issues has drastically increased as enrollment of and support for students with disabilities has grown. A project team in a Midwestern library consortium was formed and charged with evaluating the accessibility of the consortium’s database subscriptions. This panel will present our process of creating an evaluation template based on WCAG 2.0 standards, evaluation procedures, our revisions of the template, and best practices for customizing it for their own evaluations. The panel will also include a discussion of accessibility at one institution in the consortium and the role its library has played in campus accessibility efforts.

Session Description:
Empathetic marketing shows students how library services and staff can meet their core emotional needs (Control, Self-expression, Growth, Recognition, Belonging and Care). Meeting these needs assists in building connections between students and the library staff, helps ease library anxiety, and provides information about library services in new ways. During this session, librarians from three academic libraries will discuss how they have used empathetic marketing to transform their marketing endeavors. They will define and show examples of empathetic marketing and demonstrate ways that libraries can incorporate empathetic marketing into their outreach to students.

Session Description:
Gain perspective on 20 years of embedded librarianship in a first year experience program. The program consists of teaching librarians lending their expertise in information literacy and academic research to support yearlong learning community courses grounded in a variety of disciplines: engineering, health sciences, social and behavioral sciences, and STEM. Hallmarks of this program are increased student retention and graduation rates, high levels of librarian involvement in curriculum design, and faculty advocating for collaboration with the library. Walk away from this session with a better understanding for designing, building, teaching, and assessing library instruction in collaboration with faculty partners.

Session Description:
Do you want to be sure all students and faculty feel welcome in your library? Have you thought about developing a diversity and inclusion plan but didn’t know where to start? Do you already do some things to promote diversity but aren’t sure what else to do? Are you encountering challenges in expanding diversity-related initiatives? Librarians from a range of institutions—an R1, an R2, a master’s university and a liberal arts college—will discuss the challenges, pitfalls, and successes of their diversity and inclusion planning; provide advice about developing and implementing plans; and respond to audience questions.

Session Description:
What does graduate student outreach look like, and how does it differ from established outreach efforts to undergraduate students? This panel will explore examples from multiple libraries that consider both discipline-specific liaison services and college-wide outreach that requires a more generalist approach. In addition to examples of different outreach efforts, panelists and attendees will discuss successes, challenges, and ways to adapt graduate outreach opportunities at their own institutions.

Session Description:
Panelists in this session will talk about how they have adapted the reflective framework in Mia O’Brien’s “Navigating the SoTL Landscape” individually and programmatically in order to answer questions like “how do I know if my teaching and my students learning has been effective?” and “what are my students learning and why is it worth it?” Panelists will discuss specific instruments and behaviors they have incorporated into their practice. Attendees will leave with tangible tools and techniques that will allow them to embed critical reflection into their individual and collective practice.