Session Description:
STEM librarians have taken a lead role in demonstrating the range of opportunities for academic librarians. By recasting their roles outside of the library, they have demonstrable influence in the classroom and in labs, as advocates for community engagement, and as designers of research & instruction development opportunities. But, what makes STEM librarians positioned to lead this way? What specific skills do they have? How can we ensure new librarians are being funneled into STEM academic librarianship paths? To answer these questions, this panel will explore how librarians are recasting their roles and renewing their approach to recruitment and training.

Session Description:
Teaching in academic libraries is exhilarating, exhausting, empowering, and exasperating, sometimes all in the same day! Instructional tips are easy to find, but the power dynamics in library instruction are often taken for granted. This panel of new and seasoned teaching librarians considers three themes: Experience, Identity, and Workplace. How do our experience levels affect what happens in the classroom? How do our social identities alter how we teach? How do institutional norms shape how instruction is perceived and valued? Join us for a spirited discussion on what’s possible in our teaching and how to change the narrative going forward.

Session Description:
When you think of academic librarian parents, what comes to mind? Many people stereotype parents and unfortunately university, local, and national leaders make policies impacting them based on these false assumptions. This presentation will extend previous work-life balance conversations by sharing the results of a survey about librarian-parent stereotypes, providing attendees with the opportunity to discuss how these stereotypes have impacted them and work together to develop an agenda to change the policies resulting from these biases.

Session Description:
“You’re a librarian, you must love reading.” As academic librarians, we spend a lot of time pushing back against the idea that books are all we do. However, as academic librarians, we also bring a unique lens to the ways students experience reading and using information sources critically. In this presentation, panelists will illustrate how information literacy barriers students face are often related to reading. Panelists will present teaching and curricular strategies used to facilitate critical reading practices in a range of settings, including different disciplinary contexts and using varied media.

Session Description:
Are you interested in developing a reading program, but intimidated by the common read? Join us to learn how to overcome staff, budget, resource, or size constraints and create an impactful community reading program highlighting diversity and inclusion. Unlike traditional common read programs, the Reading Without Walls challenge invites participants to choose and read books about characters who don’t look or live like them; books about topics they don’t know much about; or books in formats or genres they don’t typically read. Reflect on, discuss, and adapt our activities, curricular connections, campus and community partnerships, and events for your context.

Session Description:
For many librarians, demonstrating their scholarly impact is complicated and difficult to accurately reflect to other constituencies across their institution. Debates about what qualifies as scholarship are as varied as the scholarship itself, and appropriate metrics to demonstrate impact at times seem to rely more on cultural understanding than official guidelines. This panel will discuss the research and scholarly impact of librarians in higher education and the evaluation of academic librarianship. Based on research into current practice and disciplinary comparisons, a new model for the evaluation of academic librarians will be introduced. Audience participation will be strongly encouraged.

Session Description:
Leadership development institutes, seminars, workshops, academies and courses have been popular within librarianship for decades. Also for decades we’ve faced critiques about diversity within the library profession. How has library leadership professional development attempted to raise up persons of color in the profession? Do library leadership professional development experiences perpetuate diversity issues within librarianship? Join a researcher on the topic and a panel of providers of these experiences for a lively discussion.

Session Description:
Discover how two very different, well-known university libraries navigated the master planning process to recast their library’s physical space to better align with evolving roles, student needs and their institution’s mission. Both library deans will share insight into challenges encountered in bringing library needs to the forefront of their university’s consciousness and how they advocated for action on their “best laid plans.” Valuable take-aways will be shared with attendees struggling with how to better leverage their physical space to meet current demands, build consensus, involve students and faculty, and answer the universal question: What will all of this cost?”

Session Description:
In this moderated panel, librarians of color in tenure-track faculty positions will discuss their experiences in a profession that values diversity but continues to fail to diversify. While this conversation is not a new one, it is an essential one to continue having. The participants represent all areas of academic libraries: reference, instruction, collection management, archives, technical services, and supervision. The guided dialogue will touch on issues such as recruitment and hiring, research agendas and service choices, tokenism and microaggressions. This conversation centers librarians of color while giving all participants an opportunity to listen, engage, and learn.

Session Description:
Conferences are seen as a central component to spread knowledge, gather new ideas, and network within the library profession. Despite this, conferences often remain inaccessible to many library staff for a variety reasons, whether due to cost, time, travel distance, personal obligations, etc., thus reinforcing the inequalities that permeate our profession. Panelists who have all planned small-scale grassroots conferences will discuss their various organizing approaches, how those approaches met the needs of their communities, as well as dilemmas and difficulties encountered during planning in order to reconceptualize the status quo and disrupt the power dynamics typically reinforced by large-scale conferences.