Session Description:
This panel session provides an opportunity to learn about Library Diversity Residencies through the experiences of Library Diversity Residents and a Residency program director. A panel of two current residents, one former resident and a residency program director will discuss the design of their residencies, practical skills gained, suggested new approaches and work-preparedness after a residency. Participants will come away with a more holistic understanding of diversity residencies from multiple perspectives. This knowledge will hopefully lead to new ideas of how to recast and design residencies to better suit new librarians and increase the diversity in the profession.

Session Description:
Artificial Intelligence – what does it mean to you as an information professional? What does it mean to libraries? To users? What does it really mean? Attend the panel “Impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on Libraries” to learn more about the topic from a variety of perspectives, including those of library directors, corporations, i-schools and others. Engage in a deep conversation with the panel and audience about what AI can do for you and how you can prepare for its impact. Be one of the first to envision the future of libraries in an AI world.

Session Description:
Hear how one academic library moved their access services department from a library-centric model to a patron-centric model, by adding student positions, getting involved around campus, making friends and influencing people.

Session Description:
In this panel, librarians from four institutions will present the diverse ways they use the Framework to shape first-year students’ critical thinking and engagement with the research process locally. This includes using the Framework to deepen discussions about information literacy with faculty, as well as develop and assess active-learning strategies and scaffolded instruction, resulting in enhanced integration of Framework concepts in first-year courses.The panelists will engage the audience in an interactive discussion about first-year students and information literacy. Participants will be asked to evaluate opportunities for designing Framework-based collaborations, activities, and assessments for first-year students in their own institutions.

Session Description:
Four community college library directors describe successful campus OER initiatives that shifted their libraries into highly visible roles. The libraries are now center stage — as motivators of institutional change; as researchers skilled at identifying high-quality OER; as partners in curriculum development and instructional design; as experts in copyright and licensing; as entrepreneurs seeking new printing and publishing partners; and as advocates addressing college affordability. Panelists represent libraries with extensive OER engagement and will provide examples of advanced campus support; other panelists will appeal to libraries starting OER activity. Retain, reuse, revise, and remix these successful campus models!

Session Description:
Information literacy is often considered an essential goal, and evokes commitments to critical thinking and informed decision-making. But what does information literacy mean when it is taught in a society plagued by inequities? Is information literacy instruction a form of neoliberal indoctrination, or a mechanism for critical exchange? Find out how academic information literacy is intertwined with capitalism, and in particular, how information literacy instruction promotes information commodification and the production of capitalist subjects. Attendees will reconsider the narrative of this cornerstone of academic librarianship, and be inspired to reimagine information literacy as a site of critical resistance.

Session Description:
Academic libraries often do not feel welcoming to staff members from underrepresented groups. Too often, we place the burden of fixing that problem on the very people that are marginalized. In this presentation, we will tackle this problem head on by repositioning the narrative so that the burden of making things better is placed on those with privilege. It is time for librarians to live their values by becoming true advocates for their underrepresented coworkers. Join us and challenge yourself to consider what you are going to use your privilege for.

Session Description:
Academic Libraries play a powerful role in remembering. Remembering history, remembering research, and remembering our cultural heritage. Hear how a community partnership, between cultural heritage institutions, libraries, educators, technologists, and underrepresented community groups – are working to share untold stories and build cultural understanding in the classroom.

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:
In this session, panelists will examine critical approaches to instruction and pedagogy in the context of the credit-bearing course. Panelists will address some of the benefits and challenges of teaching in the credit-bearing format. One of the significant benefits is having time to employ critical pedagogy in the classroom, to build rapport with students, and to make course content more meaningful. We will also examine critiques of the format, and ways to make existing information literacy courses critical by situating content within larger political, cultural, and/or social themes and contexts.