Presentation Descriptions

Individual Presentations

Find Peace & Joy in Library Instruction with Emergent Strategy

adrienne maree brown’s emergent strategy is a feminist, afrofuturist philosophy that explores human relationships and responses to change and imagines socially just futures. Interweaving with critical librarianship topics such as feminist care ethics, anti-perfectionism, and relational-cultural theory, while still remaining focused on the smallest but most meaningful connections (small is good, small is all: the large is a reflection of the small), adopting emergent strategy principles is a natural way to find peace and joy in library teaching. Incorporating the nine core principles of emergent strategy into library instruction has lessened classroom anxiety (change is constant, be like water), brought peace to lesson planning (less prep, more presence), curbed imposter syndrome (never a failure, always a lesson), and opened wide the opportunities for those moments of connection with students that bring joy (what you pay attention to grows). This presentation will introduce the core principles of emergent strategy and use storytelling to share the joy to be found by embracing those principles in library instruction, using examples from the forthcoming edited work, Emergent Strategy in Library Instruction: Stories, Reflections, and Imaginings.

 

Presenter: Leah Morin, Michigan State University

Joyful Encounters with Ferns, Bugs, and Snakes: Exploring Nature and Open Knowledge

This presentation describes the impetus, logistics, and outcomes of a library event that invites students, staff, and faculty to embark on a guided nature walk across a university campus, encouraging observation of local flora and fauna, and then attend an optional hands-on workshop focused on responsible information creation and image sharing online. Leveraging newly captured photographs from the walk, workshop participants learn how to contribute to two platforms, Wikimedia Commons and iNaturalist, and are introduced to topics such as the public domain and Creative Commons. The event embodies a joyful pedagogical approach, demonstrating how a librarian’s personal interests – in this case, a love for the outdoors and sharing knowledge – can be effectively integrated into the library workplace while highlighting the role libraries play in fostering digital literacy and ethical information creation.

The presentation will offer tips and lessons learned to attendees who would like to organize similar nature-based events on their own campuses. Additionally, resources will be provided to educate participants about local hazards, including ticks and tick-borne diseases common in the New York area.

Presenter: Christine Fena, Stony Brook University

The Mysterious Incident of Bigfoot in Access Services: Improving staff morale during tough times

When one Access Services staff member returned from vacation to find a tiny Bigfoot among his juggling penguins, he didn’t expect it to spark months of laughter, riddles, and mystery. What began as a whimsical prank evolved into an office-wide puzzle that helped staff navigate organizational change, the challenges of post-COVID library work, and the arrival of a new manager.

This presentation blends the lighthearted saga of the “Bigfoot incident” with serious reflections on staff morale, workplace incivility, and the disproportionate challenges faced by library employees without master’s degrees. Presenters will discuss how playful interventions can help build resilience, reduce turnover, and create healthier environments in high-stress, public-facing units like Access Services.

Attendees will leave with practical strategies for balancing levity with professionalism, insights into trauma-informed approaches to workplace culture, and—most importantly—the chance to review the evidence and decide for themselves: Who is Bigfoot?

Presenters: Liz King, Greg McNall & Virginia Wescott, RPI Libraries

Adventures in Wonderland: A Show-and-Tell of NYPL's Archival Theatre Photography

This presentation will be a show-and-tell of the most delightful, zany, and curious things we’ve come across in the Billy Rose Theatre Division at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. The Theatre Division's collections encompass Broadway and Off-Broadway theatre, Vaudeville, film, television, radio, circus, magic, puppetry, and more. Its formats are just as varied: photographs, clippings, scrapbooks, costumes, scripts, designs…

Your tour guides are Jeremy, a photograph librarian, and Emma, a metadata specialist. One of the delights of our work is its unpredictability, the non-algorithmic feed of materials surfaced by the randomness of human curiosity. From researchers publishing scholarly monographs to current performing artists to enthusiasts accessing our digitized collections online, our patrons use our holdings in wide-ranging and unpredictable ways, and following them down these rabbit holes often leads to surprising places and new discoveries. Is that a live seal onstage in a musical? Has that actor been misidentified for decades? What is going on in that photograph?? We will share as many of these little stories as the timeslot allows, hopefully conveying how we find pleasure in these unpredictable paths through the archives.

Presenters: Emma Clarkson & Jeremy Megraw

Panels

“In the Midst of the Bullshit”: Don’t Let Them Steal Your Joy

This panel presentation seeks to explore how the political climate has affected our work as Black and Latina librarians in academic libraries, particularly in how many of our institutions have reacted to assaults on social justice, intellectual freedom, and human rights. We have all had to rethink how to continue to show up to our jobs in ways that center our political values, professional goals, and personal joy. Following in a Black feminist and womanist tradition, our personal struggles and political work deeply inform our librarianship. In the past few years, we have all experienced systemic and interpersonal prejudice, but have remained committed to the field and to carving out space not only for ourselves, but for one another. This panel will be structured in a less formal manner, akin to conversations that happen at the cookout. We will be asking questions of one another that address institutionalized oppression, subversive means of joy and how we can continue to show up to the work. Through this framing, we will also prompt those in the audience to join in our conversation and react without self-censoring.

Presenters: Jennifer Loubriel - The New School Libraries, Gaby Garcia - New York University, Lyric Grimes - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Mahasin Ameen - Indiana University Indianapolis, Dominique Dozier - Santa Clara University

Gamification in Libraries, featuring Quit Playin’ Games with My Heart Emoji: Gamifying Your Student Tabling Events - Jillian Sandy (she/her), Binghamton University  

Campus and departmental orientations can be a great place to raise students’ awareness of library resources and welcome them to use our services. However, it can be difficult to break the ice with students overloaded with information, who are not sure what questions to ask, or are convinced the library has nothing of interest to offer. Our approach to engage with students is playing simple, low effort games! These activities serve an informational purpose and, more significantly, invite students in to make an initial or additional connection to the Libraries. As part of this panel session, I will share three simple games we use to improve our approachability and increase the number of interactions with students when tabling. Participants will have an opportunity to try out some of the games by playing several examples during this presentation. As a result, attendees will be able to identify approaches to gamify tabling activities to improve interactions with students and provide evidence in the literature to support these kinds of initiatives.

“MARC My Words”: Library Metadata as a Form of Gameplay - Jacob Adler - Lloyd Sealy Library at John Jay College of Criminal Justice

The concept of “play” in a library setting does not usually extend to the concepts underpinning metadata and bibliographic records, but the advent of new technologies may be changing this line of thinking in unexpected ways. As university libraries rethink their approach to information literacy and how best to educate students about it, so too do their own systems become a material for information experimentation, rather than solely an end in and of themselves. This presentation investigates the philosophy and methodology of gamifying metadata from a university librarian’s perspective. There will be a particular emphasis on how library service platforms and generative chatbot technologies (colloquially, though inaccurately, referred to as “artificial intelligence”), present novel means of utilizing metadata in a gamified fashion, using the “lens” of play as a means of elucidating how library databases and materials are both produced and used (in a fashion not dissimilar to previous iterations of play in an information space, e.g. a Wiki Game).

Engineering Joy: Gamified Learning in the Engineering Library - Amanda He, New York University, Matthew Frenkel, New York University, Samuel Putnam, New York University

For academic libraries, it can be challenging to engage with students, particularly STEM students in high-pressure academic environments. At NYU’s Dibner Library, librarians embedded core research and information literacy skills through hands-on and competitive formats and found improved awareness of library resources and increased overall engagement. Through gamified programming, students have improved wayfinding, awareness of subject liaisons and library resources, and a stronger sense of community with the library.

In this panel presentation, we will reflect on three examples of our gamified programming, “So You Think You Can Library” workshop, “Research Relay”, and “Engineering Olympics”. “So You Think You Can Library” is a gamified library introduction workshop, where students get an overview on the library before forming teams and answering trivia questions on library spaces, resources, and databases. “Research Relay” is a weekly 10-minute engagement activity facilitated over the course of five weeks, where students compete in weekly challenges related to topics such as access and discovery of resources, wayfinding, and liaison support by discipline. “Engineering Olympics” are daily 10-minute engagement activities during National Engineers Week, where students are introduced to a variety of engineering concepts and given an opportunity to apply their knowledge in an activity.

Lightning Talks

Can It Strike Twice? A Lightning Talk About Lightning Talks

Instruction Friday is a monthly, informal opportunity for instruction librarians across our multiple campuses to meet and discuss pedagogical issues. In Spring of 2024, we were inspired by our local center for teaching and learning to organize our first annual program of in-person lightning talks as our final Instruction Friday of the year, with lunch provided. This event has proven to be a celebratory occasion to share information and build positive relationships, contributing to a more thoughtful, effective, and values-driven department. In sharing our collaboration on facilitating the Instruction Friday program and focusing on our culminating lightning talk event, we hope to inspire attendees to consider organizing similar professional development opportunities that strike the appropriate balance in building a collegial and engaged community around teaching and learning in their own academic library.

Presenter: Dorian Onifer, Hunter College

Finding joy in social media: a whimsical approach to social media outreach 

This lightning talk will discuss the presenter’s experience experimenting with funny and whimsical social media posts to promote resources provided by the access services team at Barnard College. The presenter will provide examples of social media accounts of public libraries, in particular the Columbus Metropolitan Library and Milwaukee Public Library, that influenced her project and her choice to create entertaining photos that were whimsical and meme-like over short-form video content. Finally, she will go-over examples and metrics of successful (and also not-so-successful) posts and explain her theories on engagement levels.

Presenter: Ji Baek, Barnard College

Mapping and Informing Communities: Student Collaboration as Pleasure Activism

What does it mean to find joy in academic librarianship during a time of political hostility toward DEI and historical truth-telling? At our public institution, we turned to student collaboration, creativity, and community-centered storytelling as a form of resistance and pleasure. This talk shares the process and impact of a Black History Month project co-created by two librarians and two student interns.

We designed a display featuring a map of Maryland that pinpointed monuments, historic sites, and spaces significant to Black history across the state and paired these locations with informational descriptions and a selection of curated library resources. This project was born through conversations surrounding students’ interests, career goals, and librarians’ passions beyond their liaison areas. We asked our students what stories they wanted to tell, what they wanted to learn, and how they envisioned making the library space more meaningful. In this talk, we reflect on how this project functioned as a form of pleasure activism, creating a space where joy, learning, and resistance were interwoven. We will offer reflections on how working with students can support justice-oriented, community-rooted practices in libraries, and why pleasure and joy should matter in our everyday work.

Presenters: Stephanie Reyes - St. Mary's College of Maryland, Haley Galloway - St. Mary's College of Maryland, Brynn Desmond, Elisia Lewis

Work Friends: Relational Joy in the Academic Library Workplace 

Academic libraries play a key role in fostering connections between students. However, we pay less attention to the transformative and life-enhancing potential of cultivating friendships in the academic library workplace. My presentation will invite the audience to consider how friendships enrich their experience of and at work on a daily basis, and how connections with other librarians have enriched their own lives and careers.

Presenter: Marta Bladek, The Lloyd Sealy Library, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York

Posters

Teaching with Video Games -- Using Animal Crossing: New Horizons to Support Student Success in the Library

This poster traces the creation of a series of library video tutorials made as the result of a librarian following her joy with abandon. Austin creates replicas of the rooms of Pratt Institute Libraries and uses those rooms as sets for filming library tutorial videos, which she later cuts together in Adobe Premiere Pro. Subjects of the tutorial videos range from how to find a book, to how to watch 16mm films, to how to use InterLibrary Loan. The videos are a labor of love and have taken hundreds of hours to create. By utilizing the vernacular of a popular, cute video game, the videos ease the intimidating nature of navigating unfamiliar library services for new patrons. As the Student Success + Assessment Librarian, Austin works to support students as they gain comfort and confidence in their academic art library experiences.

Presenter: Alex Austin, Pratt Institute

Come and play: Inviting our community to explore, experiment & discover

Hunter College’s children’s book collection had the potential to serve many functions within the School of Education’s curricula and beyond, but it was underutilized, and in poor condition. Librarians at Hunter College wanted to revitalize the collection while adhering to the classification and shelving order present throughout the rest of the academic library.  

The librarians encouraged the exploration of, and experimentation with, the collection by using the Universal Design Learning (UDL) framework that says playfulness can “lead learners to experience a sense of joy that adds to engagement in the learning process.” They invited students and faculty to engage with the materials and provide recommendations for improvements to the collection. They also reorganized the collection by age group and genre, created book displays and descriptive signage above each reorganized section to indicate each grade level range.

Presenters: Allison Ransom, Stephanie Margolin, Gina Levitan, Ingrid Bonadie-Joseph & Maria Guallpa, CUNY Hunter College

Find library joy through working with the library’s student workers

At Marist University, we have created a unique and nurturing environment for our student workers by, essentially, having fun. This environment is created through activities such as crafts, a bulletin board with prompts, and stuffed animals. Our students frequently remark that this is the best job they've had and that they feel safe, respected, and valued in the library environment. Our students enjoy being at work. The student worker’s enjoyment of work makes library staffs’ work experiences more joyful and rewarding. We build relationships with our students and model a healthy workplace environment. Obviously, having fun is nice, but students also gain a community from working in the library. The students get a circle of trusted adults and peers that they can talk to.  This is many students' first time working and they are exposed to a non-toxic workplace. We try to practice things such as self-care, boundaries, and avoiding vocational awe. The students can see this through their interactions with us. Having student workers in the library is one of the most joyful parts of our practice as librarians and our poster discusses the ways that we cultivate joy and offer resources for others to do the same.

Presenters: Margaret Roach, Marist University & Gill Friedlander 

Phoenix Rising: Establishing the University of Chicago Library as a Place Where Fun Goes to Thrive

The University of Chicago was once referred to as the place “where fun goes to die,” and, while this has not been the case for many years, the reputation lingers. Alongside offices across campus, the Library is actively working to establish the University as an invigorating, exciting place to be. Instead of focusing on the academic space as strenuous and unpleasant, at the Library we’re asking ourselves: What if the University of Chicago [Library] is the place where ideas come to play and fun thrives?  This poster will highlight innovative programs that have increased student engagement in Library spaces. Building upon the idea that play is an important component of inquiry-based learning, this poster will connect UChicago’s initiatives to the ACRL framework, especially to Searching as Strategic Exploration and Research as Inquiry.

Presenters: Jamie Gentry & Kristy Lueshen, University of Chicago