Symposium Write-ups

Symposium Write-ups

  • Deadline: Oct 6, 2023- Call for Applicants: 2023 ACRL/NY Symposium Scholarships  10/05/2023
    Call for Applicants: 2023 ACRL/NY Symposium Scholarships  2023 ACRL/NY Symposium: Embracing Slow Librarianship https://acrlny.org/2023symposium/ Deadline: Oct 6, 2023 In conjunction with our annual symposium, ACRL/NY is offering three different scholarships. Awardees receive a waiver to attend our annual symposium and are also awarded a full year of membership in the organization. For those who attend in person, breakfast and lunch ...
  • Call for Applicants: 2023 ACRL/NY Symposium Scholarships  09/28/2023
    Call for Applicants: ACRL/NY Symposium Scholarships  2023 ACRL/NY Symposium: Embracing Slow Librarianship https://acrlny.org/2023symposium/ Deadline: Oct 6, 2023 In conjunction with our annual symposium, ACRL/NY is offering three different scholarships. Awardees receive a waiver to attend our annual symposium and are also awarded a full year of membership in the organization. For those who attend in person, breakfast and lunch are ...
  • 2020 Symposium Early-Career Scholarship Winner – Kaneisha Gaston-Arhin (Columbia University) 02/16/2021
    As I come to the end of my first full year as an academic librarian, I am constantly reminded of how my previous experiences as a teacher shape my current attitudes towards librarianship. I firmly believe that librarians are teachers and community leaders with servant’s hearts rather than servants at the mercy of other teachers ...
  • 2020 Symposium Student Scholarship Winner – Daniel Woulfin (Queens College) 02/16/2021
    I attended my first, of hopefully many, ACRL/NY Symposiums in December 2020 via Zoom. The theme was Civic Engagement: Democracy and the Library. As a graduating MLS student at Queens College, this symposium was perfectly timed. The panels helped me rethink what it means to be a librarian and how academic librarians can have an ...
  • 2020 Symposium Student Scholarship Winner – Hannah Herrlich (Queens College) 02/16/2021
    Attending the ACRL/NY 2020 Symposium was a wonderful opportunity to discover all of the unique ways in which library professionals around the country are introducing their users and peers to a myriad of resources and ideas surrounding civic engagement. Though the conference took on a new virtual platform this year, it was carefully divided into ...
  • 2019 Symposium Student Scholarship Winner – Katy Sullivan (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) 05/22/2020
    I was thrilled to have the opportunity to attend the 2019 ACRL/NY Symposium and grateful to the committee for awarding me the Barbara Bonous-Smit Scholarship. As a Maryland resident, I rarely travel out of state for non-national professional development, but this Symposium was absolutely worth it. As a manager, teacher, subject librarian and researcher, the ...
  • 2019 Symposium Student Scholarship Winner – Joanna Thompson (Pratt Institute) 05/22/2020
    In December 2019, I attended my second ACRL/NY Symposium: “Outside the Box: Redefining Ethical Innovation,” a day-long gathering of librarians from the five boroughs and beyond. Workshop topics included Asian American voices in academic library leadership, LIS student labor, open pedagogy, and zine librarian ethics. I left the symposium feeling prepared and excited about contributing ...
  • 2019 Symposium Student Scholarship Winner – Sabine Calleja (University of Toronto) 05/22/2020
    It was a privilege and an honour to attend the ACRL/NY Symposium in December 2019, well-worth the trek from Toronto to Manhattan. The day-long symposium was packed full of bright ideas and thought-provoking conversations. resentations and posters, presented by a range of information professionals, touched on critical topics in the field of academic librarianship relating ...
  • 2018 Symposium Student Scholarship Winner – Michelle Nitto 05/14/2019
    By Michelle Nitto The ACRL/NY 2018 Symposium was my first time attending an ACRL affiliated event and I found the connections I formed with fellow library workers through conversation and many wonderful presentations to be immensely meaningful. I am very grateful to have learned from library workers from a variety of institutions around the country ...
  • 2018 Symposium Student Scholarship Winner – Sarah Nguyen 05/14/2019
    By Sarah Nguyen I attended my first ACRL/NY 2018 Symposium: Libraries in Direct Action for a day-long gathering of academic librarians in the greater New York Metropolitan area. The hike through midtown Manhattan’s hustle-bustle and into Baruch College’s conference space left me with validating practices, visionary tools, and an empathic network. The highlight reel:       Presentations offered ...
  • 2018 Symposium Student Scholarship Winner – Alvina Lai 05/14/2019
    By Alvina Lai It is my pleasure to say that my first symposium was such a positive experience. From the topics discussed to the people I met, I was time and time again impressed and inspired by the knowledge and motivation in the room. The day, organized clearly by theme, was broad in topic and ...
  • 2017 Symposium Student Scholarship Winner – Tera Renae Kent 07/18/2018
    By Tera Kent On December 1st, I had the pleasure of attending the 2017 ACRL/NY Symposium as a student scholarship recipient. As a current MLIS student, preparing for a career as an academic librarian, I was excited to attend my first professional conference. Attending this symposium gave me the opportunity to hear the different perspectives of current ...
  • 2017 Symposium Student Scholarship Winner – Maria Shellman 01/19/2018
    By Maria Shellman In December, I was given the opportunity to attend the ACRL/NY Symposium as a student scholarship recipient. The Symposium was my first professional development event since starting my M.S. in Library and Information Science program in August, and I was pleasantly surprised how well the Symposium aligned with the lectures, discussions, and assignments in ...
  • 2017 Early Career Librarian Awardee – Leah Airt-Atkinson 01/19/2018
    By Leah Airt-Atkinson I began my career as a librarian in October of 2014 following an 8-year adventure in the United States Army. I have often felt paralyzing insecurity of being a new librarian as I negotiate spaces paved by the librarians who came before me and move into uncharted territory in a new career. My ...
  • 2017 Symposium Student Scholarship Winner – Dan Delmonaco 01/19/2018
      By Dan Delmonaco All of the panels, speakers, and attendees at the 2017 ACRL/NY Symposium affirmed my choice to pursue academic librarianship and receive my graduate degree in library science. I think I was most inspired by the engagement of every single person in attendance. From the questions asked, the discussions during the breakout sessions, and the ...
  • 2016 Dr. Barbara Bonous-Smit Scholarship Winner – Elizabeth Jardine 04/07/2017
    By Elizabeth Jardine I thank ACRL/NY for the privilege of attending its Annual Symposium,  Money & Power,  as a recipient of the Barbara Bonous-Smit Scholarship. This was my first ACRL/NY Symposium, and I hope to attend many more. There I saw librarians I only knew from social media. I listened to the engaging roster of speakers who ...
  • 2016 Early Career Librarian Scholarship Winner – Mandy Babirad 04/07/2017
    By Mandy Babirad I attended the ACRL/NY Symposium in 2015 when I was visiting faculty.  Since then, I took a new tenure track position at an agricultural/tech institution. I was so ready to talk about money and power.  Some highlights for me were Gr Keer and Lana Mariko Wood’s presentation on peer review and its myriad ...
  • 2016 Student Scholarship Winner – Renee Walsh 02/08/2017
    By Renee Walsh In early December I attended the ACRL/NY Symposium as a student scholarship recipient.  I graduated from Simmons College in Boston in December 2016 with my M.S. in Library and Information Science and am interested in working as an academic librarian.  Attending this event allowed me to better understand the discussions and issues of ...
  • 2015 Student Scholarship Winner – Paul Sager 04/28/2016
    —By Paul Sager It was an honor to accept a student scholarship to attend the ACRL/NY’s annual symposium, held at Baruch College on December 4, 2015. The symposium’s goal was to examine the ALA’s Core Values in relation to academic librarianship. The organizers chose to highlight the values of social responsibility, democracy, education, and professionalism.  I found this ...
  • 2015 Student Scholarship Winner – Hannah Sistrunk 04/28/2016
    By Hannah Sistrunk I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to attend the ACRL/NY Symposium in 2015. Its engagement with ALA’s core values of social responsibility, democracy, education, and professionalism was invigorating. Throughout the program, participants inspired me to think beyond the hegemonic structures that govern institutions toward radical action through professional practice. A ...
  • 2015 Student Scholarship Winner – Christina Broomfield 04/28/2016
    By Christina Broomfield Attending the 2015 Symposium was a valuable and informative experience — I am confident that I will carry forward what I learned into all of my professional endeavors from this point forward.  The theme of the Symposium, “Social Responsibility, Democracy, Education, and Professionalism,” initially appealed to me because I have not often had ...
  • 2015 Veteran Librarian Scholarship Winner – Antonia Olivas 04/28/2016
    By Antonia Olivas The presentations and poster sessions at the ACRL/NY’s 2015 Symposium focused on “social responsibility” and what it means for academic librarians to be activists. They looked at how diversity in our libraries affects how democratic we can be (or are not) to our patrons and to each other.  Each session focused on diversity, equity, ...
  • 2015 Early Career Librarian Scholarship Winner – Adam Mizelle 04/28/2016
    By Adam Mizelle I came because of #critlib. Here in the early stages of my reference and instruction career, I am still teaching myself to teach. After graduate school, I joined Twitter, following a long break from social media that began during the Myspace era.  Discovering the #critlib community was like a welcome-back gift. Their social justice emphasis helped ...
  • 2015 Student Scholarship Winner – Amanda Gantchev 04/28/2016
    By Amanda Gantchev At the ACRL/NY 2015 Symposium I was exposed to mind-opening and lively (to put it lightly) discussion about inclusivity in the library and archive.  From the moment I arrived to the event’s conclusion, I felt an enormous sense of inclusion in a conversation, and support within a profession that, as I write, I have only ...

2018 Symposium

  • Get involved with the 2018 Symposium! 01/19/2018
      By Maria Schlanger I have been a member of the symposium planning committee for the last two symposia. I learned as much during the meetings as I did at the events. The discussions were lively. We had our first meeting today (1/19) and Gina Levitan, our chair, posed some prospective themes and they are fascinating. I won’t ...

2017 Symposium

  • 2017 Symposium Student Scholarship Winner – Tera Renae Kent 07/18/2018
    By Tera Kent On December 1st, I had the pleasure of attending the 2017 ACRL/NY Symposium as a student scholarship recipient. As a current MLIS student, preparing for a career as an academic librarian, I was excited to attend my first professional conference. Attending this symposium gave me the opportunity to hear the different perspectives of current ...
  • 2017 Symposium Recap 01/19/2018
    From Connections Editor: I have done a disservice to Miranda McDermott because I described her excellent blog as a “recap” but I couldn’t think of a better title. Ms. McDermott’s blog for NYPL both described what went on during the 2017 symposium and distilled the information in an interesting, cohesive manner. Here is a link to to her blog: https://www.nypl.org/blog/2017/12/18/acrlny-annual-symposium    
  • 2017 Symposium Student Scholarship Winner – Maria Shellman 01/19/2018
    By Maria Shellman In December, I was given the opportunity to attend the ACRL/NY Symposium as a student scholarship recipient. The Symposium was my first professional development event since starting my M.S. in Library and Information Science program in August, and I was pleasantly surprised how well the Symposium aligned with the lectures, discussions, and assignments in ...
  • 2017 Early Career Librarian Awardee – Leah Airt-Atkinson 01/19/2018
    By Leah Airt-Atkinson I began my career as a librarian in October of 2014 following an 8-year adventure in the United States Army. I have often felt paralyzing insecurity of being a new librarian as I negotiate spaces paved by the librarians who came before me and move into uncharted territory in a new career. My ...
  • 2017 Symposium Student Scholarship Winner – Dan Delmonaco 01/19/2018
      By Dan Delmonaco All of the panels, speakers, and attendees at the 2017 ACRL/NY Symposium affirmed my choice to pursue academic librarianship and receive my graduate degree in library science. I think I was most inspired by the engagement of every single person in attendance. From the questions asked, the discussions during the breakout sessions, and the ...

2016 Symposium


2015 Symposium

  • 2015 The Radicalism is Coming from Inside the Library: Chris Bourg & Lareese Hall 04/28/2016
    By Albert Tablante The 2015 ACRL/NY symposium began with a progressive talk from Chris Bourg, the Director of MIT Libraries, and Lareese Hall, the Architecture and Art Librarian for the MIT Libraries.  The discourse builds on the premise that radical changes within academic librarianship have developed in recent years.  The presenters acknowledge that this type of activism ...
  • 2015 Diversity as Democracy? Panel Discussion: Shawn Smith, Emily Drabinski, and Jen Hoyer (moderated by Haruko Yamauchi) 04/28/2016
     Miranda McDermott and Paul Sager The panel discussion “Diversity as Democracy?” featured moderator Haruko Yamauchi and participants Jen Hoyer (Interference Archive), Emily Drabinski (Long Island University-Brooklyn), and Shawn(ta) Smith (Graduate Center, CUNY). Yamauchi asked the panelists to define diversity and to include specific examples of what they have done to increase diversity in their organizations. Emily Drabinski, Coordinator of Instruction at LIU-Brooklyn, ...
  • 2015 Ione Damasco and Isabel Espinal (Panel Discussion Moderated by Starr Hoffman) 04/28/2016
    By Elaine Provenzano The afternoon of the ACRLNY 2015 Symposium commenced with the shared perspectives of two academic librarians. In her presentation, “The Practice of Core Values: Academic Library Diversity Plans and the ACRL Diversity Standards,” Ione T. Damasco, Cataloger Librarian at the University of Dayton, presented the findings of her research on ACRL diversity standards and ...
  • 2015 Student Scholarship Winner – Paul Sager 04/28/2016
    —By Paul Sager It was an honor to accept a student scholarship to attend the ACRL/NY’s annual symposium, held at Baruch College on December 4, 2015. The symposium’s goal was to examine the ALA’s Core Values in relation to academic librarianship. The organizers chose to highlight the values of social responsibility, democracy, education, and professionalism.  I found this ...
  • 2015 Student Scholarship Winner – Christina Broomfield 04/28/2016
    By Christina Broomfield Attending the 2015 Symposium was a valuable and informative experience — I am confident that I will carry forward what I learned into all of my professional endeavors from this point forward.  The theme of the Symposium, “Social Responsibility, Democracy, Education, and Professionalism,” initially appealed to me because I have not often had ...
  • 2015 “Go, Grow… or Stay? The Imperative of Professional Development” A Talk by Jerilyn Veldof of the University of Minnesota Libraries at ACRL/NY’s 2015 Symposium 04/28/2016
    by Paul Sager Jerilyn Veldof struck a unique profile at the ACRL/NY’s 2015 symposium on ALA core values as the sole speaker to address the values of education and professionalism. A series of earlier panelists had grappled with the question of diversity in academic libraries, so the day changed key dramatically when Veldof took the podium ...
  • 2015 Veteran Librarian Scholarship Winner – Antonia Olivas 04/28/2016
    By Antonia Olivas The presentations and poster sessions at the ACRL/NY’s 2015 Symposium focused on “social responsibility” and what it means for academic librarians to be activists. They looked at how diversity in our libraries affects how democratic we can be (or are not) to our patrons and to each other.  Each session focused on diversity, equity, ...
  • 2015 Early Career Librarian Scholarship Winner – Adam Mizelle 04/28/2016
    By Adam Mizelle I came because of #critlib. Here in the early stages of my reference and instruction career, I am still teaching myself to teach. After graduate school, I joined Twitter, following a long break from social media that began during the Myspace era.  Discovering the #critlib community was like a welcome-back gift. Their social justice emphasis helped ...
  • 2014 Scholarship Winner Essay: Dominique Bortmas 06/01/2015
    By Dominique Bortmas, 2014 ACRL/NY Symposium Scholarship Recipient This past December, I was fortunate enough to receive one of four scholarships for the ACRL/NY Symposium. As a current MLIS student and staff member of the Florida State University Libraries, I was excited to attend my first professional librarian conference. Based on my prior knowledge of ACRL/NY ...
  • Help Us Plan the 2015 Symposium! 06/01/2015
    ACRL/NY Symposium 2015 Mark your calendars now for the 2015 ACRL/NY Symposium, which will take place on December 4th. As your Symposium Committee Co-chairs, we’re excited to get started with the planning process, and would like to invite your participation for the upcoming year. The Committee meets 11:00 am – 12:30 pm at Mercy College-Manhattan, room ...

2014 Symposium

  • 2014 Micah Vandegrift: Scholarly Communication is People 06/01/2015
    By Melissa Goertzen, Columbia University Libraries Micah Vandegrift, Scholarly Communication Librarian at Florida State University, delivered a lecture that highlighted the ways libraries can support the Open Access (OA) movement taking place in the academic community. The central thesis was that librarians need to take action and do Open Access instead of simply discussing it. He ...
  • 2014 Scholarship Winner Essay: Freya Yost 06/01/2015
    By Freya Yost, 2014 ACRL-NY Symposium Scholarship Recipient The Open Access Symposium, held at Baruch College on December 5th 2014, was an inspiring forum with open-access enthusiasts from both in and outside the library. The lineup of speakers was particularly well curated, professionally diverse, and the presentations covered themes and challenges of implementing,doing, and teaching open ...
  • 2014 Birds of a Feather Session 06/01/2015
    by Kathryn Shaughnessy, St. John’s University Libraries In keeping with “Open principles” of participation and community-building, this year’s symposium featured a “Birds of a Feather” session. This BOF approach asked symposium participants to suggest discussion topics throughout the day; after the keynote speech and panel presentations, the final topics were voted on, and subsequently topics were ...
  • 2014 Scholarship Winner Essay: Arden Kirkland 06/01/2015
    By Arden Kirkland, 2014 ACRL-NY Symposium Scholarship Recipient The ACRL-NY symposium left me feeling invigorated, part of a warm and welcoming community ready to fight the good fight for open access. I was very pleased that Brett Bobley began our day with projects that share material culture, visual resources, and a range of research data beyond ...
  • Notes from an 2014 Emerging Leader: My Project and Experience 06/01/2015
    by Kai Alexis Smith, MSILS I was a part of the American Library Association’s 2014 Emerging Leaders class. My group worked for six months on a template for the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS). Our report is a compilation of recommendations for the creation of two types of virtual orientations: A webinar offered twice a ...
  • 2014 Brett Bobley: Some Thoughts on Libraries and the Digital Humanities in an Open Access Context 06/01/2015
    by Albert Tablante, Information Literacy Instructor at ASA Institute of Business & Computer Technology. The first speaker of the day was Brett Bobley, the Chief Information Officer for the National Endowment for the Humanities. The title of the talk was Some Thoughts on Libraries and the Digital Humanities in an Open Access Context. Brett Bobley has ...
  • Greetings from the 2015 President! 06/01/2015
    Welcome to the ACRL/NY community! Last December 5th, librarians from across the region and beyond gathered for the 2014 Annual ACRL/NY Symposium, “The Academic Librarian in the Open Access Future.” In this special edition of the Chapter newsletter, you will find reports on the speakers, poster presentations, and other events of the day.  We are happy ...