What Happens When You Get 5,000 Librarians in a Room?

Two of our library staff members, Phil Waterman and Mary LaBombard, attended the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Annual Conference on March 22-25 in Baltimore, MD.  The conference featured more than 5,200 library professionals, exhibitors, speakers, and guests from around the world. 

There was a lot to see in Baltimore, but here are a few of their selected highlights:

What's Social Justice Got to Do with Information Literacy?

Lisa Burgert, Reference Librarian, University of San Diego

Margaret Brown-Salazar, Instruction Coordinator/Reference Librarian, Saint Mary's College of California

Elisa Acosta, Instruction Coordinator, Loyola Marymount University
Joseph Garity, Coordinator of Library Instruction, University of San Francisco

Instruction librarians at four Catholic institutions collaborated to develop information literacy instruction grounded in social justice, seeking to demonstrate that "when we seek information, we examine the privilege of the voices and sources of our information and we learn to identify whose voices are present and whose voices are missing and how that impacts and influences our understanding of information."  View the online guide about the project here.

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Predatory Publishing But Were Afraid to Ask

Monica Berger, Instruction and Reference Librarian, New York City College of Technology, CUNY

In this contributed paper, Berger examines the history and current state of predatory publishing, including the motivations of participants.  She provides a detailed list of typical practices and characteristics of predatory publishers, and urges scholars to move away from using blacklists to identify potential predatory publishers and instead engage in critical evaluation. Read the entire contributed paper here.

Anatomy of a Liaison Librarian: Analysing Liaison Activities Using Faculty Emails
Teresa LePors, Coordinator of Library Research and Scholarly Services, Elon University

In an effort to better understand the relationship between the librarians and the faculty at her institution, LePors analyzed one year's worth of emails and grouped them according to five primary functions: research assistance, instruction, circulation, collection development, and faculty outreach. Her analysis provided insights including the most common time of day for faculty email responses (between 6pm and 2am)and the month of the year in which faculty send fewest emails (June). A helpful concept map provides a visual description of the broad range of topics or requests that appear in the emails.  View the presentation poster here. 

Constructing Research(ers): Faculty and Undergraduates as Researching Subjects
Rick Fisher, Associate Lecturer of English, University of Wyoming
Kaijsa Calkins, Associate Librarian, University of Wyoming

The authors present the results of a syllabus analysis and faculty interviews to explore how educators construct research processes for their undergraduate students, and how those constructions reveal disciplinary values.  This paper represents the first stage of a research project intended to identify and address the disparities that exist between students and instructors about goals and definitions of research-writing assignments.  Read the entire contributed paper here.

Closing Keynote: Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress

Carla Hayden was nominated in 2016 by President Obama and became the first woman and the first African American to hold the position of Librarian of Congress. Before that, she served as CEO of Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library, which she famously kept open during the 2015 unrest in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray. In her closing keynote address, Hayden spoke of her ambition to make library collections more accessible to all people, and the importance of the profession in today's post-truth era. Learn more about all of the keynote speakers here.