ARLIS/NA 54th Annual Conference

Art libraries within academic institutions and museums globally continue to play a vital role in advancing the work of decolonization and Indigenization across library spaces, collections, and information cataloguing practices. This session highlights initiatives that contribute meaningfully to the ongoing journey toward reconciliation, with case studies spanning Canada and Norway. Presentations will examine the Indigenous art purchasing program at the University of Manitoba, including the work of an artist whose pieces are now prominently featured within the library; the Salish Weave Teaching Collection integrated into the Indigenous Curriculum Resource Centre at Simon Fraser University Library in Burnaby; and the decolonizing strategies undertaken by librarians at the Nasjonalmuseet (National Museum) in Oslo. Together, these projects reflect a growing commitment to inclusive, culturally responsive library practices and the reimagining of institutional relationships with Indigenous knowledge systems.Art as Literacy: bringing Indigenous art into academic libraries
Speaker: Ashley Edwards

Indigenizing the University of Manitoba Libraries' Art Collection
Speaker: Janet Rothney

Indigenous art in Norwegian libraries: DDC and Humord after the launch of the report Truth and Reconciliation – basis for a settlement with Norwegianization Policy and Injustice against Sami, Kven/Norwegian Finns and Forest Finns
Speakers: Hildegunn Gullåsen, Birgit Jordan, Per Gisle Galåen

In an era marked by ongoing budget cuts, shrinking storage space, and a surge in born-digital records creation, archives face a growing challenge: How do we determine what to keep? Focusing specifically on artists’ archives, this panel discussion will convene experienced archival professionals working across museums, academic libraries, and artist foundations, in both Canada and the USA to explore the complex strategies and evolving criteria involved in appraisal and collection development.

The panel will address the increasing necessity for appraisal, weeding, and sampling under institutional pressures, and how decisions must balance institutional priorities with the inherent richness and messiness of preserving an artistic practice. Artists’ archives—often composed of highly personal, eclectic, and unconventional materials—do not always fit neatly into traditional institutional frameworks. As such, appraisal requires deep contextual knowledge and collaborative engagement with artists and their estates, and a willingness to advocate for nuance in what might otherwise be seen as ephemeral material.

Panelists will bring their specialized experience, highlighting approaches to appraising both physical and born-digital materials. Particular attention will be given to handling accruals, which pose logistical and intellectual challenges as some artists continue to work and produce after the initial donation. These additions often fall outside of typical processing workflows and call for agile, iterative approaches to appraisal and processing.

The discussion will also explore ways that professionals are resisting increased limitations—budgetary, spatial, and administrative—to ensure that artists' archives continue to be collected and preserved equitably across institutions. How can we maintain commitments to underrepresented voices and experimental practices when resources are stretched thin? What ethical obligations do institutions have when facing these limitations?

Rather than offering a one-size-fits-all solution, this session will provide a space for reflection on best practices and peer exchange. Attendees will leave with a deeper understanding of the tensions at play, implementable strategies, and the knowledge to advocate for thoughtful and sustainable appraisal practices.

Some librarians are turning to arts and crafts as a way to engage new and continuing audiences. Presenters in this session will discuss how using crafting in the library has provided new opportunities for their researchers.

Craftivism as Library Pedagogy in the Age of Disruption
Speakers: Kellie Lanham-Friedman, Rachel Riter

Craftivism, simply put, is craft + activism. In this paper, we present an overview of what craftivism is, the movement’s significance to the current socio-political climate, and how we have embedded a maker pedagogy into library instruction sessions and workshops. Drawing on existing literature on maker pedagogy, the presentation outlines our institution’s incorporation of maker tools into curriculum (including zine assignments, podcast lessons, and more), and highlights a new workshop designed around craftivism titled Unraveled: Censorship and Craft. Participants learned basic sewing skills while creating embroidered patches, buttons, and bracelets with messages that resonate with their sociopolitical beliefs. Alongside skill-building, participants were introduced to the concept of craftivism and invited to connect it with issues like free speech, censorship, and intellectual freedom. Ultimately, craftivism and maker pedagogy gives students a voice to defend their rights, expands their autonomy, and challenges flawed traditional forms of educational assessment. This paper situates craftivism not only as a creative practice, but also as a pedagogical strategy for academic libraries to resist cultural and technological disruption while empowering students to think critically, create meaningfully, and advocate for their rights.

Cut, Paste, & Share: 20 Creative Ways to Teach with Zines and Spark Low Cost High-Impact Engagement in Libraries
Speaker: Megan Lotts

Zines—self-published, low-cost, and highly creative—are transforming how libraries engage with their communities. Since launching the Rutgers Art Library Zine Initiative in 2019, we have seen firsthand how zines foster creativity, visual literacy skills, self-expression, and storytelling while empowering underrepresented communities.

This presentation will share 20 practical tips for integrating zines into library programming, collections, and instruction. Drawing on examples from the Art Library Zine Teaching Collection—which now includes over 750 unique resources—this presentation will highlight strategies for using zines in classrooms, and for events, and outreach activities. Case studies include collaborations with an English Department to transform annotated bibliography assignments into zines, a partnership with an Asian American Studies Department that won a digital humanities award, and the creation of popular library “Zine Creativity Kits” distributed to over 500 patrons during Welcome Week events.

From this presentation participants will learn how zines can support interdisciplinary teaching, empower underrepresented voices, and create opportunities for playful, hands-on learning in library settings. The session will also discuss practical considerations such as curating a zine collection, facilitating workshops, promoting engagement through exhibits and how to engage cross-disciplinary and organizational collaborations. Attendees will leave with actionable ideas for starting or expanding zine initiatives in their own libraries—whether through instruction, outreach, or collection development—all while keeping costs low and impact high.

Archival Interventions (with Scissors!): Zine- and Buttonmaking as Resistance at UCSC Special Collections and Archives
Speaker: Sam Regal

As is intrinsic to most repositories, the collections within the University Archives at UC Santa Cruz are interwoven with bias. Collections materials unevenly represent student life and experience, eliding certain knowledge, identities, and expression across the documented history of the university. In response and resistance to these elisions, UCSC Special Collections and Archives developed the “Zine Art Party,” a critical zine- and buttonmaking series hosted in Special Collections and Archives. At these events–usually held during finals week–students are invited to cut, remix, collage, and otherwise intervene upon the archive to tell their own stories. The “Zine Art Party"" has three major objectives: to welcome students into Special Collections and Archives and foster a sense of belonging in the space, to critically activate collections materials, and to empower students to pursue arts-based research methodologies. Librarian Sam Regal will set the “Zine Art Party” program in situ by outlining the role, utility, and activist potentialities of critical making as a teaching methodology and research practice, with particular attention paid to the political implications of experimentation and play.

What's new in academic librarianship? Join us for four papers from colleagues from the US and Canada as they present on new projects, workflows, and policies.

“But what is it doing here?”: Library exhibition as pedagogy, strategy, and belonging
Speakers: Sarah Ward, Madeline Eschenburg

In the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, Butler University’s Irwin Library mounted an exhibition to highlight how previous generations used art to process grief and loss, build community, and fight for their lives. The goal: to combine display, pedagogy, and outreach by involving students, faculty, and the broader Indianapolis community in a month-long, multi-modal, collaborative exhibit.

Unexpectedly, the exhibit also provided visible, concrete support to marginalized members of the community during a time when DEI-labeled programs were shuttering across the country. As one student asked on the eve of the opening, “Is that a real González-Torres? But what is it doing here?” The answer: it is here because you are here, and you should see yourself and your interests reflected here.

This presentation offers a case study that provides creative examples of connecting librarians (and libraries) with students, faculty, and administration. It will examine ways that existing ARLIS resources can contribute to successfully mounting an exhibition on a shoestring budget. It will also present the perspectives of the co-curators, an arts librarian and an art history professor, to discuss their approach in engaging the library as a space of learning, engagement, and belonging.

Who’s an Authority, Anyway? DEIA-AR-centered Instruction on Finding and Evaluating Sources
Speaker: Jean Thrift

This case study presents a librarian-art history faculty collaboration at Furman University in spring of 2025, on instruction exploring two frames of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education through a DEIA-AR lens. These lessons were part of a writing-research intensive course examining the role of museum spaces as sites for activism and resistance in contemporary society. Students conducted research projects culminating in proposals for DEIA-AR initiatives to be implemented in contemporary museums. For the frame ‘Information Has Value,’ we assigned a short reading and screened part of a documentary to inform a class discussion on equity issues in the scholarly communication landscape. Students then reviewed strategies for finding and accessing sources with a deeper understanding of why some sources are open access, while some must be accessed through the library, and the implications of each model. Next, for the frame ‘Authority Is Constructed and Contextual,’ we interrogated who is considered an authority by presenting and discussing scholarly communication demographic data. Students then evaluated and discussed, with a critical focus on bias, the authority of two potential sources they had found.

Breaking the Virtual Ceiling: Library Strategies for VR/AR Adoption in Design Disciplines
Speaker: Alisha D. Rall

As information professionals, we have all experienced the frustration when an emergent technology fails to meet expectations, encounters complex barriers or lacks equitable access. While the widespread adoption of virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) in higher education has fallen short of expectations, the potential value in the architecture and design environment are compelling. Pedagogical benefits of immersive 3D visualization include increased student engagement, improved spatial perception, dynamic precedent research, and high impact design problem solving. As architecture and design librarians, it is important to understand how we might assist our liaison faculty in overcoming hurdles to bringing the VR/AR experience into the classroom.

Our academic library is the home of a large makerspace/innovation lab. Upon the recent acquisition of forty Meta Quest 3 headsets, the team was looking for campus partners to promote VR technology usage beyond gaming and entertainment. With the mission to embed VR experiences into academic curriculum, a pilot test was launched between the library and the College of Architecture, Planning and Design to test feasibility of VR headset applications in the classroom. This initiative explored the feasibility of headset lending program for classroom assignments from technical, pedagogical and service model perspectives.

My presentation will share the progress of our pilot test, highlighting challenges and opportunities of VR/AR adoption in academic environment, particularly within the arts, humanities and design disciplines. Drawing on practices at peer institutions, the discussion will address service models, patron privacy, technological obsolescence, app hosting and uploads, accessibility, and curriculum integration. A persistent limitation of VR adoption in higher education is the difficulty of connecting headset use to instructional content; too often, VR/AR in academic libraries remains confined to gaming rather than deeper immersive learning.

The intended outcome of the pilot project is to develop a VR/AR Curriculum Starter Kit to help faculty embed immersive technology into coursework. While the initial project focused on architecture, the potential applications for the arts, humanities and design curriculum is equally significant. Given the importance of visual and spatial experience in these disciplines, they are ideally positioned to benefit from immersive VR/AR learning.

Reinvigorating Library Policies with EDI, Sustainability, and Accessibility Frameworks
Speaker: D. Vanessa Kam

With the goal of revising library policies to better align with valued principles of EDI, sustainability, and accessibility, this presentation will describe a process for evaluating and reinvigorating library policies through the use of relevant frameworks. After conducting research and consulting with experts in the field, a library committee identified four established frameworks for this work. This presentation will describe the methods of the committee's deliberations, the challenges of working with a variety of frameworks (some of which were abstract in nature), the degree to which library policies were revised as a result, and what was learned by walking through the process. The presenter will conclude with comments about how to take this work to the next level while trying to avoid the trap of ""nonperformativity,"" as described by Sara Ahmed, where the act of writing policy is a stand-in for meaningful action.