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.
