Category: Conference Blogging

Includes the blogging of conference programs

First time attendee at ACRL 2023: Getting there can be enough 

March has gone by so fast, and that’s definitely in part because of the ACRL 2023 conference. I was extremely grateful to have my registration paid for by the Congress of Academic Library Directors (CALD) of Maryland. Truthfully, I almost didn’t go; less than 12 hours before I needed to leave for Pittsburgh, I was at the Pet ER with my pup. She’d been sick in the days leading up to the conference, but thankfully, that visit helped her turn a corner and I felt okay leaving her with dogsitters (but with a car rental website pulled up and ready on my phone in case I had to come back).  

It might go without saying, but I certainly wasn’t at my best during those days. Traveling can already throw me for a loop, but it was intensified with worry for my dog. I was checking my petcam whenever my dogsitters weren’t there, and more than once I found that I needed to just go up to the rooftop terrace of the convention center and sit for a while. My coworkers said I seemed quite chill, given all that had happened, but that’s how my personal brand of anxiety manifests; it’s calm, cool, and collected on the outside and a bit of a storm on the inside.  

View from the convention center.

Maybe you expected this post to be more of a conference report, and I will definitely shout out some of the work I saw later, but I start with this to normalize the mental health struggles that can come with conference attendance. How disruptive to life and routine they can be. On the first full day of the conference, there was a community chat at 8:30am entitled, “Anxious People Unite” led by Heidi Burkhardt. It was so, so nice to be in a room of librarians who understand the impact anxiety can have (and for me to have the opportunity to just… rant a bit about the absolute struggle in getting to the conference!). I think I would have been even more spacey and out of it during ACRL if not for this chat, because in addition to letting the anxiety out, we all shared coping tips and strategies.  

This was my first time at ACRL, so I didn’t know what to fully expect. I’d only ever attended AWP (Association of Writers and Writers’ Programs) in the past, which is ginormous, and I didn’t really know anyone. It was different in Pittsburgh. I got to catch up with some of my graduating cohort, since we’re all now scattered across the country (academia, am I right?) as well as other folks from UIUC and GVSU. My work with ACRLog also allowed me to meet some new people too. I think browsing the poster sessions was my favorite part; of course, engaging with the authors was intellectually stimulating in its own right, but it was also nice to hear the conversations happening around me. It can be a struggle to explain a job in academia to those outside of it and knowing that everyone here had that baseline understanding was lovely. I was excited to bring some of the concepts back to my home library, like the posters about shortening database descriptions for their student audiences and a seed library.  

An interactive exhibit (“Commons Threads”) at ACRL 2023, where you looped thread around your answers.

I went to many great sessions though, such as Meg Galasso’s contributed paper Fatness and the Future of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Librarianship and Ali Krzton’s contributed paper Welcome to the Machine: Ir/Responsible Use of Machine Learning in Research Recommendation Tools. I won’t describe them here since the papers are available to read, but both sessions were extremely enlightening and informative. I also attended a Visual Literacy focused roundtable, where I learned a great deal about the concept as well as some good tips and tricks from the other librarians present. Particularly, an activity where the point is to have a “failed” search – such as searching the color “nude” to see the results that come up. I think it’s good for students to see how search engines and databases can fail; search persistence is something I’m always trying to get across in my instruction sessions. We can then go a step further beyond persistence to ask deeper questions about the results. 

Overall, I am glad I went. As my title suggests, I’m trying to push beyond my ambitious overachiever thought processes and acknowledge that this time, just getting there was the accomplishment. Life got in the way, as it is wont to do, but I think I made the best of the brain power I did have. I found that once I was in the convention center, I was busy and distracted enough that I wasn’t focusing as much on the anxiety about my dog. She is fine now, for anyone wondering; it was just one of those “worst timing ever” situations.  

So if you also encountered struggle in attending ACRL 2023, just know you aren’t alone in that. 

My First Conference (as an academic librarian)

I promise I did not vanish into the abyss. I did, however, disappear into an incredibly busy March and April and I offer profound apologies to my fellow ACRL bloggers, though I’m quite sure they understand how these things go in the wild world of libraries.

TLA 2022 in Forth Worth, TX. April 25-28. Theme: Recover, Rebalance, Reconnect.

One of the many events that consumed me during these past two months was the Texas Libraries Association conference, AKA TLA2022. If you are a member of #LibraryTwitter, you might be familiar with the controversy that was stirred up by one of the keynote speakers, Alyssa Edwards. I was unfortunately unable to go to this keynote due to a very long and tiring day waiting in lines (Sidenote: What do conference organizers have against chairs? I haven’t been able to sit on the floor without a monumental effort to get up again since undergrad. Do not make people stand in lines for hours! It’s not acceptable or disability inclusive or okay! Geez!) but the issue was echoed again and again in each session I did attend. Libraries are being badgered by bigots, zealots, and busybodies who jump on us the moment we show any support to LGBTQ communities.

It’s not as bad in academic libraries. My colleagues in public libraries and especially those in school libraries are taking the brunt of the abuse. However, the field itself is having a reckoning, if the thrust of nearly every main session at TLA is any indication. I attended sessions each day, and book banning and challenges, patrons abusing staff, programs being canceled and boycotted, and constant, aggressive censorship was a topic brought up at almost every one of them. Even while I was busily networking in the Exhibition Hall, my main goal of the conference, I saw it everywhere. The air hummed both with the tension of the amount of pressure librarians and library staff are under as well as understanding. Every time a speaker acknowledged how hard this has been on us, professionally, physically, emotionally, I could feel waves of relief coming off those surrounding me. I got it. I’m lucky to have a partner who is also a librarian, so he understands. But how many of the people I encountered at that conference had felt isolated in their struggles? If your family, friends, even colleagues just don’t grasp the severity of the anxiety you live in day after day, that the one book you order or the one event you plan is going to set off a tidal wave of complaints, how amazing must it feel to finally have someone recognize it? And not only that, but someone on stage, holding a microphone, speaking with authority?

Nadine Strossen addressed the audience of librarians during her mid-conference keynote when she said, “In the land of the free and the home of the brave, it should not take courage to be so brave to do your job.” And all I could think was yes, yes, thank you! Thank you for acknowledging what the people around me have been doing. Thank you for speaking that truth to the people who really needed to hear it.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how amazing Ibram X. Kendi’s session was.

TLA did my heart good. I took a risk by going, I know I did. Large gatherings like this are going to be a gamble for a while with the COVID pandemic still in full swing. We did have protections in place, particularly either a vaccination record or clear test being required to enter the convention center, but in the end I’m very happy that I went and experienced this validation. No, I’m not on the front lines of this fight, but I’m also not so sheltered that I can ignore it (nor insist on continued oppression-favoring neutrality like some  members of our field). It was a memorable and important first conference for me in my academic librarian career. I’m hoping to attend more in the future, especially because I don’t see today’s problems going away any time soon. I’m going to keep my head in the game to support fellow library workers. We all need each other right now, that’s how we make it through this.

One step at a time.

Reflections on ACRL 2021

As I logged into the ACRL 2021 Virtual Conference Opening Keynote, I was excited and nervous for the conference. I didn’t know what to expect. Would I find new and inspiring ideas? Would I find old and tired conversations that I’ve participated in over and over again? Would I find the virtual format engaging? Who would I be hearing from? How difficult would it be to find non-dominant voices?

My recent focus in research has primarily been on critical librarianship, information literacy, and open pedagogy. These subjects were well represented on the calendar. And, in the actual sessions, I found perspectives and conversations that were entirely new to me. Now, this isn’t true across the board, but the virtual conference allowed me to watch other sessions if I didn’t find the discussion in a given session to be meaningful.

From the opening keynote with Tressie McMillan Cottom and conversations about information and platform capitalism, to a deconstruction of imposter syndrome by former library pages, I found many of the new perspectives to which I was exposed to be helpful and well-grounded in a critical theoretical framework. The critical perspectives brought by the presenters helped me to articulate some of the challenges that I have been wrestling with recently: feeling gas lit by higher education conversations focused on productivity rather than recovery and healing, an alarming preference for surveillance of students rather than connection with students, and the continued omission of critical anti-racist approaches from conversations about progress. Luckily, I haven’t felt this in my library specifically, but I have found the broader discourse in higher education to be discouraging, especially since the start of the spring semester.

In addition to McMillan Cottom’s keynote, the session with We Here, “Systemic Oppression Requires Systemic Change,” highlighted specific instances of racism and oppression in librarianship. Recently, I’ve often felt as if I am blindly gesturing at these issues on a strictly theoretical level. For the most part when I speak about the systemic racism of libraries, I get a few nods, but more blank stares. The presentation underscored that there are concrete and present manifestations of white supremacy in academic librarianship, and it is not strictly an obscured, ominous force that is difficult to uncover. While many conversations about anti-racist work have died out since the summer, this presentation encouraged me to continue seeking anti-racist organization within librarianship and without.

I walked away from the ACRL Virtual Conference with new ideas, a handful of lesson plan sketches, and a re-assurance that I am not the only one trying to have conversations about critical librarianship. In fact, the ability to quickly move between virtual sessions allowed me to find something that really felt like a community. I only wish I had the opportunity to build more connections with that community. At future ACRL conferences, whether virtual or in person, I am excited to find ways to intentionally build relationships.

Conferencing while Chronically Ill

ACRLog welcomes a guest post from Katie Quirin Manwiller, Evening Public Services and Assessment Librarian at DeSales University, Center Valley, PA.

Travel time, packed schedules, and constant networking can make conferences exhausting for even the most outgoing librarians. For those of us who face mental and physical exhaustion as part of daily life, attending conferences can be a battle. I’m a spoonie librarian who deeply enjoys meeting and sharing with fellow LIS folks, but it takes a lot of extra effort for me to manage my health during professional events. Through navigating various national and regional conferences, I’ve developed a few tricks to help me make conferencing while chronically ill possible.

Some background: I work primarily in reference and instruction at DeSales University in Pennsylvania. I’m interested in assessment, student engagement, professional service, and accessibility in librarianship. I also have a handful of chronic illnesses you probably have never heard of: Hypermobility Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS). I manage an array of symptoms on a daily basis, such as chronic muscle pain, acute joint pain from dislocations, migraines, chronic fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, depression, nausea/GI upset, dizziness, and exercise intolerance. Sounds fun, right?

Like most chronically ill people, I will struggle with my health for the rest of my life, but the difficulty of that struggle varies greatly from year to year. After my initial hEDS diagnosis in 2013, my symptoms and pain management slowly improved for three years, only to go tumbling backwards in 2017. My health has been largely at a low point since then, which brings me to April 2019, and the inspiration for this post.

I attended ACRL 2019 in Cleveland and as an early-career instruction librarian, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to learn from my peers and be fully immersed in academic librarianship. Unfortunately, my body was not so thrilled. The travel sent me into a POTS flare and I was dizzy with a skyrocketing heart rate every day of the conference. I had a panic attack when someone in a session seemingly subtweeted me after I asked a question and I needed to leave the conference center for a break. ACRL had some helpful services for attendees, like a quiet room, but when my pain was high and my brain fogged I couldn’t even find the room to rest. Long story short, it was hard. Harder than any professional experience of my life.

Since ACRL, I’ve successfully presented at a conference for the first time. And best of all, my experience at ACRL led me to a community of other librarians with illness and disability for which I am deeply grateful (#SpoonieLibrarian or #CripLib on Twitter). I hope to support this community and want to begin by addressing one of my biggest challenges as a professionally-engaged spoonie. Here’s my advice for fellow librarians who conference while chronically ill:

1. Have a buddy. I was able to learn at and enjoy ACRL largely because I had a close friend also attending the conference who has known about my health issues for years. She went to restaurants with me when I was too dizzy to stand in the food truck lines, found a place for me to sit down in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when my heart rate was going crazy, and generally provided emotional support. If you don’t know someone else attending who you feel comfortable disclosing to, let someone in your support network know you will be having a challenging few days and reach out via text, call, whatever when you need to. Bonus tip: share this blog post with that buddy, so they can learn more about what you might be going through and how they can support you.

2. Plan rest time in advance. I do better when I plan rest into my schedule before I arrive at the conference. Plan for a quiet dinner in your hotel instead of attending the dine-out on the same day you traveled seven hours. Schedule time off for the day after the conference to rest and recover. If financially able, stay in the hotel adjacent to the conference center so it’s easier to get to your room if you need a break. If not, scope out the conference map beforehand and figure out where you can rest without having to go all the way back to your hotel.

3. Set reminders for your meds. I easily forget my medicine when I break from my regular schedule, which always happens at conferences. I got a daily pill organizer to keep track of what I have/have not taken, and set reminders in my phone to make sure I take them before heading to a session. Also, bring extra meds and make sure you have some with you so you don’t have to return to your room if symptoms come up.

4. Plan your outfits in advance. This may seem like a basic one but chronic illness makes it trickier. My MCAS flares if clothing is too tight on my abdomen, and my POTS makes it hard to regulate my body temperature. Bring clothes that you feel confident in but that are also comfortable enough to not increase symptoms. Add in a few options in case the conference center is colder or hotter than you expected. And plan outfits a few days in advance – a 10 pm Target run the night before you leave does not do your anxiety any favors (speaking from experience).

5. Skip sessions. The FOMO at conferences is real, especially when it costs $1000+ to attend. Try not to feel guilty about skipping sessions or events when your health won’t permit it. Prioritize certain sessions that you definitely want to attend, and determine what you can skip if necessary. Follow the conference hashtag on twitter to get a recap of the keynote you didn’t feel up to attending. Unless you actually need to meet with a vendor, consider skipping the exhibitor hall. You will probably spend an hour and a fair bit of energy collecting unnecessary freebies to carry around for the rest of the day. Plan to review the conference materials that go online afterward. Take advantage of the online options when you need to stay in your room.

6. Make your session work for you. If you’re presenting, do what you can to make the session cost the fewest spoons. Present with a colleague if possible to delegate responsibilities. Skip a meal out to practice and rest the night before. Arrive in the room early to set up and mentally prepare. Ask for a chair so don’t have to stand the whole time (this is totally fine! Your content is still excellent whether you present it standing or sitting). Incorporate small group discussion to give yourself a break. Plan extra rest before or after your session if you need to. Overall…

7. Be gentle with yourself. This goes along with skipping sessions, but be mindful of your limits. It can be easy to push yourself because you don’t want to miss anything, but in the long run you’ll end up missing more if you completely exhaust yourself. Stop before you get exhausted and before the pain is too much to keep going. That way you’ll not only be able to attend the sessions you want but actually focus on them and not your symptoms. Take a few minutes at the end of each session to check in with yourself, see how you’re feeling, and determine if a preventative break is the best option. You can also take that time to check in with your buddy, grab a cup of coffee, and discuss what you’ve learned so far.

Chronic illness and disability are experienced differently by each individual, so these tips will not work perfectly for everyone. They have made attending conferences easier for me, and I hope they will help other spoonie librarians successfully engage in LIS events. If you have any tricks or tips that have worked for you, please feel free to add them in the comments below.


Applying Counter-Narratives to Academic Librarianship

Beginning notes from Prof. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s keynote at IDEAL 2019.

Late July and early August were a whirlwind of travel for me. First up: ACRL Immersion, where I had the privilege of observing the program as a new facilitator. This was followed up by a quick trip to Columbus, Ohio for IDEAL 2019, the Advancing Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility in Libraries & Archives Conference. I’ve been pouring over my notes, doing some personal reading, and reflecting on some of the bigger ideas that connected these two very intense learning experiences. One of those ideas was the concept of counter-narrative.

Counter-narrative comes from Critical Race Theory, and is rooted in the idea that power creates a dominant story that is accepted as Truth. Through counter-narrative, groups of people who have been marginalized have the power to resist dominant ideology and tell the story of Truth from their (our) own perspective and experience. An excellent example of counter-narrative in action is the 1619 Project spearheaded by Nikole Hannah-Jones at The New York Times. This project “is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.” I had the honor of hearing Nikole Hannah-Jones and Prof. Kimberlé Crenshaw speak at IDEAL 2019 and both stressed the importance of the stories we tell and the way that narrative shapes our reality.

There are so many opportunities for us to develop and apply a counter-narrative to our work in libraries, which is influenced by the same ideologies and -isms that plague the world in which we live. We see this in the work of Eamon Tewell, Jacob Berg, and Scarlet Galvan, who turn the resilience narrative so many libraries adopt on its head, highlighting the ways in which it reinforces structural inequalities and shift responsibility to individuals who suffer. It is present in the instruction team at the University of Nevada Las Vegas Libraries who seek to dismantle deficit thinking in information literacy education and acknowledge the strengths that transfer students bring to the classroom. The work of Annie Pho and Rose L. Chou in Pushing the Margins, along with that of the many talented librarian researchers who contributed to that excellent volume are all prime examples of counter-narratives by women of color within our profession.

What narratives and ideologies have we bought into in our own work in academic libraries? What have we simply accepted as Truth without bothering to question, poke holes in, and dismantle? There’s this unfortunate narrative that critical inquiry is about posing problems without offering any form of solution. To respond to that, I’ll borrow from Prof. Kimberlé Crenshaw and say that “There is power in naming.” There is power in storytelling, in pointing out problems, and in developing a discourse of dissent. What can you question? What kind of counter-narrative can you give to our profession?