Social media happens so fast. I mean, just a couple weeks ago, none of us had considered that we could be asked to be in a Netflix documentary. So in between the monthly “Recently in Academic Libraries” posts, I pull together regular updates on what AcadLibs are doing on social. Please enjoy these recent highlights.
When I said last month that I had not seen academic libraries rally around a viral trend the way they rallied around the Backrooms in some time, I did not know the Netflix documentary meme was coming. Many librariesdidtheirowntakes, but UVU Library, true to their form as the GOAT of all AcadLibs on social, delivered what is, in my opinion, the chef’s kiss of this trend. I’ve watched it a dozen times and it never gets old.
Librarians may not know what it’s like to be wrong…but on the rare occasion that we don’t know an answer, we’ll help you find the right information! Whether you’re stuck on a research topic, can’t find a credible source, or are confused by citations, we’ve got you. Make an appointment today via our website, or stop by the first-floor Research Help Desk. #UVU#Library#Documentary#Trend#Academia
If you’re like me, you’ve been living and breathing World Cup for the past month. We’re a few days away from the final match, and libraries have been leveraging the beautiful game to promote policies, spaces, and staff. UT Arlington Libraries used a soccer ball to take a tour of its campus. Riccardo from SJSU Library gave us a tour of the library without dropping the ball! LSU Libraries explained what might get you a red card in the library (though, not off sides). And then the University of Florida Libraries had this banger.
Finally, in the “fun and unique” category, we’ve got William & Mary Libraries asking staff to try and guess how many books they think their colleagues have read this year (oh my goodness, 145 books!!!). A good reminder that asking simple questions to a handful of your colleagues can always make good, low-lift content.
If, like me, you work at a Jesuit or Catholic institution, everyone has been talking about the Pope’s recent encyclical on artificial intelligence. Seattle University was the first academic library that I noticed to post on the topic. Their first post frames the document as a call to centering human dignity over technological efficiency; and it asks us to think critically about how AI is reshaping education and work. It’s somewhat of an orientation piece. The follow up post explores one of the encyclical’s most poignant themes: “digital slavery,” outlining how AI often relies on hidden labor (e.g., data labeling and moderation), exploits personal data in ways likened to “digital colonialism,” and depends on harmful supply chains for materials like rare earth minerals. We need more critical analysis of AI like this in higher education.
A Duke University Libraries post by two student interns takes us on a deep dive (haha) into their Marine Lab archives, where students have been digitizing materials that capture more than a century of marine science research and campus life. Along the way, they’ve uncovered everything from early 20th‑century studies of crustaceans to mid-century lab bulletins and quirky glimpses of scientific life on the North Carolina coast. Equal parts history lesson and archival adventure, it’s cool to see this type of labor and reflection get surfaced (see what I did there?).
The University of Ottawa and Vanderbilt University have established a new partnership focused on advancing Indigenous digital archives and mobile history research. The collaboration emphasizes Indigenous-led knowledge preservation, prioritizing community engagement, data sovereignty, ethical stewardship, and reciprocal knowledge exchange. The partnership reflects a shared commitment to preserving Indigenous histories and also building long-term, respectful relationships between universities and the communities that build knowledge.
The University of Utah’s Indigenous Storytelling Camp marked its 10th anniversary, having grown from 27 participants to nearly 100 Indigenous middle and high school students from across the region. The week-long program brings students to campus to create stories using various media, e.g. podcasting, photography, mural-making, and animation, while also introducing them to college life and library resources. The library provides makerspace tools, instruction, and a welcoming environment, but it sounds like it’s a truly interdepartmental initiative, bringing together over a dozen campus units.
Really love this idea: DePaul University Library expanded their collections by purchasing nearly 200 books and 50 vinyl records from local independent businesses, as part of a broader commitment to support the Chicago economy and align with the university’s mission. The program prioritized in-person selection, allowing staff to browse with input from store employees, respond to patron requests, and quickly add materials to the collection (and avoiding long shipping times). The team focused on finding items with local connections, including works by Chicago-based creators.
Notable mentions
A conservation study at Northwestern University Libraries analyzes red inks in West African manuscripts.
Seton Hall University Libraries has a brief World Cup guide.
The raison d’être of library outreach isn’t to get students to attend events. It isn’t to sign them up for our newsletter or get them to follow us on social media. It isn’t even to get them to use library resources [insert pearl clutching]. The goal of library outreach is to start the conversation. It’s a handshake… maybe it becomes a bridge, but at its simplest, it’s an entry point. As an outreach librarian, my role is to build the door, to always keep it open, and (as far as my department’s time and resources permit) to continually find creative ways to build new thresholds for discovery. In the world of Monsters, Inc., I run the door factory (well, as it was at the end of the film with Sully and Mike in charge).
Students arrive at college with varying levels of academic preparation. There are first gen students, international students, students from small private high schools, students from rural communities, transfer students, students coming back to college later in life (as grad students or otherwise), and a dozen other common demographics to which we pay close attention. Regardless of where/when/how they show up, library outreach ensures that students start engaging with the system of scholarly inquiry early enough to be successful. We focus much of our energy on the early weeks, through orientations, resource fairs, open houses, and low-barrier events; but because we know students often wait until the point of need, our work is year-round. Always holding the door open. Always extending our hand.
The library offers early engagement with academic expectations, scholarly terminology, writing and research workflows, and habits that will sustain students for the length of their campus experience. Moreover, the means of that engagement exist in a space that is less intimidating than the classroom but nonetheless structured in ways that go beyond mere informal support.
Our work speeds students along their journey towards increased confidence, belonging, and perhaps most important of all: an ability to thrive in a specialized—perhaps even rarified—environment with its own special codes and customs. Library success leads to college success.
No, Artificial Intelligence is Not Conscious by Ted Chiang: “The primary difference between deepfake photos and LLM conversations is that the people who generate the former are deliberately trying to fool others, and many of the people who elicit the latter from LLMs have inadvertently fooled themselves.”
The Shell University by Rory Truex. “If I’ve learned one thing this year, it’s that we need recenter the human part of the university: the student-teacher relationship.”
If there’s a single takeaway from all these articles, it’s that human connection is going to be the new “value add” for any university, business, or service. The rarity of that experience, in a market that’s surfeited in AI outputs (AIs talking to AIs talking to AIs), is only going to increase its desirability.
Links to the past
1 year ago: There were more mentions of AI than I remember.
5 years ago: I was doing more gardening than doom-scrolling. Can’t sat the same is true these days.
10 years ago: ““As long as Google has a commercial interest in appearing omniscient, it probably won’t work to improve knowledge panel transparency.” Still true.
15 years ago: Teaching college students how to manage personal information (beyond research needs) is still a worthwhile program to pursue.
Overheard online
“I can definitely walk and chew gum at the same time,” claims my LLM, as it lies bleeding on a pile of unchewed bubblegum. – @hotdogsladies on mastodon
🪑🥤🖥️ Drexel Libraries hosted a student-curated exhibition of everyday objects from university dorm rooms, “Dorm Objects 101.” Most of the objects on display, photographs, and labels came from about 70 students who took either a “Visual Culture” or “History of Modern Design” class. The university loaned standard-issue furniture to be included as well. Some of the photographs came from greek life scrapbooks and handbooks from the University Archives. What I love most of all, some of the student contributors also served as docents leading tours of the exhibition.
🤖📚🤔 The “AI Framework” from ZSR Libraries at Wake Forest has to be one of the most thoughtful and insightful policies that I’ve seen come out of an academic library to date. The framework— which includes an Engagement Framework, a Values Statement, and a Guide to Using AI— was the result of an AI Engagement Task Force. As Dean Lauren Pressley writes: “The Values Statement names the foundation. The Framework translates that foundation into eight engagement principles. The Guide takes those principles into the texture of everyday decisions.”
📚📚📚 The nearly 18,000 books once owned by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy are currently being cataloged by University of Tennessee Libraries. McCarthy was a Knoxville native. Processing the collections is expected to take around 10 months, but once it is publicly available, will be an invaluable resource for scholars of McCarthy’s works. Not all the books, however, went to UT Libraries. A couple thousand with annotations went to Texas State University at San Marcos.
📖🪡✂️ The Dartmouth Libraries Book Arts Workshop partnered with a geography professor to design a course in which students create a handmade book about a chosen city. Students used the medium to highlight social justice issues, like redlining and gentrification. This tactile approach increased student engagement with the research. As one student noted, “I had to be more thoughtful and intentional about what I wanted to communicate as a result, and I was conscious to try and design a progression of pages that—whenever possible—show before telling.”
📜🕵️🤖 Now this is a usage of machine learning that I can get behind. The University Libraries at Carnegie Mellon University partnered with their college of humanities and social sciences to create the Catalog of Distinctive Type, a digital resource that helps identify letterpress printers. By digitizing 20,000 individual letters from more than 240 printers in 17th century London, scholars can use machine learning to help identify unique characteristics (like errors in the type) that will help uncover the identity of unattributed works. (sen above)
Notable mentions
Housings for Northwestern University Libraries printing plates
Libraries as third spaces is a message that sticks, especially when student tell the story. I love this authentic video from Georgia Tech Library [YouTube].
This is the last post in a weeklong series offering a snapshot of what a day in the life of an academic librarian, specifically an outreach librarian and department head, looks like. Here was Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, and Day 4.
8:30a: Arrived at work and immediately had to troubleshoot an HR issue regarding student hiring. Once I handed that off to one of my team members to manage, I checked in with the campus children’s center to make sure story time was going ahead as planned (the air quality was almost poor enough to cancel their walk to the library).
9:00a: Because of meetings later in the day, I took advantage of my free morning to go to the gym.
10:00a: Cleaned up my email. Reviewed notes from the latest Faculty Senate meeting. Ordered gifts for my graduating senior student employees. Added an ND filter to my camera equipment inventory (pictured above).
11:00a: The leadership of the library met with the leadership of ITS. There were a number of issues to discuss, including cybersecurity of library systems, printing modernization, AI workshops, and digital assets management.
12:30p: Drafted the agenda for my department meeting on Monday and shared that with my team. More email (I always make sure my email inbox is cleared before the weekend). Emailed a student who won a raffle item by filling out a library survey. More coffee.
1:30p: My son was performing at his school today, so I hopped over to watch that.
2:30p: Went through my students’ project boards (we use Trello) and cleaned up their unassigned tasks, archived their completed work, and prioritized their projects for next week. I also scheduled their end of year performance review meetings.
3:30p: Committee on Committees meeting. We’ve mostly completed assigning all faculty volunteers to open committee seats, but there were a handful of unresolved issues to discuss.
4:30p: For the rest of the day (until about 6:30), I did my “Weekly Review.” I’ve discussed this before, but essentially it’s the time I set aside to review all my notes from the week, capture any action items, plan my priorities for the week ahead, and make it possible for me to go into the weekend without any hanging fire.
6:30p: Done and done. That’s it! If you were along for this whole ride, thanks for sticking around. Maybe I’ll do this again sometime.
We’ve made it to Thursday. This is the fourth in a week-long series of “Day in the Life” posts for those considering a career in academic libraries, specifically working in either outreach or managerial positions. Here was Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3.
8:30a: Arrive at work. I spent the first 30 minutes trying to film a piece of video content that refused to work the way I envisioned it. This is a sad reality of working in a creative position: sometimes the first four drafts are all complete rubbish. I decided to shelve the idea for a later time.
9:00a: Scheduled three future meetings: one for a committee, one for a photography shoot with a faculty speaker, and one prepping for the launch of a new digital archive.
9:30a: Meeting prep (see next item). Coffee.
10:00a: Our library is currently working with a consultant to do some thinking around stakeholder mapping and strategic communications (internal). Two other department heads and I met to brainstorm all the key players on campus and arrange them according to “low/high power” and “low/high interest.” We then went through a series of questions that helped us to articulate the level of influence those stakeholders have vis-a-vis the library.
12:30p: I had planned to go to a pilates class, but the meeting before ran over so I took a walk around campus instead. Breaked for a lunch. More coffee.
2:00p: Met with two other colleagues to draft a proposal for an upcoming conference.
3:00p: My two student workers arrived for their shift. We spend the first hour brainstorming a [different from the one this morning] video idea: this one to promote the use of study rooms during finals. It took us a good while to figure out the best format, script, and audio.
4:00p: Filmed and edited the video. We’ll post it tomorrow.
5:00p: Left work to pick up my son from school and take-out Thai food. 🤤
6:00p: Spent about 30 minutes catching up on emails and Teams messages I missed throughout the day.
Because of all the creative and brainstorming work today, it took me longer than usual to wind down. I don’t think I fully shut off until almost 7p. This is one of those days when I come home feeling worn out, but not overly productive. However, I know from experience this is all prelude to something better. It just takes time and a few false starts for some good ideas to fully gel.
banner image: view from the campus bluff during my walk
This is the third in a week-long series of “Day in the Life” posts, written primarily for those considering a career in academic libraries—specifically working in either outreach or managerial positions. But also for nosey curious minds. See also: Day 1 and Day 2.
8:30a: Arrive at work (a little more sluggish following yesterday’s faculty social event). I pulled together images that my student graphic designer created to post on Instagram. A “farewell” of sorts for our graduating seniors.
9:00a: Board meeting for the Library Marketing and Communications Group. This is my third year serving on the board, whose primary responsibility is running the annual conference. I am the board secretary, as well as the lead on local arrangements for the conference and co-lead on the program selection committee. This work is part of the “service” obligations that all librarians at my institution are expected to undertake.
10:00a: Follow up meeting with select members of the LMCC Board to discuss the room setup for the conference and the timeline for selecting submitted proposals.
10:30a: Clean up emails.
11:00a: Went to the campus gym. Normally I do this daily, but this week’s been busier than usual so today was the first day getting there. On the way there and back, I checked in with my team staffing the library’s table at a campus event.
12:30p: Followed up with a student employee applicant and interviewed another student for two other potential positions at the library.
1:30p: Lots of little things! Scheduled a meeting with a vendor. Uploaded a recent event recording to the library’s YouTube page. Drafted a blurb for a summer staff event and pop-up exhibit. Reviewed a proposed summer schedule for story time with the campus children’s center. Got coffee.
3:00p: Oversaw the start of “goat yoga,” an annual event that the library hosts during finals every year. Checked in with my student photographer who was capturing the day.
4:00p: By now, my daughter had arrived on campus so I took her to her gymnastics practice. 🤸
4:30p: Came back to campus and worked on setting up drafting files for the library’s Year in Review publication (that is, I set up instructions for all the various authors who contribute content to the document), including word counts, style and content directions, etc.
5:30p: Helped set up for our “Graduation Hat Decorating Party” at the library.
6:00p: Staffed the Grad Hat Party with my team. Toward the end of the event, once we realized there would be left over food, I took a tray of cookies around the library and offered them to students who were studying for finals.
8:30p: Left the office after cleaning up the event.
This is the second in a series of “Day in the Life” posts for those considering a career in academic libraries, specifically working in either outreach or managerial positions (I wear both hats). Here was the post from Day 1. As for Tuesday of this week…
8:30a: Arrive at work. By now, I had received all the photos from last week’s Library Research Awards from the freelance photographer I hired. I reviewed the photos, posted a selection to instagram, selected all those that included the winners and sent those along to them, and archived everything in Box.
9:00a: It’s Feel Good Finals, so we had puppies! I met the crew and helped them set up the dogs in front of the library. While I had planned to go back to my office to work on other projects, I ended up staying for the next hour to take photos and talk with students as they interacted with the dogs.
10:30a: I met with the incoming Faculty Library Representative (FLR) for the Music Department (one of my subject liaison areas). We discussed the expectations of the FLR role and the types of support I can provide to the department, including collection development. We also discussed the possibility of having mini-music performances in the library next year. 🎼
11:30a: Cleaned up my email inbox. Took time for lunch. Then prepped for my 1:1 meeting with my boss (the dean).
1:00p: Biweekly meeting with the dean. We discussed the outcomes of last month’s events, including National Library Week, the Long Night Against Procrastination, and our Senior All-Access Library Tours. We also discussed potential plans for future AI literacy-related external comms. Finally, I gave her an update on the various projects my team is working on.
2:00p: Met with my two student assistant for social media. We reviewed the stats from last week’s content and planned a video for today. This one…
3:00p: An external vendor reached out about partnering with the library on our Feel Good Finals events. I had to politely say no because it would violate our campus food contracts. I also emailed the campus children’s center to confirm the summer schedule for story time at the library. Finally, I handled some LMCC conference planning to-dos (I’m on the planning team for both the upcoming online conference and the in-person conference in November).
3:30p: Had a quick meeting with two of the speakers for next year’ Faculty Pub Night, mainly to discuss scope and promotional needs.
4:00p: Checked in on our Feel Good Finals setup (by this point, we had the campus radio station and student health services tabling outside the library). My son had shown up to the library by now as well so I had to make sure he wasn’t up to any trouble (he was not). I reviewed and provided feedback on a second video draft that my student employees created for Instagram (we’ll post it later this week). Finally, I emailed a potential new student hire with a job offer.
4:30p: My dean asked me to review a short bio and rewrite it in a more “punchier” style.
5:00p: Headed off to the end of the year Faculty BBQ. Didn’t end up leaving until after 7:30p.
Once upon a time, in internet days of old, librarian bloggers would annually create a “Day in the Life” post. The format has lived on in the GRWM and DITL posts on TikTok, but I still appreciate a good long-form blog post (see also 2023, 2017, 2015). If you are considering leadership work in an academic library (specifically of the outreach variety), here’s a glimpse of what it could look like.
8:30a: Arrive at work. At the end of last week, I created a video with my student employees for Star Wars Day so I posted the final cut to Instagram. Additionally, I had already drafted the May edition of the library’s monthly newsletter but was just awaiting the hero image photography from an event we hosted last Friday. Thankfully, the photographer had already sent the photo so I popped that into the newsletter and sent it off to our 5K subscribers.
9:00a: I have three presentations I’m making to the library’s leadership team today. I’m giving an overview of the production process for the library’s annual Year in Review (and twisting some arms into helping out). I have revisions to the library’s social media policy that I’d like to get approved (it was). Finally, I have results from a recent survey of our Instagram users which provided evidence of our social media’s impact on students’ perception of the library (tl;dr: it’s very good). So I spent a good hour preparing my talking points for all three of these presentations.
Word cloud of responses to a survey asking “How would you describe the @lmulibrary Instagram account to a friend?”
10:30a: Library leadership meeting with the dean, the library admin team, and all the department heads. In addition to my presentations above, we also discussed a new structure for our internal committees.
12:00p: Took a short walk and visited the farm animals setup we had for Finals Week.
12:30p: Reviewed photos submitted by faculty for next year’s Faculty Pub Night speakers series. I’ll be working on the promotional materials all summer long so I need to get the faculty’s professional headshots before they leave for the summer.
1:00p: A colleague reached out to me to ask whether being interviewed by a grad student in an journalism program was considered a “media request.” Because of [reasons] this one fell somewhat into that category, so I quickly prepared talking points and a brief media kit for them to review before they met with the student.
1:30p: Had a weekly 1:1 with one of my employees during which we talked about his recent projects and I asked for updates on some outstanding action items.
2:00p: Hosted my weekly department meeting. We had a debrief on last week’s Long Night Against Procrastination. We also reviewed progress on one of our team goals to update our internal documentation. We decided on gifts for our graduating student employees. We brainstormed objectives and desired outcomes for an upcoming collaboration with another team. Finally, we reviewed current projects for our student team.
3:30p: Met with my student graphic designer to review current projects. Their last project before they graduate as a matter of fact. 😢
4:00p: Spent about half an hour processing email.
4:45p: Headed out to take my son to his music lessons.
✈️💰 Lemieux Library at Seattle University offers travels awards to students. This is for students who have been accepted to present at a professional or scholarly event, including academic conferences, film festivals, etc. Students can receive up to $1,000 for travel expenses. The students are also asked to present a poster or give a presentation. It’s wonderful to see a library supporting students’ academic success in this way.
🪡👨🏼🦳 The University of Arkansas’s Mullins Library is launching a new series called “Granny Camp,” which is designed to foster a learning of practical skills (e.g. sewing craft) and encourage intergenerational dialogue. They provide the space and the snacks, and guests are encouraged to drop in as their schedules permit. What an amazing way for a campus to engage with the local community!
📼📸 Tulane University has published a new collection on early 1970s New Orleans Mardi Gras Indians for public research. The collection includes reel-to-reel and cassette tapes, photo negatives, research notes, and other materials that were collected as part of a dissertation project. “While the materials are preserved and made accessible by [Tulane Libraries], cultural authority remains with the tribes and individuals represented.”
🗿🏺 The “Re/Make History: Crafting the Past with 21st-Century Technologies” exhibition at Penn Libraries invites students to seek inspiration from archeological artifacts and rare books in order to make contemporary works of art, including earrings, chains (seen above), sculpture, toys, and even chocolates. In one notable example, the program coordinator used ChatGPT to help imagine a 3D model of a 2D image, which was then further refined by hand and in consultation with other sources. It’s a wonderful example of combining technology, art, craftsmanship, and research.
🤖📚 You can’t escape library news about artificial intelligence, so here’s a lightning round: The University of Virginia has launched the Statement of Shared Practice for libraries who want to address AI training requests of their unique archival and cultural heritage materials. Northwestern University received a $500K grant to transform an extensive collection of environmental impact statements into a dataset that can be analyzed through a new AI agent framework. Stony Brook University Libraries is launching a new course on critical data and AI literacies. Oh, and they are putting AI into library robots.
✏️🗺️ File under: “coolest idea of the month.” UW Wisconsin-Madison Libraries is hosted a “study crawl” for finals. The day-long event encourages students to take study breaks across campus at multiple library locations. Along the way, they can earn merch and win prizes. This seems like an event that would also work well by including campus partners, like the writing center or student health services.
Notable mentions
They say there is a LibGuide for everything. Well, Wayne State does not disappoint. May I present: Doors, a LibGuide.
Villanova Library put together a deep dive on Jesse Jackson.
Librarians are the mavens of undoing misinformation. With the rise of AI generated content, I’ve seen a number of content creators take on the mantle of “truth-discerners.” But even users of traditional platforms still need help sussing out hype from reality. Which is why I enjoyed this video from Penn Libraries of librarians responding to study tips found on Reddit.
Maintaining the university archives is one of the most important roles that an academic library plays in its community. I’ve often said that if I wasn’t an outreach librarian and I could start over, I would want to be a university archivist. Which is perhaps why I enjoyed this video from the University of Maryland.
What could you discover with the right tools and the right experts? The University of Vermont is hosting a research fair to promote its services. So bring in a creepy cat!
