🪑🥤🖥️ 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].
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
✈️💰 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!
Last month, I gave a presentation at the CARL 2026 conference on the use of AI-generated images in library outreach and communications. Here is the full text of my presentation, adapted for sharing publicly, with select visuals from the slide deck (you can download the full deck from my Scholars @ LMU page).
Introduction
Hi, I’m John Jackson and I’m the head of outreach and engagement at the William H. Hannon Library at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. I’m here to hopefully encourage and enable you to create narratives that center the real, human connections between your library staff and your students. I’ll talk about some of the theoretical underpinnings of this advice and show you a few examples of how we’ve done this successfully at Loyola Marymount University. But first, I’m going to talk about why you should think twice before using AI generated content in your marketing and outreach materials. Let’s start with an object lesson.
How many of you are familiar with the “Make it More” trend? The “Make It More” trend was an AI generated meme that began on Twitter and Reddit and eventually moved to TikTok in 2023. Here’s how it worked: you prompt an AI image-generating tool like DALLE-3 or MidJourney to make an image. Then, with each proceeding prompt, you ask AI to make it increasingly more ridiculous. Here’s an example:
In Fall of 2025, I decided I could do this one better. I asked my student graphic designer Sophia if she could hand-illustrate an image of our library building. I then proceeded to give Sophia increasingly more ridiculous instructions. This was the result:
Who do you think did it better? The response from our followers on Instagram, as well as what felt like the entire online community of artists and illustrators, was overwhelmingly positive. It was, at the time, the most successful Instagram post we had ever created in the 15 years of running our library’s Instagram account. My favorite comment, which came from Hilbert Library, was “How do I get a Sophia?”
But John, you may ask: what if I want to use AI generated art? Well, I’m here to tell you using AI-generated art in library marketing and outreach rarely goes well. In fact, in all the examples that I found, the response was either outright negative or dead silence. [At this point in the presentation, I shared some examples from academic libraries. I’m not reproducing them here because I don’t think it would be fair to let them live on in infamy. Most of the AI-generated posts have since been deleted. But here are some examples of the comments]
And it’s not just in libraries. Here are some of the comments from the 2025 Coca-cola holiday commercial that was entirely AI-generated. As one commenter noted: “You know the entire point of these seasonal ads is to pretend you aren’t a soulless mega corporation, right?”
Take a look at the top of the comment section from a New York Mets post that was literally just an AI video of an apple. I like the comment from Dylan here. “Could it have been that hard to go to the top of the roof and put an Apple on the ledge of the building and film it?”
Some of this anti-AI art responses hit pretty close to home in higher ed as well. Here were some of the top responses to UNC’s announcement about the launch of an AI studio. As one person wrote: “Literally no one asked for this.”
And I’m sure many of you heard about the Libby debacle, when it came out that they were ingesting AI-generated books, some of it being labeled as AI slop, which then made it into the packages of ebooks they provide to libraries. The comments were vicious and folks are still responding in this way even on more current posts.
Some companies are even mocking AI as a brand strategy, as you can see that strategy on display here in this Polaroid and Heineken ad, which is making fun of a wearable AI device. So what’s the takeaway here?
Trust matters more than style. Effort matters more than the end result. And using real people and real situations, especially on social media platforms, signals authenticity. This is especially true for cultural and historical institutions like libraries, museums, and archives.
What this talk is not about
I do want to say two things at this point: #1, I’m not just here to talk about social media (though, I am going to come back to it before the end). Instead, I want to talk about the many ways we foster authenticity at the William H. Hannon Library by intentionally focusing on the “faces and places” of the library and by centering the people of our community. What I’m going to present has immediate applications to how libraries do marketing and outreach, but also applies to what we put on our websites, what we show at our events, and what we present in the classroom.
And #2: this is not an anti-AI presentation, because I do think AI can support library outreach, especially in creating more accessible digital experiences, but this presentation is humans-preferred because Rule #1 of marketing is “make something people want.” And I’m here to show you that what people want more than anything, is to feel they belong, and using AI-generated content can be directly oppositional to that desire.
Theoretical background
So let me start by looking briefly at some of the research that undergirds a lot of what I’ll be showing you today. I want to bring your attention to two concepts I’m sure many of you are familiar with: sense of belonging and library anxiety.
Sense of belonging is an individual’s desire to be part of a community and their attachment to a specific place. It includes the ability to project oneself into a future that includes the shared experiences of that community. Library anxiety is the emotional state that arises when a student enters the library. This state can be characterized by stress, fear, shame and confusion.
Research across higher education consistently shows that belonging is a central factor in student success. Psychologists Baumeister and Leary define belonging as a “fundamental human motivation”, putting it alongside essential needs like those we see in Maslow’s hierarchy. And studies repeatedly confirm that students who feel they belong earn stronger grades, persist at higher rates, and experience better mental health (Goplan and Brady, 2019; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2017; Walton and Brady, 2017)
At a campus level, belonging is often measured through three simple questions: whether students feel they can be themselves, whether they feel valued, and whether they feel part of the community. Students who answer “yes” to these questions are more likely to engage with campus resources, including the library, further reinforcing their academic success (Lu, 2023; Yeager et al. 2026; Strayhorn, 2012).
For academic libraries specifically, belonging is shaped largely through relationships: the small, everyday interactions that signal to students that they are seen, respected, and welcomed. In Portal, Couture et al. found that for first-generation students, real-life interactions with library staff are among the most powerful contributors to a sense of belonging. Reed (2025) similarly argues that social relationships with library employees are a primary mechanism through which belonging can be cultivated.
This aligns closely with the literature on library anxiety, a concept grounded in feelings of shame, fear of judgment, and uncertainty about how to navigate the library. A wide body of evidence shows that direct contact with librarians—whether through orientation programs, formal interactions, or informal conversations—significantly reduces library anxiety (Black, 2016; McAfee, 2018). Lackner (2022) summarizes this well: creating human connections that foster belonging is the antidote to library anxiety.
Ramsey and Brown (2018) note that inclusive atmospheres, diverse representation in promotional materials, and visibility of students from marginalized backgrounds help counter the “outsider” feelings inherent in impostor syndrome. Students need to see themselves in the library to believe they belong in it.
This all ties directly into our current conversation about library marketing and communication. Bedenbaugh (2016) and Tanner (2023) argue that “humanizing the library” is essential—not just aesthetically, but psychologically. Students respond more strongly to real faces, real places, and real interactions. Tanner’s findings are explicit: images of real humans perform better, while illustrated or artificial substitutes widen the emotional distance between the library and its users.
Recent research on AI-generated promotional content reinforces this concern. Carvalho et al. (2025) found that even when participants couldn’t reliably distinguish between human- and AI-generated text, the perceived effectiveness dropped as soon as they suspected a message was created by AI. In other words: the more content feels machine-made, the less persuasive it becomes.
To wrap this all up, emerging library-specific research underscores the link between belonging and academic outcomes. Scoulas identifies library employees as a central driver of inclusion. In a later study, Scoulas, Naru, and Yu (2025) connect students’ perceptions of library spaces, collections, and support services directly to their sense of belonging; echoing broader findings that belonging predicts persistence, motivation, resilience, academic achievement, and well‑being.
Across all this research, one message emerges clearly: Students feel like they belong when the library feels human. Belonging is built through authentic interactions and in environments where students feel recognized. These connections are what counteract library anxiety and support ongoing academic success.
Centering the human in library outreach
So let me now talk about how we do that at Loyola Marymount University. I’m going to focus on two areas: Centering the Human in Library Outreach and Centering the Human in Library Marketing. Let’s start with outreach and programming.
One the first experiences students have with the library at LMU is the Library Open House. We host this annual event every fall semester. It’s essentially a giant carnival where each library department hosts a table with games or a fun activity. The goal isn’t necessarily to teach students anything in particular (though that’s always nice if we do). Instead, our main goal is to introduce students to the “faces and places” of the library. Meet library staff. Explore our building. And hopefully form a bond between staff and students within the physical space of the library.
At the end of the event, we ask students “To what extent do you feel comfortable asking library staff for help?” and for the past four years, 98% report feeling comfortable or very comfortable asking for help after attending the library open house. As one student told us: “It was a very fun and interactive event that helped me feel more comfortable about going to the library in the future. I also was able to meet new Lions while playing the games and exploring all levels of the library.” and “It was great and the energy of the staff made the library a safe/comfortable environment.”
These two comments (and there’s way more where this came from), respectively speak to both reducing library anxiety and fostering a sense of belonging, through the act of person-to-person connection.
Another unique event that we’ve hosted for the past 10 years is LMU Speaks. This is a storytelling program, similar to The Moth or NPR Storycorp, where we ask 5 members of our campus community to tell a true, personal story around a central theme. We always invite a mix of faculty, staff, administrators, and students; and the themes are things like “The Fork in the Road” or “Standing on Business” or like we did in 2021 “Hitting the Reset.” At the end of the event, we ask attendees whether they spoke with at least one person they’d never met before.
We also ask them if, as a result of attending this event, they feel a stronger connection to LMU and 100% agreed or strongly agreed. As one attendee noted this past year: “I learned that everyone has struggles you have no idea about that show up in their life in so many ways.” This is fostering a sense of belonging: by helping students see themselves in other students, faculty, and staff.
But making these human connections isn’t just something that happens during large, public events. At LMU Library, we also do this behind the scenes. Like many institutions, we have an email marketing platform that allows us to quickly create mass email campaigns. But we also rely heavily on personal, one-to-one email outreach. For example, we have this speaker series called “Faculty Pub Night” where we invite faculty to speak about their latest “publication.” We also serve beer and wine so it’s like a pub with pubs. (Get it?) Anyway, in order to build an audience for this series, my team and I comb through the course catalog and identify specific classes that we think might enjoy whatever the topic of the Faculty Pub Night is. We then individually email the faculty teaching those courses to invite them and their class to the event.
This work is time-consuming, but it also has a much higher ROI than mass emails campaign. It might take me an hour to personalize and send out 20 of these invitations. But if just 1-2 promise to bring their classes? Well, then I’ve got a packed room at our next event. It’s worth the effort. And it’s built on the personal connections that me and my team have built with many of these faculty over the years. They trust me not to spam them and to only contact them if I really think it’s worth their time.
Finally, we send personalized welcome packets to all new staff and faculty at LMU. I know, this sounds crazy. But we get a list of newly hired staff every two weeks from Human Resources. It’s usually about 10-15 people at most. Since we can look up their contact info in Outlook, we put together a packet that includes a welcome letter, our latest annual report, and some library merch. One month after sending those letters, I follow up with a personal email inviting them to come take a one-on-one tour with me of the library, where I talk about the services the library provides for university staff. I end up doing about 2-3 personal tours per month for new employees.
Centering the human in library marketing
So that’s just a sample of what we do to center the human in outreach and programming. Now, I want to shift from talking about events and circle back to talking about marketing and the ways in which we center the human in our external communications work.
When I create content for our external communications, I always strive to center our library users and their personal stories. Last year, we created a six-part video series about some of the people who use LMU library regularly, folks we called our “Library Fans.” Here’s one video about Alexsiya, a graduate student, a parent, and a frequent visitor to our library.
One thing that I think is clear from that video is that the story matters. And some mediums are better at telling stories than others. In the year of our lord 2026, video is king. Primarily short form video. It’s the primary way that most students consume media, especially among teens, 73% of whom, according to Pew Research, reporting using sites like YouTube daily. Of course, anyone who uses Instagram or TikTok knows that the algorithms for both these platforms prioritize video over static images. So if you want you stories to actually get any eyeballs, you really need to focus on developing video content. At LMU, instead of posting static graphics or digital fliers, we primarily focus on promoting our services through video using our own students and staff. Here are two examples of the ways we’ve promoted our film collections at LMU Library.
Now, those videos are fun, but creating video content has a steep learning curve. And the expectations for quality keep getting bumped up a notch all the time. So if video production isn’t in your tool kit, at least use photography. Again, centering real people and real library spaces, preferably your own. Don’t use stock photography: your students can tell.
49% of the social media posts we’ve created since August 2025 (183 out of 376 total) include photography or video of current LMU students, faculty, staff, or librarians. And that doesn’t include archival photos, like images of students from the university archives, which are also very popular. If you include that, it’s closer to 57%. Only 6% of our IG posts are event fliers and yet we still have high attendance at our events. And our engagement since August 2025 is through the roof. Our content interactions are up 6.6 thousand percent.
One really easy way to center the human in library marketing is to utilize student talent. At LMU Library, I hire a student graphic designer, a student videographer, and 2-3 student social media assistants to help create content each week. Here’s an example of one video that Petra and Jmac made asking folks how they use they library. All of these students were interviewed with consent (and spoiler: students were asked in advance if we could film them), but their responses are genuine and they showcase how actual students actually use our library. I’ll just show you the first one, which we made after someone suggested to me that students don’t know they can use the library without actually going into the library. The resulting video turned out to be a great way to highlight our online resources.
The video work we do is still relatively young in its development. I just started hiring a student videographer a few years ago, but for the past 10 years, I’ve hired a graphic designer, usually a junior or a senior, to help create unique, promotional materials for our events and our collections.
Here are a few examples of Instagram carousels my current student, Sophia Chavez, has created to highlight our Staff Picks LibGuide and our Popular Reading Collection. This Radiohead carousel from a couple months ago knocked our anti-AI library video, the one I showed you at the beginning of this presentation, knocked it out of the top spot on Instagram. It has since been shared more that 2600 times, saved by over 4,000 people, and currently has over a 156,000 views. This post alone brought more than 800 people to our profile page. All of this is hand-illustrated, or at least human-designed promotional materials. However, there’s a caveat.
Content development is one thing. But content strategy requires a more experienced hand. Someone who can see the connections between the library’s value, our strategic priorities, the needs of our users, and the university’s mission. So I do just want to make it clear that I’m not suggesting you hand over all your marketing and promotional work to students, but they can be and should be essential partners in that work.
Librarians at the forefront
Instead, I would like to recommend that you focus on the more stable faces of your library. In keeping with our theme of centering the human, I encourage you to think of yourselves as local influencers. Specifically for your campus community. Or if not you, then think of 1-2 of your colleagues who might be able to do this type of work well. Going back to the research I spoke about earlier, when students know someone who works in the library, when they can put a face to a name, and connect that face to the library as an organization or the library as a service, that will positively reduce library anxiety. That will foster sense of belonging. Even if that face is just someone they regularly see on the library’s website, YouTube page, or social media.
There are a few libraries that I believe are doing this really well. Oklahoma State University Libraries, Kansas State, University of Wyoming, UCSB, Emerson College, and William and Mary Libraries, just to name a few. They have created “recurring characters” in their external communications that have backstories, and lore, and complicated relationships with other recurring characters. Whether it’s library student employees or the dean of the library, there’s a real human face that students can come back to again and again. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that some of the most successful academic libraries on social media are also the libraries that regularly feature people in their promotional content.
Conclusion: A critical framework
So what have we learned. We’ve learned that reducing library anxiety and fostering a sense of belonging are essential to student engagement with the library. We’ve seen how AI-generated content can create the opposite effect and cause students to feel a disconnect with the library’s brand. Finally, we saw examples of how the library’s “faces and places” can be leveraged to strengthen the connection between library users and the library organization.
I want to leave you with some guiding questions and provide you with a critical framework: What value(s) do libraries offer for their community? Does automating our voice and giving over our brand to AI-generated content increase that value? Does it support our values? I would argue that it does not. The library’s voice is not just a tool: it’s a reflection its values. By centering human intelligence in our messaging, we model the kind of discernment we hope to cultivate in our students, discernment that is linked to questions of justice, community building, and community values. We can ask ourselves:
Does the time/effort this saves me erase an opportunity for building a relationship with my community/users?
How will my community respond when they discover this content is AI generated? (i.e., do you have an art or MFA program on campus?)
Does using AI-generated content reflect the values of my library? My university?
What practical opportunities does not using AI present? (e.g., student employment, building my skill sets, deep learning)
This is a critical framework for thinking about the use of AI-generated content in library outreach and marketing. Looking at these various dimensions, I have critical questions you should ask yourself, why it matters, what might be some indicators of a human-centered practice, and what are some possible red flags. I’ve listed here 8 dimensions for consideration: belonging, authenticity, relationship-building, community impact, equity and inclusion, mission and pedagogy, labor, and brand health.
For example, before using AI-generated content in your outreach, consider how this impacts belonging: does the content I’m creating help students see themselves in the library? Because when they see themselves in our future…. Literally see themselves and their friends in photographs… this helps strengthen persistence and motivation. On the flip side, and this is the “red flags” column, if you’re using AI-generated images, it’s essentially the same as using stock photos: no one will recognize themselves in your messaging.
And here’s part two. For example, looking at DEI, does using AI-generated content reflect diversity or exacerbate imposterization? This matters because students need to see themselves to feel they belong. If you’re doing this right, you’ll have real people telling real stories, rather than homogenized or stereotyped imagery.
This critical framework is applicable not just to the outreach we do through marketing and promotional work, but I would argue it’s also applicable in the classroom, on our websites, and at our service desks. Any one of these dimensions: belonging, authenticity, relationship-building, community impact, equity and inclusion, mission and pedagogy, labor, and brand health… all of these are impacted when we make the decision to outsource our library’s voice to AI-generated content.
And that’s it! I hope you enjoyed the presentation. Again, please feel welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn! Thank you so much for listening!
References
Baumeister R. F., Leary M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529.
Bedenbaugh, R. A. (2016). Marketing is Our Game: Tackling the Library Awareness Gap. Public Services Quarterly, 12(4), 321–328.
Black, S. (2016). Psychosocial reasons why patrons avoid seeking help from librarians: A literature review. The Reference Librarian, 57(1), 35–56.
Carvalho I., et. al. (2025), “Beyond human touch: evaluating the effectiveness of AI, human, and hybrid-generated tourism promotional texts”. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Insights, 8(10), 3804–3824.
Couture, J. et al. (2021). “We’re Gonna Figure This Out”: First-Generation Students and Academic Libraries. Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 21(1), 127–147.
Gopalan, M., & Brady, S. T. (2019). College Students’ Sense of Belonging: A National Perspective. Educational Researcher, 49(2), 134-137.
Lackner, J. (2022). Confronting library anxiety. Public Services Quarterly, 18(3), 224–231.
Lu, A. (2023, May 9). How to Turn Your Campus Into a Place of Belonging. The Chronicle of Higher Education.
McAfee, E. L. (2018). Shame: The emotional basis of library anxiety. College & Research Libraries, 79(2), 237–256.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2017). Supporting students’ college success: The role of assessment of intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies. National Academies Press.
Ramsey, E., & Brown, D. (2018). Feeling like a fraud: Helping students renegotiate their academic identities. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 25(1), 86–90.
Reed, E. (2025). Inclusion and Empathy Are Not Enough: Cultivating Student Belonging in the Academic Library Through Compassion. Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 25(4), 625–641.
Scoulas, J. M. (2021). College students’ perceptions on sense of belonging and inclusion at the academic library during COVID-19. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 47(6), 102460.
Scoulas, J. M., Naru, L., & Yu, Y. (2025). Factors Influencing Undergraduate Sense of Belonging at a Public Research University. Journal of Library Administration, 65(3), 343–360.
Walton G. M., Brady S. T. (2017). The many questions of belonging. In Elliot A. J., Dweck C. S., Yeager D. S. (Eds.), Handbook of competence and motivation (2nd Edition): Theory and application (pp. 272–293).
Strayhorn T. L. (2012). College students’ sense of belonging: A key to educational success for all students. Routledge.
Tanner, L. (2023). “How do you do, fellow kids?”: Staying relevant with college students on your academic library’s social media. Public Services Quarterly, 19(3), 233–239.
Yeager D. S., et al. (2016). Teaching a lay theory before college narrows achievement gaps at scale. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113, E3341–E3348.
Social media happens so fast. I mean, just a couple weeks ago, none of us had ever imagined what 12 tons of KitKats looked like. 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.
The Bass Library at Yale created (appropriately) a bass-based wayfinding strategy. The libraries at the University of Georgia was forcing students to compete in Beast Games to reduce late fees. While Drexel went all digital and emptied their shelves. At Beinecke Library, there is now a pool open to registered researchers. William & Mary was offering students the opportunity to check out library narrators.
Fondren Libraries wants us to think the library whiteboards are all empty during finals. UCSB replaced all its furniture with its famous red booths. The University of Albany Libraries has a new intern. And in what is perhaps my favorite post, Clemson Libraries did a reverse Uno on its noise levels.
🌏🗺️ The University of Michigan Library is posting a 3-part history about its copy of Abraham Ortelius’s “Theatrum Orbis Terrarum.” The library’s copy is rare, being one of the first forty ever printed. It’s also in need of extensive conservation and repair, the process of which UM is documenting through its news blog and on video. The book will be completely disbound and washed, old “fixes” will be unfixed and repaired, then it will be rebound in new material. It’s great to see the library documenting the entire process.
📻🎙️ Self-archiving is one of the greatest kindnesses you can give to future researchers. Carolyn Armenta Davis recently donated her collection of self-taped radio broadcasts featuring Black classical composers to Northwestern Libraries. Davis is a polymath whose curiosities extend to architecture, health research, and television news writing. This sentence encapsulates the impact of Davis’s decision: “Davis asked WEFM to her record her show, and she was able to retain the tapes because she was an independent writer-producer who had secured her own sponsor, Commonwealth Edison. Without that effort, this piece of radio history would have been lost.”
🤖💬 Brown University Libraries has created a critical AI learning community for students, faculty, and staff to explore and critique artificial intelligence technology and its implications for learners and researchers. It aims to center issues relating to justice and power, and is open to folks of various experience levels, covering conversations on practical skills, critical thinking, ethical issues, and social impact. Personally, I find these communities of practice to be more helpful than AI task forces that rush too quickly to codify policies and best practices– like building the ship while sailing rather than stopping to examine why we’re even on these ships in the first place.
📷 Washington State University Libraries is participating in a series of events highlighting the history of farm workers in the Yakima Valley by creating a display of photographs from its collections for National Farmworker Awareness Week. NFAW is a week of action for university students and community members to honor farmworkers’ important contributions and to raise awareness about the issues they face. The library is working in collaboration with WSU CAMP, a federally funded program that helps first-year students from migrant and seasonal farm-working backgrounds transition to college each year.
Notable mentions
Two pages from Matthew Paris OSB, Chronica maiora I, (ca. 1240 – 1255). The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge.
Indiana University Bloomington Libraries provides step by step instruction for creating a Japanese accounting ledger.
The Robert Van Houten Library at NJIT is challenging students to race a librarian (at search).
Parker Library on the Web, a collaboration between Stanford University Libraries and University of Cambridge, is celebrating 15 years of digital collections.
Blending art and research, the J. Willard Marriott Library is hosting its inaugural “Image of Research” competition.
Also from Marriott Library, they’ve expanded their “ProtoSpace” with some additional audio production equipment and software.
BYU Library has refurbished a card catalog cabinet into a seed library.
“Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls was one of my favorite songs growing up (as a teen, I was a massive Meg Ryan fan and the City of Angels soundtrack is nothing but bangers). So when the “Mom, what were you like in the 90s” trend started last month, I watched every single iteration. AcadLibs really took to this trend, using it as an opportunity to promote university archives and photos of really old tech (i.e., desktop PCs). Kansas State, Utah Valley University, Claremont Colleges Library, Loyola Marymount University, University of San Diego, Cal Sate LA, and Kenyon College, just to name a few. This meme was a perfect opportunity for university archivists to parter with the central university MarComm teams to collab over institutional history.
Purdue Libraries hosted a video contest that challenged students to answer the question: “What do incoming students most need to know about Purdue Libraries to succeed?” The winning video does not disappoint, showcasing real student anxieties and successes. You can also explore the other winners as well as past videos on Purdue’s website.
This photo carousel format from UC Santa Barbara is elegant and simple, utilizing high-quality photography and the experience of receiving an AirDropped photo. I could easily see other libraries using this format to highlight specific materials (e.g. “UCSB Libraries would like to share a book”). It might also work with silly, BTS photography (e.g. students doing weird things in library spaces), with each photo getting progressively weirder; or, posted chronologically to tell the story of a recent library event.
Copley Library at University of San Diego took the “my boss left me a voice memo” format to promote a list of updates for their library, including spring break hours, an upcoming game night, and National Library Week. I hadn’t seen this meme in a few months, but it reminded me how useful it can be to highlight multiple announcements or CTAs in one video, even when those things may not have a single throughline.
Promoting VR creation services in a 2D medium like video is difficult, not just because you don’t get the full experience, but because the learning curve for creating and utilizing VR is steep. But I love how Virginia Tech told a very human story of one student’s project. The video is just the right balance of enticing and informative, without being overwhelming.
banner image: page from UM’s copy of Abraham Ortelius’s “Theatrum Orbis Terrarum”
Social media happens so fast. I mean, just a couple weeks ago, none of us had ever considered posting all our staff’s baby photos online. 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.
Good video = good vibes
I’ll admit that I’m a sucker for a well-thought out video. It doesn’t need to be complicated or even that “cinematic,” but if it’s obvious that someone put some thought into it, I’m impressed. Two videos recently caught my attention, one from Grand Valley State University Libraries and the other from Temple University Libraries. The GVSU video is just a simple exploration of colors in library spaces, but charmingly executed. The Temple video is more complex, but does a good job of keeping the viewer’s attention with a mix of close up and medium shots, with regular cuts.
I think this trend started with university level accounts, but this is one from Pollack Library at CSUF of the better ones I’ve seen. It’s fairly easy to execute with invisible wipes/cuts between each shot, and an easy way both to highlight library study rooms and (in a kind way) poke fun at some of the ridiculous ways in which students use them. We did one at my library as well last month.
Want better study rooms? We do too! Support us during TitansGive on March 11th and help us upgrade our study spaces for all students. The donation link will be in our Linktree! Disclaimer: Please don’t try any of these activities in the study rooms lol
I’ve said it before: If you’re not having fun creating social content, you’re not doing it right. Butler Libraries is obviously having fun with their latest Day of Giving videos. Though I guess if you have a giant pool in your library, you’re already having fun. (See also the follow up.)
I’m at the point in my career where I can look back and see trends. I can vividly remember my early obsession with professional networking (2009-2011), the deep dive into critical pedagogy and instruction (2011-2015), the slow rise into outreach (2015-2017), and the crossroads that led to management (2018-present). Assuming I retire between the age of 60-65, this means I am just approaching the half-way point.
That’s a sobering realization.
And it leads me to think “what’s next?” I’ve been invited to apply for associate dean and AUL positions. I don’t yet know if that’s the direction I want to go. I’ve also considered stepping back from management to focus entirely on strategic communications and assessment. I’m not sure that’s a direction I want to go either. Frankly, I’m undecided on what my immediate next step is.
And that’s OK.
What I do notice, however, is an emerging fascination with the professionalization of outreach work. Within academic libraries, there are certain areas of work that are highly professionalized: e.g., reference and instruction, special collections, collection development, e-resources management, and systems. Basically, if there are multiple annual academic conferences dedicated to your line of work in libraries, you can consider your area to be highly professionalized. Also: multiple academic journals on the topic; multiple ACRL sections and interest groups; and professional competencies.
Outreach librarianship, as a stand-alone position, emerged alongside distance education librarians at the dawn of the internet in the 1990s and early 2000s. So in the grand history of academic librarianship, it’s one of the younger specializations. We do have academicjournals and we just recently adopted professional competencies, but we are no where near the level of professionalization that, say, reference librarianship or collection development work is at.
Outreach librarians take many forms: student engagement librarians, communication librarians, first-year experience librarians, various forms of liaison work, management, and instruction-adjacent positions. We also wear many hats, everything from program development and community engagement to marketing and social media strategy. Some are housed within reference and instruction departments, user services teams, or administration; others (like myself) are stand-alone departments.
With what remains of my career, I think that I want to continue to professionalize the work that outreach librarians do. Developing standardized assessment protocols. Advocating for the hiring of uniquely qualified and skilled individuals. Championing the work of academic libraries that support notable outreach projects. I’m doing some of this work already as the Marketing Column editor for Public Services Quarterly and as a board member of the Library Marketing and Communications Group.
To those ends, these are some of the projects I’d like to work on:
Co-lead research that helps to further codify academic library outreach as its own LIS subfield
Help to build a robust set of outreach assessment tools
Form a community of practice around academic library ROI, storytelling, and communicating value
Formally highlight notable examples of successful academic library outreach (see also: RIAL)
Write a new book on academic library outreach
Develop a new toolkit for library outreach (let’s bring back the ARL SPEC kits!)
Co-teach a course on academic library outreach
Just to name a few.
Not that I have the time for any of this right now, of course; but as I look at the next 20-ish years of my career, I do want to start moving towards “the next thing.” And if that can be something that leaves an impact on the future of the profession by making it possible for more folks to pursue outreach librarian work along pathways that feel supported and well-trodden, that would be worth the journey.
🎤🎵 Stanford’s East Asia Library hosted a Love Data Week event exploring how data shapes K‑pop. Attendees explored Stanford’s K‑pop collection, learned how fan engagement and music metrics are analyzed, and enjoyed games, snacks, and song sharing. Organized by librarians and staff, the program highlighted data’s role in global music trends. The event featured a performance by XTRM, Stanford’s competitive K‑pop dance team, exploring community through shared musical interests. There was “enough K-Pop data to seal the Honmoon” said the libraries’ social media coordinator, Carrie Gao.
🤖🤔 Last fall, Gleeson Library at the University of San Francisco convened a taskforce to consider how AI is impacting higher education and library work at their institution. They’ve issued their final report. They offer a set of values to support ethical, responsible, and transparent use of AI in library contexts, as well as links to what other AJCU schools are doing around AI. One thing that makes the AJCU’s distinct (aside from the obvious Jesuit connection) is their dedication to “discernment.” Reading this report suggests to me that the ACJUs collectively could lead the way in developing a more critical AI literacy framework.
🎮💻 The University of Chicago Library has opened a Steam PC Cafe pilot as part of its “year of games” initiative. Students can play games like Portal, Terraria, Subnautica, God of War, Half-Life, and more. There are also inclusive titles for patrons with visual impairments; and students can recommend titles to be added.
🚧📢 The Carrier Library at James Madison University is going through a massive renovation. The new building is scheduled to open later this year. The communications in and around the construction work has been a master class in effective storytelling, community engagement, and external marketing (psst: there will be an article about this in the next issue of Public Services Quarterly).
📚☕️ The UC Boulder University Libraries is partnering with local independent bookstores to build a more community-centric collection. “The Boulder Bookstore has excellent expertise for curating books for the Boulder community. Every time I visit, I see things that I think we should have in the library collection” said Literature and Humanities Librarian Rybin Koob. In addition to bringing in diverse perspectives, this partnership enables the library to provide titles that connect to the specific interests of the local community— some of which may not be accessible through traditional acquisitions workflows. See also: Clarivate phasing out print book purchases and the closure of Baker & Taylor.
📜👩🏻🎓 The special collections team at WashU Libraries is soliciting nominations for a student public historian internship. Interns work with university archival collections “to assist with reparative description in finding aids and contribute to the WashU & Slavery Project digital archive.” There is also the possibility of developing a small exhibition. What a great opportunity!
🏛️💰 I did not have “Pam Bondi” and “Epstein” on my bingo card of announcements about library funding. But at Long Beach State, U.S. Congressman Robert Garcia presented the library with a $2.1 million check to fund their new Research Center and Special Collections Archives. The funding will help develop an expanded facility with an improved reading room and exhibition space.
Notable mentions
UTA Libraries is trying to stop bots slowing down its websites.
I first saw the “This is who…” trend going around among coffee shops in early February. This is where you post baby photos of your staff with captions like, “This is who manages the money.” Academic libraries started picking it up in the last week, with prominent examples being University of Wyoming, Stockton, Fondren Library, Utah Valley U, and the J. Willard Marriott Library.
UC Santa Barbara took the lead from Wimbledon to do their own version of the “mic’ed up” series here and here and here. They’re doing it with their service desk staff to highlight the variety of questions folks ask at the library.
If you’re looking for a fun way to highlight the University Archives, take a cue from UF Libraries and create a video walking tour. Especially fun if you have some niche campus lore to share.
If you’re going to host a film competition, you best make sure the call for proposals is solid piece of video work. William & Mary Libraries read the assignment.
Here’s a motif I think I might ask my student workers to try out: playing hide and seek in the library as a means to promote various library spaces. I could see this working for any size library, from single-room to multi-floor! From Wayne State Libraries:
Finally, I thought this video from FSU Libraries promoting the library’s impact on student employees was extremely well done. Good lighting, voice over, talent, and editing. Obviously a social-first approach, one that I don’t always see in university fundraising videos.
Social media happens so fast. I mean, in just over a week, we went from simply touching grass to being grass. 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.
Bad Bunny memes
Moments of mass- /mono-culture are few and farther between these days, but leave it to libraries to take advantage of the ones that remain! A number of academic libraries, including Bass Library at Yale, UVU, University of Florida, Clemson, and Florida State University (seen above) used photography and stills from the Super Bowl to promote library services and collections. This year’s half time show did not disappoint and provided plenty of fodder for the meme cannons.
If your campus has an annual tradition with decades of photos behind it (the more raucous the better), check out what Dartmouth Libraries did to highlight their annual Polar Swim. I love the scrapbook vibe (easily pulled off with a little background remove magic). Be sure to connect with your campus alumni organization or the main uni social for the collab opportunity (and remember: let the bigger account initiate the collab).
Honestly, I’m surprised I hadn’t seen this format used by a library before now. So many academic libraries have golf carts for moving books around campus. It’s the perfect opportunity to create short, fast-paced content, provided you’ve got a witty host. The sound effects are fun. Very “Cash Cab” vibes. From University of Florida Libraries.
Currently, I’m working on a presentation about social media in academic libraries and one of my top recommendations is to “become your own main character.” Too many libraries treat their social like bulletin boards with no clear or consistent voice. Instead, I suggest they embrace the serial approach and feature a regular occurring cast. I think Emerson College Library is doing this well by featuring the same folks (Molly) in all their recent content. See also: University of Wyoming Libraries and William and Mary Libraries.
