ARLD Day 2025

​MLA Zoom Link​​​

Have you ever felt nervous about teaching students how to research a hot-button political topic? You’re not alone. Librarians occupy a precarious position at many institutions, asked to perform similar teaching functions to classroom instructors while lacking the protections of academic freedom granted to those instructors. Come to this talk to learn how one non-faculty librarian worked to reinstate academic freedom for herself and her colleagues over the course of nearly three years. We will discuss practical “lessons learned,” such as strategies for identifying allies on campus, responding to administrators’ concerns, and making difficult compromises in order to get a policy approved, and you will take away ideas for establishing or expanding academic freedom policies as they apply to librarians at your institution.

​MLA Zoom Link​​​

Minitex Resource Sharing has long been a vital service for academic libraries, enabling the seamless exchange of both physical and electronic resources across institutions. As libraries continue to evolve to meet the expanding needs of their patrons, it is crucial for resource-sharing services to adapt in order to remain effective and relevant in today’s information landscape.

In this session, we will explore how Minitex is evolving to better serve the needs of the academic libraries and the communities they support. Our goal is to foster connection, exchange knowledge, and collaborate on ways to improve and expand resource sharing. We invite you to share your experiences and insights—what’s working well at your library, and how we can improve to better serve you.

Join us for an opportunity to connect, share, and learn together as we look toward the future of resource sharing!

​MLA Zoom Link​​​

In recent years, librarian scholars including Julia Glassman and Meredith Farkas have advocated for what they term “slow librarianship.” Slow Librarianship questions the imperative that librarians should be ever-focused on innovation and optimization and calls on librarians to instead reflect on the actual needs of their communities and the importance of creating services that are sustainable for library workers and organizations.

Over the past months, library workers have faced a number of political actions from the Trump administration that impact our work as both information professionals and as providers of student services. These actions include the removal of government web pages containing data and research, the suspension of federal grant funding for research, attacks on academic freedom and free speech, and the erosion of civil rights for many Americans (to name just a few). These developments raise important questions about slow librarianship. As library workers, how can we respond to these actions in a way that is sustainable and intentional? What work do we need to let go of, and how do we determine our priorities? How do we best provide support and advocate for our students, colleagues, and ourselves? These are questions that we will explore in this roundtable.

​MLA Zoom Link​​​

Join Ninh Tran and Greta Bahnemann as they share their experiences using AI transcription for digital collection items. TranscribeAI is a new tool developed at Minitex that uses Azure OpenAI to transcribe typed, handwritten, and mixed-text documents. By automatically downloading items from digital repositories (e.g., Minnesota Digital Library) and using metadata to provide context, TranscribeAI produces highly accurate transcripts while reducing staff time and costs. This session will highlight the challenges of traditional OCR and manual transcription, demonstrate how TranscribeAI addresses them, and share best practices for integrating AI-generated transcripts into library workflows. Attendees will learn how AI-driven transcription enhances accessibility, improves discovery through keyword-searchable text, and preserves the cultural integrity of historical documents. We will also discuss lessons learned from recent pilot projects, including the importance of human review and quality assurance. Join us to explore how TranscribeAI can transform your library’s digital collections by increasing discoverability and broadening access for all users.