ARLD Day 2025

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Welcome and Academic Innovator Award

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The COVID-19 pandemic increased the level of stress on academic library workers already struggling with budget cuts, increased work requirements and responsibilities, and overall campus stresses. Now federal funding reductions, "death by a thousand cuts,” and continued attacks on higher education challenge us in our communities.

In 2021, we analyzed survey data from 679 U.S. library workers, and in January 2025, we interviewed 29 respondents to learn more about their motivations for choosing to work in an academic library, and their experiences with expectations of emotional regulation. Critically examining workplace norms and expectations of service may be perceived as displaying a “negative attitude"" by others, turning attention on the individual rather than systems and structures. We were interested in how expressing any extreme emotions, but particularly those that are frequently perceived to be negative, impacted people in their work environment.

In this presentation, we will share initial data from the interviews in relation to the themes that developed in our survey, challenging us to consider what keeps us engaged in academic library settings. We examine how these experiences and expectations play out in personal narratives in the current post-pandemic and changing environment in the United States. We invite questions and a discussion of how these themes present themselves in our own libraries.

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The Arts, Humanities, and Areas Studies Department of the University of Minnesota Libraries consists of eight liaison/subject librarians covering a myriad of disciplines in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. While our liaison responsibilities and academic backgrounds vary, collectively, we identify information gaps in our collections and strive to acquire materials by and about underrepresented groups and cultures. Similarly, some of us engage with marginalized communities through library programming and events. Panel members will discuss four questions: 1) how they inform themselves about underrepresented groups in their disciplines or geographic regions; 2) how they identify gaps within the collections and prioritize next steps; 3) how they source materials covering underrepresented groups via international vendors, book fairs, and other means; and 4) how they create programs and events geared toward supporting underrepresented groups. The panel will provide audience members with resources and recommendations for diversifying their own collections and library programming.

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Like many universities, Northwestern Health Sciences University has had to confront the role Artificial Intelligence (AI) will play in the future of our university and the professions for which we prepare our students. A task force was convened to identify faculty and student knowledge gaps, clarify policies, and plan educational opportunities.

This session will discuss the role two campus librarians played on this task force. The work was built around guidance and resources, including surveys of faculty and students, crafting a syllabus statement, providing AI training to faculty,  and developing a tutorial we hope to embed in new student orientation.  We will also discuss our hopes for AI support at NWHSU in the future.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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We all know what's happening - to libraries, to the public sector, to the functions of our government, to our basic freedoms, to the most vulnerable in our society. What does a principled response look like? What meaningful actions can we take? Join Library Freedom Project director Alison Macrina for a frank discussion of our current conditions in libraries and beyond. Alison will talk about what's happening, what's at risk, and what  we can be doing right now to fight for and build more democracy. She'll talk about assessing risk, supporting each other, and planting seeds of possibility and hope.

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In 2022, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities libraries staff were approached by a student interested in restarting a campus book club after the pandemic and partnering with the libraries. A book club board was created with two library staff in advisory roles and a small number of students. We will share what we have learned throughout the growth of our book club, provide space for exchanging best practices, and inspire you to create a book club of your own. Possible topics include: discussion moderation strategies, online platforms to best support the club’s needs, book selection, and outreach/promotion.

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This data landscape project explores where datasets are discoverable, under which conditions, and evaluating the presence and status of open access datasets in the open scholarship infrastructure.. We have gone about this by using OpenAlex, which is a free and open catalog of the world's scholarly research system. Our work also builds upon the Realities of Academic Sharing (RADS) Project Phase 1, which used Crossref and DataCite as a source and was completed before OpenAlex was launched. Since OpenAlex has access to many open access datasets via ORCID, ROR, DOAJ, Unpaywall, Pubmed, Pubmed Central, the ISSN International Centre, Subject-area and institutional repositories from arXiv to Zenodo, this allows us to get a data landscape of the current status of dataset management based on these sources.
We used Python to access OpenAlex’s dataset metadata via its API; we narrowed our scope to datasets published from authors who are affiliated with institutional members of the Data Curation Network (DCN), whose vision it is to advance open research by making data more ethical, reusable, and understandable. Narrowing our scope to datasets affiliated with DCN members, allows us to compare partners who collaborate and use similar dataset submission processes and standards. This way we can see how DCN members' datasets are being presented in the open scholarship landscape. In addition, we can compare how member institutions stack up against each other, and how our own institution, the University of Minnesota, compares to the larger group, and how this may inform our library’s guidelines and policies

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In this featured session to follow the keynote, Alison will engage us in an interactive activity where we can work through feelings of grief, anxiety, and fear, and strategize about real, actionable steps towards a better future.

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The US Congressional Serial Set is widely considered one of the most important publications of the US Federal government and is a rich source of primary source material on all aspects of American history.  The University of Minnesota Twin Cities works to preserve this historic title as an official Preservation Steward partner with the US Government Publishing Office.  Come to this session to learn about the history and content of the Serial Set and how our library has preserved and grown our large collection of over 14,000 volumes as a Federal Depository Library and Preservation Steward.

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Wrap-up and thank you