NCLA Con 2025

Whether expanding our reach to new community members or taking on the risk of navigating tough topics, improving our capacity to engage in dialogue across difference will help librarians expand their library's capacity to serve as a third space bringing communities together for interaction and learning. When diving into new challenges of the present and future, or revisiting old disagreements, our capacity for healthy dialogue enables us to build a sense of community, become more effective problem-solvers, and help unlock the potential in our communities to overcome deep-seated challenges. New frontiers mean greater uncertainty, at a time when so much feels unstable. Healthy relationship is critical to our success, and it comes not from avoiding conflict altogether, but learning how to take advantage of healthy conflict as an inevitable dimension of living in community with people different from ourselves.This pre-conference workshop is designed to build participants’ capacity for civil discourse on tough topics facing our communities and even libraries themselves. We will explore understanding civil discourse in the context of other peaceful tools for engagement, the impact of our particular identities and experiences, and specific ways we can improve our day-to-day engagements in a difficult political environment.

Library leaders must deeply understand the social and political climate in their towns and counties in order to position their libraries for future funding success. The first step is to know that funders are not always library users, and their decision to fund the library is not generally based on self-interest. Whether they are elected officials or donors, funders are motivated by compassion, pride, and data. In tough budget climates, they are motivated by evidence-based policymaking. This session will provide actionable ways to refine, rework, and even rewrite your municipal or county budgets for stability and growth. You are the only expert on how your library can affect real change and support your community. Knowing what messages resonate with and activate current and potential stakeholders is key to effective communication about your funding.

Efforts to restrict or suppress content can take many forms and come from various sources. When such efforts arise from concerned parents or members of a community, it is crucial to have honest and difficult conversations. However, if they become politicized or are done for political purposes, they may be driven by external agendas rather than legitimate local concerns. This session will provide insights on distinguishing between external agendas and legitimate local concerns. Being well-prepared to address the issues, organizations, and political beliefs fueling these divisions is crucial.

Libraries are uniquely positioned to support local non-profits by providing resources and expertise. This session will explore innovative ways libraries can (at little or no cost) provide non-profits with a wide array of programs, training, and volunteer recruitment support. Attendees will gain practical strategies for launching similar initiatives in their own libraries, which will both aid the non-profits and promote the library through the people who are often the most active in a community.

While traditional library instruction offered in a one-shot model often focuses on finding and evaluating sources, librarians often lack an adequate platform for further guiding students through deeper concepts within the Information Literacy Framework for Higher Education. Gardner-Webb Library designed a series of application-based workshops in collaboration with the university's Student Success division, which also serve as an alternative to our traditional information literacy & instruction offerings. Our workshops include podcasting, 3D printing, Copyright 101, utilizing University Archives, and visual design using Canva. These workshops emphasize hands-on learning and visual literacy, equipping students with the skills necessary to integrate research into their academic and professional work. Each session is designed to help students move beyond the research phase and into the creation and communication of knowledge. For example, students can use podcasting to engage in scholarly discourse in a low-stakes environment, and Canva to visualize data and research findings. These workshops foster deeper engagement with materials while building transferable skills. A key component of our program's success is our collaboration with the Student Success division on campus. This partnership has allowed us to tailor workshops to student needs, ensuring alignment with coursework and career readiness goals. The demand for these workshops has grown significantly, with faculty requesting customized sessions for their students as well as their own faculty-focused workshops to support professional development, research dissemination, and tenure promotion. An unforeseen benefit to the workshops has been a reframing of how librarians are viewed on our campus. While our campus community frequently praises the library's helpfulness, it is often within the context of traditional research support. These workshops have highlighted the broader scope of the library's contributions to teaching and learning, giving faculty and students a greater understanding of the diverse range of expertise the library offers. Given our library's small staff size, we greatly benefit from creating strategic partnerships across campus with CETL and Student Success. We have also been conscious of making the workshops part of sustainable change so that the workload is manageable. This session will discuss how our library implemented these workshops, strategies for effective campus partnerships, and best practices for expanding library's instruction beyond the traditional one-shot model. Attendees will leave with practical and actionable ideas for integrating application-based learning into their own instructional programs, fostering innovation, and reinforcing the library's role as a key player in student and faculty success.

We would like to use this opportunity to showcase what social work and peer support looks like at the High Point Public Library. We will share what prompted this partnership between the Mental Health Associates of the Triad and the High Point Public Library, what services we provide not only for the patrons but also for the staff, as well as the data and statistics we have collected since starting our program. Additionally, we will share creative ways other libraries can still be a resourceful place for vulnerable populations without requiring funding. Furthermore, we will cover examples of future endeavors for libraries, social workers, and peer navigators serving the mental health and homelessness population.

In the midst of a major library transformation, Davidson College Library launched a series of internal learning networks to support cross-functional collaboration, informal professional development, and a shared sense of purpose. One of the most dynamic of these has been the Object-Based Inquiry Network. Rather than focusing on formal pedagogy or technical expertise, this network encourages staff to approach archival materials, technologies, and tools as springboards for inquiry. Staff are invited to bring challenges, brainstorm ideas, or simply explore together. These sessions foster a sense of connection and creativity during a time of organizational change, providing an outlet for shared learning that is collaborative and energizing rather than prescriptive. This presentation will introduce the goals, structure, and spirit of the Object-Based Inquiry Network. Whether you're in archives, public services, operations, or digital scholarship, this presentation will offer practical inspiration for building collaborative learning communities in your own context-especially those rooted in curiosity, conversation, and a love of meaningful materials.

Short-term leave, like parental, family, or medical leave, can have long-term effects on careers. Often the need to take leave arises suddenly, and there is little notice or preparation possible, leaving regular work-flows disrupted and special projects in the lurch. This can be stressful for managers as they struggle to identify critical gaps, find coverage, and equip their employees; it's stressful for colleagues as they scramble to understand new assignments and manage additional workload. It is also stressful for the librarian on leave to assemble necessary materials for the handoff, let work responsibilities stall, and to return to work without a clear sense of where things stand. Recent research shows that short-term leaves like parental leave can pose a challenge for librarians' careers and for library communities. This presentation aims to build on the work of Mollie Peuler (2024), Emily A. B. Swanson (2020), and Alexandra Gallin-Parisi (2017); but while those papers offer themes and takeaways for administrators to better support parents before and after leave, this presentation will add a practical option for anyone who might need to take short-term leave of any kind. Grounded in personal experience, project management literature, and librarianship literature, this session would be applicable and adaptable to library workers in any setting. While the frontiers of life can be unexpected, in this presentation the author plans to share concrete strategies one can take to proactively document responsibilities and materials so that if an absence is necessary, the work can continue. In the past five years, the author has, herself, taken two short-term leaves of absence from her work as a liaison librarian in an academic library. In order to equip her colleagues the first time she took leave, she created an easy to understand and adapt calendar-based system, a short reference guide for frequent tasks, and a suite of templates for emails and instruction. She shared this information in a common drive and ensured it was labeled and available to her department. These actions were simple and straightforward, but they were so successful that they were adopted by other members of the department. Her manager also asked to use them for onboarding new employees so that they might have models as they settled into new work. The second time the librarian took leave, she simply had to make minor updates to her materials. Sharing this calendar-based workflow resource will not totally solve the stress that short-term leave can cause for a library or library workers, but it might serve as a map to help both parties navigate the new frontier of absence. Until the worker returns, confident and at ease, on that not-so-distant horizon.

How nimble is your library? If a staff member is gone for an extended period of time, can their major job duties be covered? Do your staff want to build new skills? Cross-training is a solution to all of these challenges! Cross-training is any form of employees learning job duties that are outside their normal focus from their colleagues within the same library system. Implementing a cross-training program not only helps your staff grow professionally, but it also benefits your library as a whole while keeping training costs low. By emphasizing cross-training at your library, you will have staff that can step in and fill gaps that may arise and develop well-rounded, skilled staff. Cross training can have a variety of appearances, from people within a single library learning each other's areas, to creating staff who are comfortable at more than one branch location, to back-ups for tasks crucial to the library's success. Cross-training is also beneficial to library staff by allowing them to build new skills and gain experience in different aspects of the library to support their own career goals and professional development. In this session, librarians will discuss the benefits of cross-training and ways to implement it at your library. Whether you work in a single library or multi-branch system, there are multiple ways to design a cross-training program to help your staff grow and enable your library to rapidly adapt to changing needs. Practical tips and ways to avoid common pitfalls will also be covered.

The integration of library services into student transition programs has emerged as a novel approach in the evolving landscape of academic affairs on college and university campuses. At Augusta University (AU), the AU Libraries have partnered with the Office of New Student and Family Transitions for orientation events and transformed the library space into a dynamic event venue for other unique activities welcoming students to campus, such as ice skating in the library (yes, you read that correctly). This cross-departmental partnership between transition programs and university libraries directly addresses the need for creative academic engagement from the first day on campus. It reflects the growing emphasis on holistic student development, integrating academic resources and recreational activities to enhance the student experience. This session will highlight the importance of collaboration in creating impactful student experiences and showcase the potential of libraries as multifunctional spaces for student activities. Attendees will learn strategies for incorporating library services into transition programs and will understand the benefits of early library engagement in fostering a culture of resource utilization among students

Libraries serve as pivotal community hubs, offering spaces where individuals of all ages can learn, engage, and celebrate cultural traditions together. This session delves into the development and execution of multigenerational cultural programming, emphasizing its significance in strengthening community bonds. Using the Traditions of Ramadan & Eid series as a case study, participants will gain insights into: Program Development; Steps to conceptualize and design inclusive cultural events that resonate with diverse audiences. Outreach Strategies: Effective methods to engage various community segments, ensuring widespread participation. Partnership Building: Techniques to collaborate with local organizations, businesses, and cultural groups to enhance program authenticity and reach. Attendees will leave with actionable strategies, templates, and resources to replicate multigenerational cultural programming in their own libraries. Whether you're just starting out or looking to enhance your library's approach to inclusive community engagement, this session will provide you with the tools and inspiration needed to bring meaningful cultural programming to life.  

Library staff encounter people with trauma histories every day. We don't usually know their stories, but we can approach our patrons and our colleagues with a person-centered, trauma-informed lens. In 2024-2025, Amanda Goldson (librarian at Charlotte Mecklenburg Library) and Rachel Green (licensed clinical social worker at Jewish Family Services) developed and presented 6 training sessions on the PCTI lens to CML staff members. At the same time, Amanda put together a grant-funded, PCTI healing arts series for the public with local artists teaching a variety of media. In this presentation, Amanda and Rachel will talk about the basics of PCTI and what was learned by adapting PCTI to library services and programs.