Yearly Archives: 2025

The Library World, Mental Illness, and the Everyday

Peer-Reviewed Article, , , , ,

By Andrew Field
Royal Oak Public Library

1.

Yesterday I heard a noise I immediately identified as a library noise – the sound of a cart rolling. And though it sounds insignificant, the particular sound felt almost Proustian in its associational richness, in the fecundity of its everydayness. For carts, as we know, are what we use to transport books, to get them where they need to be; and they are used all the time in libraries, and located in various places in the library: in storage rooms, basements, second floors and hallways, stationary, alone, empty and filled with books, pushed by pages, clerks, librarians, and managers, and fated with different configurations of wheels that squeak in certain ways or roll steadily or crookedly on the particular floor or carpet. You would think, then, that carts are conspicuous aspects of libraries, and, in a sense, they are. But in another sense, they are so interwoven into the fabric of the everyday at the library, that we do not see them. Even when we use them, unless they are broken, they are transparent to us. And so this sound, when I heard it, meant something; it seemed to emerge out of a texture I couldn’t see, and illustrate something about that texture. In so doing, I felt I was intuiting something about the nature of libraries, about the feel of the world of libraries, and therefore in some sense the world itself. And it left me wondering, what did that experience mean?

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Learning at Work: Translating Classroom-Based Inclusive Pedagogies to Academic Library Student Employment

Essay, ,

By Nancy Shore, STEM & Health Sciences Librarian,
Columbus State University,
Erin Tan, Head of Access Services,
Columbus State University, Columbus, GA
and
Kristina Clement, Assistant Director of Academic Engagement and Instruction and Instruction Coordinator,
Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA

Introduction

Student employees play an important role in the daily operations of academic libraries, contributing to access services, user engagement, and special projects while simultaneously developing transferable skills for future employment (McKenna, 2020; Sterling, 2015). The student employees benefit from meaningful participation in campus operations and financial support for their work in academic libraries, while library supervisors face challenges in training, motivating, and retaining a transient workforce. Traditional supervisory strategies geared for full-time staff often emphasize efficiency and policy adherence, but they may fall short in supporting the diverse learning needs of student workers, particularly those who are first-generation or neurodivergent (Accardo et al., 2024; Becker-Redd et al., 2018). Emerging scholarship suggests that extending inclusive pedagogical frameworks, commonly applied within classroom contexts, into campus workplaces can help address these challenges. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) emphasizes proactive planning to reduce barriers by offering multiple means of engagement, representation, and action (Smith, 2025), while Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) highlights the value of clearly communicating purpose, tasks, and criteria for assignments and job responsibilities (Winkelmes, 2023). Both frameworks demonstrate positive impacts on student confidence, belonging, and persistence in employment settings and hold potential to enrich student experience as employees in academic libraries.

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Makeshift Mentoring for Atypical Academic Librarians

Essay,

by Daniel E. Feinberg
and Tamara Druash
University of North Florida

Abstract

Mentoring has been a part of every career in the modern era. It has been practiced so that a seasoned veteran in a career will give guidance to a protégé or a person new at a job. A typical example would be that a senior associate in the field would be guiding and advising a novice in the field. For academia this would usually mean a higher-ranked professor working with a novice professor to give guidance for the mentee’s professional career. However, what happens when a mentoring system is not in place at an institution, or if there are not enough tenured mentors available? In this article, two academic librarians tackled teaming up to work towards promotion, creating an informal peer-to-peer mentoring partnership. It became relevant at our institution because of this exact scenario. Suddenly, a lack of tenure, or as it is called at the university, University Librarians, caused a loss for traditional mentoring. Therefore, peer-to-peer mentoring was the best option as seen by the two librarians. It is recognized that at times it may seem strange for two associate librarians working side by side to work towards promotion. It was the option that would work best in this case. This article will discuss what informal peer-to-peer mentoring is, how two academic librarians have used it at a university to benefit their careers, and some of the challenges involved as they embarked on their mentoring journey.

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Building Sustainably: A Collaborative Partnership for New Student Orientation

Peer-Reviewed Article, , , , , ,

LaTiffany Davis
Student Success Librarian for First Year Engagement
University of Tennessee, Knoxville

and

Sarah McCarter
Student Success Librarian for Professional Literacies
University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Introduction

To continue our support in the onboarding and transition of new students, this case study will demonstrate how the University of Tennessee, Knoxville Libraries (UT Libraries) has consolidated efforts to maximize the impact we have on students and their transition to college. With the overall goal of creating a seamless onboarding experience  for first year students, the following pages will outline a campus-level redesigned new student orientation pathway, UT Libraries’ collaborative integration into the orientation program, and practical lessons learned that librarians could use in similar partnerships. Continue reading Building Sustainably: A Collaborative Partnership for New Student Orientation →

The Writing Blitz: Engaging Students Through a High-Impact Hybrid Event

Peer-Reviewed Article, , , , ,

Alexandra Boris
Social Sciences Librarian – University of Tennessee

Kat Brooks
Collections Strategist – University of Tennessee

Sarah McCarter
Student Success Librarian for Professional Literacies – University of Tennessee

Erin Elizabeth Whitaker
Student Success Librarian for Information Literacy – University of Tennessee

Abstract

The Writing Blitz is a long-standing high impact event held by The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Libraries. The original event was in-person, however, due the COVID-19 pandemic we transitioned to hybrid format to continue to reach students in the most accessible way possible. We will discuss how we managed an event in a hybrid environment and maintained relationships with crucial campus partners. In Fall 2023, we surveyed students and assessed perceptions and preferences for hybrid events. This article will outline the planning stages, execution, assessment, and our challenges and successes for delivering a hybrid engagement event.

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