Presenting on Library Residencies at ACRL 2015

It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything here, and a lot has happened since then, but for now I just want to share a poster I co-presented at the ACRL 2015 Conference. The conference took in Portland at the end of March – it was my first time attending ACRL and my first time visiting the Pacific Northwest, which made for a very fun and exciting trip. I was definitely looking forward to this conference, and on top of that, I got a poster session and a roundtable accepted. That added to the excitement (and a bit of nervousness) and made for an even better experience.

Here is the poster, which I presented along with Sara Arnold-Garza and Rosie Linares:

We focused on library residency positions and how they can be valuable to the individual resident as well as the employing institution along three major themes: leadership, innovation, and inclusion. In our presentation, we defined library residency programs, gave some background, and identified three main “pillars” of residency positions. These are recurring themes of residencies that you see in job titles, job advertisements, and program descriptions. We also drew a lot on our own experiences – between the three of us we had one current resident, two former residents, and a residency coordinator.

For the hour our poster was scheduled we were talking with people non-stop – and then even stayed for about an extra 20 minutes because enough people kept stopping by! Many of those I talked with were administrators or directors who were not familiar with residencies, yet expressed interest. Even more were library school students or recent graduates, either on the job market or with the job-hunt fast approaching. I especially enjoyed talking with the MLIS students/recent-grads: some had never heard of library residencies, and some had, but it was a great chance to let more people know about these opportunities while also giving the perspective of someone who’s been there not too long ago.

To learn more about library residencies, ACRL’s Residency Interest Group (RIG) is a good place to start. I’ve found this group to be a welcoming community of current residents, former residents, residency coordinators, and just anyone interested – naturally, it’s how Rosie, Sara, and I met and came to propose this presentation.

Here are a few other related programs from the ACRL Conference: