About this conference
Background
In 2022, the University of Mississippi Libraries (UML) actively sought to expand community engagement outreach. Academic librarians and deans from Mississippi universities met to discuss ways that UML and others could create more outreach opportunities, specifically for school librarians. For the past few years, UML has wanted to create goals that align with the university’s mission in outreach and community engagement, yet barriers such as a shortage of staff and resources kept this from becoming a reality.
In May 2023, the Head of Research and Instruction Services at UML was accepted into the University’s inaugural Community Engagement Fellowship cohort, establishing UML as an official community engagement partner. UML's newly hired Outreach and Strategic Initiatives Librarian became a partner in planning the library’s new outreach initiatives. From discussing needs with local information professionals, two opportunities that would benefit the K-12 community were identified, one of which is The School Library Symposium: a professional development day for school librarians.
About the Symposium
The University of Mississippi Libraries (UML) is expanding our outreach to school librarians in Mississippi. Melissa Dennis, Head of the Research and Instruction Department, and Elizabeth Batte, Outreach and Strategic Initiatives Librarian, have been meeting with fellow information specialists who would like to create community engagements with us and are working to coordinate outreach opportunities for UML. We are excited to announce plans for the library’s first symposium for school librarians! We are partnering with local school librarians, academic librarians, school educators, the UM School of Education, and our wonderful support from UM Friends of the Library to help us design the Symposium set for Monday, December 11, 2023, 8:00 a.m. - 3:45 p.m.
The SLS has 2 goals: 1) to help school librarians gain CEU credit in professional development that can help them work with their students to be better prepared for college and careers. 2) to enhance the relationship between UM and school librarians in Mississippi. To achieve our goals, we are working with campus partners to cover all symposium expenses. We hope to develop connections between campus scholars and the K-12 community by having leaders in emerging fields engaging directly with school librarians during the symposium on topics like censorship, DEI, collection development, and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence. By enhancing accessible professional development opportunities and sharing our research and experience with our fellow library educators, The University of Mississippi Libraries hopes this School Library Symposium will be an annual event for teaching and learning.
Objectives
- UML objective: Provide accessible professional development to 40 regional school librarians.
- Campus partner objective: Extend awareness to university resources and research.
- Community partner objective: Collaborate in the symposium to gain CEU credits and knowledge from peers and speakers on ways to enhance K-12 education at their schools.
Assessment Methods
The assessment tools will be summer planning focus groups with school librarians to establish the symposium agenda and a feedback survey given at the end of the symposium to all participants that UML can use to analyze feedback about each event’s success in programming, timing, location, and other factors that would enable or prohibit future participation. A long-term measure of success will be comparing demographic and geographic reach of the UML Symposium participants with similar data from other one-day conferences for school library professional development in Mississippi, as well as the satisfaction with the quality of programming at these events. UML will continue to work with campus and community partners to plan and assess future programming that supports all objectives.
Future Plans
By enhancing accessible professional development and sharing academic research directly with school library specialists, UML can provide a path for enhanced learning to fellow library educators that is currently unmet. This fundamentally supports the University’s mission by extending our instruction and sharing our research with teachers. Future discussion to enhance this experience include working with campus partners to establish a funding pool for librarians who need CEU’s, yet may not be able to afford to attend the symposium without support.
