When one of the presenters attended STELLA (Science, Technology, Engineering Library Leaders in Action) Unconference meeting in 2018, she noticed (and felt herself) a collective pressing need amongst the attendees to understand more about integrating the many components of social justice into STEM librarianship. For decades, much has been researched and published on the exclusion of and barriers for people from marginalized communities in the STEM fields (Xie, Fang, & Shauman, 2015). These issues remained tucked in the corners, certainly out of sight for most STEM librarians, until the last decade whereupon they have increasingly moved to the forefront of STEM conversation and research. STEM librarians have an opportunity to join in this conversation and create opportunities for our users to learn more about social justice issues within the STEM fields. One potential place of opportunity is our STEM LibGuides.

This Keynote Address is based on the content analysis research we are currently conducting on the textual presence of social justice concepts on over 100 institutional Chemistry, Mathematics, and Physics LibGuides. One immediately useful result of our research is the identification of social justice resources that STEM librarians have integrated into their subject guides. Thus, in addition to sharing our research project and preliminary results, we would like to use our session time to offer a few simple ways that you can add social justice content to your science subject guides. This interactive component will invite you to update your subject guide along the way with us. We will also leave time for you to share any social justice resources that you already have in your subject guides.

Xie, Y., Fang, M., & Shauman, K. (2015). STEM Education. Annual Review of Sociology, 41(1), 331–357. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-071312-145659

Comics and graphic novels have been gaining in popularity and perceived legitimacy for years, and the collections at Grand Valley State University (GVSU) have been keeping up! In this lightning talk, Mary Ruge and Emily Metcalf will feature a new graphic medicine collection hosted within GVSU's health sciences library. They'll discuss the collections' inspiration, collection development methodology, and the project's goals for instruction and engagement. Storytelling through comics and graphic novels has the potential to revitalize the use of the physical collections in a historically low-usage space, engage users as both learners and creators, and reconnect users to the patient-centered compassion that drew them to the health sciences in the first place.

Traditional library databases like Scopus have integrated AI to enhance their research capabilities. Meanwhile, emerging AI-powered tools such as Consensus are also gaining traction. How does Scopus AI compare with these non-traditional tools? What lessons can we learn from comparing these resources? This presentation will delve into Scopus AI and various AI-powered tools, examining their pros and cons in conducting literature reviews, and provide insights into how these technologies are transforming the research landscape.

Often STEM academics find and use information differently, and in some instances entirely different resources, than those who work professionally in a STEM field. Academic STEM librarians providing information literacy instruction in university courses regularly take guidance from faculty on what types of resources to introduce to students. This can lead to information literacy instruction at the university level preparing students well for graduate studies but may leave gaps in information knowledge for students entering their first professional job. While the main goal of many university curriculums is to help students develop critical thinking skills, it is also important to ensure students have practical skills for future employment when they graduate. For academic librarians to ensure students have these skills, librarians need to know the current trends in information requirements for the disciplines they do instruction. Since many academic librarians have not recently or ever worked as a professional in the STEM fields for which they do instruction, this can create a black box of unknown information when preparing for instruction. It is therefore important for librarians to be able to quickly keep up to date with what is happening in STEM professions. However, not all librarians have the time, professional connections or funding to set up surveys or interviews with STEM professionals to better understand information needs in practice. This talk will describe some methodologies used by an engineering librarian to quickly get a snapshot of current trends in information use in professional engineering using engineering job ads, professional publications and social media.

In Fall 2023, a team of engineering librarians joined forces with the User Research Team at NC State University Libraries to conduct a pop-up interview event to gauge student experiences and needs in developing professional and technical skills. Students were invited to reflect and share their strategies for supporting their academic and personal skill goals in the library, across campus, and beyond. Additionally, students identified areas where they felt they could benefit from further support. This session will share insights into the planning process for this event, offering practical tips for engaging students in user research, and highlight common challenges and themes identified from the pop-up event.

The goal of our study was to update the current state of science libraries at Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member institutions, and, where possible, compare our data to previous studies. Library websites were analyzed to obtain a count of science libraries. We identified 152 science libraries at the 120 ARL academic institutions in 2024. Our analysis shows that the number of science libraries has decreased 45% since 1983, even as the number of ARL institutions has increased by 15%. Since our initial study in 2017, there has been a 16% decrease in science libraries. This is partially due to the continuing consolidation of single-subject departmental libraries into multidisciplinary science libraries. “Science” and “science & engineering” libraries now make up a much higher percentage of science branch libraries at ARL institutions compared to 1983 (52% versus 11%). More often, however, science libraries are closed, and their collections are combined with those in the main campus library or sent to off-site storage facilities. The frequency of single-subject science library closures and consolidations is not the same across all disciplines, and there are interesting comparisons to be made with some of the Special Libraries Association’s strongest science communities, e.g., Science-Technology, Engineering, and Physics-Astronomy-Mathematics.

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has made significant advances and is increasingly used in academic and professional settings. GenAI can be seen as a method for discovering information, a producer of information, and a means to participate in communities of learning. However, the ACRL Framework has not yet fully addressed the unique applications and challenges of GenAI. The inclusion of AI literacy as a component of information literacy instruction is important since students may not fully understand where information presented in GenAI is sourced, the authority or accuracy of information from GenAI, nor how they can appropriately attribute GenAI. Recent studies have shown that students are using GenAI in their coursework; however, policies on the use of GenAI in classes may be inconsistent or not addressed at all. Instructors can guide students’ use of GenAI to ensure that they are using it effectively and ethically. Instruction on the capabilities and constraints of GenAI is needed through the intentional integration of GenAI literacy in the classroom. This presentation will introduce participants to students’ perceptions on the use of GenAI in their coursework and a model for collaborating with faculty on incorporating GenAI literacy into their courses through the lens of information literacy.

In Spring 2024, the Engineering Librarian interviewed undergraduate Engineering students in a fundamentals course on their perceptions and use of GenAI as instructed by their professors. Preliminary findings suggest that most students are unsure how to utilize GenAI appropriately within their classes. All the students interviewed explained that they benefited from their course professor's direct instruction regarding GenAI usage within a project or class. This finding was consistent with the participants regardless of their experience with GenAI before the course. A theme that emerged pointed towards the student understanding that GenAI use in an academic setting needed specific instruction to incorporate GenAI responses in an ethical and useful manner.

As a follow-up to this research, an interdisciplinary team of librarians and faculty in STEM will recruit a diverse group of faculty across campus to participate in a faculty learning community on introducing GenAI literacy instruction and assessment for their courses. Instead of trying a one size fits all approach, the interventions will be discipline-specific and unique to the goals of each course. While the effectiveness of the interventions will not be compared to each other, they will be assessed using the same assessment measures. Early progress on this project has included developing GenAI learning outcomes and assessments of related knowledge practices and dispositions adapted from the ACRL Framework. The presenters will share their preliminary work and provide suggestions for effective faculty-librarian collaboration.

Fairly frequently researchers from the sciences, social sciences and humanities, ask the library for help to make a map for an assignment or a piece of scholarship they are working on; other times they want to go a little further and explore some geospatial analysis possibilities for their project. Regardless, both kinds of researchers, be they students or faculty, have little to no experience with either Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software or the principles behind it. The library is glad to help on a case-by-case basis, and can refer more complex projects to the Geospatial Analysis Center on campus. However, to bolster campus wide geospatial literacy skills and address the need we’ve experienced through the requests for help, we’ve offered in-person workshops (which have been poorly attended), and added post-workshop materials to our GIS LibGuide as asynchronous tutorials. These asynchronous tutorials have proven useful in getting people started with the software, however what they are lacking is fundamental geospatial literacy skills, and a familiarity with maps. This is much like writing; the more you read the better a writer you become and the more maps you examine, the better map maker you become. To help build these experiences, the library created a new video series to provide a sort of map show-and-tell. The goals of the series are to point out common features, share map reading skills, showcase the diversity of maps, and most of all, explain that maps are communication pieces, just like a piece of written work. Both should be tailored to a specific audience, presented in a way that the audience will understand and find useful. While the librarian who created these had considerable experience making videos for instructional purposes, a new approach was taken to make these more engaging. Rather than relying on screen capture, the visual elements were created in the video editing software so as to move dynamically with the audio, and bringing in other context such as satellite imagery or photos of the place to make it more real. These were shared on YouTube, bringing these materials and experiences to any learner, connected to the campus or not; they are also embedded on the Maps and GIS LibGuide for people who look for advice there. The materials are therefore discoverable, and quick to share as supplemental instruction with anyone who asks for advice on map making or GIS projects.

In this presentation, librarians from NC State will discuss the creation and implementation of the Emerging Engineers speaker and workshop series. This program invites local engineering alumni back to campus to discuss their career journeys, the transition from student to professional life, and lessons learned along the way with current students. The speaker sessions are complemented by workshops that provide students with opportunities to engage in group projects in a relaxed setting. The goals of these events are twofold: to equip students with valuable insights for their transition into the engineering field by offering firsthand perspectives from recent alumni, and to foster a sense of community and belonging among a population that has faced mental health challenges in recent years. Presenters will discuss how they secured funding, identified speakers, and collaborated with faculty & campus offices to make the series successful. Attendees will leave with an understanding of why it’s impactful for students to hear from alumni (particularly alumni from groups that are underrepresented in STEM) and the value of creating space that allows for informal connection.

In the field of engineering, evidence synthesis is becoming increasingly important for advancing knowledge, guiding future research, and informing practice and policy. For example, systematic reviews have gained popularity in engineering, with the number of systematic reviews published in engineering disciplines increasing at an average rate of soaring 36% from 2015 to 2021[1]. However, it's unclear how engineering students are being involved in this process. Engineering projects are collaborative in nature, often involving one or several labs working together. Undergraduate and graduate students typically assist with these projects under the guidance of faculty members. Traditionally, students are tasked with reading papers and conducting literature reviews for research projects in their lab, and there is an increasing expectation for them to be involved in evidence synthesis projects as well.

Engaging students in systematic reviews often contradicts the instincts of librarians, who may feel it is their duty to dissuade students from undertaking these complex projects rather than assist them [2]. Moreover, the feasibility of an average student completing a high-quality review within a one or two semesters is highly questionable.

At our master-level university, which does not have PhD programs in engineering disciplines, undergraduate and master students are sometimes asked by their advisors to conduct systematic reviews for their capstone projects or master theses. Additionally, faculty members in the same lab may ask students to conduct systematic reviews for research topics. Consequently, engineering librarians often encounter questions from students working on systematic reviews, particularly when their advisors lack hands-on experience with this type of research.

This situation raises important questions: How can we support engineering students and faculty members who lack knowledge about evidence synthesis while managing an appropriate workload? Where do engineering students and faculty members fit in the process of conducting evidence synthesis? Are there specific strategies or resources that help incorporate engineering students into evidence synthesis activities, particularly in resource-depleted institutions lacking support to provide training opportunities (e.g., workshops, credit-bearing courses that other institution can offer)? In addition, faculty members play a crucial role in guiding students. Are there any existing faculty training programs on evidence synthesis that we can use to enhance their ability to mentor students effectively?

I am interested in hearing from others about their experiences and best practices for engaging engineering students in evidence synthesis.

References:
[1] Phillips, M., Reed, J. B., Zwicky, D., van Epps, A. S., Buhler, A. G., Rowley, E. M., Zhang, Q., Cox, J. M., & Zakharov, W. (2024). Systematic Reviews in the Engineering Literature: A Scoping Review. IEEE Access, 12, 62648–62663. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3394755
[2] Wissinger, C. L. (2018). Is there a place for undergraduate and graduate students in the systematic review process? Journal of the Medical Library Association, 106(2), 248–250. https://doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2018.387

You’re beyond “early career” -- what comes next? In many academic institutions, STEM librarians face challenges in their professional presence and potential growth related to flat organizational structures, personal life constraints, and concerns about either being overwhelmed by constant change or stagnating in their own discipline. In this, “I have a Problem” two mid-career librarians will introduce some of their own challenges and invite conversation about navigating career development.

Participants are encouraged to bring both their own particular concerns related to mid- or later career personal calibration and ideas to share on how they navigated maintaining motivation or discovered new directions.

The problem we are combating is students (and faculty) not retaining information about the library, despite hearing it regularly and often. We frequently encounter students and faculty who we know we’ve worked with in the past expressing surprise at our various services—none of which have really changed since the last time we engaged with them. We would like to collaborate with our peers to crowd-source ideas to solve the goldfish problem—short memory of library services, resources, and events.

Scientist biography assignments help STEM students develop their professional identities and senses of belonging by introducing them to new individuals in their scientific communities. These assignments are common across the curriculum in [university name redacted for proposal] College of Science & Math. Many faculty members prefer their students to engage with the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion in these biography assignments by focusing on a scientist from a historically marginalized background. In past years, Twitter was a great resource for students to use to discover and learn about living scientists from a wide variety of backgrounds. Because of Twitter’s recent rapid enshittification (Doctorow, 2022) and subsequent decline in userbase, it no longer feels like a good, reliable source for these student assignments.

Subscription biography databases often don’t contain resources on living scientists from diverse backgrounds. Aside from monographs, where do you send students to learn about their scientific communities? What are your best tips or hidden gems for finding biographical information of living, diverse scientists? How do you help support biography assignments in a meaningful way that helps STEM students develop their professional identities and senses of belonging? Come share your advice and experiential takeaways on this topic. The resources and tips we discuss and discover together will be included in class instruction materials, like lesson plans and LibGuides, that support scientist biography assignments across a variety of STEM disciplines.

Like many women with divergent neurotypes (autism, ADHD, etc.), I received my diagnoses much later in my adult life. As a result, I had by that time already developed a variety of structures and masking behaviors to cope with neurotypical societal expectations, particularly in my professional life. Before diagnosis, I had worked in public libraries for nearly 7 years, and then I left libraries completely for about 5 years while exploring other career opportunities, including those that were fully remote. In 2023, I landed my dream job as an academic science librarian at a university, even within my own preferred specialty, biological and life sciences. Re-transitioning to a “normal” in-person job required a great deal of planning and management of my energy, my time, and my life. One of my greatest fears was that I might never be able to succeed as a (now-diagnosed) neurodivergent person in a neurotypical professional world. With a fantastically flexible supervisor, workplace, and co-workers, as well as a strong support network and plenty of grace, I was able to build a fulfilling professional life that has me excited to go into to work every day and hopeful about my future and the future of other neurodivergent professionals in the academic library sector.

Oh boy, do I have a story for you. What would you do if a group of traffic engineers approached you to assist with a systematic review, but you don't have any evidence synthesis experience because you've never been a health sciences librarian? Oh, and they actually want to do 18 separate comprehensive literature searches, because it's for a book with 18 chapters. The researchers’ grad student's term ends in like, two weeks. Don’t worry, it gets worse - you won’t get authorship. It'll be fine! You'll figure it out! Right? RIGHT?!

Join me as I share this semi-painless but nonetheless ridiculous experience, lessons learned, and how you can do it better than me, should you ever be doomed with a similar fate.

I met my first and truest love at the age of fifteen. While I had enjoyed dalliances with mathematics as a child, I knew I was never going to be the same the very first time my eyes met chemistry’s from across a classroom in Hopkinton, NH. Inspired by an incredible educator, I grew confident in my destiny to become a science educator. I had a plan. I would pursue chemistry, whatever that meant, until I obtained my Ph.D. and found a permanent position as a chemistry professor. Unfortunately, it was impossible for fifteen-year-old Ashley to know what obstacles and fortuitous surprises awaited her on her journey to join the professorate, find her home in academia, and embrace her life as the supportive educator she hoped to become. Join me for my telling of the harrowing journey from studying chemistry to library school to earning my PhD in chemistry and teaching freshman general chemistry and back again.

As I look towards retirement and reminisce over my career, I am very aware of having lived through the digital transformation of librarianship in STEM. I started my career in 1979 over the "big pond" in a major construction company with a telephone and a typewriter and carbon paper! I have had the privilege of working at two top research institutions (Northwestern and Caltech), a NASA agency, a community college and now in the biggest university system (the California State University System). And here I am trying to understand AI, data science and systematic reviews! Recently I have started to talk about this with colleagues so why not tell this at this conference? We are the last of this generation - born in the print era and now retiring as AI dominates our work. A lot has changed, but some basic principles remain the same - echoes of Ranganathan's 5 rules of librarianship - which I think are worth sharing. I wrote this all by myself and any errors are mine and mine alone and cannot be blamed on an AI chat bot!

I’ve taken a circuitous path to librarianship. I have a PhD in Ecology and taught as an adjunct professor for a year and a half before I transitioned to working in libraries. My job title didn’t have the word librarian in it but the job description essentially mapped that of a librarian. I also started off as a solo science librarian, so I didn’t feel like I had a network to reach out to for help. I was very wrong but you just don’t know what you don’t know. I’d like to walk you through my journey from being a Vertebrate Biology instructor to becoming a STEM librarian. I will share with you things that I would have done differently and key insights about things that helped me during my transition to working in libraries without an MLIS.

Librarians are increasingly expected to integrate research and scholarship into their professional practice, often to the ends of promotion and tenure; however, designing and conducting a social science research project is a complex, time consuming process. Additionally, many librarians have received little to no training or practice on qualitative or quantitative research methods in graduate school or work settings. As a result, they may feel stuck between the necessity of generating research output, gaps in their understanding of the research process, and a lack of confidence in completing a project on their own.

In this short presentation structured as a conversation, two STEM librarians will offer best practices to remedy this tension for new researchers at any point in their library careers. We will present this information through the lens of our participation in an IMLS-funded training program for solo researchers and share our experiences conducting qualitative research projects for the first time. We will place a particular focus on developing a project timeline, balancing research work with liaison duties, and building community with other librarian-researchers. Throughout the presentation we will engage with participants to gauge their familiarity with the research process and the depth of their existing research networks. Finally, we will conclude with a survey of interest for librarians interested in a community (listserv, discord, etc) designed for STEM librarian-researchers working in any and all disciplines.

Ensuring the integrity and ethical conduct of research is paramount in the STEM fields. Over the past year, our library hosted a remote Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) workshop series, aiming to foster a culture of ethical research practices among STEM researchers at our institution. This initiative was a collaboration with our local Office of the Vice Provost for Research (OVPR), which traditionally offers the federally mandated RCR training as an in-person, 12-hour course spanning four weeks in the winter.

Our series reimagined and complemented this training with a series of one-hour remote workshops, each focusing on an individual topic such as conflict of interest, effective mentorship, or AI literacy. This format provided a flexible, accessible alternative, attracting a broad audience, and the remote format meant that we were able to accommodate researchers several states away. The library saw increased engagement in our workshop series, while the OVPR saw more researchers seeking guidance from their Research Integrity and Compliance Unit. This presentation will explore the lessons learned from our experience and outline potential improvements for future iterations. Attendees will gain practical insights into designing and implementing similar initiatives, emphasizing the critical role libraries can play in advancing responsible conduct of research. (This session description was written and edited with help from ChatGPT)

Will the advent of generative AI tools that train on large, often open datasets, affect scholars' desire to open up their work? With active court cases helping to shape the future of what is considered fair use in terms of generative AI training data, some publishers and other copyright and data owners are actively seeking out lucrative licensing deals with AI companies. Thus many open and paywalled scholarly articles, data, code, and more are now subject to use for training by generative AI tools, often regardless of the authors' preferences. Will this have a chilling effect on open access publishing and data sharing? Will authors start trying to negotiate AI-related terms in their author agreements? Will scholars be less likely to contribute to open resources (open access journals, open data repositories, Wikipedia, etc.) because they are known training data sources for large generative AI tools? Or will scholars see such use as a positive - an expansion of their impact? This presentation will explore these questions as well as implications for STEM librarianship practice, including practical advice on how to engage in conversations with researchers on these concerns.

Are you teaching one-shots on finding and evaluating scientific sources? Are you looking for a way to assess student learning? In this session, the presenter will discuss efforts to evaluate student usage of scientific resources in a Biology 141 course at Oxford College. Previous assessments had focused on student confidence in finding resources, which is a useful metric, but it is also valuable to determine how effectively students apply and contextualize the sources they find in their research. This session will focus on the creation of a rubric and methodology to evaluate the introductions of Biology 141 students' final papers, and give suggestions for attendees to develop their own assessment based on assignment structures and instruction session learning outcomes.

The ability to analyze information and arguments for credibility is one of the hallmarks of critical thinking. However, the proliferation of disinformation and misinformation on social media has raised concerns among educators regarding students’ ability to assess the credibility and accuracy of this information. This open educational toolkit, created by University of Calgary librarians, supports faculty in engaging students to develop skills to critically appraise the credibility of information disseminated on social media and other information platforms, and more broadly to understand misinformation and disinformation within a broader social context, in particular the deliberate use of disinformation tactics to influence public perception on a variety of topics. The toolkit also focuses on individuals as information actors, and encourages students to adopt critical thinking skills and behaviors when interpreting and sharing information. The toolkit design was informed by an extensive research process involving focus groups, a literature review, classroom piloting, and stakeholder feedback, and includes instructional resources and examples to support teaching curricula across disciplines.

This presentation discusses the challenges, considerations, and approaches we encountered in building this toolkit, a demonstration and walkthrough of the toolkit, and the response the toolkit has had from our community.

As higher education adapts to the rapid technological advances driven by Generative AI, STEM librarians must identify opportunities to integrate these tools into the services they provide and educate both faculty and students in their use. AI tools can be utilized as a vehicle to engage faculty members and entice them to connect or reconnect with libraries. One method STEM librarians can use to encourage faculty to engage their students in library instruction is to integrate AI literacy concepts into both library instruction sessions and online learning objects. Before implementing curriculum changes, assessment is needed to determine the level of AI literacy skills students are developing and identify areas for improvement. Since faculty members work with students on a regular basis, their experiences and perceptions are important for understanding the students’ proficiency with Generative AI tools at the present time.

Currently, little research exists about faculty perceptions of AI literacy and collaboration with librarians to address the skills students need. To determine future content and teaching methods for integrating AI literacy into library instruction, faculty members from East Carolina University’s College of Engineering and Technology were surveyed and participated in follow-up interviews to assess their perceptions of students’ abilities to use, evaluate, and consider the ethical implications of Generative AI tools. The results of these assessments helped the Engineering and Technology Librarian adapt instructional content and teaching methods to include AI literacy concepts and provided new outreach topics for the faculty’s consideration. Other opportunities for collaboration were identified during the research process as well.

In this presentation, survey results and follow-up actions will be discussed to provide STEM librarians with ideas to explore regarding instructional content, methods, and additional opportunities for engagement with faculty. The key takeaways for attendees will be 1) an understanding of the current level of AI literacy skills students possessed based upon the perceptions of STEM faculty members, 2) the use of generative AI tools in teaching and coursework, and 3) the types of content needed in library instruction regarding Generative AI tools. Ideas for collaboration among librarians, faculty members, and other campus units will also be provided.

Systematic reviews are traditionally associated with the sciences, and with medicine in particular. As STEM librarians, we are often aware of affiliate researchers engaged in this synthesis work, sometimes offering guidance on search strategies, or even joining teams of expert reviewers. Evidence synthesis has since expanded to many fields outside of STEM, but how do we – librarians still associated with those same STEM areas – reach out to and make meaningful connections with researchers who aren’t doctors, scientists, or engineers? This presentation will cover two years’ worth of discipline-agnostic workshop instruction on evidence synthesis by a health sciences librarian and an engineering librarian. We will discuss original workshop development and content evolution, cross-campus collaboration, and outcomes for workshop participants and the library. We welcome questions from colleagues in all areas of evidence synthesis support, whether newcomer or accomplished author.

Using exhibits as a powerful tool for outreach in STEM education, this presentation details the journey of creating an innovative exhibit through a collaboration between the STEM librarian and the Exhibit Program Coordinator at California State University, Fullerton. Entitled “The Deductive Duo: Sherlock Holmes and the Elementary Dr. AI,” this exhibit serves as a prime example, demonstrating the effectiveness of interactive displays and thematic storytelling in educating visitors.

The exhibit seamlessly blended the worlds of Sherlock Holmes and artificial intelligence (AI), guiding visitors from Victorian London to modern AI marvels. “The Deductive Duo: Sherlock Holmes” immersed visitors in Holmes’ era, while “The Elementary Dr. AI” highlighted AI’s contemporary significance. Holmes' deductive methods were shown to inspire AI’s technological feats, emphasizing the enduring impact of deductive reasoning on innovation over time. It facilitated critical discussions on ethical considerations in AI development and encouraged exploration of the evolution of detective work from Holmes’ era to modern AI applications. The ground floor featured a dynamic window case that invited visitors to explore Holmes’ methods through literature, while upstairs, two detailed cases and a dedicated panel showcased the integration of Doyle’s detective stories with AI in real-world investigations.

Incorporating quotes from the Holmes stories throughout the exhibit added a touch of authenticity and literary connection. Using pictures scanned from a Holmes Victorian book to show images of Victorian times added a visually immersive element, enhancing the overall visitor experience. Interactive elements, such as detective puzzles, AI word searches, and selected print books from the library collection, received praise for their ability to make complex concepts accessible and enjoyable. The integration of QR codes throughout the exhibit allowed students and faculty to access digital resources, including websites and e-books from the library’s collection. Additionally, faculty involvement through the inclusion of their AI-related research in the exhibit promoted engagement with current academic work at the university.

During the presentation, the exhibit’s inception will be shown from initial concept ideation to the practical challenges faced during design and implementation. Insights from our collaborative approach, involving both the library and STEM education sectors, will be shared. The aim will be to highlight effective strategies for integrating thematic exhibits into library spaces to enhance STEM literacy and foster a culture of inquiry. By showcasing the exhibit’s impact and the positive outcomes achieved, the presentation hopes to inspire fellow STEM librarians and professionals to explore similar innovative approaches at their institutions.

We propose to briefly highlight” Integrating Art into STEM Programming in the Library,” a training webinar/live presentation for public librarians created by members of the Fine Arts and Music Department of the Enoch Pratt Free Library/State Library Resource Center (SLRC). The aim of this SLRC webinar is to demonstrate, through sharing online resources, programming ideas, and examples of fun, easy-to-do STEAM activities, why the arts are a natural and important addition to STEM education for increasing learner engagement and retention of information, and why libraries should be involved in STEAM programming.

Good STEM education identifies and exploits the interconnectedness of its component fields for dynamic learning. STEAM seeks to utilize art’s creative and problem-solving qualities to uncover more connections, and to fuse naturally-aligned arts topics with STEM subjects in order to reach people with different abilities and learning styles. Arts Integration goes even a step further, holding up the arts as a potential primary path to education, useful in the sciences and in other fields.

One segment of our training webinar encourages programming librarians to begin with a particular art practice, technique, or an actual artwork, to examine its scientific underpinnings, and then to connect that information with examples from the real world. For instance, one might look at a pointillist painting by the artist Georges Seurat, then talk about the emerging scientific field of optics in Seurat’s time and examine, through an art activity, how he painted with tiny dots of pure colors that our brains blend into completed images. This could be followed by looking at how computer screens use the same principle with red, green and blue pixels to display a full array of color.

SLRC librarians who have previously presented ”Integrating Art into STEM Programming in the Library” online and in-person will share an 'Art to STEM to Real World Application’ example from the webinar, along with various STEAM learning resources they’ve uncovered, and their thoughts and ideas for other ways in which the arts can enhance STEM learning activities in a library setting.

As the STEM Librarian for my college, I work with many departments and a lot of students. During certain times of the year I am booked with research appointments from students scrambling to find a topic for their capstone or semester long research project. In the quest to balance my availability with the need to help as many students as possible, I decided to try something new: Speed Topic Dating. The beauty of this approach, besides fewer research appointments for me, is that it’s dynamic, fun, and can be used in any discipline. Plus, it also helps those students that might not reach out for assistance (but could really use it). The quick version: I book a 1 hour session in the classroom with the students and professor. Once there, we divide the students into groups of 3-4. I usually bring 2 additional helpers, such as other librarians, director of the STEM Lab, other instructors, etc. Each speed session is timed. In that time, each student in the group pitches their topic idea(s) to their group of fellow students and one librarian/instructor/professor. Everyone gives feedback and ideas. At the end of the time, the librarian/instructor/professor moves to the next groups and we do it again. The students get to hear feedback from many people with diverse backgrounds, they get to practice their own pitches, they give helpful feedback to their fellow students, and hopefully by the end have settled on a topic! Feedback from professors on this program has been very positive. The students settle on topics much faster and are ready to take on the bigger tasks of research and writing sooner in the semester. Join the fun and let’s do some speed topic dating!

The role of the liaison librarian has naturally transformed and evolved over time. However, in the past few years, dramatic changes in post-secondary education, the ever-evolving research and scholarly communications landscape, and relentless advances in technology have all had a significant impact on the duties of subject specialist librarians.

Liaison librarians are adjusting to this new environment by collaborating with faculty and providing new innovative services in the areas of research, teaching, and scholarship. While traditional responsibilities such as reference work, information literacy, collection management, and outreach remain integral parts of liaisonship, new functions related to research data management, digital initiatives, scholarly communication, evidence synthesis, and user experience are increasingly part of liaison librarians’ duties. At our small STEM-focused academic library, we are three liaison librarians who support science, engineering and health sciences programs while managing (balancing) functional responsibilities in the areas of data, 3D printing and evidence synthesis respectively. Due to these hybrid roles, we have had to learn strategies for triaging our workload, discerning the return on investment for projects outside of our scope, and exercising our professional boundaries.

In this talk, we will discuss the ways in which we have taken advantage of the opportunities and addressed the challenges of our hybrid roles, including:
Learning new functional skill sets
Reaching our liaison audiences through our functional work
Deepening our disciplinary knowledge in our liaison areas through our functional areas (e.g. open science workflows through research data management work; students’ experience of the engineering design process through 3D printing support)
Seeking the right balance between the breadth of services we offer and the depth of support we can provide in different areas
Considering short term vs. long term career progression

We will highlight any missteps and lessons learned, while sharing our insights into the future of liaisonship (as we know it).

Ensuring digital accessibility is critical to creating inclusive and user-friendly online content, particularly for users who rely on screen readers. While automatic accessibility checkers can identify the presence of alternative text for images, headings, and link text, they cannot assess the effectiveness or clarity of this content. It requires human judgment to determine if they are beneficial to the visually impaired and people with learning disabilities.

This presentation will highlight the importance of creating appropriate and descriptive alternative text for images and crafting meaningful link text and headings. Attendees will understand why these elements are vital for accessibility and usability.

Recognizing the subjectivity in writing effective alternative text and descriptive headings, this session will provide attendees with practical strategies and best practices. During the presentation, participants will engage in hands-on activities to create their own alternative text for images. They will also explore how generative artificial intelligence (GAI) can serve as a starting point in this process by offering initial suggestions that can be refined and tailored to their needs.

Additionally, attendees will learn to write clear and descriptive link text and headings, enhancing the navigability and readability of their digital content. The session aims to equip STEM librarians with the skills and confidence to improve digital accessibility in their work and at their institutions.

By the end of this presentation, participants will:

• Understand the critical role of effective alternative text, link text, and headings in digital accessibility.
• Develop strategies for creating meaningful and descriptive text that enhances the user experience for individuals using screen readers.
• Practice writing alternative text, link text, and headings through guided exercises and real-world examples.
• Explore the potential of generative AI tools to assist in generating initial drafts of alternative text.