Connect and Communicate Presents – Once Upon a Time in the Academic Library: Storytelling Skills for Librarians

Presented by 

Maria Barefoot, Sara Parme, and Elin Woods

Wednesday, April 26 at 1:00 pm EST

Registration Link

Academic librarians can apply storytelling in the same way that teachers, entertainers, lawyers, and businesspeople have done for centuries. Once Upon a Time in the Academic Library explores applications of storytelling across academic librarianship in three sections: The Information Literacy Classroom, The Stacks and Physical and Virtual Library Spaces. This presentation, given by the books’ authors, will explore the theoretical application and cultural considerations of using storytelling principles in these three areas of librarianship and share some examples from the book. The first five registrants will receive a free copy of their book, Once Upon a Time in the Academic Library: Storytelling Skills for Librarians, published by the Association of College and Research Libraries in 2022.

We will mute participants on entry into the Zoom room. Session will be recorded and available on YouTube after the session. We will enable Zoom’s Live Transcription feature during the session.

Maria Barefoot is currently the online learning librarian at the University of Delaware. She has used storytelling in all of her library roles and is currently developing digital badge programs using storytelling principles. She became interested in the connection between storytelling and learning while pursuing her Master of Education degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She recently presented at ACRL and has published in Reference Services Review, Pennsylvania Libraries: Research and Practice, and The Library Assessment Cookbook.

Sara Parme, MLIS, MBA, is the Project Director for the Appalachian College Association’s Open and Affordable Resources Initiative and the Grants Coordinator of PA GOAL, Pennsylvania’s open and affordable grants program. After working in academic libraries for nine years, thanks to the mentors and some wonderful people she’s met along the way, her professional interests are virtual community building, project management, and not reinventing the wheel. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Administration and Leadership Studies. Her dissertation focuses on status and incivility among academic library employees. She’s a productivity geek and can have lengthy conversations about planners and focus apps.

Elin Woods is an independent researcher previously holding librarian posts at Saint Francis University and most recently at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania as a student success librarian. Her slightly unconventional path to libraries included time spent working at a newspaper and planning events before pursuing her MLIS from Clarion University. Since then, she has worked in both public and academic libraries, believing that they both have something to learn from one another. Her favorite way to tell stories is in the form of food, as she especially loves baking her way through historical Welsh and northern English cookbooks and the recipes she has from her grandmothers.

If you would like to present with C&CS, please contact the C&CS team.

This project is made possible by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, Governor.

Support is also provided by the College and Research Division of the Pennsylvania Library Association.