April 13-15, 2018

Pullman San Francisco Bay Hotel, Redwood City, California

Change is an inevitable and can be a welcome part of our jobs. In this ever-changing landscape, libraries are feeling pressure to provide solutions to many and various challenges: shifts in access to our resources, “evolving” ideas of credibility and authority, increasing threats to our patrons’ civil liberties, a movement to “all-things-digital”, staff/library reorganization, and more. How can libraries rise to the challenges of engaging our students and colleagues, advocating for our communities, and protecting our democracy? The CARL 2018 Conference builds upon the CARL 2016 Conference, “What we talk about when we talk about value…” by asking: How will we, as libraries, navigate change, reassert and use our core values to ground our everyday work, strengthen our advocacy, and buoy our hopes in times of uncertainty?

From a March 2017 article in American Libraries, trends to watch include: entrepreneurship, civic engagement and innovation, school libraries as global educators, sustainability, virtual reality, welcoming communities, accessibility, academic tech focus, and 21st century ethics. What do these trends look like on a more local level, and how can we translate them into the work we do on a day-to-day basis?

Sessions will include, but are not limited to, the following areas:

  • The Library Bill of Rights and the core values of librarianship; issues of equal access, diversity, and inclusion; concerns with intellectual freedom, privacy, and censorship
  • Misinformation, disinformation, and educating users
  • New ways of understanding the user experience to shape library services and programs
  • Open access, OER, scholarly communication, and copyright challenges
  • Resource sharing, consortial practices, shared collections, and discovery systems
  • Changing roles of librarians, and the larger changes in the profession
  • Innovations in acquisitions and technical services: Cataloging, RDA implementation, electronics rights management, demand-driven acquisition, eBooks, and big data/library metrics
  • Collaborative partnerships on- and off-campus