LOEX and ARLIS/NA: Two CSB+SJU Librarians Travel to Out-of-State Conferences

LOEX and ARLIS/NA: Two CSB+SJU Librarians Travel to Out-of-State Conferences

Written by Kelly Butorac, Business & Marketing Librarian & Bonnie Finn, Arts, Humanities, and Digital Humanities Librarian

Earlier this month, Business & Marketing Librarian Kelly Butorac and Arts, Humanities, and Digital Humanities Librarian Bonnie Finn both attended national conferences to meet up and learn from academic librarians from across the country! Here is a recap of both of their experiences.

LOEX 2026 Conference – Kelly

A woman with light brown hair in a ponytail, wearing a denim jacket and striped shirt, smiles while holding a coffee cup outdoors near a tree and parked cars.
A sign on a tripod stand in a hallway reads "Pre-Conference Workshop" with a conference logo above. The sign is next to a closed door and abstract artwork on the wall.

I traveled to Norfolk, VA from May 6th-9th for my first in-person national librarian conference – LOEX! Each year, LOEX brings together 400+ librarians from academic librarians of all shapes and sizes to talk teaching strategies, advancements in librarianship, and more. After hearing from CSB+SJU Libraries colleagues about the conference’s usefulness and impact, I was excited to see what it was all about.

I kicked off the weekend by attending a pre-conference workshop put on by ACRL – Librarians as Teachers: An ACRL Immersion Workshop. Together, we chatted about the advancement of information literacy instruction, our teaching identities, and how to combat librarianship burnout.

Throughout Friday and Saturday, I attended sessions ranging on topics from critical AI literacy to active learning strategies, to even hearing from a librarian who incorporated a semester-long information literacy course at her institution. I left feeling inspired, and ready to incorporate the things I learned into classes this Fall. My summer to-do list got a whole lot longer!

ARLIS/NA 54th Annual Conference – Bonnie

A small, handmade booklet with a grid design and partially visible printed text stands upright on a white table in a brightly lit room with blurred chairs and tables in the background.

ARLIS/NA (Art Libraries Society of North America) held their 54th Annual Conference in Montréal, Quebec, Canada on May 2nd-6th this year. What a beautiful city!

I started off the conference on a workshop panel for students and emerging professionals that were new to art librarianship. We answered a set of questions about applying for jobs and application materials, then met with the attendees for table discussions about marketing themselves. I also presented a poster with three colleagues from other institutions, “Weaving in Resilience: Determining Capacity and Resisting Pressures in Digital Humanities,” which included a Zine for questions to ask, and a QR code to a public Zotero bibliography. (Download here!)

Other sessions I attended included lots of info about zines, video games in libraries, and plenty of ideas to think about adding to CSB+SJU Libraries and class sessions.

It would be fun to have a Zine-making corner in the Makerspace, where people could make and take personal zines! An interesting class activity could be LARPing in the Library – a different way to find resources in the library – ask me about it!