ULA Annual Conference 2026

As a group of seven faculty librarians hired in the same year at a large academic library, we formed a cohort to help support one another in our new roles and navigate the oft-confusing organizational forays and multi-layered processes of our positions. As catalogers and subject specialists from across the humanities and social sciences, we have found that our group—which we have affectionately dubbed Septenarius—serves multiple functions. In this panel, we will discuss some of those purposes, which include but are not limited to, 1) building a community of support and collaboration; 2) supplementing institution-provided trainings and orientations with more local, context-specific discussions; 3) making interdisciplinary connections; and 4) sharing information and resources (e.g., information on available funding for travel, conference opportunities, clarifications on policy and procedures, technical tools and workflows, hiring and supervising student employees, etc.).

We offer our experience as an informal case study of one model of a professional development group developed and run by and for peers. We posit that teams of this kind, organized to provide a space for collaboration and support, are a powerful vehicle for inclusion, where all are strengthened by and have access to a community of professional peers, thus providing social validation, connection, and confidence. While we in Septenarius all work in different areas of the library with unique responsibilities, we have discovered a fondness and friendship in regularly convening—usually once a month—to discuss various projects, hold each other accountable for upcoming deadlines, and share casual moments of connection from our personal lives. As valuable as the support has been in our professional context of preparing for tenure and promotion, we have often commented on how meaningful it is to have a time to connect socially, to commiserate over shared struggles and celebrate individual successes. Recognizing that some of what we do in our group is specific to our own library and university situation, we believe that the principles of nurturing a collegial and collaborative work environment have far-reaching impact and application in librarianship generally and thus will be relevant to conference attendees regardless of job title or status.

A how-to session for ULA Annual Conference attendees. Learn to navigate the exhibits, decipher the conference program, how ULA really works, and ways to get involved. Ask questions and hear from active ULA members about staying connected and engaged in the ULA organization and how to make the most of your professional development.

Come join us for a practical intellectual freedom discussion with ideas on how to have conversations with concerned patrons and community members, tips for creating and maintaining smart policies, advice for responding to reconsideration requests, and discussion on other current intellectual freedom concerns. The panel will spend the first part of the presentation answering common and relevant questions relating to intellectual freedom, after which we will open up the conversation to questions from the audience.

Librarians from USU and BYU will share their experiences with student employees in libraries & archives. Attendees will learn how we’ve worked with hourly employees, interns, graduate students, and more. We’ll talk about the importance of experiential learning to student success and how to grow the understanding and appreciation of archives and librarianship in Utah.

In an era of record-low trust in media and the proliferation of "AI slop," many library patrons have moved beyond healthy skepticism into information nihilism—the belief that because some information is biased, no information can be trusted. This shift presents a unique challenge for librarians: How do we teach critical thinking and evaluation skills without accidentally fueling deep-seated cynicism?

Join our panel of experts as we explore the "messiness of expertise" and share actionable coaching strategies to move patrons from the "everything is fake" mindset toward a productive hopeful skepticism. We will discuss:

• Navigating High-Tension Conversations: Strategies for engaging patrons who reject traditional sources of authority.
• Instructional Frameworks: Evaluating the effectiveness of frameworks like SIFT in the age of generative AI.
• Empowerment over Despair: Helping patrons embrace ambiguity and uncertainty without throwing all journalists and scientists "under the bus."
• Cross-Disciplinary Partnerships: Suggestions for leveraging expertise from experts and colleagues to combat both naive acceptance or nihilistic opposition.

Attendees will leave with practical conversation strategies and resources to help their communities reclaim a sense of agency in a complex information landscape.

Explore how the Pleasant Grove Library has created successful programs to meet the community's changing needs. Using three case studies we will discuss how we discovered the gap in our programming, what need the program is filling, and how it was developed and adjusted.

This panel brings together librarians from academic and public libraries to provide a broad perspective on outreach efforts. We define outreach as connecting with library users outside the physical space of the library or outside the ways that library users typically interact with the library. As such, outreach is a huge undertaking. In this panel we will focus on how building connections and working relationships with individuals, organizations, and groups both within and outside the library is central to successful outreach efforts. Attendees at the panel will gain practical tips for who to partner with and how to begin and strengthen those working relationships.

Quality metadata is vital to the patron experience, but metadata creation is only one part of the metadata lifecyle. Patrons may not know what metadata maintenance, enhancement, and remediation are, but they do notice when they need to be done. In this panel, five librarians from BYU’s Cataloging and Metadata department will discuss the steps they have taken to upgrade the patron experience at their library through improved metadata. This panel will describe how to evaluate metadata, create and prioritize projects, involve student workers, and collaborate with other library departments to improve the patron's experience finding and using library materials