TNLA 2025 Conference

University of Tennessee, Knoxville Libraries has worked in partnership with UT Extension to create new avenues of building information and digital literacy skills in communities throughout the state that have historically (and presently) had limited access to broadband. This presentation will talk about how the partnership works, how it expands opportunities for community members to access information and digital literacy trainings beyond the walls of their libraries, and how a train-the-trainer model can relieve the burden on already strained libraries in meeting the needs of their communities.

Training student employees to work in our libraries is a time-intensive process that must be repeated often, especially at 2-year institutions like Pellissippi State Community College. In this session, we will provide an overview of how we refined our student employment program to streamline training and create a partnership of librarian supervisors. We recently went back to basics by aligning student employee training to fit the needs of our four campus libraries and multiple departments, while also aligning to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) competencies as required by our Human Resources Department’s student evaluation forms.

Recruiters from Unum, one of Chattanooga's largest employers, will share tips on making your resume stand out from the crowd and ace your interview. We will also discuss Unum's job skills partnership with the Chattanooga Public Library.

Inventory projects may be important for collection management, but they often get overlooked, postponed, or given a scan-it-and-forget treatment. With a little collaboration inventory can be transformed into a powerful tool to identify and correct a wide variety of problems in the collection and dramatically improve accuracy and retrieval. This presentation provides an overview of current inventory practices at the University of Memphis McWherter Library: the who, the how, the why, and the positive impact inventory can have on the print collection

While librarians may ask ourselves if we are doing a good job, we often don’t reflect effectively on our actions or decisions we make as librarians. In this session, we will discuss the importance of reflection and participate in a guided activity using Gibbs Reflective Cycle to help us examine our professional choices; think critically about beliefs concerning patrons, programming, or instruction; and consider ways to emphasize or modify what we do in our libraries. While this session includes practicing reflection, no one is expected to share personal experiences; group discussions will focus on reflection in general.