On August 15, 2023, The University of Tulsa's McFarlin Library hosted their first conference for school librarians. Though this conference has now become an annual, ever-evolving event, it was years in the making. The idea for this conference model was informed by data from TU students and the first-hand experience of one McFarlin librarian.
In Fall 2019, conference creator Lisa Grimes noticed a deficit with the information literacy skills of students in the FYE and English 1033 courses taken by TU freshmen. Looking for data to back up this observation, Lisa created a survey for all freshmen to gauge their research readiness. The data showed that 62.6% of students did not know how to do scholarly research and 68.9% felt they had not had formal library training prior to attending TU. While she was then able to use this data to improve the instructional support offered by McFarlin for TU students, Lisa still knew that more could be done to prevent this gap.
Months later Lisa woke up in the middle of the night with an idea for a conference that would help McFarlin reach out and support the community, while filling a gap in scarce professional development offered for school librarians around the state. Lisa was a public-school librarian for 11 years prior to coming to The University of Tulsa, and knows how challenging it is to meet the needs of an entire school community. Combining this knowledge with the skillsets of her team at the McFarlin Library, she was able to create this conference model as a way to empower fellow librarians. When it came time to put planning into action, Lisa was able to use her connections with Tulsa Public Schools (TPS) librarians to secure an inaugural half-day conference as part of the back-to-school Professional Development required for all TPS librarians.
This conference continues to be an example of how The University of Tulsa supports students of all ages across Tulsa. TU librarians will share their insights, resources and skills with Oklahoma school librarians to forge stronger relationships with school and community stakeholders. McFarlin is very excited to see how this conference continues to impact our community, state, and future TU students.
Ensuring that each year feels like a professionally, thoughtfully designed conference, the team at McFarlin has worked hard to raise money that supports excellent presenters, access to resources, and professional development opportunities that attendees would otherwise not have access to. This conference is currently free for school librarians to attend because of the donations provided.
Funding provided by:
2025 : Community Connections
The need to expand was noted through networking with other academic and school librarians around the State. This year's conference invitation has been extended to our core TPS group, as well as school in the surrounding area. To further support this idea of creating and relying on community connection, presenters will be focusing on the community resources that librarians have access to in the Tulsa area.
McFarlin wants to help librarians form community connections with other professionals in their area, and have a better idea of who to call on when they need support.
Community Partners: HCAR, TCCL, OKSL, and variety of library vendors.
2024 : Educational Technology
Still offering instructional support but seeing the need to branch out to new topics such as a conversation on Generative-AI Literacy, McFarlin collaborated with TU campus partners. This year's focus was on the growing need for school librarians to support the information literacy and technology needs of students in TPS.
Community Partners: The University of Tulsa’s Tandy School of Computer Science and FabLab.
Read more about those collaborations.
2023 : Instructional and Outreach Support
Being the first year of this conference, a survey was administered prior to the conference to inform the needs of school librarians. Based on this data, the theme was focused on instructional and outreach support for school librarians. By offering actionable ideas for conference attendees, students in TPS could improve their research skills and have greater understanding of how access vital research resources.
These goals are based on conference feedback, information shared by school district administrators, and changes in the national trends which impact the information literacy needs of PK-12th grade students.
The foundational goal of this conference is to encourage librarians to return to their sites empowered and ready to support the instructional needs of students.
McFarlin's current goals for this conference are:
