Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member representatives, guests, and staff convened for the 178th Association Meeting via video-conference on April 20–29, 2021. Meeting participants discussed “The Big Pivot: Disruption, Discovery, Transformation” in four sessions, each targeting a timely, critical issue: the dissemination of misinformation and disinformation; the social justice mission of our institutions; the transformation of teaching; and the rise of anti-intellectualism. The meeting also provided the opportunity for participants to break into small groups to discuss these topics and others.
Prior to the program sessions, the Executive Committee of the ARL Board of Directors met on April 20. Association Committees also met on April 20 and April 22. The Board of Directors met on April 26. On April 27, the Program Strategy Committee met and the Business Meeting was held, where the Board hosted a Town Hall. On April 28, the sixth annual ARL Film Festival—the Arlies—highlighted and shared videos developed by member institutions to increase knowledge and use of libraries, their spaces, services, collections, and expertise. The winning videos are available on the ARL website.
During the Business Meeting on April 27, the Association welcomed new member representatives Faye Chadwell (Penn State), Joan Heath (Texas State), and Athena Jackson (Houston), as well as new interim member representatives Mark Emmons (New Mexico), Carrie Hackney (Howard), and Karen Rupp-Serrano (Oklahoma). A moment of silence was observed in honor of former member representatives who had passed away since the Fall 2020 Association Meeting: Paul Bernard Wiens, Jennifer Cargill, Frank Phillips Grisham, and Gloria Werner. ARL featured interviews and bios of member representatives who will be retiring or stepping down this spring or summer: David Carlson (Texas A&M), Joan Heath (Texas State), Valerie Hotchkiss (Vanderbilt), Krisellen Maloney (Rutgers), Diane Parr Walker (Notre Dame), Carolyn Walters (Indiana Bloomington), and Lizabeth “Betsy” Wilson (Washington).
The Association Meeting formally opened on April 28, with a plenary session convened by ARL President John Culshaw (University of Iowa). Claire Stewart (University of Nebraska–Lincoln) moderated the first panel, on misinformation and disinformation. The panelists were Clara Chu, director and Mortenson Distinguished Professor, Mortenson Center for International Library Programs, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Whitney Phillips, assistant professor, Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies, Syracuse University; and Sarah Sobieraj, professor, Department of Sociology, School of Arts and Sciences, Tufts University. Chu wanted to “shift our gaze” to look at disinformation in a different way, including the suppression of information from and about marginalized people. Phillips noted that the phenomenon of disinformation has transformed from something most people weren’t paying attention to and is now a more central story that many people are focusing on. Sobieraj commented that facts are not a silver bullet that will vanquish misinformation because people are often motivated by facts they disagree with to double-down on finding opposing “facts.” The panelists noted that people respond to narrative more strongly than to facts. Reversing dis/misinformation will take storytelling from trusted sources within various communities, a theme that resurfaced throughout the Association Meeting.
Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy and law, New York University, followed the first panel on Wednesday with a talk on “Who Knows? Who Decides? Identity, Authority & Trust,” moderated by Jim O’Donnell (Arizona State University). Appiah discussed how people are most inclined to trust one another in the context of an ongoing relationship in which they look out for one another’s interests without calculating the costs and benefits.
April 29, kicked off with a panel discussion of “COVID-19: A Catalyst for Innovative Course Delivery,” moderated by Deborah Jakubs (Duke). The panelists were Josh Eyler, director of Faculty Development and lecturer of Writing and Rhetoric, Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning, The University of Mississippi; Matthew Rascoff, special advisor to the provost, Stanford University; and Dominique Scheffel-Dunand, associate professor, Department of French Studies, York University. Rascoff spoke of his experience while at Duke during the pandemic, when they rapidly switched to remote teaching. He posited that people can take the skills they’ve learned due to the pandemic and use them to solve pre-pandemic problems. Eyler called the pandemic teaching experience a “mass professional development experiment” and noted that 2020 broke down campus silos and increased inter-institutional sharing, creating an opportunity to shape new kinds of programming. Scheffel-Dunand discussed how the pandemic highlighted how much teachers needed to rely on social media to get the resources they needed to teach. This led to collaborations among many faculty members and librarians to create open educational resources (OER). Post-pandemic, the panelists want to keep the focus on building equitable structures and centering students as human beings.
The final program session of the meeting was a panel discussion of “Anti-intellectualism and Its Effect on Our Global Future,” moderated by Elaine Westbrooks (North Carolina at Chapel Hill). The panelists were Eric Merkley, SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto; Matt Motta, assistant professor, Department of Political Science, Oklahoma State University; and Colleen Shogan, adjunct lecturer, Department of Government, Georgetown University.
The Association will convene for its Fall 2021 Meeting on October 5–6.
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