Conference on Academic Library Management 2026

Academic library managers often feel pressured to resolve conflicts quickly to move past uncomfortable situations. While efficient, this approach can miss crucial underlying issues, leading to recurring problems and eroded trust. Conflict transformation, a framework used in peace-building, offers a sustainable, alternative approach by shifting focus to ”'constructive change initiatives that include and go beyond the resolution of particular problems” (Lederach, 2003). Unlike the more traditional conflict resolution lens, conflict transformation examines the multi-faceted aspects of conflict to address root causes and positively engage all parties involved.

This session will equip library managers with practical conflict transformation strategies for navigating team dynamics and organizational change in a relational, person-centered way. The presenter will distinguish between conflict resolution and transformation while sharing a framework for person-centered conflict transformation (including addressing provocation, mindfulness techniques, and establishing community agreements), and guide participants in strategies for building sustainable practices that avoid “quick fixes” when it comes to managing organizational conflicts.

Participants will learn to identify patterns in workplace conflicts, apply specific frameworks for transforming rather than simply resolving disputes, and develop approaches that strengthen relationships and prevent future conflicts.

Lederach, J. P. (2003). Conflict transformation. https://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/transformation

Formal career review and advancement, such as the tenure and promotion process, can be a celebratory and/or soul-sucking time for candidates, their colleagues, and library managers. The presenters, three current or former academic library unit heads, know this first-hand from their experiences facilitating sometimes heavenly, sometimes hellish promotional meetings. While the policies and standards surrounding these reviews are crucial to prevent intentional cruelty or harm, culture plays a large role in how those policies are carried out: a successful promotion does not always mean a successful process, and we have seen how positive intent can cause negative impact in the form of microaggression, poorly worded questions, and lack of engagement. What can those of us participating in or facilitating the review or promotion process do to create a supportive, kind, and clear culture of review in our libraries, especially when two candidates may experience the same review cycle in vastly different ways. We will discuss both cultural and structural elements of promotion, highlighting important frameworks and strategies for the planning period, including mental models, psychological safety, and giving feedback. This goal of this session is to collectively contemplate how not to be the a-hole, facilitated by three a-holes trying to do better.

Using a trauma-informed framework, we will explore ways to help student workers develop empathy and self-awareness and build a workplace culture of collaboration and inclusion.

What can you do when a student employee is offended by something a co-worker said at the circulation desk? What policies can mitigate the problem of excessive profanity in public services? These questions may seem simple to solve - say “stop it,” and move on - but these issues portend a more complicated problem. Student employees may have had no prior work experience and when problems in workplace culture arise, it offers an opportunity for teaching emotional intelligence skills that will help them in future professional settings. The session will use Rebecca Tolley’s Six Guiding Principles of Trauma-Informed Approaches - safety, transparency, peer support, collaboration, empowerment and culture - to frame a discussion of intentional learning experiences for student employees that can lead to retention, academic success and self-discovery.

In this workshop, we will brainstorm ways to:

- Use a trauma-informed approach to build a safe, collaborative workplace environment

- Integrate emotional intelligence skills training into a student employment program

- Give feedback to students that results in better performance and concrete action steps

As academic libraries face ongoing retirements and organizational restructuring, early career librarians are increasingly assuming supervisory or managerial responsibilities earlier in their careers. Yet questions remain about how prepared they feel for these roles and what kind of support contributes most to their confidence and effectiveness. This presentation reports the results of a national survey conducted in 2024 exploring early career academic librarians’ perceptions of their readiness for management. The survey gathered quantitative and qualitative data from over 70 respondents with fewer than ten years of professional experience across a range of academic library settings.

Findings suggest that while many early career librarians find themselves in management positions, fewer feel adequately equipped to take them on. This presentation will share key data themes on how library managers did and did not feel prepared, highlight respondent narratives, and discuss possible implications for library administrators, professional associations, and LIS programs. There will also be several breakout sessions for participants to discuss their own management situations and brainstorm how to best support new incoming managers. Attendees will gain insight into how institutions can better support leadership development for early career professionals and foster more intentional management onboarding within academic libraries.

On the afternoon of Saturday, August 16th, 2025, an emergency alert text was sent to the University of Denver campus community, informing them of a stabbing that had occurred in the Anderson Academic Commons, the building that houses library employees, service points, and collections. The conflict, which took place in an open seating area, involved two individuals unaffiliated with the University. While the physical injuries sustained by the victim were minor, the psychological impact on the library staff and the community was significant.

Violent incidents in academic libraries—regardless of the scope or medical severity—are traumatic events that fundamentally alter the workplace environment. How administration handles the minutes, days, and weeks following such an event is critical to staff recovery and retention. Moving beyond standard active harmer training, this session focuses on the administrative burden of care after the threat has been neutralized. Topics covered will include: supporting staff immediately following the violence; communicating successfully with campus security and law enforcement; and best practices for communicating with the broader campus community to provide transparency without increasing panic.

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a collaborative, person-centered communication approach originally developed in the behavioral health field to strengthen motivation for change. Today, MI offers powerful, practical tools for leaders who want to foster engagement, support growth, and inspire meaningful action within their teams.

This session will introduce the core principles of MI: expressing empathy, developing discrepancy, rolling with resistance, and supporting self-efficacy, and demonstrate how they can be applied to everyday leadership situations. Whether navigating resistance to change, addressing performance concerns, or building stronger team connections, MI techniques help leaders move conversations from compliance to genuine commitment.

Attendees will learn how to use open-ended questions, affirmations, reflective listening, and summarizing (OARS) to create collaborative, trust-based environments. These strategies not only improve accountability and communication but also promote psychological safety, increase adaptability, and strengthen team cohesion.

The essential activity of recruiting and hiring can be fraught with high levels of stress, anxiety, impersonal formality, and the possibility that anyone involved may dread the unfeeling cold of distant scrutiny and fierce competition. While multiple factors can contribute to discomfort and disconnection, the presenters advocate for an approach that eschews even an accidental running of the gauntlet in favor of interview experiences that intentionally center the whole person. The whole-person approach to hiring both embraces the logistical and legal requirements overseen by Human Resources and incorporates person-centered strategies and when applied across each element in recruitment and hiring, help reduce unnecessary fear or intimidation. By personalizing experiences and applying thoughtful consideration to the holistic experience of each candidate, an organization can invest in their ability to bring their best self to each interaction. This has the potential to make way for a clearer understanding of the expertise, experience, and vision that an individual offers to an organization, and in return, convey what the workplace community offers to prospective colleagues. The presenters—who have served as hiring managers, search committee chairs, and search committee members for a variety of faculty librarian roles— will share why they’ve moved to this approach and what they have learned in three years of refining their whole-person practice. Attendees will receive a foundational understanding of the whole-person approach, including benefits, challenges, and specific, practical strategies for incorporating this philosophy into any hiring opportunity.

Like many libraries, the Davidson College Library is organized around functional teams focused on the various aspects of the library’s work and mission: research collections, archives and special collections, access and outreach, digital engagement, and research and instruction. This structure acknowledges specializations and strengthens those cores, but it also creates silos. To overcome these silos, library leadership at Davidson worked to create person-centered processes that honor individuals' ideas for strategic projects, encourage collaboration across functional units, and empower team members to “lead from where they are” in a relatively flat organization.

This presentation will outline the library’s “Great Ideas” process in which library staff, having connected with key partners across teams, identify and pitch projects that further the library’s strategic priorities. Because overcoming silos is complicated work, a re-imagined organizational structure of “Learning Networks” helps to facilitate shared professional interests and peer-to-peer learning, while a “unit” structure brings together staff with shared focus on collections and teaching, and defined “Systems” and “Professional Well-Being” steering groups further identify and prioritize collaborative work. This human-networked framework provides opportunities for leadership and growth at all levels of the organization, lowers the barriers to connecting with similarly-motivated colleagues from across the library, and builds a sense of belonging amongst staff. After sharing the story of the Great Ideas process and collaborative work structures, the presenters will facilitate an opportunity for attendees to identify pain points to collaboration, explore potential affinity groups, and create actionable steps to establish their own great ideas process.

As remote and hybrid work structures become increasingly common in academic libraries, managers face new challenges in keeping employees engaged, motivated, and connected. This session presents original research exploring the relationship between transformational leadership behaviors and work engagement in remote and hybrid academic library environments.

Drawing on a quantitative study of over 100 library workers, attendees will learn which transformational leadership behaviors have the strongest impact on engagement in remote contexts. By focusing on the two dimensions of transformational leadership that emerged as significant predictors of work engagement, this session will offer practical, research-backed guidance for library leaders navigating reduced face-to-face interaction, digital fatigue, and a growing demand for flexible work arrangements.

The session will connect leadership theory with actionable management strategies, including values-based communication, modeling purpose-driven behaviors, and reframing innovation support to avoid burnout. Attendees will explore how to implement these findings at the micro and macro levels, in everyday interactions and throughout their organizations.

Whether you're currently managing a completely distributed team or trying to maintain a cohesive feel in a hybrid model, this session will help you identify what truly drives engagement and how to lead with intention across distance.

Many academic institutions embrace transparent or publicly accessible data practices, leading to high visibility of sensitive information such as salaries and merit raise allocations. This practice brings significant benefits in terms of accountability and equity but also adds layers of complexity for supervisors, administrators, and HR partners who must articulate how merit decisions are made and funded. Library employees may compare increases across units, make assumptions about performance ratings, or express concerns about fairness and consistency. Without thoughtful communication and structured processes, transparency can unintentionally erode organizational morale, increase anxiety, and spread misconceptions.

In this session, we will discuss several challenges related to navigating annual merit cycles in a transparent-budget environment. Topics will include working collaboratively across administrative units, preparing supervisors to communicate difficult decisions, and designing consistent messaging that helps employees understand both the process and the outcome. The session will also examine how to balance transparency with necessary confidentiality, especially regarding individual performance data.

When I overheard my daughter, playing with her dolls, declare proudly, “I’m a department head and a mom,” I didn’t know how to feel. Does my work as a library leader intrude so noticeably on family life that my 4-year-old is playing ‘university’? Am I succeeding as a role model and breadwinner if my daughter sees leadership as something worth including in her play? Is it both? Neither?

The U.S. workforce—and higher ed in particular—aren’t easy environments for mothers to navigate. Structures built to accommodate cis male bodies don’t work for fertility treatments, pregnancy, breastfeeding, sleepless nights, and the intangible magic that—for whatever reason—prompts so many children to reach again and again for mama. On top of this, leadership roles require us to be present, emotionally engaged, and unfailingly committed to our organizations. The exhausting reality for many women and non-binary people is that combining leadership, motherhood, and academia can be draining, lonely work. And yet, for many of us, it is work worth doing.

In this session, participants will share and explore our own lived experiences as academic librarian-mothers in leadership roles, breaking down the intense isolation that often comes with these positions. Discussion may include logistical, physical, and emotional challenges, as well as solutions and opportunities for solidarity and support. This is an interactive session where we will prioritize empathy, care, and safety.

All gender and family identities are welcome in this inclusive, support- and solutions-oriented conversation.

In this prolonged period of disruption for libraries, old ways of working just aren’t cutting it. At our R1 university library, we had long supported researchers and students using a liaison model, with librarians providing instruction, reference, collection development, and outreach to their assigned college unit. Liaisons were organizationally situated in disciplinary departments with some shared work, but largely liaisons managed and went about their work independently. This approach gave liaisons autonomy, deepened their relationships on campus, and amplified their unique expertise. However, it also came with unequal workloads, isolation, and a scramble when there was staff turnover. Leaner budgets and a bumpy environment for higher education exacerbated these downsides to our existing model. To address these challenges, our library embarked this past year on a significant reevaluation of our liaison model. We wanted to build in greater sustainability, workload equity, and more opportunities for collaboration. We also rejected the model of 'doing more with less'.

The three presenters of this session, department directors overseeing liaison work, led a project to study our current liaison model and propose new ways of working. Our session will share our process, including (1) our initial project brief, (2) how we structured our work, (3) key findings, (4) our recommendations, and (5) our implementation plan. Throughout, we’ll address how we adopted change management principles to earn trust and support from the liaisons most affected. Attendees will come away with ideas for how to ask similar questions and address challenges at their own libraries.

Join members of the CALM Conference Experience Committee for a session focused on continuing CALM’s Beyond a Land Acknowledgement work. Attendees will watch a brief video about decolonization and discuss and reflect with each other about future actions they can take to support reparative action for Indigenous communities. No prior experience is required to participate in this session.