I just returned from the Critical Librarianship & Pedagogy Symposium at the University of Arizona and feel so lucky to have spent time with such thoughtful, intelligent, engaging friends and colleagues. In the frantic lead up to the conference I neglected to share the slides and notes from the discussion I helped co-facilitate and the research panel I co-led.

First up was A Practice of Connection: Applying Relational-Cultural Theory to Librarianship, with Anastasia Chiu, Joanna Gadsby, Alana Kumbier & Lalitha Nataraj.

As per usual, the slides have relatively limited text, but if you select the gear icon on the slide show you can see our speaker notes. Our guiding questions for this facilitated discussion included:

• Based on what we’ve introduced and what you already know / have experienced, what are some ways you could incorporate RCT into your work?
• What opportunities for mutuality are there in this work?
• How can you create connection within this work?
• Where are you finding connection and support in your work?
• What relationships do you value and nurture in your work? What relationships would you nurture more if you felt you had more capacity to do so?
• What are opportunities for empowerment / empowering others (alongside yourself) in your work?
• Do you have any examples/ experiences of growthful conflict?

Then, Joanna Gadsby, Sian Evans, and I shared some initial research findings in Peers, Guest Lecturers, or Babysitters: Constructions of Power in the Library Classroom.

I’m always happy to talk about our presentations, and welcome questions! Also, I was asked about our slides a few times at the conference, so I’ll share my invaluable slide deck resources below:

• Slide Carnival for PowerPoint and Google Slide templates
• Unsplash for high resolution images
• Google Fonts for typographic variety
• The Noun Project for icons
• My Pinterest design board for color palettes.