2024 Community Connection Roundtable Report

Community Connections Roundtable Discussions are great opportunities for ER&L attendees to network, share their experiences, and problem-solve together around a focused topic. This year there were two roundtable sessions, with both in-person and online options. The discussion topics were determined via interests expressed via the conference registration as well as an opportunity to add topics on a white board in Austin. Both sessions were well attended, with interest in “Librarian Burnout” and “COUNTER/Statistics” being so high that overflow rooms were needed.

Discussions were directed by moderators chosen from presenters and exhibitors with specialized knowledge in the area, who provided prompts beforehand to get things rolling. For example, Tasha Mellins-Cohen from COUNTER led the COUNTER/Stats discussion, and Noah Levin from NISO (National Information Standards Organization) started off the KBART discussion with updates on KBART Phase III. Online participants could also submit questions, ideas, and comments both asynchronously or during the live session via Slack channels, which remain available post-conference for all attendees.

In Austin, the exchange of ideas filled the room as participants warmed up to the issues at hand. Attendees in the Librarian Burnout group offered each other empathy and approaches to dealing with continual job scope creep, sexual harassment, and the struggle to explain electronic resource librarians’ roles to administration. At the Streaming Media table, strategies were shared for improving discovery, managing users’ expectations, handling rising costs and limited budgets, and tracking requests and licenses. Katharine Macy, presenter and moderator at the Licencing & Negotiations table recommended: “Imagine that you have unlimited power. What would you ask for? Start there and you will end up with a better result.” Further discussions continued on additional topics such as electronic resource management in library services platforms, remote work, user research, and transformative agreements, among others. Online, people posted their own questions, while reporters documented conversations from the live session.

Overall, the roundtable discussions were a wonderful way to network and gain insight from others’ experiences. They were also a chance to “change gears” a bit when conference-goers’ brains needed a break from soaking up all the tremendous information in the presentations. As part of the ER&L experience, attendees appeared to enjoy and value these interactions as one more opportunity to connect with the electronic resources librarianship community that this conference brings together each year so successfully.

Prepared by: 

Lauren K. Marshall, MS, MLIS
Collections Analyst | Cataloging & Metadata Department
Grasselli Library and Breen Learning Center
John Carroll University