The Garden of Your Mind

“Did you ever grow anything in the garden of your mind? You can grow ideas in the garden of your mind. All you have to do is think and they'll grow.” -Fred Rogers

Calling all libraryland idea growers, gardeners, cultivators, and curators! We know the past few years have been a time of difficult change, but challenging times can lead to reimagined and reinvented library services, partnerships, and spaces. So we want to know: What’s changed for the better at your library? What new things did you try that took root? What old initiatives needed pruning before they could blossom?

We want to hear about your work planting the seeds of information literacy, fertilizing collaborative partnerships, composting problematic collections, and irrigating dry library programming. Add your voice and experience to Forward Libraries’ first annual Spring Forward Conference!

Forward Libraries strives to bring library workers from all types of libraries together to learn and grow with one another. We’re looking for proposals that are fun, engaging, and will leave our attendees ready to try out new things at their institutions, with a support system of new friends and colleagues behind them!

Seed Starters (aka the kinds of topics we’d like to see):

• Advocacy and Fighting Book Bans

• AI in Libraries

• Assessment

• Cataloging

• Collection Development

• DEIA in Libraries

• Engagement and Outreach

• Instruction and Research Help

• Hiring and Job Searching

• LIS Education and Professional Development

• OER and Open Pedagogy

• Other Awesome Ideas You Want to Show Off!

We’d like to see your proposals for synchronous, interactive sessions (lightning talks, panels, roundtable discussions, etc.); asynchronous content (podcasts, recorded videos, articles, and more); and social/networking opportunities (virtual happy hours, crafting circles, work-with-me sessions, other fun and collaborative activities).