Once Upon a Time in the Academic Library

It could be argued that to tell stories is to be human. Storytelling evolved alongside us to provide entertainment via literature, plays, and visual arts. It helps shape society through parables, moral tales, and religion. Storytelling plays a role in business, law, medicine, and education in modern society.

Academic librarians can apply storytelling in the same way that teachers, entertainers, lawyers, and businesspeople have done for centuries, as education within information literacy instruction and as communication in the areas of reference, outreach, management, assessment, and more. Once Upon a Time in the Academic Library explores applications of storytelling across academic librarianship in three sections:

• The Information Literacy Classroom
• The Stacks
• Physical and Virtual Library Spaces

About the Author: Maria R. Barefoot is the online learning librarian at the University of Delaware. She became interested in the connection between storytelling and learning while pursuing her master of education degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She has previously published in Reference Services Review, Pennsylvania Libraries: Research and Practice, and The Library Assessment Cookbook.

Sara Parme, MLIS, MBA, is the Project Director for the Appalachian College Association's Open and Affordable Resources Initiative and the Grants Coordinator of PA GOAL, Pennsylvania's open and affordable grants program. After working in academic libraries for nine years, thanks to the mentors and some wonderful people she's met along the way, her professional interests are virtual community building, project management, and not reinventing the wheel. She's always found the open and affordable community to be where the nice people are, and her professional aim is to surround herself with as many nice people as possible. In her previous job evaluations, she's often described as "informal" and "enthusiastic," two characteristics she's chosen to embrace as strengths when meeting new people and challenges. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Administration and Leadership Studies. Her dissertation focuses on status and incivility among academic library employees. She's a productivity geek and can have lengthy conversations about planners and focus apps.

Elin Woods is an independent researcher previously holding librarian posts at Saint Francis University and most recently at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania as a student success librarian. Her slightly unconventional path to libraries included time spent working at a newspaper and planning events before pursuing her MLIS from Clarion University. Since then, she has worked in both public and academic libraries, believing that they both have something to learn from one another. Her favorite way to tell stories is in the form of food, as she especially loves baking her way through historical Welsh and northern English cookbooks and the recipes she has from her grandmothers. When she's not whipping up something in the kitchen, you can find her exploring Appalachia or on the hunt for the perfect red lipstick.