2024 Call for Propsoals

Are you an academic librarian with liaison responsibilities in business, finance, or entrepreneurship? In the Southern US? If so, the Southern University and College Academic Business Librarians Conference (SOUCABL) is for you! SOUCABL is a great opportunity to meet other information professionals, develop your regional network of colleagues, share ideas, and brainstorm solutions.

The call for proposals has now closed.

Timeline

Proposals are due Friday December 8, 2023.
Proposals confirmed no later than January 15, 2024.

We especially encourage proposal submissions from librarians who work at smaller institutions or for whom providing public and technical services for business, finance, sports management, or entrepreneurship education and programming is only part of their job.

Priority will be given to participants from the District of Columbia and 14 states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.

About the Conference

What: The SOUCABL Conference: Chapter 5

When: Thursday, March 7, 2024. Sessions are held between 8:30 AM - 5 PM EST.

Where: University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC

Cost: No registration fee.

Breakfast and lunch will be provided.

Speakers are responsible for their own travel and lodging.

This year's theme: Taking Stock

The theme of 2024 is “Taking stock”. It builds on last year’s theme of ‘Expanding Visions’ and how libraries are changing in the new era of pandemics. With sweeping change, it’s easy to lose the things we value most. This year we invite you to consider, how might our traditions serve as a rudder as we demonstrate adaptive leadership? How do we hold on to the core values of business librarians as we remake our profession to stay relevant to our students, faculty and staff?

Suggested topics may include, but are not limited to the following:

Incremental changes that have led to excellence over the long-term
Bi-directional mentoring or coaching experiences and programs that harness the value of both experienced wisdom and fresh thinking
Collection development approaches that leverage new data analytics, cooperative models
New service models that uses our core collections in new ways to deliver more value and impact
New ways of working with vendors of familiar products that open up more possibilities that help us live our values more fully as business librarians
Evolving staffing models that allow librarians to move up in the value chain as equal partners at the table
Community building models that extend our impact beyond the library
Relationship building with faculty by business librarians new and experienced

Formats

Presentation (plenary): 15 minutes, followed by 5 minutes of Q&A.
Poster (concurrent): An opportunity to share your recent, “taking stock” of library experiences and/or future aspirations related to business librarianship. If you would like a template, consider using the ones found here: https://osf.io/ef53g or https://www.socialsciencespace.com/2018/05/4-steps-to-designing-an-award-winning-poster

We are flexible on format. Sometimes a poster can be expanded into a presentation or panel discussion, sometimes a presentation can condense into a poster. We are looking for events that provide impact with the quickest return for time invested. We are also open to innovative formats. If you have an idea to develop it into a program, we’d love to hear from you.

Please contact brittany.champion@furman.edu for suggestions for the program, or any questions about the conference.