2025 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.

We are now accepting proposals!

https://forms.gle/yU9ANKZAvFRQTCsdA

Timeline

  • Proposals are due Friday December 20, 2025.
  • Proposals confirmed no later than Monday January 20, 2025.

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 6 - "Future Forward"

When: Wednesday March 12 (10:30AM - 4PM EST) - Thursday, March 13, 2025 (8:30 AM - 5 PM EST.)

Where: Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC

Cost: No registration fee.
  • Breakfast and lunch will be provided in addition to welcome reception on Wed., and closing reception on Thursday.
  • Speakers are responsible for covering their own travel and lodging.


2025 Theme: Future forward - Developing Resilient Business Librarians

The theme of 2025 conference is “Future forward”. It focuses on how business librarians are navigating the complexities of new technologies, evolving roles, and organizational restructuring. We plan to explore how librarians are dealing with changing roles, including taking on new functional responsibilities, collaborating with other functional roles, and transitioning away from traditional subject liaison duties. Additionally, in a pre-conference we plan to help librarians understand where they are in the AI adoption curve, how the integration of AI is impacting their work, and early insights about implementing AI assistants.

This year we invite you to share what is happening at your institutions, how you are dealing with the transitions and what lessons you’re learning. Suggested topics may include, but are not limited to the following:

  • How is your role as a subject librarian changing and evolving? Are you letting go of aspects of traditional subject liaison responsibilities? Have you taken on new functional roles? Do you collaborate with functional roles? 
  • Where are you in the AI adoption curve? How is the jagged edge showing up in your work? Are you rolling out AI assistants? What early insights do you have for business librarians? 
  • Have you successfully navigated a re-structuring of teams at your organization? How did it go? What are you learning? How are you re-skilling? How are you leveraging your past experience in new roles? Are you exploring new types of services? Testing new service delivery models? 
  • Balancing research (support) and instruction - do you support biz researchers in new ways? Where do you provide most value? Do you collaborate as equals as a researcher yourself, in e.g., evidence synthesis projects? 

Formats

SUBMIT YOUR PROPOSALS USIGN THIS FORM: https://forms.gle/yU9ANKZAvFRQTCsdA 

Be open to shifting your proposal to a different form of demonstration. Sometimes a lightning talk can be expanded into a presentation, sometimes a presentation can condense into a lightning talk. 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  bc102@mailbox.sc.edu for suggestions for the program, or any questions about the conference.