Message from the IACRL President
September 24, 2025
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Message from the IACRL President: Joshua Newport, Illinois State University
Photo courtesy of Martina Newport Photography
Hello IACRL members!
I am looking forward to being the IACRL President for the coming year. This is a great role because it allows me to collaborate with and support academic library workers and, through the library workers, their patrons. IACRL has some exciting activities coming up in which you can participate.
From the 14th to the 16th of October, there is the ILA Annual Conference in Rosemont. This conference is a great opportunity to meet, share ideas, and learn from librarians at all kinds of libraries throughout our state. Of particular interest to academic librarians attending the conference, we will be holding our annual “Unconference” at 8 am on Wednesday the 15th of October to network and chat with academic library workers. At noon that same day, we will have an IACRL luncheon, where my colleague from Illinois State University–University Archivist, April Anderson-Zorn–will be speaking about preserving and communicating the “silences” of our institutions' histories in the current political environment. I, and other IACRL Executive Board members, will be at a Forum table, and we would love to meet members of IACRL at the ILA Annual conference. There is still time to sign up to attend!
I also am really excited about the IACRL Spring Sampler which was held for the first time on April 17th of this year. It was a one day online mini conference designed to be a very easy event for Illinois academic library workers to participate in. We will be doing another Sampler this coming spring, so stay tuned for details!
I’m always happy to hear from you! I would like to encourage you to contact me or any of the IACRL committee members to let us know what you would like IACRL to do or get involved with that would serve the membership. You can find contact info for us at the IACRL homepage. If you would like to become involved, please reach out. You can also keep informed about what is going on with IACRL by joining our email list and finding us on Facebook and X.
Remember in the coming year that, like this year’s conference theme says, You Belong Here. IACRL exists to support Illinois academic librarians and staff so they can keep doing the amazing work in service of their communities. Have a great Fall semester!
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