2026 ARSL Preliminary Session List

Here's a first look at the educational sessions you can look forward to at the 2026 ARSL Conference! This is not an exhaustive list of all #ARSL2026 programs, and sessions will continue to be added over the coming weeks.

Additional session information will be available on the official conference program schedule. This list is subject to change.

Access & Inclusion

• Understanding Behavior, Building Safety: Trauma-Informed Libraries
• Safe Routes to Libraries: Actionable Solutions to Ensuring Walking and Biking Access to Your Library
• Beyond Neutrality: Multi Partial Dialogue to Facilitate Informed Civic Engagement
• Recovery Connections
• Small and Rural Libraries as Digital Opportunity Champions
• The Collaborative Access for Rural Empowerment (CARE) Project: Library Partnerships to Improve Services for People with Disabilities
• Understanding Behavior, Building Safety: Trauma-Informed Libraries

Advocacy & Intellectual Freedom

• Law for Librarians presents Privacy, Patron Policies and the Limited Public Forum
• Healthy Roots, Stronger Branches: Advocacy from Personal Boundaries to Community Action
• The Quiet Power of Rural Libraries: Advocacy Rooted in Trust
• Advocacy for Everyone
• From Public Computers to Capitol Hill: What’s Your Broadband Story?
• The Quiet Power of Rural Libraries: Advocacy Rooted in Trust

Age-Specific Programming

• "Raiding the Supply Closet: Low-Cost Adult Crafts for High-Impact Community Building"
• Reaching Rural Teens: Building Bridges, Breaking Down Barriers, and Creating Lifelong Library Champions
• "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" : Making summer reading your opportunity to make meaningful experiences in small libraries.
• Walking Together: How Rural Libraries Are Reducing Isolation, Improving Health, and Strengthening Communities
• Setting Teens Up For Success: TAB and Food Security
• Book Joy for Neurodivergent Readers! Connecting with youth who experience books in a unique way.
• Community engagement methods for community data
• Walking Together: How Rural Libraries Are Reducing Isolation, Improving Health, and Strengthening Communities

Collections, Cataloguing, RA, Archives

• Modern Readers’ Advisory: Books, Screens, and Everything In Between
• Beyond Inclusion: Building Library Collections That Center Native Voices
• Create Local Digital Collections through Collaborative Learning
• Fill Your Brain Full of Books: Readers' Advisory Tips
• From Attics to Archives: Preserving Local History with a Memory Lab
• MARC 101: Building Stronger Connections: How Quality Cataloging Drives Community Circulation
• Weed’em and Reap: Keeping a Healthy Collection Through Weeding

General Programming

• Let's Play I Spy AI! How to Evaluate Content Critically
• Seed Libraries, Community Gardens and Freedges: Creating Programs That Feed Your Community and Build Resilience
• OUT ON A LIMB: Putting your library “out there” to build internal and external relationships
• The Newest Hub for Food Education… & How You Can Do It Too!
• Building Book Clubs, Build Community
• AI Literacy at the Library: Helping Patrons Navigate a Generative AI World
• Big Author Experiences on Small Library Budgets
• Beyond Comfort Zones: Growing Readers Through Genre Exploration
• Showing Your Patrons The World One Country At A Time
• Worm Races

Outreach, Marketing, & Community Engagement

• Fundraising for Small & Rural Libraries
• From Shelf to Table: Feeding Neighbors, One Bag at a Time
• Building Community-Based Summers: Rethinking Your “Why”
• Small Events, Big Impact: Turning Music, Bingo, and Community into Library Funding
• Gathering CommUNITY: tried and true programs that encourage nonlibrary users into your library
• Programming: From Worms to Prom
• When It Hits Home: Navigating Controversy in Small Communities
• Book Merchandising in Public Libraries
• Building Community and Connection: A Practical Guide to Holding Civic Dialogues
• The M Word: Bringing Math Into the Community 
• "A Home Away From Home:" Sharing Your Library's Impact Through Storytelling
• Book Access Beacons: How Two Rural Library Systems Use Little Free Library (LFL) Networks to Expand Outreach and Applicable Strategies to Start a LFL Network at Your Public Library
• Rooted in Community: Growing Friends of the Library from Supporters to Stakeholders
• Mapping Communities: Leveraging Data to Meet Community Needs
• Partnerships Start with Relationship Building: Tribes and Public Library Engagement
• Personas with Purpose: Designing for Small & Rural Library Communities
• Rooted Connections for Community Food Makers
• Tour de Force: BUILD BRIDGES BY LEADING TOURS OF YOUR LIBRARY
• Your Numbers as a Story: How to Use Your Program Statistics, Big Or Small, Into a Narrative for Grants, Networking, and Partnerships

Partnerships & Networking

• Hello School! Your Friendly Public Library Here
• You Don't Have to Do It All: Building Partnerships with Boundaries, Humility, and Mutual Benefit
• From Circulation Desk to Community Anchor: How One Rural Library Became a Countywide Hub
• Six (or Seven) Strangers: Creating Cultural Connection in a Small Town
• More Than Books: How Rural Libraries Compete -- and Win -- Because They're Rooted in Community
• Rooted Together: Combined-Resource Model as a Multi-Generational Hub
• Scaling Early Literacy Without Scaling Budgets: The Book Ecosystem Model
• Sisters in War and Peace: 17 years long Sister Library Partnership Between Troy University-Dothan and Central Ukrainian State University Libraries. Benefits and Challenges.
• Stretched Thin but Showing Up: Rural Libraries and the Realities of Community Coalition Work

Personal Development & Mental Health

• Care Less: Change the Way You Work, Not the Work You Love
• Grief Practice at Work
• Let's Make Training Fun for Everyone! Tools to Cultivate Engaging and Adaptive Learning for Library Staff and Beyond
• Safe Spaces: Adding a Therapeutic Touch to Library Programming

Planning & Leadership

• Empowering Staff to Be Library Ambassadors
• GROWING BRANCHES: Pruning stagnation as a catalyst for library leadership
• Being Ready for Change: Keeping Library Services Going In Real Life
• Findings from the Public Libraries Support Community Resilience Survey with ARSL & Cornerstones of Science
• Presenting Presentations
• Small & Rural Libraries: Mighty Catalysts for Community Resilience
• Academic Library Excellence at Any Size: Designing Professional Development on a Small Budget
• Disaster to Delight: Finding Positives and Growing Your Library amid Unexpected Misfortune
• Library Funding and Community Support Development Project
• Library Facility Management 101
• PIPs Without Panic: Turning Performance Plans into Professional Growth
• The Art of the Library Budget: Turning Constraints into Opportunity
• The Best of Friends: Best Practices for Public Libraries and Friends Groups
• Write a Strategic Plan That Actually Works: A Practical Framework for Small and Rural Libraries

Resources & Services

• Mom Sharing Shelf
• Library of Things in the 21st Century
• Libraries with Heart: Partnering with the American Heart Association to Support Blood Pressure Access, Education & Cardiac Emergency Preparedness in Rural Communities
• Rural Libraries, Urban Problems: Advocating for Social Support Staff Without Losing Library Services
• The Academic Library in the Small and Rural Community Setting: Lessons from Historically Black Colleges and Universities
• The Collabratory: creating a library makerspace
• ThriftBooks BuyBack Program
• "Yes, let's do this!" to "Ugh, no. Do I have to?": Engaging your community about AI
• Document Scanning
• Exploring Local History with the Library of Congress
• Strengthening Families: The Library's Role in Child Maltreatment Prevention
• Interlibrary Loan: An Unsung Hero
• Welcome.US Citizenship Initiative: How Libraries Can Connect Immigrants and Volunteers Through Citizenship Support

Workplace & HR

• Welcome Aboard . . .and Please Don't Jump Ship: A (relatively) peaceful flow for onboarding and evaluating library staff
• From Transaction to Trust: Strengthening Patron Experience in Rural and Small Libraries
• Better Culture, Better Service: Building a Happy Library Workplace
• Mastering the Art of Difficult Conversations
• Navigating Away from an Us vs Them Environment
• Neuro-Inclusive Strategies to Promote Organizational Health & Staff Wellbeing
• Plan the Perfect Staff Day: Ideas for flow, focus, and fun