2025 Conference - Call for Proposals
Michigan Academic Library Association (MiALA) 2025 Annual Conference: Call for Presentation Proposals
Driving Excellence: Navigating the Challenges & Opportunities

“Driving Excellence: Navigating the Challenges & Opportunities” allows us to explore new pathways into the future as we are guided by the wisdom, openness, and tenacity of our profession to provide the best outcomes for library users. New opportunities and technologies can challenge our beliefs about academic integrity and impact a variety of library collections and services. Has your library staff taken a new strategic approach, designed an innovative service, developed a new policy, or begun a new area of professional development that you would like to share? If so, we invite you to share your challenges, successes, and solutions with your academic library colleagues as we guide academic libraries down the road of innovation and into the future.

MiALA invites you and your colleagues to submit presentation proposals for the 10th annual conference to be held in-person, May 18-20, 2025 at the University of Michigan-Flint, Flint, MI. Participation from librarians, library staff, LIS students, and administrators from all types of academic libraries is encouraged.  MiALA membership is not required to submit a proposal. We welcome proposals on topics covering any aspect of academic libraries. 

We are seeking the following presentation formats: 
  • Presentations, panels, or moderated discussion sessions (45 min.)
    • Individual or group presentations, panel sessions, and moderated discussion sessions are all welcome. Each of these sessions will be 45 minutes, including a Q&A.
  • Interactive workshops (105 min.)
    • ​An opportunity to teach and explore current and emerging topics in a collaborative atmosphere. Workshops encourage a hands-on experience that may combine active learning, collaboration, and discussion. 
  • Lightning Talks (10 min.) 
    • ​A short individual presentation addressing a specific topic or project. Lightning talks provide attendees the opportunity to hear about a range of innovative ideas from a broad and varied group of colleagues in a short amount of time. Lightning talks will be grouped into sessions that may or may not be themed. Lightning talk sessions will be 45 minutes, including a Q&A.
Along with presenter(s) information, program proposals must include title, presentation format, presentation description (up to 300 words), short abstract (up to 75 words), and learning objective(s). Proposals will be evaluated on relevance to the conference theme, impact on academic libraries and higher education, originality, creativity, and clarity. For workshops, include plans for interactivity and audience engagement in the session description.

If you have a topic you’d like to explore and are looking for collaborators, consider adding your session idea to the Breakout Session Collaboration spreadsheet. This spreadsheet is not monitored by MiALA or the Program Committee and is not part of the official submission process.

Please submit your breakout session proposal using the application form by January 10, 2025. The primary contact listed on each proposal will receive a message indicating receipt of the proposal when it is submitted and decisions on proposals will be communicated to the primary contact in late January or early February.

Questions about proposals can be sent to werdeljc@udmercy.edu.
Questions about the conference in general can be sent to conference@miala.org. 

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(Word limit: 12)
(Word limit: 300)
(Word limit: 75)
(Word limit: 50)