Events

Joddy Marchesoni, the Data Services Librarian at Wake Forest University, will help you kickstart data literacy instruction sessions at your library using established ACRL guidelines. You'll also practice fun and engaging activities to inspire your patrons to love data, too!

In this webinar, we will explore how to approach data literacy in library instruction sessions through hands-on activities and open resources. “The data literate individual understands, explains and documents the utility and limitations of data by becoming a critical consumer of data, controlling one’s personal data trail, finding meaning and taking action based on data. One can identify, collect, evaluate, analyze, interpret, present and protect data” (Oceans of Data Institute). We will discuss how to consider faculty and student needs around data literacy and how librarians are well-positioned to build data culture at their institutions. The Adopt a Dataset activity is a great way to practice evaluating data, and can be used as inspiration for your own activities!

Register to attend

Hosted by FLVC
 

The CARLI Discovery Primo VE Committee meets monthly via Zoom. Contact the committee chair or CARLI staff with questions.

Milner Library at Illinois State University and the CARLI Archives Committee invite CARLI members to an Open House on April 16 from 9:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. that showcases Milner Library's Archival Circus & Allied Arts Collections. Attendees will get an up-close glimpse of Special Collections at Milner Library, including the Circus & Allied Arts Collection, which is one of the three largest of its kind in the United States.

Come experience the spectacle of an archival collection that documents over a century of the circus in America. This collection contains over a million items, including manuscripts, correspondence, business records, posters, ephemera, books, photographs, advertisements, costumes, and more. With complex collections comes a range of issues relating to arrangement and description, access, outreach, and care.

This event will touch on managing diverse materials and will provide plenty of information applicable to archives of all subjects and sizes.

Space is limited, so register soon!

Open House Agenda:

Location:

Milner Library - Floor 6, Special Collections Reading Room
Illinois State University
201 N. School Street, Normal IL 61761

Once in the Library, use the central stairwell or elevator to access Floor 6. The Special Collections Reading Room is located to the left.

Directions and Parking:

Directions to Campus

Milner Library on the Illinois State University campus is next to the Bone Student Center.

The Visitor Parking lot at the Bone Student Center is located adjacent to Milner Library. Parking is currently free in this lot; if this changes prior to the Open House, CARLI will notify those registered. The ISU Campus Parking Map shows additional metered parking locations around campus.

If you park in the Visitor Parking lot at the Bone Student Center, use the stairs or ramp to access the upper plaza. Milner Library is the building on the left side of the plaza.

Presenters:

Rebecca Fitzsimmons is a Special Collections Librarian at Illinois State University. She provides instruction, reference, and collection development services, curates and designs digital and physical exhibits, and engages in a variety of digital scholarship projects and initiatives in the library, with an eye to centering special collections and archival materials in this work.

Ellie Harman is Milner Library’s Digitization Technician. She has a bachelor’s degree in photography and graphic design from Olivet Nazarene University and a master’s in library and information science from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.

Mark Schmitt is a Special Collections Specialist at Milner Library and an expert in circus history. He is the co-author of the book, The Bloomington-Normal Circus Legacy, and works closely with patrons researching the Circus & Allied Arts holdings at Illinois State University.

Becky Koch is the Conservator and Preservation Specialist at Milner Library at Illinois State University. In this role she works with a variety of archival and special collections materials, including rare books, textiles, and works on paper. Her role ranges from designing and creating custom housings for a diversity of materials to repairing works on paper ranging from newsprint to oversized circus posters.

Registration: To Register for this open house, please click the "Register" Tab above.

Registration Deadline: April 9, 2026 (or until full).

A box lunch will be provided. When you register, you may select either a vegetarian or non-vegetarian option. Our caterer is working in a commercial kitchen where a wide variety of other foods are being prepared, often using some frozen and/or processed products that may have unknown trace ingredients. As a result, we are unable to guarantee that the food is kosher, vegan, gluten free, and/or peanut free. Attendees with strict, specific dietary restrictions should plan to provide their own food.

During this time of attacks on freedom of expression, libraries matter more than ever. Join us on April 16, 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time / 1:00 p.m. Central Time / 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time to find out more about the legal and social context for censorship in libraries. Theresa Chmara and Dr. Emily Knox will discuss the legal history of censorship, the legal landscape today, why people censor, and how to respond. 

This webinar is the first of the Free Speech Needs Free Libraries series developed by CARLI, Orbis Cascade Alliance, and PALCI in support of our joint statement "Free Speech Needs Free Libraries."

Register to attend!

Do you have censorship-related questions you would like to share with the presenters in advance of this webinar? If so, please email them to CARLI Support prior to April 2. 

Presenters:

Theresa Chmara is an attorney in Washington, D.C. She also is the General Counsel of the Freedom to Read Foundation. She is the author of Privacy and Confidentiality Issues: A Guide for Libraries and their Lawyers (ALA 2009). She has been a First Amendment lawyer for over thirty-five years and is a frequent speaker on intellectual freedom issues in libraries. She also served as an instructor for the Lawyers for Libraries training seminars, Law for Librarians training seminars, and as an instructor for the American Library Association First Amendment and Library Services E-Course.

Dr. Emily Knox is interim dean and professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include information access and intellectual freedom and censorship. She is a member of the Mapping Information Access research team. The second edition of her book, Book Banning in 21st Century America (Bloomsbury), was published in January 2026. Her previous book Foundations of Intellectual Freedom (ALA Neal-Schuman) won the 2023 Eli M. Oboler Prize for best published work in the area of intellectual freedom.  She has been interviewed by media outlets such as NPR and the New York Times and also testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on book banning. Emily previously served on the boards of the National Coalition Against Censorship, the Freedom to Read Foundation, and is a former editor of the Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy. She received her PhD from the doctoral program at the Rutgers University School of Communication & Information.