PDA Series: Communicating Value through Storytelling

Presented by Dr. Kate McDowell, School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Storytelling has been happening for over a century in libraries, but its applications are too often presumed to be narrowly focused on serving children. The skills involved in navigating a dynamic exchange between teller, audience, and story are applicable to the most pressing problems facing libraries and librarians in the 21st century, those of communicating our knowledge and value. This talk will feature storytelling insights based on over 40 interviews from the Storytelling @ Work project, and combining insights from librarians with those from storytelling applications in advancement and fundraising. Participants will leave with narrative structures for building informative and emotionally compelling stories from their own knowledge and experience to communicate their value. 

Kate McDowell is Associate Professor at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She has been teaching storytelling since 2007, helping graduate professional students explore how their stories can help them succeed. She is also the storytelling consultant to campus-level Advancement at the University of Illinois. Her workshops for nonprofits bring together the tools of storytelling with many areas, including fundraising, career preparation, business, and public service.  Her current research project is on Storytelling at Work, and she is working on a book called Storytelling Thinking for Professionals. 

Registration is available to CARLI members and to members of the ICOLC Professional Development Alliance.

Sponsored by CARLI.