On Wednesday, June 4, 2025 I attended the Metrolina Library Association (MLA) Conference in Charlotte North Carolina as a poster presenter alongside Will Ritter. Our presentation focused on the Public Service Department’s Student Employee Chronicles and was titled, “Check Us Out!: A Blog Empowering Student Workers to Reflect and Belong.” The idea of the blog was very well received as an innovative project.

For our presentation, we chose to design a fabric poster and styled it after the Inside ZSR Blog page. Not only did the poster turn out beautiful, but the idea of a work blog by and about student employees really resonated with other academic library personnel, with some stating they will be looking into this for their own student employees. I am grateful that Will invited me to participate and gave me this opportunity to attend the Metrolina Conference with him.

Keynote Speaker

The Keynote speaker at the MLA conference was Dr. Lane Freeman, Director of Online Learning for North Carolina Community College System. Dr. Freeman spoke on AI initiatives, practices, and gave us practical demonstrations, and also led a breakout session,“Prompt Craft: Writing Powerful AI Prompts,” that was a hands-on demonstration of using ChatGPT. During the breakout session, we pulled our devices out and practiced using the various AI models under Dr. Freeman’s direction.

As someone who has had very little interaction with ChatGPT, I found the hands-on approach extremely helpful and insightful for practical uses of AI. For example, Dr. Freeman gave ChatGPT the prompt, “Act as a historian. Create a 5-slide presentation on the history of the Metrolina Association. Each slide: 5 bullet points, and no more than 10 words,” demonstrating how to assign a “role” to ChatGPT, and give it specific parameters.

Breakout Sessions

In addition to the AI session, I also attended two other breakout sessions, “Engage and Inspire: Crafting Interactive Library Displays to Foster Vibrant Community Connections ,” and “Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Programming & Community Outreach Strategies.” Both of these gave me a further understanding of the ongoing changes in our society, and the roles that libraries can play to better understand their respective communities in order to build connections–which always makes for better services to library patrons.

Poster Presentations

My fellow poster presenters had some great ideas and amazing accomplishments to share. There were two from Clemson University that stood out to me in particular: Jessica Kohout-Tailer’s and Cath Bruhnke’s. Jessica shared how she and her team created a “reflection room” in their library. She shared the many challenges they had to overcome to create these rooms, such as finding the space, what to include, maintaining the rooms and their items, and making sure the meditation rooms were equitable to all students regardless of religious affiliations.

The other poster, “Revolt and Remix: How Benchy-Gate Sparked Community Resistance and Open-Source Exploration in My Academic Makerspace,” Cath Bruhnke shared how she helped a group of students advocate to save “Benchy,” popular 3D model used to calibrate 3D printers. Benchy’s creator company had started removing remixes of the model that people relied on to test and adjust their printers. Students, upset that this was happening, sought a way to advocate for Benchy, and Cath gave them the opportunity through an act of resistance known as “Benchy-Gate.”

Overall, the MLA Conference was a wonderful experience. The hosting library staff were friendly and engaging, the committee had everything well organized, they fed us a great lunch, and I learned new things about library work, NC libraries, and North Carolina in general.

And one last photo, because Charlotte is almost as beautiful a city as Winston Salem.