Performance as Truth in the LIS Classroom
Authors: Nelson Sarah , Vardell Emily , Sturm Brian , Cooke Nicole 
Published: October 2024

Library and Information Science instructors are including art in their teaching. Ibekwe (2020) asked students “to produce artworks that illustrated how chosen information and communication theories operated in plausible, real-life, or historic contexts” (p. 427). Dali et al. (2015) describe substituting an “academically informed creative writing” option for what would typically be an academic writing assignment, “in other words, a short story that would read like fiction while touching upon the essential issues involved in dissecting and understanding the experience of reading” (p. 302). Hartel et al. (2017) proposed reinventing conventional essay assignments as a “creative deliverable,” a more spacious translation of course content into any format of the arts, including non-material manifestations such as dance or musical composition.
In the LIS field, performance is most commonly associated with children’s librarianship. McDowell and Cooke (2022), discussing storytelling, note “those skills and practices have not been readily available to or understood as important for everyday libraries and librarians” (p. 373). Worthington (2017), analyzing LIS syllabi, found that the “vast majority of courses that included storytelling, puppetry, and read-alouds were childrens’ courses” (pp. 211-212). Even these courses are typically elective rather than required, and performance is often ungraded (p. 210).
Vardell and Nelson’s (2020) adventurous “Teaching Reference Interview Skills with Improv” reports on the benefits of improvisation activities, which can enhance communication, empathy, and teamwork–all essential to a librarian’s interactions with the public.
Our panel will share how we incorporate performance into our LIS classrooms. We discuss performance for children’s librarians as well as for students entering other areas of the LIS profession. We examine how performance gets at Truth that can be difficult or impossible to access through other means. And, we consider the ethics of requiring student performance in a course.
Exploring Soft Skills through the Fundamentals of Improv Comedy
Emily Vardell will discuss how she uses improv comedy exercises to discuss and practice the soft skills necessary for successful reference service interactions. She uses the exercises as an active learning activity in a required reference services course to help LIS graduate students more organically explore soft skills. In addition to outlining the improv exercises, Emily will explore how she leads class discussions on the connections between improv and the soft skills needed to be an effective and responsive librarian. Students report that the opportunity to explore the provision of reference services through an improv lens helped them connect to many of the soft skills inherent in effective reference provision such as being flexible, meeting someone where they are at, making connections, and affirming patron needs. These soft skills are key to effective reference interviews but can be difficult to convey in a standard practice the reference interview exercise. By marrying discussions of improv comedy with reference skills, students are able to engage and explore these soft skills from a different lens.
The Price of Stories is Sometimes Too High: Learning from Students’ Personal Narrative Performance
Brian Sturm will share his experience in a Storytelling for Social Justice course for first year undergraduates. Designed to help them develop their own voices, the class was a bit too successful when one student used the opportunity for revenge on another student. He’ll cover lessons learned and changes made to the course to avoid this “misuse” of storytelling in the classroom.
Breathing Life into Read-Alouds
Sarah Beth Nelson will discuss the read-aloud assignment in her Library Materials for Children course. She prepares students for this assignment with a workshop on “breathing life into read-alouds,” which includes recognizing the reader’s creative contribution to the story. She will also share student thoughts on authenticity and authority as they relate to reading books aloud. What if a librarian wants to share a book with children, but isn’t sure they are the right person to read it aloud? By practicing a read-aloud and giving each other feedback, students experiment with stepping into the authority that the reader role asks of them. Sarah Beth has had students perform in person during face to face class, and more recently online by recording their performance.
Storytelling for Social Justice and Advocacy
Nicole Cooke will discuss the creation and implementation of her Storytelling for Social Justice and Advocacy course. Incorporating a mixture of public speaking, storytelling, personal narrative, and current social justice issues, students learn and practice the processes and skills needed to orally advocate for themselves, the profession, and the issues they care about most passionately. Grounding their passion with ethics and cultural competence, Cooke, and her students, place special emphasis on the question “Is this my story to tell?”
Using data and self-reflection, instead of props, puppets, and picture books, student tellers learn how to lend their voices to amplify the social justice issues in their communities.