Got Banned From My Last Campaign for Insisting Paladin was Pronounced Paula Deen and Other Memes

Description: Pop culture literacy is an integral part of my librarianship. Not only does staying up to date on TV shows, music, memes, etc help me work better with my student staff, but it helps in the instruction classroom as well. There’s no way to watch every show or listen to every new song, so learning ways to keep up to date with pop culture without making every evening a Netflix binge night is important. Also, it’s hard to predict what the next cool thing is going to be! Millennials are out here making jokes about The Cask of Amontillado! There are many discussions in our profession about leveraging social media/pop culture for the library presence, but learning how to leverage social media/pop culture for the librarian’s presence can be just as useful.

Format & Style: Play session (pop culture game at tables to help break the ice, get people comfortable - Catchphrase style), small group discussion

Takeaways:

• Strategies for keeping current without giving up your life.
• How to not get overwhelmed by what you don’t know
• Resources to help stay current
• Fun and friendship

Organization: No formed group - I would LOVE to talk to other librarians about the way pop culture helps inform their librarianship, and to hear how they keep abreast of it all. I think something like this can only be helped by adding other perspectives. I would definitely want to do a CFP.

Contact: Beth Carpenter -bcarpenter@transy.edu (Feel free to just send me an email if you want to talk about pop culture! I will answer it!)