(via Firouzeh Rismiller, DePaul University)
The College of DuPage Library and the DePaul University Library are pleased to announce the call for proposals for the 24th Annual Illinois Information Literacy Summit. The Summit will be held in person on Friday, May 1, at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, IL. The Summit is a regional conference that draws attendance from university, community college, and school librarians from Illinois and neighboring states. Sessions typically have 20-40 participants.
This year, we’re exploring the theme “Skepticism (Not Cynicism): Navigating Knowledge in a Time of Uncertainty”. We’re excited to kick off the discussion with a keynote by Teresa Helena Moreno, Assistant Professor and Librarian at the University of Illinois Chicago.
In an age when skepticism is often mistaken for cynicism, libraries remain among the last public spaces dedicated to truth-seeking, questioning, and dialogue. This year’s Information Literacy Summit explores how we can model and teach skepticism as a productive, hopeful stance – one grounded in curiosity, respect for evidence, and an openness to understanding.
Skepticism today must operate on many levels: questioning the inevitability of AI, asking who trained the model and whose data it reflects, recognizing who benefits from particular narratives, and acknowledging the emotional toll of constant uncertainty and information overload. Just as importantly, skepticism is a civic and scholarly skill, essential to democratic participation, informed discourse, peer review, and academic integrity.
ACCESS
If skepticism is the stance, ACCESS is the work.
Amid book bans, campus speech restrictions, disappearing digital archives, and algorithmic filtering, ACCESS offers both a diagnosis and a response: a framework for understanding the forces shaping what we can see, share, and trust, and a call to action for libraries, educators, and students to rebuild trust, protect knowledge, and strengthen critical engagement.
Proposal Formats
We’re considering proposals in the following formats:
- Breakout sessions or panels: These sessions will be 50 minutes long and consist of a presentation from the front of the room. We encourage presenters to incorporate audience interaction or hands-on demonstrations when possible. Panel discussions should include a maximum of three (3) presenters.
- Roundtable discussions: These sessions are 50 minutes long and consist of a brief presentation from the facilitator to set the stage, followed by small or large group discussion among attendees. If you’d like to propose a roundtable discussion, please include a brief (5-7 item) bibliography of publications related to your chosen topic and several discussion questions (3-5 questions).
- Lightning talks: These are short 5-7 minute presentations which serve as an optimal format for presenting work-in-progress, sharing successes (and things that didn’t work out as expected), or introducing attendees to a teaching tool, lesson plan or learning activity, or critical framework.
Submitting Your Proposal
The deadline for proposals is now Monday, February 9. Please check here for additional instructions. If you have questions or would like to discuss your idea for a proposal, feel free to reach out to the planning committee at infolitsummit@gmail.com.
For more information about the Summit, please go here.