Keynote Speakers

Short biography

She was part of an expert panel that helped develop the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education and served on an American Library Association’s Public Programs Office project to develop the framework, practitioner’s guide and workshops for the Media Literacy for Adults in Public Libraries project. Her most recent books include the Reference and Information Services: An Introduction, 7 th edition, co-edited with Melissa Wong and the open access textbook Instruction in Libraries and Information Settings: An Introduction, co-authored with Melissa Wong. Laura has a PhD and a Master of Library and Information Science, both from Simmons University, and a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Boston University. She is the 2019 recipient of Simmons University’s Provost Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching.

Keynote address title: Information Literacy and Intellectual Freedom at the Nexus of Social Justice: Imagining a Path Forward

Intellectual freedom and social justice, both core values of the library profession, are sometimes put into conflict as librarians try to balance free access to information against facilitating access to information that is potentially harmful, whether by being inaccurate, hateful or offensive. Such discussions are often framed from absolutist positions that do not address context and instead suggest the two values might be incompatible. However, a librarian's responsibility, and hence their relation to these values, differs when they are building a collection that a patron might access independently and when they are providing information literacy support, where they inevitably make value judgements about information that is accessed. This session will examine how information literacy roles and responsibilities interact with values of intellectual freedom and social justice and propose a model for balancing these two seemingly-competing ideas while supporting the development of information literacy competencies.

Keynote address title: The Inconvenient Library: Friction and Dissonance as Central to Developing Critical Literacy

Receiving an answer (of any quality) without the act of ‘seeking’ facilitates little to no learning, there is no change in the person. If this is done by regularly cognitively offloading to Generative AI, then a lack of learning extends to the suppression of critical evaluation which in turn can lead to cognitive surrender. In this talk I will argue that contrary to the dominant model of AI, ‘successful’ information seeking cannot be 100% convenient. Given this, a super-efficient, seamless, library will fail to embody its social, civic and scholarly values. Instead, what is required are consciously designed seams and joins which encourage individuals to question and critique.  I will propose that library staff are the most important ‘seams’ in this model and should be empowered to generate ‘constructive friction’ through dialogue and acts of mindful dissonance.

Short biography

Mario holds a doctoral degree in information and communication sciences, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia; and has a Master’s Degree in Human Rights and Democracy from the Center for Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Studies, University of Sarajevo and University of Bologna. He has written in Bosnian and English numerous articles on different aspects of critical librarianship, information society, digital culture, media literacy, information ethics. In 2018 he published a book „Digital degworth and postdigital commons: critical librarianship, disruptive media and tactical education“ (Zagreb, Multimedia Institute and Institute for Political Ecology). He was actively engaged in research and development of projects on media and information literacy via Institute for Social Researches at the Faculty of Political Sciences (University of Sarajevo) from 2017-2022. It resulted in publishing two co-authored books on media and information literacy as well as policy document „Strategy for the development of media and information literacy of Sarajevo Canton”. He was the Editor-in-Chief of the Open Information Science Journal (De Gruyter) 2020-2025. In 2020, M. Hibert is awarded with the Charter of the Honorary Membership by the Zagreb Library Association. Mario Hibert was also the Head of the Department of Comparative Literature and Librarianship (2014-2016), Vice President of Federal Association of Librarians (2014-2016), Member of the Governing Board of „Analitika“ (Center for Social Research, 2013-2019), Member of the Governing Board of the Sarajevo's Open Society Foundation (2019-2024) and Member of the Project Team of EU/UNESCO's project „Building Trust in Media in South East Europe and Turkey“. He was also the program selector of the „Pravo Ljudski“ Human Rights Film Festival, author of documentary film „XXth Century Man“, and poetry book „Judas's Toys“. 

Short biography

Michael George holds a PhD in Ethics/Moral Theology from St. Paul University and the University of Ottawa. His work engages with major philosophical and ethical traditions, with a particular focus on ethical foundations, questions of methodology, and the role of imagination, language, and narrative in shaping interpretation and understanding across cultural and informational contexts. He has published extensively and presented at numerous international conferences, including work that connects philosophical inquiry with themes relevant to library and information science, such as knowledge mediation, interpretation, and the epistemic role of narrative in information environments. His work spans both theoretical and applied ethics, particularly within integrative bioethics, and he has contributed to a range of academic and professional communities through research, teaching, and advisory roles. George has a long-standing collaboration with Croatian academic institutions and scholarly communities, where he is particularly active. He has regularly participated in conferences and research initiatives and has held visiting scholar and guest professor positions at the University of Split and the University of Zagreb. He is currently affiliated as a visiting scholar with the University Centre for Integrative Bioethics in Zagreb.

Keynote address title: Agency, Responsibility and Critical Literacy- Social Demands and Challenges: The Academy and Beyond 

If academic workers are (or could be) considered as members of a moral community this might indicate the beginning of a shift in how values are identified and prioritized. This move would raise a number of questions, not the least of which would include “what is a moral community?”.  In addressing this (and related questions) a distinction between understanding existing conditions (i.e. “what is the case?”) and how we should act (i.e. “what should we do?”) becomes clear. By emphasizing the importance of contextual frameworks to aid in general comprehension, the importance of critical historical consciousness in situating ourselves in our world then leads to questions about agency, where a concern for inter-subjective relations informs our attempts to realize value. In promoting the project of critical literacy, the significance of the distinction between historical reality and of future possibilities requires attention to consciousness, the role of truth and critical judgment, and to the promotion of imagination.

Round Table Panellists

Conference Invited Commentators