Emma Freeman

If you have an idea, experience or lesson learned that could help your fellow academic librarians, we’d love to hear about it at EBSCO User Group 2027.

In this video, I’m going to walk through our Call for Proposals process, including the kinds of sessions we’re looking for, how to choose the right format and how to submit your proposal through the EBSCO User Group website.

And if you have never presented at User Group before, don’t let that stop you. You do not need extensive presentation experience or a perfectly polished case study to have something valuable to share.

Let’s start with who we’re hoping to hear from.

User Group sessions are primarily led by academic librarians and library staff who can share what they are doing with EBSCO products, services or content to support their communities.
Our speakers come from all walks of library life, from subject librarians, systems and electronic resources librarians, collection development teams, instruction and outreach librarians, administrators, or anyone involved in connecting users with library resources, and anyone who has an EBSCO story to share.

That can include a major project or implementation, but it certainly doesn’t have to. Maybe you found a better way to configure your discovery experience. Maybe you changed a workflow that was creating problems for staff or users. You might have tried a new outreach or library marketing strategy, evaluated how a resource was being used or worked with faculty on a particular research need. You can also talk about something that is still a work in progress. A project does not have to end in a perfect success story to generate useful lessons for somebody else. What matters most is that you have an experience, approach or insight that your peers can learn from.

So what makes a strong proposal?

One of the best places to start is with a specific problem or experience. A focused story about one challenge or idea and what you learned from it can be more helpful for attendees in understanding your session’s content, rather than trying to cover an array topics all at once.

If you want to discuss a larger range of ideas, you are welcome to submit multiple proposals focusing on different topics.

The best proposals draw on real library experience. Think about what happened at your institution and what another librarian could take away from hearing about it. For example, rather than proposing a broad session about discovery, you might focus on a particular change you made to improve the user experience and what you observed after making it. If you recently implemented something new, you could talk about how you approached the rollout and what you would change if you did it again. You might also have an experiment that is still underway. Early findings can be useful, particularly when they help other libraries think through a similar decision. Ultimately, the strongest proposals give us a clear sense of what takeaways a librarian will have from attending your session.

And don’t feel like your session needs to present your institution as having all the answers. User Group is intended to create conversations between peers. Being candid about challenges and lessons learned can make a session especially valuable.

If you aren’t quite sure what to share, the Call for Proposals page includes six session pathways that can help you brainstorm. They cover the research journey and user experience, collections and database strategy, emerging technologies and innovations, implementation and change management, analytics and assessment, and teaching and campus engagement.

Each pathway includes several examples that can kickstart your thinking on what might apply to you or your institution. These pathways are meant to provide direction rather than box you into a particular category. Your idea may touch several areas, and that’s completely fine. Just think of which one most closely aligns with what you want to speak about when formulating your proposal. Once you have your topic in mind, think about the format that will serve it best.

Our Standard Presentations allow 40 minutes for the presentation followed by 10 minutes for open Q&A with the audience. These work well when one or two speakers are providing a more complete walkthrough, case study or in-depth analysis.

Panel Presentations use the same general session timing, with three or four speakers contributing different experiences or perspectives to the presentation, or hosting an open dialogue that may or may not include audience participation.

If you think 40 minutes is a bit too long for your topic, we also have an Innovation Session format for 10-minute lightning talks. These offer a more approachable way to present a quick takeaway or tip with less presentation overhead.

Choose the format based on how much time your idea actually needs. A tightly focused 10-minute presentation can be just as valuable as a longer session.

Now, let’s look at how you actually submit your proposal.

To get started, visit ebscousergroup.org and select “Submit” in the main navigation. This will bring you to the Submit a Session page.

Before jumping into the form, I recommend taking a few minutes to review this page. It’s a good way to refer back to some of the information shared in this video, including session formats, topic pathways and examples of proposal angles.

When you’re ready, scroll to the bottom of the page and select “Start Submission”. This link will take you into our PheedLoop submission portal. Once you enter PheedLoop, work through the submission steps presented in the portal.

If you are completing the proposal on someone’s behalf, you can enter your own information to get started, but we’ll discuss where this needs to be updated later.

As you complete the session information, remember that the title is the first thing people will see on the agenda. Make your title descriptive and engaging to help it stand out, but don’t get hung up on making it too clever if that’s just not your jam. Clear and contextual is all you need.

For the description, give attendees a clear picture of what you plan to talk about and why it will be useful to them. Start by establishing some context or posing a question, and close with a value statement or attendee takeaway. This helps attendees understand if the session is a good fit for them. You also have the option of including up to three learning objectives. These are not required, but are a helpful way to reinforce what attendees will learn and who will benefit.

You will select the pathway your session most closely aligns with, your desired presentation format, and the audience suitable for your session. Audiences are broken down by complexity level – Accessible sessions are open to anyone, regardless of their experience level. Balanced sessions require a little bit of background knowledge, but are otherwise understandable to a broader population. Complex sessions are geared towards experts in a given field and require extensive background knowledge to get value out of the session.

The next screen will ask you to identify all products relevant to your session. These selections help us avoid overlap when possible as we build the agenda, so focusing in on one to three core products is a good approach. You will also be asked to agree to our image and media release, which you can read in the submission portal. If your session includes additional speakers, make sure their information is included where requested. Fill out the required fields and then hit “Add Co-Speaker.” Otherwise, hit “Skip this step.”

Finally, complete the profile information for the primary speaker. This should carry over all required fields from the “Start” screen, but verify that the information is correct. If you are submitting on someone’s behalf, this is where you need to update the information to reflect that of the actual speaker for the session.

You may also choose to upload a profile picture, write a bio, share social links and other information, but these steps can also be completed from the Speaker Portal later on if your session is accepted.

At the end of the profile section, follow the final prompt to submit your proposal. You will see a proposal confirmation screen, including a Submission ID and the name and email associated with the proposal. Take note of your Submission ID.

A confirmation email will also be sent to the address of the primary speaker. You can confirm which email address received that message on this final page. Keep track of this confirmation email, as you will need it in order to make any edits to your proposal, which you are able to do at any point until the submission deadline. Simply click the button at the bottom of your email to be brought back to your submission.

Before we wrap up, there are a few things I hope you’ll keep in mind while developing your idea. If you have a connection with one of your EBSCO team members, whether they are in sales, product management, implementations  or wherever, and you want them to collaborate or co-present with you, please reach out to them and see what is possible! Our team members are always eager to attend and present at the User Group if they are available.

And in that same vein of EBSCO support, the EBSCO User Group team is also here to help. We host presenter preparation meetings in advance of the conference and provide support materials including templates, best practices and more.

And finally, as a special “thanks” from us, everyone who submits a proposal will receive a discount code in their confirmation email for an additional $25 off registration costs, even if your proposal is not accepted!

If you have been considering submitting a proposal, I hope this makes the process feel a little easier.

You can find all of the Call for Proposals information at ebscousergroup.org. You may also email us at EBSCOUserGroup@ebsco.com if you have any questions.

We look forward to hearing your ideas and seeing you there!