I suggested last issue that perhaps I would stop expounding on overarching themes in these introductions, but alas, as I read through the articles for this issue, I found myself musing on the subject of expertise: the desire (and often need) that many of us share to continue to expand our areas of expertise; the challenging issue of our existing expertise sometimes being accorded less trust and value than it was in the past; and how our expertise compares, contrasts, and overlaps across subject areas and in disparate library contexts. At this point, I make no promises regarding any future discussions of unifying themes either. I don’t think I can be trusted to adhere to such a stricture.

We are thrilled to have a Feature Article in this issue focused on the development of the Midwest Entrepreneurship Case Competition (MECC) from a local event into a regional, library-led case competition. In “Building a Regional Library-Led Case Competition: Reflections from Librarians and Vendor Partners” authors Zoeanna A. Mayhook, Annette Bochenek, Elizabeth Grauel, Hunter Minser, Ilana Stonebraker, and Juan Vasquez state that their aim in sharing their experience with us is “to serve as a practical guide for business librarians looking to organize local or regional case competitions to support the information literacy development of business students.” To that end, they provide a relevant literature review; a detailed account of how the MECC evolved; stakeholder reflections from a first-time case competition planner, a judge, and their vendor sponsor; and they conclude with a reflection on both the benefits of this type of case competition and the challenges they had to overcome or will need to address in future iterations of the event. This is a unique case competition with librarian expertise baked into the planning, execution, and reflection of the case.

We also have three articles in the Teaching and Learning section in this issue – Shoutout to our excellent Section Editor! – including another peer-reviewed article. In “From Classroom to Boardroom: Employer Perspectives of Business Graduates’ Information Literacy Skills,” Heather Howard, Margaret Phillips, and Jiahong Wang share the results of their pilot study wherein they interviewed four employers regarding the information literacy skills of recent undergraduate business students, asking both which skills new hires currently have (or don’t have) and what skills might be of increasing importance in the future. The discussion of their results is along the following themes: gathering and using information; evidence and synthesis; using specific types of information; learning; navigating internal systems; satisfaction with new hires; and data. One of the main takeaways I took from this article was that many graduates struggle with real world scenarios wherein there are no absolute answers, and the authors share that their employer-interviewees suggested addressing this challenge with more experiential learning opportunities… like case studies, for instance.

The other two Teaching and Learning articles both address challenging circumstances, and I’m thankful to the authors for letting us learn from their experiences. In “Choose Your Own Adventure: Overhauling and rightsizing a library orientation for first year business students,” Maria Planansky and Mechele Romanchock at Alfred University in New York State explore how they redesigned their first-year library orientation session after discovering post-COVID that student engagement had decreased, previous library and research experience was less than in previous years, and students “seemed bored.” To address these issues, the authors redesigned the orientation into a multi-part process that starts with a guided opening conversation to gauge students’ current level of library and research knowledge, visually displays to them that this previous knowledge varies amongst their classmates, and then allows the students to ‘choose their own adventure’ in terms of activities that will introduce them to library resources and services on an as-needed basis.

In our final Teaching and Learning article, “Confronting Student Distrust: Unexpected Findings from a Five-Week Business Intelligence Course” Susan M. Klopper and Nora B. McKenzie from the Goizueta Business Library at Emory University share with us their experience in designing a for-credit senior seminar workshop. I found some overlap between this article and ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ particularly as regards students’ changing ideas about information literacy expertise – Are librarians still regarded as experts? Are peers more trustworthy experts? – and the conclusion both articles drew that one important change they needed to make to their instructional activities is to learn at the beginning of their sessions what students see as their own knowledge gaps as well as trying to tease out the assumptions and/or past experiences students have with research and library resources. In their for-credit course, our authors confronted a lack of trust in their expertise. Even more alarming to me though was the fact that “students were especially resistant to the instructor’s perspective on cautionary tales for using ChatGPT for business research” and the implication that students may trust the expertise of AI, potentially more than the expertise of information professionals.

As far as expanding into new areas of expertise is concerned, our Tips section includes an article from HD McKay, Alyssa Sklar and Chuck Knight – a business librarian, a GIS professional, and a business collections librarian respectively – sharing their perspectives on GIS/business librarian collaborations for those that are ‘GIS-curious’. While GIS services are increasingly available in university library settings, discussion in business librarian literature is limited, so “GIS x Business Librarian Collaboration: Mapping New Opportunities” gives us a chance to read about the benefits and challenges of these potential collaborations from several relevant perspectives.

Our Conference Report article, “2024 Charleston Conference: Through the Eyes of a First Timer” by Chuck Knight of Vanderbilt University discusses another way we often expand our areas of expertise as business librarians, which is through our attendance at both in-person and virtual events. The Charleston Conference certainly comes highly recommended, as Knight tells us, “My attendance has proven to be one of the peak experiences of my first year as a new business collections librarian. Besides visiting a charming coastal city, the conference offered valuable programming and opportunities to meet fellow librarians.” In person registration also included attendance at the virtual conference a few weeks later online, which seems like it provided a unique opportunity not only to attend additional learning sessions, but to catch up via a recording on details of the event that may have been missed in person.

Finally, our International Outlook article comes to us all the way from the NYU Shanghai Library as Yu Huang discusses the “Business Librarian as Learning Facilitator in and out of the Classroom,” walking us through some of his experiences as a business librarian in this setting. Some of the strategies and experiences Huang explores are his participation in both inquiry-based and scenario-based learning, his emphasis on non-English language materials for assignments where English-only resources will likely be insufficient, and how he supports students not only through course-embedded library sessions, but also through his participation in pre-scheduled workshops, business competitions, and one-on-one research consultations. Huang emphasizes helping students to deconstruct their research and think about using library resources in a step-by-step fashion and the importance of earning faculty trust to obtain word-of-mouth marketing support.

I am certain there is something worthwhile in this issue for absolutely any librarian with an interest in business information literacy. Happy reading!