Kick Off The Year with RUSA's 2026 Online Learning

The American Library Association- Reference and User Services Division (RUSA) 2026 CE offerings are booming with an outstanding combination of repeat and new courses/webinars. Our list of upcoming programming is below:

Passports & Notaries @ Your Library

60 minutes webinar on Wednesday, January 14, 2026

During this 60-minute webinar, learn how to build in passport and notary services at your highlight as the panelists highlight getting started and creating clear processes to avoid monopolizing staff time from both management and administrative perspective.

Presenters:

Amber Gordon, Assistant Manager at Buder Library, St. Louis Public Library

Marissa Owens, Community Engagement Librarian at Buder Library, St. Louis Public Library

CORE/RUSA Webinar- From Goals to Impact: Library User Stories

60-minute webinar on January 20, 2026

Successful leadership efforts center key partners and anticipate concrete outcomes. In libraries, this means demonstrating impact by linking institutional goals with information about students’ library engagement and its relation to their learning and success. This session will demonstrate how library leaders and managers can apply user stories to provide a common understanding of research and results, enabling rapid transition (as appropriate) to address and act upon findings.

Presenters:

Dr. Megan Oakleaf, Professor of Library and Information Science and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, iSchool at Syracuse University

Dr. Rebecca (Becky) Croxton, Assessment Research Analyst, Colorado State University Libraries.

Next Gen Tools for SWOT Analysis and Strategic Insight

75-minute webinar on January 21, 2026

Are you interested in new approaches to Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities & Threats (SWOT) analysis? During this webinar, we will reimagine data collection and interpretation for strategic insights. Hear as Michele Costello, an Assistant Professor and Business Librarian at Baruch College of The City University of New York shares how to leverage non-traditional data sets and emerging technologies such as Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reporting, sentiment scores and AI financial transcript mining techniques.

Inside Interlibrary Loan: Basics for a New Millennium

Four-week asynchronous course starting on February 16, 2026

As library shelving and physical collections continue to diminish, electronic resource collections continue to grow. We need to expand our Interlibrary Loan (ILL) services to meet the needs of our library patrons.

The instructor, Debra Lucas-Alfieri, Professor Emeritus, was the Head of Reference, Interlibrary Loan, Public Services, and Information Analysis and Instruction, at D’Youville University in Buffalo, NY. Debra has been teaching online library science classes, seminars, and webinars for over a decade, working with national organizations. She has presented web-based symposiums for organizations in Florida and Montreal. Debra has vast experience and knowledge of the history of libraries, and its mission, her research and philosophies are highly regarded, studied, and cited across the world. Through teaching and writing, she has impacted students and scholars across the globe.

Previous attendees have shared:

• I valued all of the resources provided to help learn about ILL. The resources were both practical and theoretical
• I appreciated the practical tools we were shown, such as Google Scholar and LVIS. I thought the introductory material was well presented and appreciated going through the history of ILL to today, with copyright laws and the Rule/Suggestion of Five. I feel a little more prepared to talk about ILL professionally.

Simplify communication to increase access, trust, and efficiency

60-minute webinar on February 18, 2026

Led by Lee Shainis, President of Simplify Language, this 60-minute webinar will give registrants a greater awareness of language exclusion and actionable ways to make written and spoken communication more concise, understandable, readable and translatable.

Design and Marketing for Libraries

Four-week asynchronous course starting on February 23, 2026

A four-week asynchronous course to help students market their library to send positive messages, advocate, promote and engage with their audience. This course is for librarians and library staff of any type (public, academic, etc) that are responsible for or involved with promoting the library via social media and other engagement tools. Attendees will develop an understanding of marketing and design standards; transfer knowledge of marketing to the library field; and apply knowledge of design to web-based and other applications.

The instructor, Jennifer Blair, is Associate Professor, Head of User Servies Librarian at Azusa Pacific University.

Don’t see a topic that interests you, check out our continually updated listings here or submit a proposal form here.

The Reference and User Services Association (RUSA), a division of the American Library Association, represents librarians and library staff in the fields of reference, specialized reference, collection development, readers’ advisory and resource sharing. RUSA is the foremost organization of reference and information professionals who make the connections between people and the information sources, services, and collection materials they need. Learn more at www.rusaupdate.org.