2025: UT Libraries Year in Review

2025 has been a busy and productive year for UT Libraries. We faced new challenges and found new ways to serve the campus community.

Here’s a look back at our 2025 highlights:

UT Libraries welcomed two new associate deans to its senior leadership team: Jen Bartlett is Associate Dean for Engagement, Learning, and Public Services. Jennie Mezick is Associate Dean for Research, Collections, and Assessment. 

UT Knoxville’s Big Orange Give, an intensive single day of fundraising, was held this fall. Thanks to the Libraries’ many friends and to generous matching gifts, the proceeds raised were more than double the Libraries’ goal! Big Orange Give raised more than $70,000 to empower research, creativity, and discovery at UT Libraries.

Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives finished processing the Beauford Delaney Papers and opened an exhibit commemorating the life and work of Beauford Delaney (1901–1979), Knoxville’s most renowned artist. The exhibit on the first floor of Hodges Library will continue through May 2026.

Original compositions by renowned jazz pianist and composer Donald Brown, inspired by UT Libraries’ Beauford Delaney Papers, debuted at the Knoxville Museum of Art in the spring. The performance was part of UT Libraries’ signature program Boundless: Artists in the Archives, which invites musicians and other artists to visit the Libraries’ archives and create original works inspired by the unique primary sources preserved there. Boundless partnered with the world-renowned festival Big Ears to present the event.

Library faculty participated in campus-wide scholarly endeavors, including serving on faculty search committees and curriculum advisory committees. Dean of Libraries Steve Smith is co-chairing the university’s Strategic Vision Refresh Advisory Group, which will realign UT Knoxville’s It Takes a Volunteer strategic vision with the UT System’s 2025–2030 Strategic Plan. Leigh Mosley, UT Libraries’ accessibility coordinator, is serving on the UT System Digital Accessibility Working Group and UT Knoxville Digital Accessibility Steering Committee. Both groups are working towards ADA Title II compliance. Grace Therrell, student success librarian for online pedagogy, was nominated to serve on the Scholarly Teaching Advisory Network, an initiative of Teaching and Learning Innovation. LaTiffany Davis, student success librarian for first-year engagement, was selected to serve as a Volunteer Experience Faculty Fellow.

The university broke ground on a Library Storage Annex, a climate-controlled, high-density storage facility that will safeguard the Libraries’ most fragile holdings. The facility will assure long-term preservation of and access to the university’s archives and special collections, as well as other materials that are sparsely held throughout the state or nation or are part of cooperative resource-sharing and preservation agreements.

The Libraries’ Community Learning and Engagement team and community partners launched STEMOVATE, which this academic year will reach 6,000 sixth graders across 22 Tennessee counties with hands-on interactive lessons on artificial intelligence, engineering design, nuclear energy, and invasive species.

UT librarians presented various workshops for faculty and graduate student scholars. The Research Impact series included topics such as publishing in the right journal to enhance the visibility and reach of academic research. The new Learn@Research LibForum, offered in collaboration with the Graduate School’s Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, commenced with a presentation on using artificial intelligence in the diagnosis of breast cancer.

Two sports-related University of Tennessee Press titles won awards for cover design at the Association of University Presses Book, Jacket, and Journal Show: White Ice: Race and the Making of Atlanta Hockey and Ballplayers on Stage: Baseball, Melodrama, and Theatrical Celebrity in the Deadball Era. 

This fall, Hodges Library hosted the Association of Creative Technologies in Academic Libraries (ACTAL) Conference. The event brought together library professionals from around the country to share their work around innovation, creativity, and collaboration.

UT Libraries’ staff, initiatives, resources, exhibits, and collections were featured in more than 20 news stories in international, national, and local media including American Libraries, Kirkus Reviews, WBIR Channel 10 and the Knoxville News Sentinel.

UT Libraries was featured in five campus and student news media stories, including in the Daily Beacon and Torchbearer magazine.