About

Dr. Brian Sturm is a Professor at the UNC School of Information and Library Science (SILS). His research focuses on immersion in information environments, exploring the state of being completely engrossed in activities such as reading, story listening, or playing video games. He has dedicated his career to understanding the experience of immersion and the various influences that facilitate deep engagement with media. Prior to his academic career, Dr. Sturm gained diverse experience as a natural history museum docent, planetarium show presenter, wildlife rehabilitator, outdoor educator for fifth graders in California, and a professional storyteller for over 30 years. His work integrates storytelling, folklore, children's and young adults' literature, and public library services, emphasizing immersion and engagement in information environments. Dr. Sturm has contributed to graduate and professional education at UNC and has been recognized with awards such as the SILS Edward G. Holley For the Good of the Order Award and the Frances Carroll McColl Term Associate Professorship.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Business
• Social Science
• Pedagogy
• Public relations
• Library science
• Psychology
• Literature
• Archaeology
• Medicine
• Art
• Engineering
• Medical education
• History

Selected publications

• “Many, Many Hats”: Youth Librarians’ Perceptions of the Work of Children’s Librarianship

  Public Library Quarterly · 2025-02-28 · 1 citations

  articleCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• “Relevant but Somewhat Outdated”: Children's Librarians’ Perspectives on Their Education and Training in the Southeastern United States

  Journal of Education for Library and Information Science · 2025-07-21

  article

  As the social support network in the United States struggles to address the myriad needs of the public, libraries are being asked to shoulder an increasingly varied set of responsibilities. Are they educated appropriately to meet these needs? We conducted in-depth, semi-structured video interviews with five experienced youth services professionals in the southeastern United States, transcribed them, and used NVivo to facilitate qualitative, collaborative coding. Our analysis revealed that, while they felt confident when entering the field years ago, children's librarians have had to adapt and extend their roles and duties such that their education from 10 years ago is now somewhat outdated. The “traditional” skills in reference, collection management, and readers’ advisory are still fundamental, but our participants identified a particular emphasis on programming as a skill set vital to children's librarianship. Others expressed current needs for more knowledge of generative AI, youth development for marginalized identities, advocacy and public speaking, outcomes evaluation, and conflict resolution that were not covered in their degree programs. Interviewees also expressed more general concerns about the ongoing relevance of the master's degree. While LIS educators are constantly updating their curriculum content, we hope our research will inspire them to reflect on—and further adapt—the content and methods in the children's librarianship curriculum.

  PublisherDOI

• Storytelling and Oral Tradition in LIS: The State of Research

  Elsevier eBooks · 2024-05-10 · 2 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Performance as Truth in the LIS Classroom

  Proceedings of the ALISE Annual Conference · 2024-10-16

  articleOpen access

  Library and Information Science instructors are including art in their teaching. Ibekwe (2020) asked students “to produce artworks that illustrated how chosen information and communication theories operated in plausible, real-life, or historic contexts” (p. 427). Dali et al. (2015) describe substituting an “academically informed creative writing” option for what would typically be an academic writing assignment, “in other words, a short story that would read like fiction while touching upon the essential issues involved in dissecting and understanding the experience of reading” (p. 302). Hartel et al. (2017) proposed reinventing conventional essay assignments as a “creative deliverable,” a more spacious translation of course content into any format of the arts, including non-material manifestations such as dance or musical composition. In the LIS field, performance is most commonly associated with children’s librarianship. McDowell and Cooke (2022), discussing storytelling, note “those skills and practices have not been readily available to or understood as important for everyday libraries and librarians” (p. 373). Worthington (2017), analyzing LIS syllabi, found that the “vast majority of courses that included storytelling, puppetry, and read-alouds were childrens’ courses” (pp. 211-212). Even these courses are typically elective rather than required, and performance is often ungraded (p. 210). Vardell and Nelson’s (2020) adventurous “Teaching Reference Interview Skills with Improv” reports on the benefits of improvisation activities, which can enhance communication, empathy, and teamwork–all essential to a librarian’s interactions with the public. Our panel will share how we incorporate performance into our LIS classrooms. We discuss performance for children’s librarians as well as for students entering other areas of the LIS profession. We examine how performance gets at Truth that can be difficult or impossible to access through other means. And, we consider the ethics of requiring student performance in a course. Exploring Soft Skills through the Fundamentals of Improv Comedy Emily Vardell will discuss how she uses improv comedy exercises to discuss and practice the soft skills necessary for successful reference service interactions. She uses the exercises as an active learning activity in a required reference services course to help LIS graduate students more organically explore soft skills. In addition to outlining the improv exercises, Emily will explore how she leads class discussions on the connections between improv and the soft skills needed to be an effective and responsive librarian. Students report that the opportunity to explore the provision of reference services through an improv lens helped them connect to many of the soft skills inherent in effective reference provision such as being flexible, meeting someone where they are at, making connections, and affirming patron needs. These soft skills are key to effective reference interviews but can be difficult to convey in a standard practice the reference interview exercise. By marrying discussions of improv comedy with reference skills, students are able to engage and explore these soft skills from a different lens. The Price of Stories is Sometimes Too High: Learning from Students’ Personal Narrative Performance Brian Sturm will share his experience in a Storytelling for Social Justice course for first year undergraduates. Designed to help them develop their own voices, the class was a bit too successful when one student used the opportunity for revenge on another student. He’ll cover lessons learned and changes made to the course to avoid this “misuse” of storytelling in the classroom. Breathing Life into Read-Alouds Sarah Beth Nelson will discuss the read-aloud assignment in her Library Materials for Children course. She prepares students for this assignment with a workshop on “breathing life into read-alouds,” which includes recognizing the reader’s creative contribution to the story. She will also share student thoughts on authenticity and authority as they relate to reading books aloud. What if a librarian wants to share a book with children, but isn’t sure they are the right person to read it aloud? By practicing a read-aloud and giving each other feedback, students experiment with stepping into the authority that the reader role asks of them. Sarah Beth has had students perform in person during face to face class, and more recently online by recording their performance. Storytelling for Social Justice and Advocacy Nicole Cooke will discuss the creation and implementation of her Storytelling for Social Justice and Advocacy course. Incorporating a mixture of public speaking, storytelling, personal narrative, and current social justice issues, students learn and practice the processes and skills needed to orally advocate for themselves, the profession, and the issues they care about most passionately. Grounding their passion with ethics and cultural competence, Cooke, and her students, place special emphasis on the question “Is this my story to tell?” Using data and self-reflection, instead of props, puppets, and picture books, student tellers learn how to lend their voices to amplify the social justice issues in their communities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Future of Youth Public Librarian Education Project: Initial Findings

  Journal of Education for Library and Information Science · 2023 · 5 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Public relations

  Despite evidence suggesting that current LIS curricula might be inadequate to prepare students for the realities of today's public library youth services work, little research has addressed potential changes to the LIS curricula in this area. This paper reports findings from the second phase of an IMLS-funded project exploring how LIS programs might better prepare students to work in public libraries with youth. Through a combination of surveys, informal virtual meet-ups, and focus groups, we collected data addressing two primary research questions: What is the job of a public youth services librarian today, and how has that job changed in recent years? What do practitioners, library administrators, LIS faculty, and other youth services providers perceive as the gaps in current LIS graduate curricula for pre-service youth services librarians? Findings indicate significant changes to the nature of public library youth services work in recent years, as well as misalignment between traditional LIS curriculum and the actual knowledge and skills required to succeed in this work.

  PublisherDOI

• The Hidden Voices of Symbolism and Superstition in the Hungarian Folktale of “The Rooster and the Diamond Button”

  Storytelling Self Society · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Literature
  • Art
  • History

  This article examines the symbolism and superstitions surrounding the Hungarian folktale of “The Rooster and the Diamond Button” that deepen the reader's comprehension of the story as one of resistance to the oppressive Ottoman Empire. The analysis reveals that the tale has myriad overlays of meaning culminating in the understanding that the rooster serves as a heroic icon of the folk; the rooster challenges authority and, in carnivalesque fashion, usurps the dominant power and, thereby, reestablishes the rightful order of the world. The accompanying personal story of “The Lebanese Rooster” shows how life often follows a similar, though in this case tragic, narrative vein.

  Publisher

• “Books, physical spaces, rules, people”: A holistic analysis of young Chinese children’s perceptions of public libraries

  Journal of Librarianship and Information Science · 2021 · 8 citations

  • Sociology
  • Psychology
  • Social Science

  Young children’s perceptions of library services are often ignored when providing library services to this group. In order to reveal young children’s perceptions, grounded theory technique was used to analyze the interview data from 92 young Chinese children. The authors first proposed an integrated model of young children’s perceptions of Chinese public libraries, including the elements of books, physical spaces, rules, and people. Subsequently, the model is compared to the adult experts’ perspectives, revealing that young children could perceive all the experts’ proposed services and functions. Besides, they could perceive rules in libraries. Furthermore, young children were able to convert the abstract library classification index system to perceptible clues. The findings could be used to improve library services to accurately conform to young children’s perspectives.

  PublisherDOI

• What Can Folktales Teach Us About Higher Education Teaching?

  Carolina Digital Repository (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) · 2021-01-02

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Folktales, stories passed down orally for generations, can shed interesting insight into higher education teaching. Thirty-nine folktales about teachers and teaching from twenty-nine different countries were analyzed using qualitative content analysis to discover themes relevant to contemporary higher education. The teachers in these stories use primarily constructivist approaches to teaching (modeling and experiential learning), vary in their levels of wisdom and virtue, and struggle with the inherent power of the teacher over his or her students. Implications for modern education are discussed.

  PublisherDOI

• With Our Own Words Librarians’ Perceptions of the Values of Storytelling in Libraries

  UNC Libraries · 2019-08-17

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Storytelling has been part of public library programming since the late 1800s, and its value has been widely discussed by librarians. The works of twenty-six public librarians and one schoolteacher were examined for trends in their perceptions of storytelling's value in libraries. The data reveal that, while storytelling is beneficial for librarian development and institutional promotion, the primary values are for children: (1) motivating reading, (2) developing strength of character, (3) growing their imaginations through vicarious experience, (4) exposing them to culture and history, (5) building personal relationships and emotional engagement, and (6) improving basic literacy skills.

  PublisherDOI

• How preschool children think about libraries: Evidence from six children’s libraries in China

  Journal of Librarianship and Information Science · 2018-12-19 · 11 citations

  article

  Listening to young children’s voices is crucial to improving children’s library services. The first step is unveiling how young children think about the library. Thus, researchers recruited the Mosaic approach including photography, interview, and drawing to explore the features of children’s libraries in children’s perspectives in six libraries in China. The results indicate that first, the children’s library is a “primary third place”. Second, the children’s library is an overlapping of home and society. Third, children can read books in the children’s library, but not just read. Fourth, the children’s library improves children’s awareness as patrons. It is suggested that young patrons already form initial understandings of the library, begin to complain about any problems, and put forward requirements for the library. Additionally, their interpersonal needs should be paid attention to. Therefore, librarians and researchers should respect the rights of children and listen to their voice when designing and providing library services associated with children.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Sarah Beth Nelson

  University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

  4 shared

• Yingying Wu

  2 shared

• Jianhua Xu

  University of Macau

  2 shared

• J. Metz

  2 shared

• J. Vollebregt

  Reade

  2 shared

• Pianran Wang

  Peking University

  2 shared

• Chad Haefele

  1 shared

• Renée Bosman

  1 shared

Labs

• Equity in Making (EITM) LabPI

Awards & honors

• 2023 SILS Edward G. Holley For the Good of the Order Award
• 2019 Nominated for UNC Faculty Award for Excellence in Docto…
• 2016-2018 Frances Carroll McColl Term Associate Professorshi…
• 2013 Frank Porter Graham Honor Society
• 2009 Nominated for ALISE award for Teaching Excellence