🤩 ARLIES Film Festival 2026 Winners

The 11th annual ARLIES Film Festival featured 49 videos by ARL members, shown at the ARL Spring Association Meeting in Knoxville and live streamed on the ARL YouTube channel this week. The festival highlights and shares videos developed by member institutions to increase knowledge and use of libraries, their spaces, services, collections, and expertise.

ARL member representatives in attendance voted on the videos and, new this year, viewers who live streamed the videos off-site voted for the People’s Choice award. A working group of the ARL Member Engagement and Outreach Committee, the ARLIES hosts, presented the following awards resulting from the vote. 

Best Collections-Focused Film: Women’s Wear Daily Archive, Tulane University Libraries

Rawad Nahhas, Becky Gipson, Ty’hja Cooper, and Alan Velasquez

Tulane University Libraries gives full online access to the Women’s Wear Daily archive, every issue, from 1910 to today.

Best Development/Fundraising Film: Celebrating 60 Years of Ralph Brown Draughon Library, Auburn University Libraries

MAK Media

For 60 years, RBD Library has been the Heartbeat of Auburn University, the Keeper of History, and the Champion of Innovation.

Best Free-Form Film: Whisper Something Good, University of Utah J. Willard Marriott Library

Jordan Hanzon

Good things happen all the time, so we invited our students to whisper something good that’s happened to them lately.

Best How-To/Instruction Film: Borrow Books from Your Seat at Cornell University Library, Cornell University Library

Danica Fisher, Rachel A. Foster

A short video demonstrating how students can check out books directly from their seat using the Cornell University Library self-checkout app.

Best Publicity/Marketing Film: PSA: Please Pick Up Your Interlibrary Loan Requests, University at Albany, SUNY, Libraries

Amanda M. Lowe, Melody Palmer, Sophie Bartlett

PSA: The millions of books that are never picked up from the libraries’ hold shelves make library workers sad.

Best Research Film: For Good: A Digital Preservation Parody, University of Calgary Libraries and Cultural Resources

Kathryn Ruddock – lyrics, singing Preservationist Kathleen James – singing Data Nicola Yssel Johnson – piano Nathan Chandler – audio recording and engineering Andy Nichols – video recording and editing

In honour of World Digital Preservation Day 2025 #UCalgary’s Libraries & Cultural Resources proudly presents: “For Good: A Digital Preservation Parody.”

Reflection of Inclusion: Filipino Tattooing at Hamilton Library, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa Hamilton Library

King James Mangoba

This reel promoted the “Cartographies of Skin and Soil: Tattoos, Resistance, and 1500s Colonial Maps of the Philippines” exhibit at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Hamilton Library by interweaving images of rare historic maps from its Philippine Collection with footage from the workshops and tattoo demonstrations that launched the exhibit to highlight cultural resilience, identity, and the living legacy of Indigenous Filipino tattooing.

Best Production: Celebrating 60 Years of Ralph Brown Draughon Library, Auburn University Libraries

MAK Media

For 60 years, RBD Library has been the Heartbeat of Auburn University, the Keeper of History, and the Champion of Innovation.

Best Humor: UF Libraries Class Cab, University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries

Rae Riiska, Aimee Sullivan

*Beep Beep* In this Cash Cab spin-off, students demonstrate their library and UF knowledge in the hopes of making it to class on time.

Best Performance: Unbound, Colorado State University Libraries

Tubyez Lucky

In times of uncertainty, books become more than pages—they become pathways to truth, dialogue, and freedom.

Best Picture: UF Libraries Class Cab, University of Florida George A. Smathers Libraries

Rae Riiska, Aimee Sullivan

*Beep Beep* In this Cash Cab spin-off, students demonstrate their library and UF knowledge in the hopes of making it to class on time.

People’s Choice: TIED Between:

Research Consultation: KPop Demon Hunters AI Controversy, UC Santa Barbara Libraries

Johannes Steffens, Quynh Vo

The video leans into the recent controversy over AI-generated music in the popular, award-winning animated film “KPop Demon Hunters” to highlight to an undergraduate student audience UCSB Library’s reference support and research consultation services, as well as strategies for finding and evaluating sources and for identifying misinformation.

Spaces, York University Libraries

Sean Sweeney, Alan Peng, Markham Library Digital Support Assistants

“Spaces” is a documentary following York University alum and musician David Park as he writes, records, and performs an original song in a single day, showcasing how the creative spaces and resources at York University’s Markham Campus Library can dynamically transform a single idea into a finished work.

 

About the Association of Research Libraries

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit membership organization of research libraries and archives in major public and private universities, federal government agencies, and large public institutions in Canada and the US. ARL champions research libraries and archives, develops visionary leaders, and shapes policy for the equitable advancement of knowledge.