Presentation Tips

1. General Presentation Tips  

  • Papers will be submitted in advance of the conference, but presenters should avoid repeating the text of their paper during the live presentation.  
  • Use clear, jargon-free language and practice your presentation out loud to make sure you stay within the time limit.  
  • If you are giving a lightning talk, focus on the key highlights of the research in the time available.  
  • Avoid spending too much time on institutional context or background. Focus on explaining what you did, your results, and what you did with the results.  
  • Use slides to complement your presentation but please avoid reading the slides or your paper aloud. The exception to this is reading quotes out loud for accessibility purposes.  
  • Keep visual content on slides simple and remember to incorporate accessibility principles into your slide design. See details below.  
  • Practice your pacing and make sure you can cover your content in your allocated time.  

Members of the Conference Board (info@libraryperformance.org) are happy to assist and/or provide feedback on specific questions related to paper or lightning talk presentations.  

  

2. Tips for Live Presentations  

  • Take part in speaker training and tech check in advance of the conference. You will get used to the presenting software and how to operate it.   
  • Be ready to participate in the whole session, including Q&A.  
  • Remember the allotted time limit for your presentation – 20 minutes for full papers and 5 minutes for lightning talks.  
  • Usually, it takes 1-2 minutes to present the content of one slide. Consider this while preparing your presentation.  
  • We recommend using microphones and headphones as they provide a higher sound quality.  
  • Check your equipment before giving a presentation. Make sure your computer, camera and microphone are working properly.  
  • Silence your phone, turn off desktop notifications, get rid of loud noises, e.g., fan, and make sure your room is silent.  
  • Review anything else you might need, such as a glass of water, pen, and paper, or even props.   
  • Don’t worry if any technical problems occur. It happens. There will be technical support present to help you.  

  

3. Accessible Presentations  

LibPMC is committed to providing access to its presentations and web content to everyone. To help us meet our commitment, please follow these guidelines when creating PowerPoint slides to be shown at the conference and subsequently posted to the website. For tips on accessible presentations, see Microsoft guidance.

  • Each slide should have a unique title.  
  • All fonts should be a minimum of 24 points. The slides should utilise recommended fonts, e.g., Palatino, Georgia, Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, and Helvetica.  
  • If colour is used to emphasise the importance of selected text or convey other meaning, an alternate method (such as bold text) should also be used. Use patterns or textures in addition to colour in charts. Use proper contrast between the fonts or charts and the background.   
  • Don’t use flickering, flashing, and animated text.  
  • All URLs must contain the correct hyperlinks and display the fully qualified URLs (e.g., https://www.jisc.ac.uk/ not http://www.jisc.ac.uk).  
  • All graphics, photos and smart art that convey information must have alternative text associated with them. (In PowerPoint, right-click the graphic, click ‘Format object’, click the ‘Alt Text’ pane and enter a brief description of the graphic.) See this guide from Microsoft.  
  • In PowerPoint, fill in the Document Properties of Author, Title, Subject, Keywords, and Language under the ‘Summary’ and ‘Custom’ tabs. (On a Mac, see File–>Properties; on a PC, see File–>Info.) Please see additional guidance from Microsoft, if needed.   
  • Consider using Accessibility Checker in PowerPoint. Please see additional guidance from Microsoft, if needed.   
  • Additional information on creating accessible presentations is available from the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), ‘How to Make Your Presentations Accessible to All‘. For more practical tips on accessible presentations consult the presentation and/or slides by Carli Spina (2021 LibPMC Board).  

Adapted from 2018 Library Assessment Conference Guidelines for Presenters and Accessible Presentations.