Lian Warner is an active instruction librarian and OER specialist with an information literacy instruction specialization. She’s also a saxophonist, composer, adventure educator, martial artist, aquatics person, and bunny mom — a jack of all trades, master of some.
As a Katrina kid growing up in the stormy greater New Orleans area, Lian spent her childhood using her imagination to create worlds and games in her head. While she admits to being a professional quitter of multiple crafts, skills, clubs, and games, she eventually realized that some adventures last longer than others, and you must let go of old adventures to make room for new ones. At 16, at Ridgewood Preparatory School under band director Shari Meyer, Lian discovered an adventure worth sticking around for the long haul by learning the saxophone and music mastery.
In 2013, at 18, Lian realized that her next step after high school was not yet traditional education, but an adventure traveling up and down the eastern portion of the USA, starting in the mythic mountains of southern Appalachia. Lian took a gap year, which proved to be one of the most formative experiences of her life. She started off in Brasstown, NC, at the Pioneer Project under Open Way Learning’s Adam Haigler. Lian learned to explore natural wonders through experiential education and later spent the year becoming a Wilderness First Responder and Outdoor Education Intern at Echo Hill Outdoor School. After a year of numerous adventures over four different states, Lian decided to return to formal education at Young Harris College.
Her first collegiate experience was at Young Harris College pursuing a BA in Music and later a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies, before transferring to Southeastern Louisiana University, where she earned a BM in Saxophone Performance under Brina Bourliea Faciane with a strong emphasis on theory, music history, and literature.
Bringing her adventure north to the frigid Midwest for an arctic-blasted spring 2020, Lian was initially accepted to the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee for a dual MM in Music History/Literature and an MLIS in Library Science. Of course, one cannot prepare themselves for a disruptive global pandemic, COVID, nor a deeply personal loss, though the adventure continues even through dark valleys and an even more perilous journey. These changes forced the type of rock-slide barrier that led her to pivot into OER work, information literacy instruction, and eventually K–12 librarianship.
Today Lian is back living in the southern Appalachian mountains and is the Instruction/Public Services Librarian at North Greenville University, where she continues finding adventure in everything — including sitting on the couch with her phone at 3 p.m. in the afternoon.
Adventurfy Learning 