180 research outputs found

    Introduction: Valuing librarianship: Core values in theory and practice

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    In 2011 we published an article in Library Trends where we concluded, “It is worth considering why the ALA Core Values seem to have lost their traction or relevance in the daily work librarians perform. There may be political, institutional, professional, or organizational reasons why this has happened and these factors would be well worth exploring” (Jacobs & Berg, 2011, p. 391). In 2014, as the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the American Library Association’s (ALA) “Core Values of Librarianship” came and went without any scholarly or professional attention, we found we were still considering these questions and issued a call to librarians and LIS faculty to explore these questions along with us. As Maura Seale eloquently asserts in her contribution to this special issue, “ALA’s Core ‘Core Values of Librarianship’ (2004) wants to tell a story” (p. 596). This special issue, “Valuing Librarianship: Core Values in Theory and Practice,” is an attempt to tell some of those stories. The “Core Values of Librarianship”published or submitted for publicationOpe

    Valuing Librarianship: Core Values in Theory and Practice

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    In 2004, the American Library Association (ALA)’s Core Values of Librarianship statement identified eleven core values: access; confidentiality and privacy; democracy; diversity; education and lifelong learning; intellectual freedom; preservation; the public good; professionalism; service; social responsibility. As the ALA document explains, “the foundation of modern librarianship rests on an essential set of core values that define, inform, and guide our professional practice. These values reflect the history and ongoing development of the profession and have been advanced, expanded, and refined by numerous policy statements of the American Library Association.” While the ALA is not the only national library association to articulate their core values, this issue is an explanation of how core values have shaped, influenced, and informed libraries and librarianship in North America and around the world. Individual values such as democracy, diversity, access, and social responsibility have been the subject of inquiry by prominent scholars in library studies. There has not, however, been a coherent collection of scholarship addressing these specific, individual values in the practice of librarianship. Valuing Librarianship, a special issue of Library Trends, is an attempt to redress this absence within the context of public, school, special, and academic libraries. This special issue of Library Trends features practicing librarians and LIS scholars addressing librarianship\u27s present and future in relation to its core values. Using the ALA Core Values of Librarianship statement as a framework, Valuing Librarianship explores how these core values have informed, influenced, guided, and contextualized libraries and librarianship in the past ten years and consider how these values might guide our profession in the future

    Introduction

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    Appreciative Inquiry (AI): An Annotated Bibliography

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    This is an annotated bibliography exploring current research that applies Appreciative Inquiry in higher education settings

    A Case for a Critical Information Ethics: Lessons Learned from Research Justice

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    Information ethics as taught in academic information literacy treats students as consumers, largely ignores the broader sociopolitical context of academic knowledge creation and, through a lack of critical analysis, reproduces Eurocentrism and colonialism in the information literacy classroom and literature. We propose applying a critical information ethics inspired by research justice that emphasizes solidarity with marginalized people and communities, respect for community knowledge, and moral integrity related to situated knowledge versus capitalist notions of information as a commodity. Pre-print first published online 01/20/201

    Unifying Ideas: Building For-Credit Information Literacy Around Themes to Optimize Student Learning

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    Teaching a for-credit information literacy course can be viewed as hitting “prime time” for some librarians, but the courses can be as disjointed and problematic for the instructors as one-shot sessions. Projects are a hodgepodge of student-chosen or instructor-assigned “info lit” topics that fail to underscore the biggest problems for students in research: Developing a research question and writing a paper are difficult without enough background knowledge to understand the topic. At semester’s end, instructors may be feeling discouraged and wondering what students actually learned. Solution: Start the semester analyzing one topic to build a knowledge base for discussion and research, before allowing the students to pursue individual topics related to the central theme. Suggestions for how to select a successful theme to re-energize your teaching will be discussed

    School libraries, political information and information literacy provision : findings from a Scottish study

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    This paper presents the findings of research which explored Scottish school libraries’ information provision and information literacy support in the run-up to two major political events: the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum (SIR) and the 2015 General UK Parliamentary Election (GE). To do this, the project identified, through an online survey, what political information seeking secondary school students engaged in through school libraries, what information provision and information literacy support was available to students relating to political issues and events, and what barriers school libraries faced in providing these aspects of political education. It also identified what information seeking students engaged in, what levels of information provision and information literacy support relating to politics are provided by school libraries, and to explore the perceptions and experiences of library staff relating to work in this area. Analysis of the results indicates that there are mixed levels of provision across school libraries in Scotland and that this variation may be influenced by inconsistent policies from local councils and individual schools themselves, as well as variations in the experience and views of library staff. Key activities to support young people’s political education are identified, and several reasons library staff do not engage in political work are discussed. The findings are linked to previous research, with a discussion of the need to encourage and support school library staff to contribute to the political education of students alongside teaching staff. Several recommendations for schools and library staff are made, relating to a consideration of the role of school libraries, how they can provide relevant political information, the importance of clear policies around political information provision and the support required for school library workers

    Motivated Reasoning, Political Information, and Information Literacy Education

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    Research in psychology and political science has identified motivated reasoning as a set of biases that inhibit one’s ability to process political information objectively. This research has important implications for the information literacy movement’s aims of fostering lifelong learning and informed citizenship. This essay argues that information literacy education should broaden its scope to include more than just knowledge of information and its sources; it should also include knowledge of how people interact with information, particularly the ways that motivated reasoning can influence citizens’ interactions with political information

    Contextualizing the “Marketplace of Ideas” in Libraries

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    “The marketplace of ideas” is frequently invoked in debates concerning the merits of free, unrestricted speech; as social and information centres of their communities, libraries are often implicated in these debates. If we suppose that libraries are supporters of civic debate, what does it mean to take the “free market of ideas” as the principle by which the free speech debate is organized? This paper contextualizes the tendency to imagine the public sphere as a free market in ideas within jurisprudence and the neoliberal arts of government, consulting democratic theory to question which frameworks libraries might draw from to reimagine their contribution to the public sphere
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