Information Literacy and Reflective Pedagogical Praxis

Drawing on discussions within Composition and Rhetoric, this article examines information literacy pedagogy. It considers how academic librarians can work toward theorizing our profession in such a way that we may ask new questions of it and foster creative, reflective and critical habits of mind regarding pedagogical praxis

Talking Back to a Tote Bag: Or, How a Tote Bag inspired Molly of the Mall: Literary Lass and Purveyor of Fine Footwear

Heidi L.M. Jacobs reflects on the journey that led her to become the 2020 winner of the coveted Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humou

Valuing Librarianship: Core Values in Theory and Practice

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

By Librarians, For Librarians: Building a Strengths-Based Institute to Develop Librarians\u27 Research Culture in Canadian Academic Libraries

In spite of the increase in formal and informal expectations for research by Canadian librarians, there have been few—if any—Canada-wide initiatives to help support librarians in meeting research expectations. Moreover, there have been few opportunities to address academic librarians’ needs and Canadian librarian research culture in any systematic way, especially on a national scale. As a way of redressing these absences and filling this need, a four-day nation-wide institute was proposed and conducted in order to bring together Canadian librarians interested in developing their own research programs and working toward fostering a positive and productive research culture in Canadian academic libraries. This article describes the principles informing the institute’s development and locates the institute’s objectives within discussions of research culture, mentorship, and strengths-based approaches

History, Play, and the Public: Wikipedia in the University Classroom

A lesson plan is provided that describes a student group activity project on the use of Wikipedia in university-level history education, including having students write and edit Wikipedia articles

Academic Librarians and Research: A Study of Canadian Library Administrator Perspectives

Within the literature exploring the role of research in academic librarianship, very little attention has been paid to the perspectives of upper libraryadministrators. This perspective is critical because library administrators play a key role in hiring, evaluating, supporting, promoting, and tenuring professional librarians. As a way of bringing the administrative perspective to these discussions, our study examines how library administrators within the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) view the role of research in their own libraries and within academic librarianship, as well as how they perceive the current and future climate for librarians’ research. Our study reveals key areas in need of further research and identifies several issues that librarians and upper administrators would benefit from exploring together to advance discussions about research

Making a Third Space for Student Voices in Two Academic Libraries

When we think of voices in the library, we have tended to think of them as disruptive, something to control and manage for the sake of the total library environment. The stereotype of the shushing librarian pervades public perception, creating expectations about the kinds of spaces libraries want to create. Voices are not always disruptive, however. Indeed, developing an academic voice is one of the main challenges facing incoming university students, and libraries can play an important role in helping these students find their academic voices. Two initiatives at two different academic libraries are explored here: a Secrets Wall, where students are invited to write and share a secret during exam time while seeing, reading, commenting on the secrets of others; and a librarian and historian team-taught course called History on the Web, which brings together information literacy and the study of history in the digital age. This article examines both projects and considers how critical perspectives on voice and identity might guide our instructional practices, helping students to learn to write themselves into the university. Further, it describes how both the Secrets Wall and the History on the Web projects intentionally create a kind of “Third Space” designed specifically so students can enter it, negotiate with it, interrogate it, and eventually come to be part of it