“If You Want the History of a White Man, You Go to the Library”: Critiquing Our Legacy, Addressing Our Library Collections Gaps

In 1864, the same year the University of Denver was founded by John Evans, then the Territorial Governor of Colorado and the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, a group of U.S. militia attacked and killed vulnerable members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho nations at Sand Creek. Using Critical Race Theory and the feminist “ethic of care,” we critique our collections in terms of the Massacre and absent Native American voices, in order to develop a collecting philosophy and direction to acknowledge and address the gaps, and to formulate strategies for teaching students to interrogate a predominately white institutional archive to give voice to the absent or silenced

Working Toward Human-Centered, Reparative Change Through Print Collection Development at the University of Denver

In 2014, the DU Libraries began to address a lack of work by and about the Cheyenne and Arapaho people in its collections, and moved toward reparative change in response to historical traumas suffered by Indigenous Peoples. The history of this work and its origins—which led to the creation of the Libraries’ Collection Diversification Task Force (CDTF) and now informs the Libraries’ collection development philosophy and operational inclusivity—are discussed in the “Developments Leading to the Collection Diversification Task Force” section of this chapter. Further on, the “Collection Diversification Task Force” section clarifies methodology, recommendations, and self-discovery on the part of librarians. Finally, “Reflections for Future Work” summarizes where collection diversification currently stands at DU Libraries and highlights the role of administrative support in encouraging this process to continue

Humanities Reference Librarians in the Electronic Age: Strategies for Integrating Traditional and On-Line Resources in an Academic Library

Humanists build new ideas and arguments based upon studies done in the past. Although research requires these scholars to pick through the literature that has come before, much has been lost because of the lack of adequate comprehensive reference tools. In the age of technology, new projects are available which enhance and enlarge the body of work upon which future scholars can build. For reference librarians helping with research questions in the humanities, the marriage of traditional reference tools and new on-line resources means a richer cumulation of past scholarship. In this paper, I will discuss strategies for academic humanities reference librarians to integrate traditional and electronic reference resources, and the need to continue learning the skills to use both. Humanities reference librarians must continue the great humanist tradition of building new ideas upon older foundations by successfully acquiring and using both new and old reference resources

North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary. Jules Heller , Nancy G. Heller

A review of: Heller, N., & Heller, J. (2013). North American women artists of the twentieth century: A biographical dictionary. New York: Routledge

LCEasy 2.0 for Windows and Macintosh. Mary L. Kish , J. E. Bowen

A review of: Kish, M. L., Bowen, J. E., & Gould, R. A. (1996). LCEasy for Windows and Macintosh 2.0. Ithaca, NY: Mary L. Kish

‘We Turn the Lens…on Ourselves:’ Assessing Digital Primary Source Library Instruction Through the Lens of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

The tenets of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) allow librarians to assess their teaching effectiveness through an evaluation of student learning. For the author, the sudden reliance on digital primary source collections during the 2020 pandemic lockdown provided a catalyst to examine her digital primary source instruction as a research project. In this case study, the author examines library instruction for a required course for third-year history majors.The author collaborated with a history professor to identify “bottlenecks” related to digital primary source research, and to design two new library instruction sessions with in-class activities and assignments to address these bottlenecks. The professor and author then evaluated the assignments to determine if students had understood and incorporated the methods modeled during the research instruction classes.Teaching undergraduate majors digital primary source research skills that will lead to the habits of mind of historians cannot be done in one academic quarter, for it takes time to develop disciplinary ways of thinking. Providing select core concepts more systematically earlier in the history major curriculum could make the enculturation into the discipline less fraught and confusing later, so that students begin learning foundational skills in their third year to carry them forward into their senior year when they write their theses.Little has been written on digital primary source library instruction, which intersects with a variety of other research literacies. Assessing library instruction through the lens of SoTL is relatively new for academic librarians and has not been used in evaluating student learning in the digital primary source environment

ARTFACT™. Artfact, Inc.

A review of: ARTFACT. (1993). North Kingstown, RI: Artfact, Inc