Innovative Information Literacy Landscapes: Leveraging the Specialized Knowledge of LGBTQ+ Communities in Research and Practice

This paper examines how Knowledge School principles can help libraries develop a more nuanced understanding of how social and cultural differences shape knowledge production and dissimi-nation within LGBTQ+ communities. I focus on information literacy (IL), in which practitioners teach individuals to seek, evaluate, and use information. IL can empower communities by enhancing education, confidence, and decision-making. However, libraries often approach IL from a deficit, skills-based perspective by envisioning communities as lacking the requisite knowledge to fulfill their information needs. As a Knowledge School, we need to move away from one-size-fits-all approaches to librarianship. Through research, we can understand how communities produce and disseminate knowledge on their terms. Such understanding can open up new, inclusive, and relevant possibilities for community-oriented practice. In this paper, I offer a lens through which to see how this occurs within a Knowledge School

“It’s incompatible with the views of the community about themselves and their defining characteristics”: norms and knowledge production within the transgender wikipedia page

In this poster, we present a typology of norms shaping editing decisions within the English version of the Wikipedia Transgender topic page. Using Talk page content, where editors negotiate these decisions, we employed an inductive coding approach to identify these norms as: Wikipedia, individual belief, social, and transgender community. Findings indicate that while editors often utilize norms outside of Wikipedia to shape editing decisions, these norms must ultimately be framed as Wikipedia norms before any suggested edits are made to the Wikipedia page. This finding informs future research of how such formalized modes of knowledge production may suppress certain perspectives on marginalized topics

"Am I Doing it Right?": Examining Authenticity as a Key Mediator of Insider/Outsider Dynamics among US LGBTQ+ Young Adults

A key mechanism of information marginalization, insider/outsider dynamics shape who gets to seek, share, and use information within a specific context. However, these dynamics are limited because LIS literature often treats them as myopic, totalizing, and static. This study deepens understanding of these dynamics by examining how they are shaped by authenticity narratives of identity among US LGBTQ+ young adults (ages 18-37). Data were collected via semi-structured interviews with 30 LGBTQ+ young adults between 2015-2016. Data analysis was iterative and employed both deductive and inductive qualitative coding. Findings demonstrate how authenticity both assisted and hindered participant seeking, sharing, and use of identity-related information. Participants seldom reported barriers to access, often citing readily available information in the form of lifeworld and small world narratives describing the "right" or "correct" way to be a particular identity. This information influenced participant decision-making since they had to engage in prescribed activities to be deemed authentic by others. However, authenticity limited participants' information practices to fit within insider, regulatory frames. Embodied subjectivity via individual perceptions and experiences emerged as a valuable information source for participants to counter these limitations. This phenomenon did not shut off participants from outside information as previously argued by Merton and Chatman but rather opened participants up to new, information avenues outside of those provided by authenticity narratives. Findings have theoretical implications for a better understanding of insider/outsider dynamics as a critical dynamic of information marginalization. Pre-print first published online 8/14/202

Characterizing Transgender Health Issues in Twitter

Although there are millions of transgender people in the world, a lack of information exists about their health issues. This issue has consequences for the medical field, which only has a nascent understanding of how to identify and meet this population's health-related needs. Social media sites like Twitter provide new opportunities for transgender people to overcome these barriers by sharing their personal health experiences. Our research employs a computational framework to collect tweets from self-identified transgender users, detect those that are health-related, and identify their information needs. This framework is significant because it provides a macro-scale perspective on an issue that lacks investigation at national or demographic levels. Our findings identified 54 distinct health-related topics that we grouped into 7 broader categories. Further, we found both linguistic and topical differences in the health-related information shared by transgender men (TM) as com-pared to transgender women (TW). These findings can help inform medical and policy-based strategies for health interventions within transgender communities. Also, our proposed approach can inform the development of computational strategies to identify the health-related information needs of other marginalized populations

"Labels are for clothing": Negotiating LGBT identities within social question-answering sites

This study examined 300 question-“Best Answer” pairs from the LGBT thread of Yahoo! Answers to determine what information individuals find meaningful, relevant, and/or credible in interpreting an LGBT identity. Using a grounded approach, five main themes were identified that characterized information shared within the thread: a) defining an LGBT identity, b) romance, sex, and relationships, c) marginalizing others, d) coming out, and e) functioning as a community. Askers often solicited information regarding how to define and establish an LGBT identity, as well as how to engage in a sexual or romantic relationship. Answerers provided coming out metanarratives and framed LGBT individuals as being part of a community, providing askers with a discursive space to construct an LGBT identity for themselves. Askers and answerers also engaged in marginalization, within both heteronormative and essentialist contexts, which might affect how individuals continue or discontinue pursuing information related to an LGBT identity.ye

CHARACTERIZING DISEASES AND DISORDERS IN GAY USERS’ TWEETS

A lack of information exists about the health issues of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people who are often excluded from national demographic assessments, health studies, and clinical trials. As a result, medical experts and researchers lack holistic understanding of the health disparities facing these populations. Fortunately, publicly available social media data such as Twitter data can be utilized to support the decisions of public health policy makers and managers with respect to LGBTQ people. This research employs a computational approach to collect tweets from gay users on healthrelated topics and model these topics. To determine the nature of health-related information shared by men who have sex with men on Twitter, we collected thousands of tweets from 177 active users. We sampled these tweets using a framework that can be applied to other LGBTQ sub-populations in future research. We found 11 diseases in 7 categories based on ICD 10 that are in line with the published studies and official reports

Beyond Behaviors, Needs, and Seeking: A Qualitative Investigation of Information Practices Among Individuals

This dissertation examines the information practices of individuals identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer (LGBTQ+). It responds to two significant problems in current Library and Information Science (LIS) studies examining these populations. First, there exist a paucity of research studying how these individuals act toward and interact with information related to their LGBTQ+ identities. Second, extant research focuses on almost exclusively on gay and lesbian sexualities, imposing a liminal, psychological model of identity development on these actions and interactions. This imposition results in a myopic view of the unique issues, concerns, barriers, and achievements of individuals with LGBTQ+ identities, often imposed by those outside these identities

“It’s Incompatible with the Views of the Community about Themselves and Their Defining Characteristics”: Norms and Knowledge Production wi thin the Transgender Wikipedia Page

In this poster, we present a typology of norms shaping editing decisions within the English version of the Wikipedia Transgender topic page. Using Talk page content, where editors negotiate these decisions, we employed an inductive coding approach to identify these norms as: Wikipedia, individual belief, social, and transgender community. Findings indicate that while editors often utilize norms outside of Wikipedia to shape editing decisions, these norms must ultimately be framed as Wikipedia norms before any suggested edits are made to the Wikipedia page. This finding informs future research of how such formalized modes of knowledge production may suppress certain perspectives on marginalized topics

We Try to Find Something for Whatever Obstacle Might be in Our Way”: Understanding the Health Information Practices of South Carolina LGBTQ+ Communities

Objective: LGBTQ+ people experience health disparities compared to heterosexual, cisgender peers. Individual and systemic barriers produce these disparities. One barrier is informational, as LGBTQ+ people experience challenges when learning about their health needs, navigating the healthcare system, and overcoming obstacles to care. This paper investigates the future of libraries and the health sciences by exploring how they can address these informational barriers. Methods: This paper reports on ~30 ongoing interviews with LGBTQ+ community leaders from South Carolina (SC) using a semi-structured protocol. The protocol asked participants to discuss their community’s health questions and concerns, how the community addresses them, and the barriers experienced along the way. Qualitative data analysis of interview transcripts and drawings from an information worlds mapping exercise is iterative and inductive. The researchers employ the constant comparative method to generate open codes and then organize them into broader thematic categories. Results: Findings denote that SC LGBTQ+ communities are keenly aware of their health information needs, however, they perceive a lack of institutional knowledge to address them. Moreover, participants mistrust experts like medical practitioners due to their perceived lack of cultural competence when serving LGBTQ+ communities. In turn, participants orient themselves and their communities through and around barriers to health information and resources via defensive and protective information practices. Conclusions: Implications suggest that LGBTQ+ people do not view themselves as experiencing deficits regarding how they engage with health-related information. Therefore, it is not the job of librarians to “correct” information practices that they may find to be risky or problematic. Instead, it is their duty to provide systems and services to meet the health needs of LGBTQ+ people, which may include reorienting their own approaches to information provision and assessment. This reorientation can be accomplished by leveraging defensive and protective information practices in which SC LGBTQ+ communities already engage

Seeking Information Between and Beyond Binaries: How Queer Theory Can Inform LIS Theories

Queer theory offers a rich set of ideas, epistemologies, and methodological interventions whose incorporation into theories of information allows for growth, expansion, and potential alteration of library and inforamtion science scholarship, pedagogy, and research praxis. This presentation provides a primer for queer theory and applies tenets from its vast canon of thought to three ongoing LIS-based research projects. Each project and application engages with existing information science theories and illuminates how queer theory challenges, unsettles, and even reconstitutes the epistemological assumptions latent within them. The first project deploys queer phenomenology to understand how one’s embodied queerness, or lack thereof, informs their perception of difference and identity within information seeking and creation. The second project examines how authenticity shapes insider/outsider dynamics within queer communities as it relates to information flow. This work presents realness, as developed by queer and trans people of color, as an alternative approach to envisioning these dynamics that leaves space to privilege individual subjectivities regarding information interactions. The third project uses notions of queer imaginaries and futurities to critique utoptic conceptions of information systems in sociotechnical work. The presentation culminates in a discussion of what queering information science could and should do, and suggests ways in which queer theoretical perspectives may be applied to the field of library and information science more broadly