Changing the mindset of pre-service librarians: Moving from library servants to public servants

In the summer of 2020, we engaged in a participatory design process (also known as co-design) with 137 library staff from across the United States. These library staff provided insight into how public libraries built services to support non-dominant youth and families during crises. Through this work, we learned that these staff had a library servant instead of a public servant mindset. Public servants make decisions with community members. Library servants make decisions for them. We designed and published a Field Guide to help public library staff better understand how to work with and for communities during crisis times. We share our findings related to library staff mindsets in this paper

Strengthening children's privacy literacy through contextual integrity

Researchers and policymakers advocate teaching children about digital privacy, but privacy literacy has not been theorized for children. Drawing on interviews with 30 families, including 40 children, we analyze children’s perspectives on password management in three contexts -family life, friendship, and education- and develop a new approach to privacy literacy grounded in Nissenbaum’s contextual integrity framework. Contextual integrity equates privacy with appropriate flows of information, and we show how children’s perceptions of the appropriateness of disclosing a password varied across contexts. We explain why privacy literacy should focus on norms rather than rules and discuss how adults can use learning moments to strengthen children’s privacy literacy. We argue that equipping children to make privacy-related decisions serves them better than instructing them to follow privacy-related rules

Strengthening Children’s Privacy Literacy through Contextual Integrity

Researchers and policymakers advocate teaching children about digital privacy, but privacy literacy has not been theorized for children. Drawing on interviews with 30 families, including 40 children, we analyze children’s perspectives on password management in three contexts—family life, friendship, and education—and develop a new approach to privacy literacy grounded in Nissenbaum’s contextual integrity framework. Contextual integrity equates privacy with appropriate flows of information, and we show how children’s perceptions of the appropriateness of disclosing a password varied across contexts. We explain why privacy literacy should focus on norms rather than rules and discuss how adults can use learning moments to strengthen children’s privacy literacy. We argue that equipping children to make privacy-related decisions serves them better than instructing them to follow privacy-related rules

Collective Wisdom: An Exploration of Library, Archives and Museum Cultures

The 2016 Collective Wisdom: Library, Archives and Museum (LAM) Conference Exchange program brought together 18 librarians, archivists and museum professionals to form a cohort charged with exploring cross-sector practices and culture with an eye toward increasing interdisciplinary collaborations and continuing education. This white paper presents reflections and provides recommendations based on the cohort experience. Cohort members represented a range of library, archives and museum institutions, academic programs and professional organizations from across the US and the Territory of American Samoa

What Do Youth Service Librarians Need? Reassessing Goals and Curricula in the Context of Changing Information Needs and Behaviors of Youth

The ALISE Youth Services Special Interest Group (SIG) presents a panel that explores what “youth services” means in the context of LIS education today, including novel additions to youth services curricula and how the changing needs of youth impact LIS education. The session begins with five research presentations, followed by an open discussion and Q&A. The five presentations incorporate the following topics: critical youth information needs, methods of incorporating design thinking and interdisciplinary research into MLIS youth services courses, an investigation of dialogue between librarians and youth, and the role of family and community in youth information behavior. The discussion prompted by this scholarship serves as an important contribution to the continued reform and evolution of youth services education

Modeling Inclusive Practice?: Attracting Diverse Faculty and Future Faculty to the Information Workforce

Goals for achieving diversity among library and information studies (LIS) students and the workforce will remain frustrated until root issues of diversity in LIS faculty are addressed. Students from underrepresented populations are typically drawn to academic programs where they believe the faculty can relate to their experiences and feel that the academic programs include their perspectives. For these conditions to be met, LIS faculty must become much more racially diverse than they are currently. Key aspects for increasing diversity among LIS faculty are to increase the diversity of LIS doctoral students, who will be the new generations of LIS faculty, and for LIS programs to offer courses that meet the needs of these diversified populations. This article will examine the current state of diversity issues related to the education of LIS doctoral students, through the lens of the fourteen U.S.-based members of the iSchools caucus that offer LIS master's and doctoral programs. We will examine pedagogical initiatives that focus on diversity in LIS programs and federally funded grants that have supported recruitment efforts for doctoral students. Collectively, these issues will be used to identify possible strategies that can serve to promote diversity in LIS doctoral education.published or submitted for publicatio

Design Thinking in Academia

This is the text and slide deck for the keynote presentation given at the Fourth Annual Libraries Research and Innovative Practice Forum

The School Librarian as Learning Alchemist: Transforming the Future of Education

The landscape of learning is changing. Children and young adults learn not only in school but fluidly across home, school, peer culture, and community. This transformation in learning and the school environment has prompted educators to ask challenging questions about how to de­velop learning spaces to meet these needs within the some­times competing economic, social, and political realities

Assessing the Digital Health Literacy Skills of Tween Participants in a School-Library-Based After-School Program

Although young people are increasingly turning to the Internet for health-related information, very little is known about the state of their digital health literacy skills. At the beginning of an after-school program (HackHealth) to assist middle school students (ages 12–15) with their digital health literacy skills, a specially designed Digital Healthy Literacy Assessment Tool (DHLAT) was administered to 19 participants. Results suggest that while tweens are familiar with search engines and have a rudimentary sense of how to use them, they often lack important knowledge and skills needed to be fully digitally health literate. More research is needed to develop more broadly applicable tools for assessing tweens’ digital health literacy skills and to discover additional ways to work with youth to ensure they are equipped with the digital health literacy skills they need to successfully find, understand, assess, manage, and make use of online health information

Teach Me and Trust Me: Creating an Empowered Online Community of Tweens and Parents

Although research has shown increasing potential for new media literacy and identity development through the use of social networking tools, there are limited opportunities for young people under age thirteen to legally take part in these environments. We challenge the dominant narrative that young people under thirteen need constant adult surveillance and are incapable of practicing safe online practices. Instead, we present a potential solution through the design of a safe, virtual learning space for tweens that integrates community-based rules and moderation. In partnership with the National Park Service, which is committed to having their virtual learning space accessible to all ages, we collaborate with a group of tweens and their parents by using bonded inquiry and focus group methods. We collate the needs, concerns, and online practices of these tweens and their parents to develop a preliminary design of a cyber-safety framework that learning institutions can employ to allow tween participation. By focusing on building a resilient online community of tweens, parents, and site developers, the framework emphasizes the value of an online environment that balances freedom and protection of tween privacy.publishedye