A call to action for librarians: Countering conspiracy theories in the age of QAnon

Librarians empower learners to become discerning citizens through a set of diverse skills and literacies. To cultivate critical thinkers, librarians continue to build innovative practices, even as technology rapidly evolves. However, the pervasiveness of misinformation and disinformation, most recently seen in the conspiratorial worldviews of QAnon, challenges librarians to center critical thinking in their information literacy praxis. In this article, we provide a concise overview of QAnon and the problems that contemporary internet conspiracy theories like it pose. We offer an epistemological shift for information literacy, from heuristics to mindsets and behaviors, drawing on disciplines external to librarianship. Finally, we consider the role that emotions play in the promotion and spread of conspiracism. Equipping librarians with a better understanding of conspiracy thinking and the tools to counter it will in turn empower the next generation of critical thinkers

RESIST: a Controversial Display and Reflections on the Academic Library’s Role in Promoting Discourse and Engagement

Libraries engage communities in a variety of ways, including through exhibitions and displays. However, librarians may not always know how to promote critical discourse if controversy arises surrounding exhibits or displays. This article reflects on one academic library’s experience hosting a controversial display during a divisive political time for the library’s parent institution, its broader urban community, and the United States as a whole. The authors contextualize the display, created by a local art collective, against the backdrop of creative activism, and consider implications for library displays and exhibits within similar environments. Rather than retreating from controversy, libraries have an opportunity to frame exhibits and displays by engaging in challenging dialogues. Professional guidelines developed by both museums and libraries are beneficial to practitioners looking toward best practices in planning, managing, and promoting exhibits and displays in the face of possible controversy

Uniting the field: using the ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards to move beyond the definition problem of visual literacy

Visual literacy has evolved alongside information literacy and media literacy, reflecting social, technological, and cultural changes. Rapidly advancing technology, multimodal access to information and disinformation, and political rhetoric increasingly impact the perception, trust, and use of visual media. These broader technological and cultural shifts also change what it means to be a visually literate individual in the twenty-first century. Although much has been written about visual literacy, there is very little that reviews scholarship that uses the 2011 ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Through an analysis of 196 articles published from 2011 to 2019, this study examines how the standards, which outline visual literacy competencies for learners in the twenty-first century, have been used since their adoption, by whom, and for what purposes. This study unveils an emerging shift in the paradigm of visual literacy scholarship. Abbreviations: ACRL: Association of College and Research Libraries; Visual Literacy Standards: Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education; the Standards: Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education; the Framework: Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education

Engaging with AI or not yet? Architecture and Planning @ The University of New Mexico

This presentation broadly reports on the results of a series of informal interviews with architects, planners, and those who teach these fields at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM, while the second half of the presentation outlines opportunities and challenges for the fields of architecture, planning, and librarianship as AI technologies become more robust and quotidian

Visual Literacy for Libraries: A Practical, Standards-Based Guide

Review of Visual Literacy for Libraries: A Practical, Standards-Based Guide, Reviewed September 2016 by Stephanie Beene, Assistant Professor, Fine Arts Librarian for Art & Architecture, University of New Mexico, [email protected]

Fluid Borders: Using Collections to Center Personal Narratives

The shared history between New Mexico and Mexico is one that stretches back eons. Indeed, the political boundary that separates the two entities on a map is one that is fluid, even though it has most recently been reinforced by the construction of a wall since the Trump presidency, and has endured increasing surveillance. Nevertheless, the peoples that have lived in the Borderlands have done so for millennia. At the University of New Mexico (UNM), a Hispanic-Serving Research 1 university, the majority of the student population identifies as Hispanic, Latine/x/o/a, and/or Indigenous and many of the students call the Borderlands home. Through four vignettes, I will discuss three projects undertaken as a collaboration with Dr. Suzanne Schadl, former Latin American Collections Curator and now the Library of Congress' Chief of Latin American, Caribbean, and European Division. These first three projects highlight New Mexico communities convening around UNM's unique and world-renowned distinctive Latin American collections, which include special collections, archives, and circulating collections. The first describes an interactive exhibition at the National Hispanic Cultural Museum, "Getting Up Pa'l Pueblo," which crowdsourced descriptions from visitors around the 75-piece Oaxacan street art poster collection, Asamblea de Artistas Revolucionarios de Oaxaca. The second and third vignettes build from the first, and discuss similar interactive, sensorial experiences centered around special collections, this time Mexican artists' books. The last vignette will discuss my use of exhibition catalogs and photobooks that center the border between New Mexico and Mexico, which I have used in library instruction sessions, to activate student learning and discussion. I will discuss the power of these collections to spark personal narratives, and how those narratives have, in turn, informed our understanding of our collections - for collection development, cataloging, and instruction

Strategic Source Evaluation: Addressing the Container Conundrum

Purpose This paper argues that information containers provide valuable context clues that can help students make choices about how to engage with information content. The authors present a strategic approach to source evaluation rooted in format and authority threshold concepts. Design/methodology/approach The authors developed a source evaluation strategy with the objective of deciding whether to trust an information source. This strategy involves a set of cues to help readers mindfully engage with both the container and content of a given source. Findings When conducting research, non-experts are asked to evaluate content in the absence of relevant subject expertise. The cues presented in this paper offer practical tactics informed by the concepts of authority (to help make an accessible judgment of intellectual trust) and format (to help make more informed decisions about the content they find in a browser). Originality/value While librarians have produced many evaluative models and checklists to help students evaluate information, this paper contributes a unique strategic approach grounded in two information literacy threshold concepts – format and authority – and enacted through a series of actions drawn from website evaluation models, fact-checking, and metacognitive exercises

When Research Does Not Start with a Question: Teaching with the Framework and Visual Literacy Standards within Art and Architecture Librarianship

While much has been written about implementing the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education in various classroom settings, this article addresses mapping the ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education to the Framework in designing instruction for art and architecture students. Disciplinary lenses, allowing for an integrative, pragmatic heuristic, are coupled with an integration of approaches found in the library instruction literature, including faculty and librarian teaching partnerships and assessment. The versatility of mapping these professional documents is demonstrated through implementation in both one-shot and embedded instruction.[The following article is an expansion of two papers presented at the eponymous panel session, co-organized by the authors at the ARLIS/NA conference held in New Orleans, Louisiana, February 2017.

Putting the Framework for Visual Literacy in Higher Education into Practice

During this workshop, the presenters will provide ideas for application, adaptation, and modification of the Framework for Visual Literacy in Higher Education as well as examples of activities, instructional materials, and techniques for one-on-one and small group consultations. Participants will be guided through pedagogical reflection and instructional design using the Framework's four themes. Facilitators will also provide a range of topic ideas related to each theme around which participants can brainstorm. Ultimately, each participant will walk away with concrete ideas for how to incorporate the Framework for Visual Literacy in their own institutional context. This workshop is appropriate for information professionals who work in architecture, art, design, museum education, or broader visual culture, with a focus on higher education settings

Tomes! Enhancing Community and Embracing Diversity Through Book Arts

This article highlights important connections between the spoken word, handmade paper, cultural memory and natural sustenance -- in books and in artworks. Two projects were brought together for an exhibition, which serves as an innovative response to the call for multiculturalism, inclusion, and equity at an educational institution in one of the most multilingual and multicultural states in the U.S. Any organization which mounts an exhibition runs the risk of assuming they know what visitors want to see, or ought to see, and how they might choose to experience the works displayed. This exhibit is an attempt to subvert that tendency and extend the continuum of authority, offering visitors multiple modes for leaving their mark on the exhibit. Preliminary comments demonstrate how performative and tactile object-based inquiry leads to transformative learning. How do communities interact with and describe materials whose intent is to push what comfortably translates between English and Spanish? How can we collaborate to provide better access to collections that represent their families, communities, or traditions? What sorts of differences are observed between the ways people handle and describe unique objects if they are not instructed first? The exhibit continues to evolve according to community feedback. This article discusses one approach to collaboration as an effective tool for breaking down barriers to traditional authority and hierarchies