The Internet\u27s Invisible Cleanup Crew

Review of Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadow of Social Media by Sarah T. Robert

Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the Politics of Correction

Critiques of hegemonic library classification structures and controlled vocabularies have a rich history in information studies. This project has pointed out the trouble with classification and cataloging decisions that are framed as objective and neutral but are always ideological and worked to correct bias in library structures. Viewing knowledge organization systems from a queer perspective, however, challenges the idea that classification and subject language can ever be finally corrected. Engaging queer theory and library classification and cataloging together requires new ways of thinking about how to be ethically and politically engaged on behalf of marginal knowledge formations and identities who quite reasonably expect to be able to locate themselves in the library. Queer theory invites a shift in responsibility from catalogers, positioned to offer functional solutions, to public services librarians, who can teach patrons to dialogically engage the catalog as a complex and biased text, just as critical catalogers do

Toward a Kairos of Library Instruction

Information literacy instruction in libraries is organized by the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards. Currently under revision, these Standards define a set of external, abstract learning objectives that have been productive of a teaching role for librarians. Simultaneously, the Standards have generated a substantial critical literature that contests the objectives as a “Procrustean bed” that distracts from the particular teaching and learning contexts. This paper offers an alternative organizing heuristic for instruction in libraries. Kairos is an ancient Greek theory of time married to measure. Used by both Plato and the Sophists to understand the emergence of truth from context,kairos has been deployed by composition studies to gain a critical perspective on teaching student writing. Used to understand the context that generated both the first set of Standards and their revision, kairos can usefully direct the energy of teaching librarians toward their particular students and classrooms

Valuing professionalism: Discourse as professional practice

In the American Library Association’s “Core Values of Librarianship” (2004), Professionalism is listed as one of the Core Values, but its meaning is not settled. Framed alternately as an incomplete achievement of professional traits or a process of identity creation, the professional status of librarianship has been subject to debate since the field began to take its contemporary form in 1876. Understanding Professionalism as a discursive response to an urgent present can enable the field to locate the value of that status outside of the workplace hierarchies that professionalization inevitably produces.published or submitted for publicationOpe

Representing Normal: The Problem of the Unmarked in Library Organization Systems

The problem of bias in library classification and cataloging structures has been well documented and analyzed. Efforts to intervene in these systems have largely taken the form of advocating for added or revised subject terms to reflect the language of diverse users and diverse library content. This case study will analyze the status of marked and unmarked binaries related to social identities in LCSH

Sustaining Scholarship: Librarians and the Political Economy of Print

As workers in the knowledge industry, librarians have particular insight into the implications of the tectonic shifts wrought by the decline of print. Drawing on work to make the journal Radical Teacher open access, this paper discusses how librarians can mobilize our insider knowledge to transform our communities of practice

Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the Politics of Correction

Critiques of hegemonic library classification structures and controlled vocabularies have a rich history in information studies. This project has pointed out the trouble with classification and cataloging decisions that are framed as objective and neutral but are always ideological and worked to correct bias in library structures. Viewing knowledge organization systems from a queer perspective, however, challenges the idea that classification and subject language can ever be finally corrected. Engaging queer theory and library classification and cataloging together requires new ways of thinking about how to be ethically and politically engaged on behalf of marginal knowledge formations and identities who quite reasonably expect to be able to locate themselves in the library. Queer theory invites a shift in responsibility from catalogers, positioned to offer functional solutions, to public services librarians, who can teach patrons to dialogically engage the catalog as a complex and biased text, just as critical catalogers do