Visual literacy for libraries: A practical, standards-based guide

When we step back and think about how to situate visual literacy into a library context, the word critical keeps coming up: critical thinking, critical viewing, critical using, critical making, and the list goes on. To understand our approach, start with your own practice, add images, and see where it takes you. Do you encourage students to think critically as they research? How can you extend this experience to images? Do you embrace critical information literacy? Can you bring visual content to enrich that experience? Do you teach students to critically evaluate sources? How can you expand that practice to images? You’ll see a lot of questions in this book, because our approach is inquiry- driven. This is not to say that we don’t cover the basics of image content. Curious about color? Covered. Not sure where to find great images? We’ll show you. Wondering what makes a good presentation? We talk about that too. But what we really want you to get out of this book is a new understanding of how images fit into our critical (there it is again) practice as librarians and how we can advance student learning with our own visual literacy. This book grounds visual literacy in your everyday practice—connecting it to what you know and do as a librarian who engages in reflective practice. Heidi Jacobs put it well when she argued that, for information literacy pedagogy, “one of the best ways for us to encourage students to be engaged learners is for us to become engaged learners, delve deeply into our own problem posing, and embody the kind of engagement we want to see in our students” (Jacobs 2008). We extend this viewpoint to visual literacy pedagogy and provide many opportunities for you to embody the kind of visual literacy that you want to develop in your learners

Student Participation in Scholarly Communication and Library Digital Collections: A Case Study from the University of Washington Bothell Library

The University of Washington Bothell/Cascadia College Library recently partnered with a faculty member to develop a digital collection showcasing student-produced digital oral histories. This case study describes the role of the library as faculty partner, student resource, and repository/publisher. Archiving and publishing requirements—such as file formats, agreement forms, and metadata—were integrated into the assignment and included as part of each project’s overall evaluation and grade. Librarians provided instruction to teach students about topics related to knowledge production and scholarly communication. Assessment included student feedback surveys and faculty feedback to librarians

A Counter-Archive of Imprisonment: The Washington Prison History Project

This essay explores the prison as an archive by focusing on an emerging digital humanities project about the history of prisons. The Washington Prison History Project (WPHP) began with the donation of two decades of records of prisoner activism; it includes an assortment of correspondence, self-published newspapers, photographs, and even a text-adventure computer game that was first designed in prison in the late 1980s and which the authors have recreated. The authors—a professor, a recent alumna, and two librarians—describe the origins and development of the project as a counter-archive of prison. Drawing on artifacts from the project, they argue that this alternate archive provides a means to teach, learn, and interpret the prison from the perspective of incarcerated people and their supporters and loved ones

Feminist Teacher

Using feminist pedagogical practices that incorporate student knowledge production and digital scholarship methods, a team at the University of Washington Bothell founded the online, open-access Feminist Community Archive of Washington (FCA-WA). Faculty, students, and the library partner with local feminist and gender justice organizations to develop content for the archive. As part of a core gender, women, & sexuality studies (GWSS) course, our/the assignment asks the students to collect artifacts and conduct interviews with activists that document the current work and histories of their organizations. The library has archived these materials and made them available in an open-access, online digital collection. In an era of disappearing information and contested stories, the FCA-WA aims to expand the archival record and serve as a permanent and open home for the histories of groups and individuals working to support social justice for women, femmes, gender-nonconforming folks, and their allies. We contend that the assignment and archive, in addition to being a repository for potentially forgotten histories, are projects that embody intersectional feminist praxis and work toward upsetting academic structures of inequity. In the academy, marginalized peoples’ stories and research methods are rendered invisible; classes and assignments that “speak to” or are taught by minoritized students and faculty are not the norm. Similarly, archives are typically created and maintained by non-marginalized scholars, ultimately reflecting the stories of the elite, their ways of knowing, and their methods of research. Perhaps most troubling, said archives are framed as neutral receptacles, which perpetuates a false narrative that leaves power imbalances unquestioned. We maintain that the FCA-WA, and the assignment used to fill it, undermines these hierarchical logics and structures. In this paper, we seek to explain the assignment and archive in the context of intersectional feminism. We then explain the assignment and archive, and conclude by demonstrating the potential of feminist, community-engaged, student knowledge production and archive building to subvert academic hierarchies, and we consider directions for future research and collaborations

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

The importance of images and visual media in today's culture is changing what it means to be literate in the 21st century. Digital technologies have made it possible for almost anyone to create and share visual media. Yet the pervasiveness of images and visual media does not necessarily mean that individuals are able to critically view, use, and produce visual content. The ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education were developed to address these distinct characteristics of images and visual media. Based on those standards, this book provides librarians and instructors with the tools, strategies, and confidence to apply visual literacy in a library context. Readers will not only learn about ways to develop students' visual literacy, but also how to use visual materials to make their instruction more engaging. Ideal for the busy librarian who needs ideas, activities, and teaching strategies that are ready to implement, this book: shows how to challenge students to delve into finding images, using images in the research process, interpreting and analyzing images, creating visual communications, and using visual content ethically;provides ready-to-go learning activities for engaging critically with visual materials;offers tools and techniques for increasing one's own visual literacy confidence; and gives strategies for integrating, engaging with and advocating for visual literacy in libraries

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

You've found that great image! Now what? You’ll need to cite or credit the image when you use it, and this chapter will help you do it right. Citing images is a fundamental part of using images in academic work, but it remains a source of confusion and anxiety for students, faculty, and many of us working with them. Style guides do not always provide complete or extensive discussion or examples of image citations, and citation generation and management tools are geared more for text materials. So you’re often left to piece together a best-guess approach. The broad range of contexts in which students use images also presents challenges for citing and crediting images appropriately. Of course images need to be cited in research papers, but what about posters or creative work? What is the best way to credit an image online? In this chapter, we explore these questions and more, and we offer examples and activities for modeling and practicing image citations. You will deepen your understanding of why we cite images, build confidence for citing and crediting images in a variety of contexts, and open discussion about how image citation can advance creative work and engagement with visual materials

Visual Literacy Standards in Higher Education: New Opportunities for Libraries and Student Learning

Visual literacy is essential for 21st century learners. Across the higher education curriculum, students are being asked to use and produce images and visual media in their academic work, and they must be prepared to do so. The Association of College and Research Libraries has published the Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, which for the first time, outline specific visual literacy learning outcomes. These Standards present new opportunities for libraries to expand their role in student learning through standards-based teaching and assessment, and to contribute to campus-wide collaborative efforts to develop students’ skills and critical thinking with regard to visual materials

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

Images can prompt inquiry and discovery and help students move from their concrete personal experiences into the more abstract area of library research. A deeper and richer understanding of visual content empowers students to think about ways to use images as part of their everyday iterative research processes. Teaching image research and evaluation alongside traditional bibliographic tools is a natural fit. Research shows that college students are already looking for images and text at the same time: in their information-seeking behavior, students don’t separate searching for sources by type. Incorporating visual literacy as part of the research process can give students the tools to move through multiple sources and content types. Working with images throughout the research process readies students to find and use information in all formats, while developing critical thinking and evaluation proficiency

ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education

The importance of images and visual media in contemporary culture is changing what it means to be literate in the 21st century. Today's society is highly visual, and visual imagery is no longer supplemental to other forms of information. New digital technologies have made it possible for almost anyone to create and share visual media. Yet the pervasiveness of images and visual media does not necessarily mean that individuals are able to critically view, use, and produce visual content. Individuals must develop these essential skills in order to engage capably in a visually‐oriented society. Visual literacy empowers individuals to participate fully in a visual culture

Visual literacy for libraries : a practical, standart-based guide

xiii, 171p.: ill.; 26c