As ACRL’s new executive director, Malone will lead the largest of ALA’s eight divisions, which includes more than 9,000 individual and institutional members. Prior to ALA, Malone worked at the History of Science Society, where he served for 23 years, helping the organization further its advocacy goals; promote equity, diversity, and inclusion; create a fundraising … Continue reading 11 Questions: Robert “Jay” Malone
God gave Noah the rainbow sign No more water, the fire next time! (“Mary Don’t You Weep,” Black American spiritual) I will never forget Friday, March 13, 2020, the last day we worked in our building. It was also our admitted-student day, and several attendees had already arrived. Our staff quickly arranged a socially distanced … Continue reading LIS and the Next Crisis
“The act of education is an act of vulnerability, the willingness to open up to the possibility of a new worldview or at the very least be exposed to it even if it doesn’t shift your own,” said Stacy Collins, research and instruction librarian at Simmons University in Boston. There are those who arrive at … Continue reading The Myth of Neutrality
My study aimed to determine whether sampled policies had manifest messages of diversity and the degree of congruence between these policies and ALA’s “Diversity in Collection Development: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights,” adopted in 1982 and last amended in 2019. Given that diversity is one of the core values of librarianship and … Continue reading What Does Diversity Mean?
Charts all have the same visual language—lines, bars, pies—but Chalabi said she tries to marry her illustrations with their subject matter to retain her viewers’ attention. A chart about candy sales uses bars of chocolate, for example, so that the meaning is clear even if the labels are removed. Chalabi described her two criteria for … Continue reading ACRL Day Four: Humanizing Information
Jenny Ferretti, We Here founder and digital initiatives librarian at Maryland Institute College of Art, opened the session “Systemic Oppression Requires Systemic Change: Recasting the Roles of Academic Libraries in Contemporary Contexts” by providing background on the racial past and present of libraries. Libraries, she said, are traditionally white-serving institutions, citing Todd Honma’s “Trippin’ over … Continue reading ACRL Day Three: Recasting the Roles of Academic Libraries
She began her talk by laying out the challenges facing the field—such as rising tuition costs, student retention, competition, and the pandemic—and their corresponding opportunities, including attracting nontraditional students, expanding degree programs, tapping alumni resources for networking, and rethinking what the campus experience could mean to students after the pandemic. Kendrick spelled out her theory … Continue reading ACRL Day Two: Getting to Welcome
Cottom, associate professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science, spoke about how these discussions inform the courses she teaches as well as her current thinking about the role of the academic library. One course, “Networks of Racial Capitalism,” examines the effects of information capitalism and structural inequality. … Continue reading Ascending into an Open Future
I’ve heard countless stories of library workers who have gone above and beyond to support their communities during this time. But I’ve also wondered how many libraries surpassed expectations to meet their staffers’ needs. I spoke with several librarians about what they’ve done to support their workers as whole people. Early in the pandemic, administrators … Continue reading Building Morale in a Pandemic
Those words seem especially prescient now as we look across the country at the libraries that have struggled most during this period of widespread library defunding and service reductions. Though the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the issue, there has long been an unmistakable correlation between communities that navigate high rates of poverty and those that … Continue reading Revolutions Where We Stand
Libraries have been described as beacons of democracy, inclusion, and equity. As a direct result of the pandemic, we have seen that in striving to fulfill our values and serve our patrons, the very people who make up libraries—library workers—are being neglected. Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people are experiencing higher death rates in this pandemic. … Continue reading Call to Action
Monique Sugimoto, archivist and local history librarian at Peninsula Center Library, a branch of PVLD in Rolling Hills Estates, California, was quarantined at home in March like the rest of her staff and patrons when she sent a photo of her feline home office companion to her team and asked them to share their own … Continue reading Collecting Coronavirus Stories
