Association of College and Research Libraries Archives

Council I: Elevating Intellectual Freedom

By Megan Bennett | June 29, 2024

The Council rules (CD#5.1) and agenda (CD#8.4) were adopted. The minutes from ALA’s 2024 LibLearnX Conference in Baltimore (CD#2.2) meetings were approved. Interim ALA Executive Director Leslie Burger shared the Executive Board’s actions since LibLearnX (CD#15.1) and the implementation of Council Actions from the January conference (#9.1). Cindy Hohl, ALA president-elect and Committee on Committees … Continue reading Council I: Elevating Intellectual Freedom →

Citational Justice

By Sheila Craft-Morgan | June 3, 2024

These findings contribute to the notion that scholarly knowledge comes from a homogenous group of researchers, thereby overlooking the contributions of other groups. This phenomenon has been referred to as epistemological racism or screening, among other terms. In 2017, I read about the “Cite Black Women” campaign founded by Christen A. Smith, an anthropologist whose … Continue reading Citational Justice →

Shifting the Narrative

By Payal Patel | March 28, 2023

“Everything we believe comes from a story we’ve been told,” McGhee said. “So, ask: ‘Who is selling us these stories?’” The New York Times–bestselling author and board chair of racial justice advocacy organization Color for Change shared key insights from her 2021 book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can … Continue reading Shifting the Narrative →

Screenshot for "Equity and Inclusion Strategies: How Does My Library Start?"

Efforts in Equity

By Raymond Garcia | March 28, 2023

At “Equity and Inclusion Strategies—How Does My Library Start?: Case Studies from the Borderlands,” librarians from Texas universities along the US-Mexico border discussed bridging their libraries and communities and advised attendees on ways to kickstart inclusion efforts at their own institutions. Speakers shared practical advice for how to serve first-generation college students, building community networks, … Continue reading Efforts in Equity →

Screenshot of "Building Bridges into Library Leadership" presentation

What Leadership Looks Like

By Payal Patel | March 28, 2023

During the panel discussion “Building Bridges into Library Leadership,” five women who were recently appointed to top positions within their institutions shared experiences, challenges, and advice, highlighting the importance of expanding opportunities for women. Rachel Rubin, dean of libraries and archives at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, in Canada, encouraged those in hiring … Continue reading What Leadership Looks Like →

The Stories We Tell

By Raymond Garcia | March 28, 2023

Award-winning advocate, journalist, and Cherokee Nation citizen Rebecca Nagle opened the conference, shedding light on the lack of representation of Native Americans in media and how it affects public policy. “The stories we tell ourselves about who we are and where we come from inform our public policy,” Nagle said. Through her award-winning podcast This … Continue reading The Stories We Tell →

11 Questions: Robert “Jay” Malone

September 8, 2021

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 →

ACRL 2021 Closing Session speaker Mona Chalabi

ACRL Day Four: Humanizing Information

By Amy Carlton | April 19, 2021

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 →

ACRL 2021 invited speakers (from left) Jennifer Brown, Jennifer Ferretti, and Charlotte Roh of We Here

ACRL Day Three: Recasting the Roles of Academic Libraries

By Amy Carlton | April 16, 2021

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 →

ACRL 2021 Virtual Conference Invited Speaker Kaetrena Davis Kendrick

ACRL Day Two: Getting to Welcome

By Amy Carlton | April 15, 2021

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 →

ACRL 2021 Opening Session speaker Tressie McMillan Cottom

Ascending into an Open Future

By Amy Carlton | April 14, 2021

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 →

Illustration: Figure shines light into the larger head of another figure (Illustration: ©Feodora/Adobe Stock)

Mitigating Implicit Bias

By Molly Higgins and Rachel Keiko Stark | January 4, 2021

Staffers defended the decision to use the racist term because the donors, mostly US servicemen, used it in the materials. Alburo points out several important things about this choice. First, it is a choice made by people. The archives staffers chose to center the experiences of US servicemen, rather than the Vietnamese people represented in … Continue reading Mitigating Implicit Bias →

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Sheila Craft-Morgan writes: “Citations are a key measure of the impact of a researcher’s work. However, research in a variety of disciplines has found that women are less likely to be cited than men; citations contain geographic bias; and the Matthew effect—in which those who begin with advantage continue to gain advantage—leads to more citations for prominent scholars in a specific discipline. These findings contribute to the notion that scholarly knowledge comes from a homogenous group of researchers, thereby overlooking the contributions of other groups.”

American Libraries column, June
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Mel Baldwin writes: “Regardless of why someone comes into a library, every patron should be free to interact with staff, browse materials, and use the internet without fear of harassment or worse. That freedom depends on libraries upholding patron privacy. With nearly 400 active anti-trans bills pending in state legislatures as of April 2024, it is a dangerous time in the US to be gender nonconforming, someone whose gender expression does not align with the traditional male or female binary. And for trans people of color, studies show the risk of discrimination and violence is higher.”

American Libraries column, June
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Greg Landgraf writes: “On a school morning last September, small groups of 5th-graders crowded around tools connected to scientific research—a microscope, a robotic camera, and even a snake named Morgan Freeman—clipboards and pencils in hand. They were at the Melrose branch of Roanoke (Va.) Public Libraries (RPL), judging graduate students from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg on their research. The event was RPL’s second Flip the Fair, introduced in 2022 to help graduate students develop skills to effectively communicate their research while engaging local elementary students with STEM topics and the library.”

American Libraries Trend, June
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Aaryn Bierly writes: “Disability Pride Month is traditionally celebrated in July to celebrate the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990. The ADA regulates laws regarding service animals, requires employers to accommodate their employees’ physical and medical needs, stipulates the number and placement of accessible parking spaces and restrooms, and more. One in five Americans has some type of disability that makes working more difficult, and the ADA has made working conditions easier for a significant number of Americans. We’ve got several great lists of books for kids and teens of different ages featuring characters with a range of disabilities.”

Herrick District Library (Holland, Mich.), July 1
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“Many people already turn to libraries as sources of trusted information ahead of elections, and organizations like ALA and the League of Women Voters are hoping to expand those numbers. We’ve curated a selection of resources, tools, and ideas to help inform your library’s approach to this important work.”

WebJunction, July 3
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“A federal appeals court in New Orleans is taking another look at its own order requiring a Texas county to keep eight books that deal with subjects including sex, gender identity, and racism on public library shelves. Llano County officials had initially removed 17 books from its shelves amid complaints about the subject matter. The June 6 order was vacated July 3 after a majority of the 17-member court granted Llano County officials a new hearing before the full court. The order did not state reasons and the hearing hasn’t yet been scheduled.”

Associated Press, July 7
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Todd Spangler writes: “In the days after Paramount Global disabled mtvnews.com and mtv.com/news in June—removing a trove of hundreds of thousands of articles about music and pop culture from the internet—the not-for-profit Internet Archive assembled a searchable index of 460,575 web pages previously published at mtv.com/news. The Wayback Machine’s archive of MTV News is not the full complement of what was published over the span of more than two decades. But the new collection at least ensures, for the time being, that much of MTV News’ articles remain accessible in some form.”

Variety, July 2

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