Meet the 2019 ALA Policy Corps

February 5, 2019

Policy Corps members will attend two training sessions in Washington, D.C. The first is a spring meeting, which will provide a survey of key library advocacy issues, major players in the legislative and policy processes, and the processes of engaging national decision makers and influencers. A second workshop will take place in the fall. Regular … Continue reading Meet the 2019 ALA Policy Corps



Zoe McLaughlin

Getting Advice

November 1, 2018

Here are some people and resources to consider when building connections for your job search: Career centers. Your school’s career center is an obvious first stop. It can be useful to learn if the center’s staffers have certain specialties. For example, someone may be well versed in interview preparation, while another person may be better … Continue reading Getting Advice


Loida Garcia-Febo

From Local to Global

September 4, 2018

Take, for example, Los Angeles Public Library, which partners with the city to provide patrons access to free classes to obtain a high school diploma. Or librarians in Alaska, who have partnered with the state to use devices to identify bats in danger of extinction and help preserve the biodiversity of the region. As many … Continue reading From Local to Global


Community Colleges of Spokane (Wash.) librarians Melinda Martin (left) and Heather Morgan at an Assessment in Action RoadShow delivered to community college librarians in Washington state.

On the Road Again

July 18, 2018

The program offers daylong, immersive workshops in a variety of disciplines that can be brought to institutions around the world upon request. Led by experts in the field, these traveling workshops help academic librarians learn new skills and strengthen existing competencies to tackle the greatest issues facing the profession today. The program reaches hundreds of … Continue reading On the Road Again



In Practice by Meredith Farkas

Framework Freakout?

September 1, 2017

In some ways, the Framework was a major departure from ACRL’s previous Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Organized around six information literacy threshold concepts, the Framework is not an exhaustive list of threshold concepts or dispositions and practices. Instead, its developers encouraged libraries to determine their own programmatic learning outcomes based on local … Continue reading Framework Freakout?


(L-R): Regina Gong, Nina Exner, Merinda McLure, Sarah Crissinger

Open Educational Resources for Science Liaisons​

June 26, 2017

OER is a learning object, shared under an intellectual property license, that facilitates the 5 Rs: retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute. David Wiley of Lumen Learning created the 5 Rs, and they serve as the foundation of any OER initiative. Crissinger also introduced the concept of Open Pedagogy, which asks students to be involved in the … Continue reading Open Educational Resources for Science Liaisons​


In Practice by Meredith Farkas

Information Literacy Toolkits

May 1, 2017

Two recent publications envision this type of instruction as a shared responsibility of the librarian and the disciplinary instructor. The Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, adopted by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) in 2016, represents a significant departure from the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. It recognizes … Continue reading Information Literacy Toolkits


ALA logo

ALA, ACRL Oppose FCC Plans to Roll Back Net Neutrality

April 26, 2017

“ALA and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) firmly believe that preserving an open internet is essential to all Americans’ freedom of speech, educational achievement, and economic growth. Now that the internet has become one of the primary mechanisms for delivering information, services, and applications to the general public, and the primary means … Continue reading ALA, ACRL Oppose FCC Plans to Roll Back Net Neutrality


Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden delivers the closing address at the Association of College and Research Libraries conference in Baltimore on March 25, 2017.

ACRL Closes with Carla Hayden

March 27, 2017

Social justice and information literacy The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions has declared that information literacy is a human right. If it’s a human right, what does this look like in practice? That question fueled the Social Justice and Information project discussed in “What’s Social Justice Got to Do with Information Literacy?” a … Continue reading ACRL Closes with Carla Hayden