Abstract
The institutional racism addressed by the Black Lives Matter movement is encoded in many of the structures of academia, including academic libraries. As a librarian who teaches information literacy, I ask students to think about which voices are represented in the scholarly literature, make explicit the implicit biases of the way scholarly materials are organized in the library and research databases, and examine the way their own biases affect their evaluations of information. In this article, I examine some of the ways racism is build into the structure of the library and describe ways I teach students to recognize inequities in the sources they rely on for college level research.
Highlights
For many academic librarians, teaching information literacy is a core component of librarianship
The Association for College & Research Libraries (ACRL) defines it as "the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning" (ACRL 2015)
We can teach students to evaluate information sources according to a simple checklist, usually including the authority of the author, publication date, and purpose of the piece, without having to examine the power structures that enabled that author to become an authority or the ideological biases represented in the piece
Summary
For many academic librarians, teaching information literacy is a core component of librarianship. We can teach students to evaluate information sources according to a simple checklist, usually including the authority (often focused on formal credentials) of the author, publication date, and purpose of the piece, without having to examine the power structures that enabled that author to become an authority or the ideological biases represented in the piece.
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