Critical Librarianship Research Articles

Decoding Anti-Blackness in Children’s Literature

This dissertation critically examines the representation of Black authors and themes within the John Newbery Medal canon from its inception in 1922 to 2023. It explores how this literary award has mirrored or challenged societal perceptions of race, particularly in children’s literature. Utilizing a thematic content analysis methodology, the study investigates the works of the six Black authors who have won the Newbery Medal, using a priori coding to critically examine the racial narratives, themes, and authorial diversity presented in these titles. Despite the noted increase in diversity within children’s literature, this research identifies a persistent underrepresentation of Black authors and Black cultural themes in Newbery Medal recipients. The study highlights a significant gap in racial inclusivity, with a mere six Black authors receiving the Newbery Medal in over a century. This underrepresentation is not only a marker of racial disparity but also reflects broader systemic biases within the literary and publishing industries. This dissertation engages with theories from critical race theory and critical librarianship to interrogate the structural barriers that sustain this racial homogeneity. In examining the implications of these findings, the research advocates for a more equitable literary landscape, emphasizing the need for librarians, educators, and publishers to foster inclusivity in children’s literature. The ultimate aim is to ensure that young readers encounter a more representative spectrum of narratives that celebrate racial diversity and promote inclusiveness.

Social Media and Crisis Informatics Research in LIS

ABSTRACTCrisis informatics is centrally situated within the realms of LIS research and practice, given the focus on the interconnection between information, people, and technology during disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, and global health crises. However, there is yet to be a community dedicated to crisis informatics research at ASIS&T, where researchers can exchange theoretical frameworks, the latest methodologies, and collected datasets, potentially fostering long‐term collaborations. Therefore, this panel proposes to bring together scholars within LIS who have been active contributors to crisis informatics research, from multiple perspectives ranging from critical librarianship, machine learning, and human‐computer interaction (HCI), to mixed‐methods approaches. The panelists will first share their most current crisis‐related research project and how they envision their research agenda advancing crisis informatics research in the LIS community. Then, they will engage in an interactive Q&A with the audience to discuss the current state of crisis informatics research and their prospective plans for advancing the field within the LIS research and practice community. The panel will foster collaborations and contribute to the improvement of response planning and policies through evidence about how information is sought, processed, and used during crises. This panel is sponsored by SIG Social Media (SIG SM).

Viewpoint: How critical can librarians be?

Critical librarianship has become embedded into the epistemological structure of the LIS profession. Those working in art libraries and the Art Libraries Journal have played no small role in this, fostering progressive discussions around issues of social injustice that orbit the library and its functions. Nevertheless, the kernel of critical theory that developed out of the Frankfurt School centred upon class and economics. Librarianship, especially art librarianship, continues to be a middle-class career requiring an expensive higher qualification to enter. This requirement indicates the contradictions operating within and around the sector. As the commodification of education continues to creep in, class and economics are urgent topics that demand to be addressed by the critical librarianship movement. Yet those who practice critical librarianship remain employees of this very system and as such, the question posed is, what, if anything, can librarians do about their role within the education system to disrupt the commodification of education? The proposal is offered that librarians and artworks have more in common than seems possible. This idea is explained by briefly introducing artwork as a monad, concluding that art and perhaps librarians reflect the society that created them but cannot change it. Nevertheless, the very existence of art reflects the possibilities of such change, and maybe this is its role.

Recommended by Librarians

To study library guides, as published on Springshare’s LibGuides platform, new approaches are needed to expand the scope of the research, ensure comprehensiveness of data collection, and reduce bias for content analysis. Computational methods can be utilized to conduct a nuanced and thorough evaluation that critically assesses the resources promoted in library guides. Web-based library guides are curated by librarians to provide easy access to high-quality information and resources in a variety of formats to support the research needs of their users. Recent scholarship considers library guides as valuable resources and as de facto publications, highlighting the need for critical study. In this article, the authors present a novel model for comprehensively gathering data about a specific genre of books from individual LibGuide pages and applying computational methods to explore the resultant data. Beginning with a pre-selected list of 159 books, we programmatically queried the titles using the LibGuides Community search engine. After cleaning and filtering the resultant data, we compiled a list of 20,484 book references (of which 6,212 are unique) on 1,529 LibGuide pages. By testing against inclusion and exclusion criteria to ensure relevancy, we identified a total of 281 titles relevant to our topic. To gain insights for future study, citation analysis metrics are presented to reveal patterns of frequency, co-occurrence, and bibliographic coupling of books promoted in LibGuides. This proof-of-concept could be adopted for a variety of applications, including assessment of collections, public services, critical librarianship, and other complex questions to enable a richer and more thorough understanding of the information landscape of LibGuides.

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Institutional Research Data Management Strategies

Research data management (RDM) is a field of emerging concern for academic librarians. As funder agencies increasingly mandate institutions and researchers to ethically and responsibly manage their research data, academic librarians are frequently tasked with creating institutional strategies and services to support researchers. This article explores how a racialized librarian at a medium-sized, teaching-focused Canadian university created an institutional research data management strategy through a process informed by critical librarianship research and contributive justice (Gomberg, 2016; Honma & Chu, 2018). It examines the lack of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) principles in both funder directives and RDM research literature and proposes an approach to do institutional RDM work in an EDI-centered way.

Bias and Whiteness in Public Services

Race and gender bias intersect in particularly crucial way in Libraires as we experience them today with their roots in Victorian virtuous womanhood and an associated service ethic that requires library colleagues to prioritize user satisfaction even if at the cost of staff wellbeing, and at times, safety. This reality has led to an intertwining of identity, worth, and service ethic that is exacerbated through late stage capitalism that rewards business over impact and asks of us to want more. On this basis, libraries have been ripe for critical review of our practices. As critical librarianship continues to grow, two concepts are gaining attention within the field of libraries and public services: vocational awe and white centering. This column will explore how the concepts continue to rise in importance in this field as well as the interrelated field of customer service industry. Additionally, the author will explore micro-practices that are surfacing in the literature to decenter whiteness as well as ensure that we are values-centered rather than unsustainable in our practices.

Streaming Queer Content: LGBTQ Media on BVOD and SVOD Services in Australia

This article analyzes the strategies through which Broadcast Video on Demand (BVOD) and Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) services make queer titles available and discoverable to users. While streaming video services operate globally and the issue of LGBTQ inclusion is not solely a national one, Australia’s complex history of LGBTQ representation in film and television offers a unique context to explore these issues. This article asks: How is queer content categorized and promoted on BVOD and SVOD services in Australia? How easily discovered is this content? And how does this impact the visibility and inclusion of LGBTQ identities within the Australian screen media landscape? Drawing on critical librarianship and catalog analysis, this article reveals discrepancies between curated categories and search results, the failure of search tools to recognize language associated with LGBTQ identities, and the obscuring of queer content within streaming video libraries.

‘They burn so bright whilst you can only wonder why’

In this article we connect critical librarianship and its practices of information literacy (IL) with working-class experiences of higher education (HE). Although the research literature and professional body of knowledge of critical information literacy (CIL), is one of the most theoretically-developed areas of wider critical librarianship (Critlib) movement, working-class knowledge and experiences remain underrepresented. One reason for this is that the values, behaviour and assumptions of library and HE workers are shaped by a HE system which inculcates middle-class values and cultural capitals within students, and stigmatises working-class students as lacking or in deficit. Hegemonic, or non-critical, IL proselytises middle-class values and assumptions about academic practices and skills development including the notion of an ideal student with behaviour and markers of identity which reflect those most privileged by wider society. In contrast CIL, framed as the socially-just practice of IL is theoretically well-placed to support working-class library workers in destabilising this alongside middle-class accomplices. Employing Yosso’s (2005) concept of community and cultural wealth (CCW), we analyse how library workers can recognise working-class cultural wealth within the context of CIL and wider working practices. As such narrative accounts are lacking in the literature, we utilise collaborative autoethnography (CAE) (Chang et al., 2013) to consider and interpret our own experiences of libraries when we were university students ourselves, and more recently as HE workers of working-class heritage.

Critical information literacy at the crossroads

In this article, the authors explore whether academic libraries are truly capable of implementing a critical information literacy (CIL) praxis and if there are inherent threats to critical librarianship when incorporating CIL into the curriculum. The survey instrument in this study gathered data from 92 academic library instructors based within the United States. The study identified that 41% of question respondents had received negative comments or criticisms about including CIL in their library curriculum through various formats: online modules, one-shot instruction, course-embedded units, and credit-bearing courses. In addition, 29% of question respondents felt that pushback from academic teaching staff, other librarians/administration, and students threatened the integrity of CIL. This research helps to illustrate the fragility of CIL and how librarians have faced pushback when critical content is incorporated into the information literacy (IL) curriculum.

Integrating diversity, equity, and inclusion principles into instruction: Case studies from the University of Florida's Health Science Center Libraries.

Librarians at the University of Florida Health Science Center Libraries have begun to intentionally incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) principles into teaching during design, implementation, and evaluation. This article uses four case studies to provide an overview of the librarians' approaches to inclusive teaching (1) an annual workshop for Physical Therapy students on the intersection between DEI, health literacy, and patient education; (2) a librarian-taught one-credit course for public health students, which was revised to create a more inviting syllabus and integrate elements of universal design; (3) an annual project for first year medical students highlighting health disparities and community resources; and (4) piloting the application of critical librarianship principles in library standalone sessions on database searching and reference management. Suggestions are provided for other librarians who are interested in developing a culture of inclusive teaching in their own libraries.

Critical Voices

This article describes how a group of students and an instructor at an MLIS program developed a community of practice (CoP) around critical librarianship. We provide a literature review on CoPs and relate this to our own experience with the reading group. We include our individual narratives that reveal the similarities and differences in our experiences as students and practitioners. The Critical Librarianship Reading Group provided a community for peers, knowledge building around critical librarianship, and an opportunity to hear from a number of voices through the readings and the members of the group. We hope this inspires other MLIS programs to develop their own CoPs that connect students, instructors, and alumni/practitioners

Interviews with Staci Ross and Emily Drabinski

Two separate interviews were conducted, one with Staci Ross, Cataloging/Metadata Librarian at the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh and the other with Emily Drabinski, Critical Pedagogy Librarian, CUNY. Topics covered include their careers, their work in critical librarianship, NASA, and building a community all while discussing cats.

Decolonizing Librarians’ Teaching Practice: In Search of a Process and a Pathway

Many educators across post-secondary institutions are learning about their colonial histories and the need to decolonize curriculum, learning materials, and teaching practice described in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action (2015). This qualitative study explored the meaning of decolonizing with a group of ten instruction librarians at a mid-sized Canadian institution. The project was conducted in the form of a learning program to offer the predominantly white settler librarian participants a chance to explore these topics. It provided an opportunity to document a learning process and a pathway to initiate change. A five-month learning program uncovered participant questions and interpretations of decolonizing drawing on transcripts of individual learning journals and a focus group as the data set. The program inspired a community of practice enabling the learning and unlearning essential to decolonizing. We report, from the perspective of two white settler librarians, on the meaning of decolonizing as an ongoing process that enables awareness of colonization, personal identity, and positionality and includes strategies librarians can use on the path to decolonizing teaching, collections, and spaces. Participant self-awareness surfaced a critical librarianship mindset where information is understood as a product shaped by cultural, historical, social, and political forces, and where we acknowledge that academic libraries and their information sources and systems are not neutral and empower specific voices.

Rethinking Library Services for First-Generation Students: Using Habitus as a Framework for Reevaluating Existing Models

This paper explores the results of our research into the needs of primarily first-generation students as they begin their college careers. We seek to understand attitudinal dimensions regarding retention and how first-generation students’ perceive libraries and library services as a touchpoint in their education. Particular to this study is our utilization of Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of Habitus as a founding theoretical framework. By using this theory, we are able to turn student input into a useful model while maintaining the individuality of the student and also attempting to dissuade harmful and problematic notions of essentialism. This project additionally explores tenets of Critical Librarianship like self-reflection, critical thinking, and examination of teaching practices.

Filling the ‘Gaps’ in the Representation of Australia’s Cultural Diversity: The Multicultural Imaginary of the NLA’s Oral History Collection

ABSTRACT In Australia’s National Library, the acquisition or commissioning of oral histories is accepted as a method by which their representative mission as socially inclusive and culturally diverse institution can be fulfilled. In this goal, oral history projects which focus on underdocumented, minoritised or marginalised individuals, groups or communities commonly stake their value on the claim that such projects can work to fill the ‘gaps’ in the national story, contribute to a more complete historical record, or recover lost, overlooked or hidden histories. Drawing on the NLA’s institutional documentation, this paper develops the findings of an empirical examination of the NLA’s oral history collection. This examination found a significant mismatch between representations of the oral history collection as diverse and the actual number of ‘diverse’ interviews. Using the analytic lens provided by critical librarianship, this paper considers the implications of these findings and argues for greater recognition of the culturally positioned nature of oral history methodology. It is suggested that by re-thinking oral history’s neutrality, space might be found within collections for a diversity of oral literacies and ‘unique epistemologies ways of knowing, languages, and histories’.

Proving the proverbial gadfly: situating the historical and racial context of Southern medical works by Mary Louise Marshall.

Health sciences librarianship has historically benefited from avoiding critical conversations around the role of race in the profession, reflected through a select few number of articles on the topic. The purpose of this study was to add to this body of literature and apply a critical librarianship framework on the early scholarly record of health sciences librarianship and the legacy of integration within the Medical Library Association (MLA). Three Southern medical works and the integration views of Mary Louise Marshall, the longest-serving president of MLA from 1941 to 1946, were thematically and textually analyzed to redress the profession's long-standing legacy with Whiteness and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) representation. In reframing the historic past of MLA both through Marshall's works and her views, the goal is to acknowledge ways in which the profession has impeded progress and present steps to remedy appropriate outreach for the future.

Public Libraries as Agonistic Spaces

The paper deals with the possibilities of engaged interdisciplinary activity implemented at the crossroads of librarianship and contemporary art practices. By relying on the theoretical concepts on which critical librarianship is based on the one hand, and contemporary art on the other hand, a possibility is shown of their interference with the aim to introduce a critical perspective within librarianship through art and to establish a new methodology at the crossroads of the two disciplines. The aforementioned is demonstrated in the paper through the coexistence and activity of S. S. Kranjčević Library and Prozori Gallery (Zagreb City Libraries), the programmatic and curatorial concept of which deals with the questions of the manner in which the theoretical positions of contemporary art and their practical and discursive analysis can contribute to the visibility, importance, and cultural capital of the library, the library profession, and the encouragement of critical attitude within the framework of information and communication sciences, the branch of which being librarianship, with emphasis on the project Uncertain Interventions: LGBTIQ Users in Public Libraries as a case study. Finally, the paper introduces the concept of libraries as agonistic public spaces.

The Politics of Theory and the Practice of Critical Librarianship. By Karen P. Nicholson and Maura Seale

The Politics of Theory and the Practice of Critical Librarianship. By Karen P. Nicholson and Maura Seale

Introducing Critical Librarianship to Information Professionals: Using Critical Pedagogy and Critical Information Literacy in an LIS Graduate Course

Critical librarianship, which critiques the role of libraries and information professionals in maintaining systems of oppression, has been growing in popularity in the profession, and instructors in Library and Information Science (LIS) have begun to address critical librarianship in their coursework. While critical pedagogy and critical librarianship have influenced approaches to LIS education, the intersection of these two has not been as thoroughly addressed. Additionally, the literature on critical information literacy focuses largely on library instruction. This case study explores a critical pedagogy approach in a critical librarianship class that prepares students for critical information literacy instruction. The instructor implemented student-led presentations and discussions, self-grading, and collaboratively setting course expectations. Student responses were overwhelmingly positive, and student performance in the course indicated the approach and content of the course were effective.

The Library Language Game: Information Literacy through the Lens of Wittgenstein's Language Games

Labeling information is a precarious and risky enterprise. Catalogers have the task of fitting unique concepts within established and rigid language frameworks while also minimizing personal bias. The way information literacy librarians interact with labeled information also influences how users interact with information. Labeling moves beyond the role of categorizing, it also contributes to meaning making and knowledge building. Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations serves as a philosophical footing to illustrate how the labeling of things, in this case information, shapes the way we give things meaning. Critical librarianship and philosophy of information theory add to the discussion by considering how personal perspective, power, and bias to manipulate the game of naming information that takes place in the information literacy classroom. This paper is an invitation for librarians to reflect upon the relationship between labeling and how all users of information engage with labels and subsequently create meaning and knowledge.