Reorienting an Information Literacy Program Toward Social Justice: Mapping the Core Values of Librarianship to the ACRL Framework (original) (raw)
Related papers
2015
72 Library and Information Science (LIS) as a discipline is guided by core values that emphasize equal access to information, freedom of expression, democracy, and education. Importantly, diversity and social responsibility are specifically called out as foundations of the profession (American Library Association, 2004). Following from this, there has been a focus in LIS on educating librarians from a social justice perspective. In this essay we will discuss some of the strategies we use for training librarians to practice librarianship using a social justice framework as a way to help social studies teachers and other educators critically think through their role in educating for social justice in their classrooms. Some areas of particular transference from LIS to K-12 educators that we focus on include locating classroom technologies as sites of power and privilege, prioritizing print and digital materials representative of culturally diverse populations and relevant contexts, and...
Social Justice as Topic and Tool: An Attempt to Transform an LIS Curriculum and Culture
A B S T R A C T Training culturally competent and socially responsible library and information science (LIS) professionals requires a blended approach that extends across curricula, professional practice, and research. Social justice can support these goals by serving as a topic of inquiry in LIS curricula as well as by providing a scholarly framework for understanding how power and privilege shape LIS institutions and professional practice. This article applies social justice as a topic and tool for transforming LIS curricula and culture by exploring the implementation of social justicethemed courses and an extracurricular reading group in one LIS department. Exploring curricular and extracurricular cases in a shared institutional setting contextualizes key challenges and conversations that can inform similar initiatives in other institutions. Transforming LIS culture to prioritize social justice values, epistemologies, and frameworks requires multivalent strategies, community buy-in, and shared responsibility in terms of the labor of leading and sustaining engagement with social justice. W hile students pursue graduate degrees in library and information science (LIS), it is hoped that they will learn the basics necessary for competent, inclusive, and caring professional practice. This is increasingly important as librarians face ever-more-diverse patron demographics and an increasingly complicated society that influences, shapes, and colors their organization's services and resources. In an often eclectic collection of graduate courses, how often do students have the opportunity to learn about the harder, sensitive, or more personal topics that may permeate their professional environments, such as race, class, sexuality, and gender? If it is expected that aspiring information professionals work with diverse populations, they should be equipped to deal with such populations and be able to deal with them in a respectful, compassionate and open-minded manner.
Reconnecting information literacy policy with the core values of librarianship
In 2009, President Barack Obama declared October of that year to be National Information Literacy Awareness Month and issued a proclamation stating that "an informed and educated citizenry is essential to the functioning of our modern democratic society." The Obama proclamation's emphasis on information literacy's role in education and democracy makes it akin to the 2005 Alexandria Proclamation on Information Literacy and Lifelong Learning. In both of these documents, information literacy is located at the core of lifelong learning. It empowers people in all walks of life to seek, evaluate, use, and create information effectively to achieve their personal, social, occupational, and educational goals. These two documents are powerful and inspiring to many academic librarians because they are reminders of the broader social context and democratic initiatives within their work. Inspiring as these documents are, they can also be intimidating and overwhelming: how can we help create an informed and educated citizenry or help our students meet technological, economic, and social challenges, to redress disadvantage and to advance the well-being of all? This article is not an attempt to provide answers to these questions but a call to move these questions to the fore of our policy and pedagogical discussions. By revisiting seminal documents like
Developing an Undergraduate Information Studies Curriculum in Support of Social Justice
2016
Through a review of the current state of Library and Information Studies (LIS) undergraduate education and the orientation of sample programs at consortium member iSchools, this article proposes an alternative pedagogical model that foregrounds the integration of a critical, social justice framework into undergraduate curricula. Based on an initial study conducted at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) by the authors and other participants of the Winter/Spring 2015 Teacher Training Seminar, this essay, in addition to positing an approach towards the building of critically engaged undergraduate curriculum, moreover highlights the increasing need and support for LIS students and professionals that have a nuanced information praxis. Inspired by UCLA's own commitment to a social justice orientation, the authors also point towards existing advocacy for social justice in LIS undergraduate education in the field and professional literature. In turn, underscoring the broader movement for a critical education and practice within LIS. Introduction Conceived of originally as a proposal for an undergraduate major to the Department of Information Studies (IS) at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in collaboration with our colleagues in the Winter/Spring 2015 " Teaching Training Seminar " (led by Dr. Leah Lievrouw), this paper intends to explore further the rich possibilities that exist within the field of Library and Information Studies (LIS) for undergraduate level education. As we maintained earlier in our thinking, undergraduate majors and coursework within LIS that are explicitly aligned with a critical, social justice focus have enormous potential for engendering students and future professionals that are informed, insightful and equally contributive in areas as diverse as technology and systems design, information policy and advocacy, law and government, as well as in more traditional spheres of libraries and archives. In addition, the training of undergraduates in a critical LIS praxis, one that also places an emphasis on the practical applications of theories studied and explored, effectively lays the groundwork for the cultivation of potential candidates for PhD programs throughout the iSchool network; who will be able to skillfully parse with the dynamic and continuously expanding nuances of LIS as a field of inquiry. As articulated in the proposal, we advocate for a pedagogical approach that tackles LIS undergraduate education with an eye towards the broader socio-cultural and political impact of information praxis. Building on the strengths of UCLA's IS program, which focuses on the history, philosophy and practice of information from a decidedly analytical and critical perspective, we urged the rigorous grounding of undergraduate students in both the qualitative and quantitative traditions that undergird the discipline as a means of accessing a wide breadth of historical, theoretical and methodological
Engendering Social Justice in First Year Information Literacy Classes
Information literacy classes are becoming common on college campuses to help first year students learn information search skills necessary for higher education. Free speech debates on some college campuses have bred a level of student activism not seen since the 1960s. Academic librarians can play a key role to educate students in First Year Information Literacy (FYIL) classes with a social justice context inclusive of race, gender and free speech.
The Academic Library and Social Justice: A Q-Study of Librarian Attitudes
2016
This study took place on the campus of a Hispanic-serving institution, and used Q methodology to assess the attitudes and perceptions of academic librarians toward a social justice role for the university library. Among librarians and others in higher education, there is a great deal of confusion around social justice as a concept because over the past forty years, it has often been subsumed under, or diverted by the neoliberal discourse of multicultural education, which conflates social justice with providing equal opportunities for under-represented students primarily as a means of enabling them to obtain jobs and become consumers in our neoliberal capitalist society. Unfortunately, this perspective dovetails neatly with the positivist traditions of the library profession, which also eschews political involvement and exhorts librarians to remain neutral in the services and collections they provide. Within this discourse, universities and their libraries are stripped of their political and social potential for addressing the structural problems and inequalities which circumscribe the lives of the very students they purport to serve. The results of this study indicate that many librarians believe that their profession's ethos of neutrality renders the debate over social justice within the library moot. These librarians equate social justice as equivalent to giving equal access to materials that promote the advancement of marginalized groups, and to those that encourage the continuation of the status quo or opposition to equality. Only a small number of librarians envision themselves as well iv positioned to promote social justice by empowering students to use the resources currently available within the library. Despite the different viewpoints represented by the factors uncovered in this study, there did emerge areas of consensus from which library leaders can mediate conversations aimed at uncovering and evaluating the principles, practices, and attitudes within the library that arise from the dominant White worldview and hinder the library's ability to serve all students equitably. Conversations about topics such as those implicated in this study, including institutional racism, diversity, social justice, and White privilege are not always comfortable conversations, but they are required if the library is to enact the changes necessary to allow it to serve all students more effectively and more justly. These discussions are especially needed at this time, when academic librarians as a profession remain 86 percent White, while many of our campuses are becoming increasingly racially diverse. If the library is to retain its place as the center of social and political discourse within the university, it is critical that it fully represent and respect the perspectives of non-dominant groups and recognize alternative epistemologies. Breaking with the positivist traditions of the library will allow opportunities for librarians to authentically connect with more of our students, which is particularly needed at Hispanic-serving institutions. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the faculty of California State University, San Bernardino and my fellow Cohort Eight doctoral students for their support and encouragement. I am particularly indebted to the members of my Committee, including my Committee Chair, Dr. John Winslade, along with Dr. Edna Martinez, and Dr. Doris Wilson, for making this journey a smooth one. Special thanks are also due to Dr. Marita Mahoney for providing consultation and guidance on data analysis. vi
Library Trends, 2015
In this exploratory study, the researchers examined the core library and information science (LIS) curriculum, looking for diversity levers, or conceptual access points, where transformative academic knowledge related to diversity and social justice could be meaningfully integrated. Multicultural curriculum reform, conceptualized as a social justice approach, was the guiding framework for the research design and analysis. The researchers began by establishing what constitutes the core curriculum and essential knowledge taught across thirty-six ALA-accredited master's of library and information science degree programs. These data were then used to construct a survey that went to one hundred LIS faculty at ALA institutions who provided pedagogical knowledge, ideas, and resources for infusing diversity and social justice into the core curriculum. The findings suggest that there are certain core LIS courses that have explicit diversity levers, or areas where there are natural connections to diversity and social justice content, while others have emergent or implicit diversity levers. The differences among these types of diversity levers are explained, and some of the pedagogical resources that were shared by the survey respondents are included. The Information Technology core course shows the most promise for integrating diversity and social justice pedagogies.
Social Justice Research Collaborative, 2021
This paper outlines the efforts of the University Library of the University of Illinois at Chicago to provide free open access to information so that everyone has equal access to it. The library does this through advocacy for open access, providing resources to make information openly accessible, and providing training in information literacy to access and use open information.
Seeking Social Justice in the ACRL Framework
Comminfolit
The scope of this article is to address the possibilities and challenges librarians concerned with social justice may face when working with the ACRL Framework. While the Framework recognizes that information emerges from varied contexts that reflect uneven distributions of power, privilege, and authority, it is missing a cogent statement that connects information literacy to social justice. In this article, authors concerned with social justice and civic engagement will share their reflections on the Framework from a critical pedagogical and social justice orientation. 111