Journal of Radical Librarianship
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Review of Land in Libraries: Toward a Materialist Conception of Education
Get PDFReview of Zyagintseva, L, & Greenshields, M. (Eds). (2023). Land in libraries: Toward a materialist conception of education. Library Juice Press
From Gatekeepers to Facilitators: Transforming Metadata for Equitable Knowledge Access
Get PDFMetadata is necessary for intellectual control of materials, providing context, and facilitating findability. In the creation of metadata, information professionals may inadvertently act as gatekeepers, perpetuating the marginalization of people and identities through the use of complicated and outdated descriptive practices. The People’s Archive, the local history department of the DC Public Library set out to revise our metadata practices for digital collections to prioritize inclusivity and findability in our collections. Addressing the role our profession has played in perpetuating harmful social structures is hard and uncomfortable, but it is also overdue and necessary if we truly want to provide the best access to our users. In this article, the authors review the methodology and outcomes of a yearlong effort to update our metadata practices
Miami University Librarians Unionize for Equity and Dignity: An Interview from the Frontlines of a First Contract Negotiation
Get PDFLibrarians describe their path to unionization at Miami University. After losing a hearing and being removed from a faculty union's bargaining unit during a union certification drive, librarians used their signed union authorization cards to file for and win a union authorization vote. The new Faculty Alliance of Miami - Librarians (FAM - L) group was formed and are currently bargaining for their first contract. This interview with four librarians deeply involved with the union drive and bargaining details the conditions at Miami they hope to improve and their challenges and hopes looking towards the future.
What a Recent Ta-Nehisi Coates Lecture Offers the “Intellectual Freedom vs. Social Responsibility” Debate
Get PDFAuthor Ta-Nehisi Coates's 2023 Arthur Miller Lecture at the PEN America World Voices Festival has been little remarked-upon since he delivered it. This oversight is particularly noteworthy in the field of library and information science, as his comments have much to offer the perennial debate between intellectual freedom absolutists and social responsibility advocates
Settler Narratives: Colonial Genocide, Westward Expansion, the Gendering of Librarianship, and the Appointment of City Librarian Nellie Keith
Get PDFThe gendering of the library profession toward female dominance, occurring between 1876 and 1905, coincided with an influx of affluent, educated white settlers in California. The simultaneity of Westward expansion and gendering of librarianship laid the framework for white women settlers to find successful careers in libraries in California. The first City Librarian of the South Pasadena Public Library, located in South Pasadena, California, was a woman named Nellie Keith. Viewed through an intersectional lens, Keith’s journey, from her birth on a New Hampshire farm to her appointment as a City Librarian in California, was paved by both her access to white privilege and her subjection to the sexism of nineteenth century male figureheads in the field of librarianship
Review of Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto
Get PDFReview of Saito, K. (2024). Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto. Astra House
Review of On Censorship: A Public Librarian Examines Cancel Culture in the US
Get PDFABSTRACT: Review of LaRue, James. On Censorship: A Public Librarian Examines Cancel Culture in the US. Wheat Ridge, CO: Fulcrum Publishing. 2023. Ebook version, 81 pages. ISBN 9781682754580
Uncontrollable Vocabularies: : Queer Theory, Sexual Identity, and the Catalog
Get PDFThis article brings together critical librarianship and queer theory to intervene in ongoing discourse about subject headings related to sexual identity. While many librarians favor a corrective cataloging approach that updates language with more current and ostensibly community-preferred terms, I draw on work by Emily Drabinski, Melissa Adler, Eve Sedgwick, and Kadji Amin to argue against corrective approaches—and against a mindset that seeks affirmation in the catalog to begin with, rather than understanding any taxonomic project to be intrinsically fraught and reductive. The purpose of this article is threefold: 1) to elucidate and challenge what I call a “paradigm of exposure”—a form of “outing” texts—around Library of Congress Subject Headings that are related to sexual identity, 2) to illustrate the fundamental irreconcilability of queerness with the cataloging principle of “aboutness,” and 3) to argue for a dispositional shift that embraces an ambivalent relationship to the catalog even while permitting for good surprises. As a case study, I examine the application of the LCSH “Lesbians” and “Female friendships” to films and challenge the paradigm of exposurethat characterizes prevalent approaches to cataloging LGBTQ-related materials.
Keywords: cataloging, critical librarianship, queer theory, academic libraries, Library of Congress Subject Headings, sexual identit
Review of The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family
Get PDFReview of Cook, J. (2024). The quiet damage: QAnon and the destruction of the American family. Penguin Crown
Review of Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions About What to Believe Online
Get PDFReview of Caulfield, M., & Wineburg, S. (2023). Verified: How to think straight, get duped less, and make better decisions about what to believe online. University of Chicago Press