IOPN Journals (Illinois Open Publishing Network)
Not a member yet
1384 research outputs found
Sort by
Integrating Critical Race Theory into Library and Information Science: Challenges, Opportunities, and the Path Forward
Full text linkThis panel will explore the intersection of Critical Race Theory and Library and Information Science unveiling the challenges, opportunities, and actionable steps for integrating CRT into library practices, education, and services. Emerging from legal studies in the 1970s, CRT has is considered the key framework for addressing systemic racism and understanding the role of power and race in shaping societal structures. In this session, panelists will discuss how CRT can be used to transform library practices and offer solutions for the evolving challenges faced by libraries and LIS educators.
Panelists will explain how CRT’s core ideas can offer new perspectives on issues of access, representation, and equity within libraries helping attendees understand why CRT is crucial in reshaping how libraries address race and how library systems can either perpetuate or challenge racial inequalities. In addition, panelists will examine the tension between the field’s traditional commitment to neutrality and CRT’s call for activism and social justice unveiling how these competing values can sometimes create friction, especially when it comes to rethinking established practices like collection development, access to resources, and library services. Panelists will engage in a candid conversation centered on the difficulties of shifting these practices in ways that more actively promote racial justice and inclusivity.
Another topic will be the gap in LIS education regarding CRT. Drawing from studies that reveal LIS students often receive little to no exposure to CRT during their graduate programs, the panel will highlight the urgent need for educational reform. Panelists will advocate for curricula that more comprehensively integrate CRT, preparing future librarians to understand and confront issues of racial power dynamics and inequities in their professional work. They will discuss the ways in which a CRT-infused education can equip future library leaders with the tools they need to challenge and dismantle systemic racism in their practices.
Panelists will offer practical ways that CRT can be applied in libraries and real-world examples of how library services and collections can be reimagined through the lens of CRT. Noting the importance of diversifying collections, ensuring that libraries offer equitable access to resources, and creating inclusive spaces where all community members feel represented and heard. By focusing on action-oriented solutions to illustrate how libraries can move beyond theory and engage in concrete efforts to address racial inequities. A key theme of the panel will be the role of librarians as agents of social change.
Finally, the panel will look ahead to the future of CRT in LIS with strategies for ensuring that CRT principles continue to be integrated into LIS practices and education in the long term. This will include ideas for advocating for policy changes within libraries, promoting diversity and inclusion within LIS education, and fostering an ongoing commitment to racial justice in library services and operations. Panelists will leave attendees with actionable steps they can take to incorporate CRT into their own professional practices and educational settings.
Breaking Reading Barriers for Children with Disabilities: Recognizing Features in Books that Make Reading Easier and More Fun
Full text linkLibrary collections must be accessible and inclusive. Special collections, like the Linda Lucas Walling Collection for Disabled Children, a demonstration collection for creating accessibility and inclusion at the University of South Carolina, have set a standard for how to create these collections with rubrics and evaluation criteria that inform librarians, other educators, parents, guardians and families of children and young adults with disabilities about how to select materials that are accessible, not only for children and young adults with disabilities, but for all children and young adults, as all have varying needs pertaining to their learning and to their engagement with literature. In addition to offering selection and evaluation criteria, the Collection’s instructional materials also offer information on how to modify materials or the presentation of them to make them accessible for populations with varying accessibility needs or learning variabilities.
Rubrics and collection development instruction around accessibility in children’s and young adult (YA) literature have received little attention in the diverse collections movement. Google searches on books for children with disabilities, reveal nearly exclusive listings of books about the children with disabilities. Very few listings include books or resources for children with disabilities or children with accommodation needs. Rubrics and collection development instruction around books for disabled children are essential to library collections, as well as to library and information science instruction and education, as reading and literacy establish the foundation for much of the learning an individual will achieve in life. Collections that center accessibility and multi-format materials can absolutely benefit children and adults with disabilities, but they can also benefit other patrons who do not identify as disabled, as research consistently demonstrates that principles of Universal Design and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) make changes that benefit all members of the population and all learners (CAST, 2024).
In the United States, falling literacy rates have proven to be a cause for concern. Children are less interested in books, and are performing poorly on standardized literacy tests, most recent data indicating that students experienced the single largest drop in reading scores since 1990. These achievement gaps are historically even more significant for students experiencing learning disabilities. For all students, the gaps are frequently long-term and persistent. Literacy skills have direct correlations with lifelong learning and a love for reading, which can be beneficial to emotional and social wellbeing, participation in society, informed citizenship, health outcomes, and employment (Mattison, et. al., 2023). It should be acknowledged that, conversely, illiteracy disables people and can impact nearly every aspect of one’s life, including health and employment outcomes, participation in society, and informed citizenship (World Literacy Foundation, 2022). Because literacy and illiteracy play such deterministic roles, librarians and other educators are constantly looking for ways to engage reluctant and struggling readers, as well as readers who might not be included in traditional collections (Merga, 2019) (Subramaniam, 2013).
Dr. Linda Lucas Walling wrote the original selection and evaluation criteria in the 1980s and 1990s to provide her students at the University of South Carolina with tools to use in selecting books from general school and public library collections for children who are challenged by a disability. Beginning in 2003, the criteria were incorporated in a web page [https://www.sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/cic/library_and_information_science/literacy/south_carolina_center_for_community_literacy/collections/walling_collection/]. She and Dr. Clayton A. Copeland have recently revised and expanded the criteria and have discussed them, with examples, in Disabilities and the library: Fostering equity for patrons and staff with differing abilities (Copeland, 2023). Caitlin Tobin has now joined the team, bringing with her an interest in disability representation in picture books, as well as experience in creating criteria for evaluating disability in public library board book collections.
By using the Walling Collection criteria, librarians will be able to create and use collections based on accessible materials with disabled children in mind that can also be beneficial and act as an inclusive tool for children who are experiencing difficulties with reading, whether that be due to a lack of interest or below-grade reading skills.
The creators of this panel believe that by including the Walling Collection criteria for accessible materials in LIS instruction and pedagogy, potentially in collection development courses, children’s and young adult (YA) literature courses, diversity courses, and literacy courses, librarians will be more equipped and knowledgeable about selecting and evaluating materials that are inclusive for children with disabilities and reading difficulties.
This panel will discuss the importance of always designing for IDEAS (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility Solutions), including universal design and Universal Design for Learning. The presenters will then offer an interactive session, during which participants will engage in whole group activities and be given opportunities to:
Actively apply criteria for evaluating and selecting materials for varying accessibility needs;
Actively apply strategic processes to modify the presentation of materials to meet varying accessibility needs (including those presented by blindness, visual impairments, or print disabilities, intellectual disabilities, autism and other forms of neurodiversity, and motor disabilities, among others);
Discuss and apply principles of universal design that benefit all readers/learners;
Discuss how the criteria can most effectively be integrated across LIS curricula
Personal Archival Practices: Broadening Our Understanding of Archival Stewardship
Full text linkArchival stewardship is a useful concept in understanding an archivist’s management of records and collections. Without the practical application of stewardship, archives would be less accessible and intelligible to the public, far less physically protected, and disconnected from the community from which it may stem. This work remains invaluable in the archival field, but it is both inadequate in capturing and frequently leaves out the care, labor, and intellectual contributions of community members who are stewards of their own archives prior to donating them to institutions. By better understanding their archival stewardship work, this paper broadens the archival field’s definition of stewardship to include unique, community-specific contributions, its findings impacting core theoretical concerns such as intellectual contributions to history and archival silences. Using a feminist epistemological framework, this paper takes seriously knowledge produced by a community and thus broadens and strengthens the model of archival stewardship as we know it
Young People’s Career-Seeking Information Behavior: Tracing the Path Beyond Career Searching
Full text linkThis poster explores how college students in exploratory programs construct and interpret career-related information to make career decisions. A fulfilling career often aligns with one’s personality, talents, and values. However, career exploration support during adolescence is often limited, as career interventions typically prioritize academic preparation and college readiness over career development. Consequently, university exploratory programs can attract and support students seeking guidance before selecting a major and career path. Yet, gaps remain in understanding how cognitive skills and information behavior influence career decision-making from a comprehensive career development perspective.
This project examines how young people engage in various career-related information behaviors—including searching, finding, creating, and maintaining information about career-related interests and topics—through a case study of a Midwest university’s exploratory program. It also explores the role of self-concept in career decision-making, drawing on sense-making theory and career construction theory. By identifying barriers students face in career information behavior, this research provides insights for professionals supporting young people in making informed career decisions
Black Teens Matter: Examining the Experiences of Black Teens in Public Libraries
Full text linkPublic libraries in the United States are often touted as a place with doors open to all, bastions of knowledge that make information accessible to the public without regard for the identities of their patrons. But in the context of US libraries, a racist past that is often unattended to and the ramifications of past acts of racism may seep into the present, especially where Black teens are concerned. Working with community organizations in Hampton Roads Virginia area, Black teenagers take part in group interviews to understand how race affects their interactions within the library, what they see as the purpose of libraries, and what an ideal library would look like for them. These questions are undergirded by the notion that Black teenagers are best able to describe their experiences and hold within them the knowledge needed to discuss these issues as both Black people and teenagers. Thematic analysis is used to analyze the data, create codes inductively, and develop themes using critical race theory and critical youth studies as frameworks for analysis. The goal of this work is to create an understanding of the Black teen experience as it relates to the field of youth services librarianship, examine how the experiences of Black teens reflect on the YALSA (soon to be reunified with ALSC) competencies for teen librarians, and to build a conceptual framework for teen led librarianship that accounts for the experiences of Black teenagers. These goals work as a form or epistemic justice.
Beyond English Hegemony: AI Academic Writing Tool Usage Among Non-Native English Speakers and International Teams
Full text linkAI tools are disrupting the English-dominated academic writing paradigm, by enhancing efficiency and supporting tasks from grammar checking to content generation. However, little is known about how cultural and linguistic diversity shapes the use of these tools. This study analyzes 168 AI usage declarations from 8859 papers to explore how non-native English speakers and international teams utilize AI tools in academic writing. Findings reveal that non-native scholars rely more heavily on tools like DeepL and Grammarly for translation and grammar checking, while international teams prioritize grammar consistency to unify cross-cultural communication. These patterns highlight the unique needs of multilingual and globally collaborative researchers. The study calls for tailored AI tool designs and journal policies to better support linguistic diversity and equitable access in academia.
Inequality and the Syndetic Structure of the Authority File: A case of the “Lost Cause” myth of the American Civil War in a Name Authority Record’s References
Full text linkName Authority Records (NARs) can perpetuate inequity and institutionalized inequality not merely via the choice of authorized access points but in the relationship between authorized access points and references. A salient example relates to the “Lost Cause” myth of the American Civil War, a distorted, ahistorical and harmful view of the conflict. A cataloger needed an NAR for the Wilmington Light Infantry, a unit of the post-Civil War North Carolina State Guard, yet the only NAR currently in the NACO file ambiguated this corporate body with a Confederate States Army unit of the Civil War. An investigation of the historical circumstances of the corporate bodies involved revealed that the relationship between the authorized access point and the references in this NAR in effect implicitly yet strongly promoted Lost Cause ideals. This example offers useful insight for LIS educators teaching cataloging and information organization
Still meeting our needs: A study of users\u27 perceptions of public libraries in the era of Generative AI
No full textThere is a growing discussion on the relevance of libraries in the Generative AI era, where large language models are taking over the information space, and the role of libraries is affected in meeting the users\u27 needs (Khan, 2024). This study explores the public perspective on the relevance of public libraries in the Generative AI era using sentimental analysis (quantitative approach) and thematic analysis (qualitative approach). The data was collected from Reddit, 1282 cleaned, stemmed, and used for the analysis. Sentimental analysis was adopted to understand the public positive, negative, and neutral sentiments about the usefulness of public libraries amidst proliferation of Generative AI technologies. The findings from most comments indicated positive sentiments, attitudes, and opinions, showing that more believe that public libraries are still relevant, and a few stated that it is irrelevant in the Generative AI era. Thematic analysis of the frequency comments revealed that public libraries still provide core services, health and counseling assistance, recreational commons, and financial literacy to users. Besides contributing to artificial intelligence literature on public libraries, the findings of this study will inform the preparation of pre-service librarians interested in public librarianship as they take courses and begin their professional journey as public library practitioners. Universities and colleges that train librarians for public library roles would also be impacted and guided through this study\u27s findings to make informed decisions on the skill set expected of public librarians in the Generative AI era as they train them for public library service roles
Designing Community-Informed Learning Experiences with and for Immigrant Teens to Critically Examine Political Information
Full text linkAs newcomers to the United States, immigrant teens make sense of abundant civic and political information as they adjust to the country’s political climate. Supported by community information mediators in public libraries and nonprofits, teens broker this information for their families, which makes them an asset to communities. This dissertation reports on a co-design process to create a learning experience with and for immigrant teens to acquire Political Information Literacy (PIL)—skills, knowledge, and confidence—to engage in politics, avoiding misinformation. Utilizing an asset-based community development approach and the experiential learning theory through participatory design methodology, the study aimed at centering teens’ contexts through design, identifying teens’ motivations to engage in informed politics, and defining information mediators’ roles and responsibilities. The design underwent three iterations with a local community, inviting teens and their information mediators in public libraries and youth organizations as design protagonists and partners. The final iteration is a complete learning experience that includes customizable sessions, supportive materials, and recommendations for future facilitators. Findings emphasize how facilitators and scholars should use experiential learning principles in civic learning, suggest language support systems for teens, and explain how communities can provide teens with opportunities to engage in digital political participation. Moreover, findings demonstrate how teens are motivated by improving how knowledgeable they are perceived and by promoting positive community narratives. Finally, the findings highlight the multifaceted role information mediators navigate and offer an asset-sharing system that communities can use to alleviate the demands of this role, navigate constraints, and identify local opportunities
ILISE Lens: Inclusive Course Evaluation
Full text linkWithin LIS education, one way of examining curricular injustice is identifying and addressing strengths and gaps in how the knowledge and ways of knowing of diverse groups of people are integrated into the MLIS curriculum. The ILISE lens was developed as a toolkit for this kind of examination. Using a lens of social justice concepts, seven key principles were identified and operationalized into twenty-one themes. These themes form the foundation of two sets of tools for deductive and inductive evaluation of course syllabi. This is available as both a checklist for quick, deductive assessment and an in-depth rubric which serves as a qualitative data collection instrument for inductive assessment. Faculty can use these tools to assess the strengths of their courses in these areas through the ILISE lens. Students can use these tools to take control of their own learning and ensure they are gaining the skills they need to navigate our changing information landscape. The results and insights gained from the evaluation of several SLIS courses will be shared alongside user instructions and the student toolkit.
This tool was created as part of the IMLS funded project LG-256634-OLS-24