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Reimagining LIS Education: Integrating Evidence-Based Practice with Human-Centered Pedagogy
Full text linkThis paper examines innovative pedagogical practices in Library and Information Science (LIS) that integrate evidence-based practice with humanistic, decolonizing approaches. Based on interdisciplinary research conducted by the “Libraries and Resilient Communities” group, we critique traditional LIS curricula for prioritizing technical competencies and quantitative measures over the complex realities faced by librarians serving diverse communities. Through participatory insights from public library directors and findings on libraries’ roles in fostering community resilience, we propose a reimagined framework that embeds critical inquiry into the Evidence-Based Practice cycle. This approach incorporates culturally responsive assignments structured in five phases (Articulate, Assemble, Assess, Agree, Adapt), enabling students to address both technical challenges and the lived experiences of patrons. By fostering equity-driven, trauma-informed practices, this model prepares future librarians to navigate the intersection of technological expertise and social engagement, equipping them to advance scientific rigor while championing social justice in contemporary library practice
Decolonizing & Indigenizing “Intellectual Freedom” in the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa LIS Curriculum
Full text linkIntellectual Freedom (IF) has been a key construct in the definition of professional ethics and identity in the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Library and Information Science Program (UHM LISP) since its establishment in 1965. This paper takes a critical lens to examine how the program has viewed and taught IF, without necessarily considering what it means in occupied land. This paper emerged as part of a faculty participation in a 2023 Indigenizing Social Sciences seminar. This paper follows the Program to move forward in a Native Hawaiian Place of Learning and helps to problematize IF for LIS educators.
\u27Realizing\u27 Information Literacy: A Philosophical Argument
No full textNotable advancements in information literacy (IL) research and practice notwithstanding, fundamental concerns persist, including conceptual ambiguity, under-theorization, ill-defined boundaries, and a persistent theory-practice gap. This dissertation addresses these issues through three interrelated studies aimed at ‘realizing’ IL. Study 1, a critical review, provides a ‘reality check’ by examining key philosophical, theoretical, and practical conundrums through an ‘aporetic’ approach. The review reveals six enduring aporias in IL: truth; knowledge and data; information behavior; genericism versus contextuality; ideology and political economy; and illiteracy. Building on these findings, Study 2—comprising three sub-studies—develops a ‘realist’ IL framework by synthesizing three approaches: (1) the capability approach (CA) in political economy frames IL as ‘combined capabilities for informed beings and doings,’ highlighting informational well-being and agency beyond both skills and practices view; (2) social realism (SR) in the sociology of eduction foregrounds the primacy and internal logics of disciplinary structured knowledge domains and theoretical knowledge, locating IL in relation to these domains rather than as individual knowledge construction or knowing itself; and (3) critical realism (CR) in the philosophy of social science provides a stratified ontology and an account of causal mechanisms and emergence, clarifying how IL can be realized within information ecosystems and across knowledge domains. Study 3 applies this realist framework in higher education, outlining curriculum-design principles that help ‘realize’ IL’s aims in practice. Collectively, this dissertation argues that a realist approach can strengthen the IL field and offers a practical guide for researchers and practitioners
Pirates, Ghosts, and Other Unexplored Spaces: A First Look at the forthcoming collective work Constellation of Insanity
Full text linkCompetency gaps between working professionals and LIS educators persist for a variety of reasons. One primary reason is the growing multitude of knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to cover in curricula to prepare professionals in today’s information agencies. Across libraries, museums, archives, and others curating data and digital objects, the information professions strive to more closely mirror the communities, entities, and persons served with inclusive and anti-racist mindsets. Secondarily, more intentional change is needed to rethink curriculum from the inherited colonial settler science, theories, and methods. This panel addresses just some of the emerging facets and preexisting curricular foundations that require reexamination in the face of AI readiness, censorship, anti-human efforts, and other storms brewing at the dawn of a new age
M.A. Student Input and Engagement with LIS Program-level Operations
Full text linkIn this critical essay, we call for a revisioning of LIS educator roles in administration and mentor capacities related to the incorporation of MLIS students in program-level, particularly curricular, decision-making processes. The goals and responsibilities of LIS programs are varied, yet students are generally understood to be critical program stakeholders despite limited time in LIS programs. In positing an involved role for MLIS students, this paper addresses the issue of agency in decolonizing LIS as it proposes a reimagining of librarian educator roles by empowering students as change agents. Additionally, including MLIS students in program processes, and providing them with a voice, offers a more equitable approach to the operation of LIS programs. Our call demands a revisiting of policies to promote inclusivity and equity in LIS programs. In these ways, this conceptual paper prioritizes diverse perspectives, cultivates agency, builds inclusivity, and prepares students for equitable and dynamic information environments
Navigating Barriers: Pathways to Librarianship Year Two in Review
Full text linkPathways to Librarianship is a multi-year, multi-phase project between the New York State Library Association and Syracuse University School of Information Studies. It aims to study and address the systemic barriers faced by marginalized people while entering and moving within the library profession.
The Pathways Project aims to answer four questions:
What are people’s current experiences of pathways into and within the library profession in New York?
What are the challenges or barriers people face along their pathways to and within the library profession in New York?
How, if at all, do those challenges vary among library types and settings?
How can we reduce or eliminate these barriers so as to increase diversity and representation in New York’s library workforce?
At the 2023 ALISE conference, we presented the first part of the project, our data collection phase, and our poster focused on how we used the journey mapping technique. This year, we are in our second project phase - Generation and Creation. In this phase, our activities include sharing the data gathered in phase one with key library stakeholders at participatory design workshops and challenging them to dream up actionable solutions for the state. As such, our proposed poster will focus on the outcomes of these workshops and future work. We also will discuss how the recent executive orders regarding the halting of federally funded DEIA work and the dissolution of IMLS have impacted our work and future plans.
Teaching search expertise in the age of Generative AI: An autoethnographic exploration of liminality
Full text linkAI literacy is increasingly seen as a necessary set of proficiencies for the 21st century, and the continuing development of Artificial intelligence (AI) technology has an impact on library and information services, along with the ethical implications it poses. This can be seen as a wicked problem for the field of LIS, and there is a need to address this foundational technology in our curriculum, which requires an understanding of the perspectives of students, faculty and practitioners. It also represents a transformative and challenging period, not just for students but also for educators, and this process of understanding and integrating this technology could be seen as a liminal state. Using the concept of liminality, this paper presents an autoethnographic analysis of the experience of learning and teaching about Generative AI as part of a course on information retrieval and developing search expertise
Ruthenian and Russian Innovations in the Sacrament of Penance and their Early Eighteenth-Century Consequences
Full text linkOrthodox Christian approaches to the sacrament of penance in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries are a story of adaptation, reception, and sometimes unintended consequences. In the middle of the seventeenth century, Ruthenian theologians like Metropolitan Petro Mohyla, Ioannikii Haliatovskyi, and Innokentii Gizel’ adapted what they thought useful from the confessional diversity of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth into Orthodox practice. Faced with a different set of challenges, contemporary Moscow-based clerics, including Patriarch Nikon, decided to adapt many of these confession-related changes for their own purposes. In the eighteenth century, Ruthenian hierarchs including Dymytrii Tuptalo and Teofan Prokopovych, alternately emphasized or instrumentalized such notions as the secrecy (‘seal’) of the confession that would become foundational in the Russian empire. The approaches to the sacrament of penance at the turn of the eighteenth century—simultaneously constitutive and transformational—are thus a curious case of histoire croisée, with shape-shifting intercrossing at multiple national and confessional levels
St. Petersburg through Venetian Eyes: An Episode in Late Eighteenth-Century Book Illustration
Full text linkThis article analyzes a print that was published in Venice in 1797 as the opening image to a biography of Catherine II. Certainly prepared during the empress’s life, the publication appeared just months after her death in a watershed year for Europe which saw the fall of the Republic of Venice. The print imagines the moment that Peter the Great founded the new city of St. Petersburg over ninety years earlier. Through an exploration of the carefully constructed messages in the print, this paper examines the legacy of the image of Peter in Western Europe against which Catherine was understood. It considers the imagery of St. Petersburg in relation to Venice: the capitals of two empires, one in its ascendency and one at the point of collapse
“Общество” как государственное установление. Социально-исторические аспекты российской государственной власти в XVIII веке
Full text linkIn 1966, Dietrich Geyer published an article on the subject of state-society relations in eighteenth-century Russia, which appeared again in 1975 in an updated form. Geyer placed Catherine II’s reform policy in a European context and asked about the policy of absolute monarchies towards corporative structures and the conditions for the development of civil societies. In the Russian case, Catherine II created “societies” in the form of noble and urban corporations in order to expand provincial administration. According to Geyer’s thesis, both the statist origins of these corporate estates and the connection between noble societies and provincial administration hindered the emergence of a dualism between state and society in Russian history.In 1966, Dietrich Geyer published an article on the subject of state-society relations in eighteenth-century Russia, which appeared again in 1975 in an updated form. Geyer placed Catherine II’s reform policy in a European context and asked about the policy of absolute monarchies towards corporative structures and the conditions for the development of civil societies. In the Russian case, Catherine II created “societies” in the form of noble and urban corporations in order to expand provincial administration. According to Geyer’s thesis, both the statist origins of these corporate estates and the connection between noble societies and provincial administration hindered the emergence of a dualism between state and society in Russian history