IOPN Journals (Illinois Open Publishing Network)
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Newtypes, Angels, and Human Instrumentality: The Mecha Genre and its Apocalyptic Bodies
Get PDFThis paper argues that the mecha genre is fixated on psychedelic and abstract imagery of supernatural human bodies, the destruction or transcendence of which often have bring about new political and social epochs. In making this argument, I build on the writing of Hiroki Azuma, and his understanding of classical mecha texts functioning as ‘substitutes’ for political grand narratives. Two major mecha texts are analyzed: Mobile Suit Gundam (1979), and Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995). I suggest that Gundam’s occultic ‘Newtypes’ bridge the series’ grand narrative space opera storyline with themes of New-Age mysticism, itself reminiscent of Azuma’s writings on the role of spiritualism in postmodernity. In my section on Evangelion, I argue that its imagery of bodily re-organization mirrors its fixation on reimagining its world and characters. I term the mecha genre’s supernatural archetype ‘The Apocalyptic Body’, and argue it is key to understanding the genre’s mixing of occult and technological themes
Examining Our Roots: The Origins and Evolution of Outreach in Academic Libraries, 1958-2020
Get PDFAnalysis of historical milestones in the field of library studies reveals the changing values, purposes, and structures of outreach broadly construed within academic libraries. A timeline and narrative are presented that traces the effects of the national outlook on higher education from the mid-century to the current neoliberal reality on outreach milestones within the field, from 1958 to 2020. We contend that the present post-pandemic moment affords practitioners a chance to turn a critical eye toward the purpose and audience of outreach in order to re-orient our actions to reflect an original philosophy of outreach: inclusivity
The introduction of a Community Resource Specialist into the Public Library: A Case Study
Get PDFSocial services in libraries have traditionally ranged from helping immigrants assimilate into mainstream culture to responding to user needs related to home and food insecurity, the opiate epidemic, and disaster recovery. Community needs have continued to grow and the public library is increasingly stepping in to help bridge the gap in part by adding a position, often filled by a social worker, to help library users find social services information, complete applications for SNAP and other government programs, and to connect library users with community resources. Additional duties often include training and coaching librarians to provide these services, performing outreach, and developing partnerships with community agencies. Although this is a growing trend, there are no established guidelines for these positions and relatively little research has been done to document the benefits and challenges, identify issues, and consider the impact on librarianship. This case study design follows a recently hired community resource specialist for the period of one year to understand why a community resource specialist position was needed, how this position was implemented, and with what result. Study findings will help to bridge the gap by documenting benefits and challenges and considering the impact of this position on practice and the development of professional competencies in social services information, as well as implications for teaching and learning in LIS programs
What Does it Mean to be First: Defining First-Generation Students
Get PDFFirst-generation students have been receiving increasing attention from LIS researchers. But who are first-generation students? The term has been inconsistently defined in scholarly literature, and a recent analysis of research university websites found over 80 definitions in use on university websites. In this interactive panel, we will discuss how the term first-generation student is defined and used, which students may or not be considered first-generation in particular contexts, and the uses, meaning, and utility of the category for researchers, academic institutions, and students themselves
Advocating for Disability Access: The Bridge We Need
Get PDFThe Disabilities in LIS SIG session features presentations by American and Canadian researchers on a wide array of disability and accessibility-related topics. The first part of the session includes five 10-min research- and experience-based talks. It opens up with Kawooya, Robinson, Copeland, and Fox discussing a pilot study focused on the “Equitable Access for the Blind, Visually Impaired, and Print-Disabled (BVIPD) Students in Online Learning” (funded by USC). In “Ableism Rekindled: Experiences of Ph.D. Student During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Dali and Charbonneau explore the experiences of disabled and neurodiverse Ph.D. students from LIS programs in Canada and the U.S. (funded by DU). To continue the theme of academia in “Discouraging Accessibility Through Poor Accessibility Training: An Antidote,” Smith addresses ways in which such training can have a negative effect on faculty and staff’s willingness to promote accessibility. Looking into professional settings, Rathbun-Grubb examines the “Post-COVID Work Experiences of Librarians with Chronic Health Conditions” based on the survey data collected in 2022. Bringing public libraries into the mix, Cahill, Adkins, Sartin Long, and Long examine why it is so challenging to engage public libraries in research-to-practice projects that improve access to library for families with young children with disabilities (funded by IMLS).
Engaging a new format of blitz reports, the second part of the session highlights the news and updates on seven ongoing or recently completed projects. In their elegiac “May Be a Picture of a Dog and a Book,” Hill and Oswald share results of the study that examined the inaccessibility of social media feeds in Ontario public libraries. Guided by a critical disability studies approach, Lundy reports on preliminary findings from the dissertation-in-progress that investigates how and why individuals with non-apparent chronic illnesses share their health stories on TikTok. In the “The Prevalence of Public Library Makerspaces and Maker Programs for Youth with Disabilities,” Jung and Abbas share the initial findings from the project that investigates strategies for including youth with disabilities in public library markerspaces (funded by IMLS). Continuing this theme, Koh and Seo engage the audience in their participatory design project “Promoting Computational Thinking Skills for Blind and Visually Impaired Teens Through Accessible Library Makerspaces” (funded by IMLS). Based on the recently published co-authored study, Tobin explores “Representations of Children with Disabilities in a Public Library Board Book Collection.” In “Broadening Academic Library Employment: Neurodiversity in Academic Library Hiring,” Thompson and Dali report select findings from the pilot project focused on exploring barriers and supports in academic library hiring practices (funded by IMLS). To wrap up this stellar line-up of presentations, Phillips and Fife turn their attention to accommodation requests from academic librarians and library staff in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic
Creating Inclusive Environments in Academic Libraries Through Universal Design
Get PDFA qualitiative case study conducted at a college in Mississippi in 2022 examined 7 students’ perceptions of an academic library. Students registered with the campus disability service accommodation center for physical disabilities participated in the semi-structured interviews. While not asked about their disability, most chose to openly share this information; they were dealing with layers of disabilities, such as constant shaking, PSTD, and anxiety. A major finding was that no student participating in the study had ever checked out a physical library book. Building on that previous case study, this quasi-experimental research will be conducted through a combination of surveys and interviews, along with observations from the disability community. It seeks to examine how students with disabilities perceive the libraries’ facilities, resources, and services in academic libraries. Student surveys and interviews will be conducted both before and after extensive library staff training on diversity, equity, and inclusion to determine the impact the training had on students with disabilities and their experience using the library. The study seeks to focus on virtual platforms, education of library staff, implementing a holistic universal design, and giving students with disabilities a voice (relatedness) and choices (autonomy and competence). By providing simple solutions with large impacts to academic library environments, more universities/colleges will have access to a usable holistic model for serving students with disabilities that can fit underfunded and understaffed environments. A follow-up posttest will be utilized to measure the impact the changes had on students with disabilities through surveys, interviews, and observations
Exploratory Social Justice Case Study Design : Operationalizing Public Library Services for Women Refugees from the Middle East and North Africa Region
Get PDFThis research investigates the role of urban public libraries in Texas from the perspectives of women refugees (from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region) and urban public library representatives in Texas, U.S. Women refugees share their daily concerns since they arrived in the U.S. Through utilizing critical race theory (Crenshaw, 1988; Ladson-Billings, 1998), critical feminist theory (De Beauvoir, 1949; De Beauvoir 2009; hooks, 2000; hooks, 2009), and Intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991; Crenshaw, 2016; Crenshaw, 2018), this project explores the information needs and information seeking behaviors of women refugees (including their interaction with public libraries).
The researcher is implementing narrative inquiry by conducting interviews and focus groups to learn about the individual and collective experiences as related to the information services that public libraries provide to MENA women. After analyzing the collected data, the researcher and MENA women refugees are co-developing an information services model for public libraries. Moving forward, the researcher is conducting content analysis of the public libraries’ websites and social media sites to check their information offerings. Then, she is conducting focus groups with library representatives to discuss what they offer.
As a social justice imperative, implementing these methods allow women refugees to represent their voices, and give them agency and authority to work with the researcher and public library representatives. Together, they will build an information services model and propose a strategic action plan, to be implemented by public libraries in Texas to support the information needs of women refugees from the MENA region. 
Developing Children’s Data Literacy through Navigating, Video-logging, and Making in a Library
Get PDFData literacy means the ability to understand, evaluate, collect, make, and use data for ethically appropriate purposes (Prado & Marzal, 2013; Yoon & Copeland, 2020). Despite its importance in the 21st century, data is often regarded as a difficult area that only some professional adults can deal with, and most children do not have enough opportunities to feel that their everyday life is indeed connected to data and find it interesting (Acker & Bowler, 2018). To situate data in children’s own lives and the spaces they usually go to (Stornaiuolo, 2020), a design-based research project was conducted by designing and implementing an educational program for children and their families about data literacy in non-computational ways in a public library. Two main sessions (1.5-hour long each) and one optional making session included navigating the whole library space while video-logging with a GoPro camera and worksheets; creating their own creative data visualizations with drawing and making tools (e.g., color papers); making artifacts with maker technologies and brainstorming a metadata structure about the artifacts. Video data from GoPro cameras were collected and preliminary analysis was conducted. Findings show how children could make different observations of familiar objects (e.g., books, tables) in the library and turn their observation to the perspective of “data” and how different types of non-computational activities could align with children’s basic understanding of data. 
Do the ends justify the memes? Exploring the relationship between youth, internet memes, and digital citizenship
Get PDFInternet memes are an extremely popular form of online communication that are often disregarded as “trivial” due to their association with humor, emotion, and youth (Shifman, 2014, p. 15; Shifman, 2019). While these digital texts (e.g., image macros, tweets, hashtags, short videos, GIFs, etc.) play a significant role in the circulation of information (e.g., Milner, 2016), there is little empirical research on how they figure into young people’s daily information practices. To address this issue, I collaborated with a secondary school teacher, co-designing a class unit that invited students to examine the relationship between memes and digital citizenship. Adopting an ethnographic approach (Markham, 2017) inspired by several design-based research methodologies, I collected a variety of data from 21 youth participants (e.g., field notes/photos, assignments), performing 15 semi-structured student interviews and 2 semi-structured teacher interviews. These materials, which I analyzed using narrative and visual analysis (Frank, 2012; Rose, 2016), included student projects on various meme-related topics (e.g., free speech, dark humor, misinformation, etc.). My findings showcase the significance of humor to students’ conceptualization of memetic storytelling and the joyful nature of the personal experiences they associated with it. Laughter, I argue, impacted their negotiations of the values memes represent and shaped the information they provided. Through its conceptualization of the informational role humor plays in young people’s meme engagements, this research contributes to present knowledge of how memes factor into civic discourse, offering valuable insight to educators, librarians, and guardians who engage youth in information literacy and citizenship education.  
Flashing the Hazard Lights: Interrogating Discourses of Disruptive Algorithmic Technologies in LIS Education
Get PDFThe increasing relevance of service algorithms and emerging technologies has landed many professions at a ‘disruptive’ crossroads. With the popular emergence of ChatGPT, a large language model from OpenAI designed to interact with users through conversations, discourses surrounding its ubiquity, potentiality, and adoption have captivated audiences. We argue that the unpredictable nature and changing capabilities of ChatGPT and other algorithmic technologies are another critical juncture in the advancement of LIS education. When given a library-oriented prompt, ChatGPT manifested biases that we normally interrogate in our ethical and professional conduct in the delivery of library services, further demonstrating the risk of algorithmic technologies in reproducing and amplifying marginalization and replicating harm. Hence, we ‘flash the hazard lights’, so to speak, and urge a more critical analysis and precautionary consideration of the social, technological, and cultural harms enabled or perpetuated by the uncritical adoption of ChatGPT and other algorithmic technologies