IOPN Journals (Illinois Open Publishing Network)
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Understanding How Youth Navigate Political Information
Get PDFThis work explores how we can design a Political Information Literacy (PIL) learning experience in out-of-school contexts. In collaboration with youth development and library educators and youth from historically marginalized communities, including 1.5- and second-generation immigrants, we ran participatory design sessions to identify how youth engage and make sense of political information while socially engaging and discussing misinformation, disinformation, and fake news. Preliminary findings show that youth are interested in creating positive, fun, and engaging experiences around political information and are interested in simplifying the idea of Political Information Literacy and related concepts, making sense of the connection of this concept to their lives, and making stronger connections between politics and their lives. Youth also identified a broad range of challenges, such as what they claimed to be inaccessible content, feeling insecure about their skills, experiencing information overload, and being concerned with their mental health. Youth also reported that they feel like they cannot trust what most consider reliable sources of information, as they perceive these channels as equally biased and promoting political agendas. Finally, youth were flexible thinkers, committed to listening, and respectful toward a broad range of ideas and perspectives (even when different than their own), positioning them as assets to their communities, especially around civic engagement efforts. This project continues collaborating with community partners, libraries, and immigrant youth to acquire PIL and engage in civic life
Schwebel, Sara L. and Van Tuyl, Jocelyn. Dust Off the Gold Medal. Routledge, 2022. 263 pages. ISBN: 9780367337216
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Developing Training for Rural Library Workers to Build Inclusive Archives
Get PDFNearly four in ten public libraries in the US are located in rural communities and serve more than 30 million Americans, and one-third of public library buildings serve populations of 2,500 people or fewer (Swan, Grimes, & Owens, 2013 https://www.imls.gov/sites/default/files/publications/documents/ brief201305.pdf ). Yet, training for practitioners across LIS and best practices often do not scale to these smaller memory institutions. This project advocates for a reorientation of curricula that centers community memory and recognizes small and rural libraries. Co-PI’s Bateman and Mattock observed these challenges during partnerships with rural public libraries in Iowa: untouched boxes of photographs, cabinets brimming with yellowing newspapers, whole basements of genealogical documents and burial records in storage. Stewarding these untouched collections are overworked library directors, rightly more concerned with immediate patron needs such as computer access. Being the only memory institutions within large radii, rural libraries become presumed repositories for community memory records, donated by well-meaning citizens cleaning out the family attic or by the local organizations producing such documents. Describing this phenomenon to librarians doesn’t take many words; to them, it’s self-evident. “I know exactly the problem you’re talking about,” a rural librarian from Vermont responded to us. But getting to the root of the problem is harder, and finding solutions is harder still.
The IMLS-sponsored project “Activating Archives in Remote Communities” evolved in response to the challenges that we have observed. Over the past year, the project has convened a diverse group of community-engaged practitioners with the aim of understanding how MLIS programs can respond to the needs of these rural archival spaces through curricular interventions and open educational resources that can help prepare rural public librarians to engage with archival materials and become aware of the cultural pluralities that constitute the vast service areas of small libraries. Representing practitioners from across the United States, “Activating Archives” includes the perspectives of the LIS professionals who are tasked with preserving community memory as collaborators in the development of a curriculum that serves their needs and increases their capacity. Together we aim to provide an adaptable model for community memory and engagement that is directly applicable to the most remote communities.
The “Activating Archives” advisory panel includes community-based and rural practitioners from across the United States: Joshua Burford, Director of Outreach and Lead Archivist for the Invisible Histories Project; Jerald Crook, Founder and Executive Director of Alabama’s Higher Ground Society; Jessica Ieremia, director of Alaska’s Sitka Public Library; Doris Malkmus, archivist and oral historian; Allie Parrsmith, director of the Iowa’s West Liberty Public Library; Verónica Reyes-Escudero, University of Arizona ‘s Katherine B. Willcock Head of Special Collections; Monique Tyndall an independent expert with experience in tribal archives and cultural affairs; and, Jessamyn West, librarian and community technologist in rural Vermont. The panel addressed many of the known challenges in small and rural collections, the lack of resources (time, funding, staff), and the reliance on volunteers. The group also stressed the necessity of collaboration, the politics of building and navigating partnerships, the challenges to building trust across heterogeneous communities, and the ethics of reparative archival work. As we concluded our conversations, the panel offered their perspectives on pedagogical interventions within LIS curricula and provided insight into how open educational resources can support training within MLIS programs and support the work of practitioners already in place in rural institutions.
During this session, project PIs, MLIS student collaborators, and community-engaged archivist Aiden Bettine will present the initial findings from the advisory panel and invite the session attendees to add their perspectives to the already rich conversation, further informing the resulting training modules and educational resources produced by the grant. The presenters will ask the audience to work together to share their perspectives and invite feedback from our initial findings, further informing the project deliverables that include training modules and open education resources to support LIS training at all levels.
Overall, this project aims to strengthen rural-community resilience, belonging, and well-being by encouraging collaborations that will help communities maintain their own cultural heritage sustainably. Our research reflects memory practices that de-center white, Western archival methods and instead reflect the numerous and mixed methods by which diverse community constituencies self-represent. The project has recruited an advisory panel that represents region-specific and culturally situated memory practices. We also hope that our research and curriculum will be used widely to help include non-dominant populations in library engagement as well as to include their voices in community histories. Finally, we view small and rural libraries as underrepresented organizations in LIS training and literature that nevertheless serve millions of diverse US patrons. Our focus on small and rural libraries includes particular attention to the populations who are likewise discounted in LIS discourse, such as rural Black library users
Pathways to Librarianship: Year One in Review
Get PDFPathways, a joint project between the New York Library Association (NYLA) and the Syracuse University School of Information Studies (iSchool), is guided by four essential research questions: What are people’s current experiences of pathways into and within the library profession? What are the challenges or barriers people face along their pathways? How, if at all, do those challenges vary among library types and settings? How can we reduce or eliminate these barriers with the goal of increasing diversity and representation in New York’s library workforce? These four questions are multifaceted in their potential answers. In order to attempt addressing the problem holistically, Pathways consists of a three-phase plan in which we have dedicated a year to each phase. We are currently on the first phase: Identify. In this phase, we are seeking answers to the first three research questions laid out above via journey mapping sessions held throughout the state of New York. A team of research assistants, two from each regional library consortia, will be trained on research ethics and methods, as well as qualitative data collection and analysis. After training, they will be connected to interview participants within their district in order to conduct in-person journey mapping sessions. Participants will be able to self-identify personal barriers they’ve individually faced, and then can extrapolate based on the overall data trends what the most prevalent roadblocks are for our second phase, in which we will be recruiting stakeholders to brainstorm viable solutions we can then pilot in year three
Privacy, Intellectual Freedom, and Learning Analytics: An Open Curriculum for Bridging the Gap Between Professional Values and Professional Practice
Get PDFAcademic libraries are increasingly participating in the collection and analysis of student data and engaging with campus learning analytics programs. The intent is to understand how libraries contribute to student experiences, learning, and success and to design effective and efficient programs toward these ends. Our earlier research established that academic library professionals recognize the ethical issues that learning analytics raise, particularly with respect to privacy, and that they need specific training related to these ethical issues in the learning analytics context. Though addressable through continuing education, those findings also pointed to the need to strengthen LIS education to prepare graduates for that work. This poster reports on efforts to adapt a proven-effective continuing education program, Prioritizing Privacy, to the LIS classroom through the development of an Open Education Resource curriculum packet and related student learning assessment resources. The poster will present the curriculum and identified LIS course contexts in which the curriculum might be enacted. Additional information is available on the project website (https://prioritizingprivacy.org)
Building Expertise with Technical Information in Support of Computational Literacies: A Research Project with MLIS Students and Instructors
Get PDFThis developing research project aims to both widen and deepen future library and information science professionals’ participation in computational literacies through a genre-based approach. Computational literacies include the knowledge of computational tools and methods, and how these are changing the ways in which librarians and archivists work. To develop and apply computational literacies, MLIS students must interact with technical information communicated through genres, such as documentation, instructions, manuals, reports, and specifications. Knowledge of technical genres is a crucial, but understudied, aspect of computational literacies. The project will consider to whom, why, and when technical genres enable or constrain students’ transitions from newcomers to emerging professionals. The project will investigate students’ experiences within technical MLIS courses, and their motivations for developing computational literacies. Technical courses require students to code with a computer programming language (e.g., JavaScript or Python). A goal of the project is to explore the challenges that students of different ages, gender identities, races, and curricular backgrounds encounter in technical courses, and to provide implications for the design of differentiated instruction. Findings will offer theoretical contributions regarding the relationship between genre and computational literacies, in addition to practical contributions to the design of curricula. Intended outputs of the project aim to better support students’ development of computational literacies. In turn, MLIS graduates will be able to engage in the lifelong learning required to respond to ongoing technical change involving the representation, management, and retrieval of information, and consider the ethical implications of new and emerging technologies
Toward an Understanding of University Students’ Information Behavior and Challenges When Experiencing Mental Health Symptoms
Get PDFThis poster reports the findings from an analysis of an online survey of 224 university students (undergraduate or graduate) who experienced common mental health symptoms such as stress, anxiety, or depression. The survey questions addressed respondents’ basic demographics and mental health conditions (using the PHQ-4 questionnaire) and explored their information needs, help-seeking behavior, information-seeking behavior, and information-seeking satisfaction when experiencing stress, anxiety, or depression symptoms. While “Information on the Internet” was the most commonly used source of information for their mental health-related information seeking, “Information on the Internet” was not the most satisfactory source of information in terms of helping them meet their information needs. Further analysis of the relationships between respondents’ mental health conditions, demographics, and mental health-related information behavior (MHIB) indicates what factors shape university students’ MHIB and what challenges they may face in their MHIB. Based on the findings and analyses, we aim to provide insights for researchers and practitioners into designing technology, programs, and services to help with university students’ mental health-related information seeking and well-being
Empathy, Confidence, and De-Escalation: Evaluating the Effectiveness of VR Training for Crisis Communication Skills Development Among LIS Graduate Students
Get PDFThis research analyzes the results of a study that is part of a larger, interdisciplinary, and multi-institutional project that examines the usability and effectiveness of VR training for library and information science (LIS) graduate students and professionals in gaining skills for interacting effectively with patrons in crisis. This paper reports on the findings related to the effectiveness of VR training for teaching empathy, confidence, and de-escalation skills for LIS graduate students. The findings illustrate that VR has the potential to impact LIS graduate education by reaching a wider audience that introduces training in low-stakes, immersive environments and that does not pose harm to patrons in crisis. This study also contributes innovative approaches that support training in skills including empathy, confidence, and de-escalation