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Health Literacy and the Opioid Crisis: An Opportunity for Health Sciences Librarianship
Get PDFAs public health challenges, information sources, and research technologies change – so must the strategies that health librarians employ to make sure they are meeting the demands of their community. In recent years, one of the most difficult public health challenges to navigate as health information professionals is the opioid crisis. This literature review provides a summary and analysis on the impact of health literacy and health literacy interventions on the opioid crisis. It concludes that low levels of health literacy are linked to higher levels of opioid misuse, opioid dependency, and opioid misinformation and emphasizes the importance of health literacy interventions to improve outcomes. Opportunities for health sciences librarians to implement interventions and increase literacy are plentiful and include strategies such as plain language resource creation, community-led services, and collaboration between public, academic, and medical library environments
Metadata Practices for Canadian Cultural Landscapes
Get PDFCultural landscapes are complex, diverse heritage resources that are necessarily localized. This literature review explores what metadata practices are most useful to users of cultural landscapes in Canada, recognizing that as a nation it represents many diverse geographies, landscapes and cultures. During the review, several themes emerged, identifying qualities that metadata should be designed to support to enhance access to cultural landscapes. The themes emphasize localization, flexibility, interoperability, and the ability to collaborate with users in describing and making these resources more broadly accessible
The Experience of East Texan School Librarians Who Participate in Self-Censorship
Get PDFThis literature review aims to synthesize research on the self-censorship practices of school librarians in Texas while also examining and interpreting the self-censorship experience. Various peer reviewed articles published within the last 20 years were analyzed for information on self-censorship practices and experiences. While self-censorship is opposed by all librarians, the studied school librarians have admitted to participating in self-censorship for a variety of reasons such as fear of reprimand, personal biases, and recent legislation changes. This literature review will also include recommendations for school librarians on avoiding self-censorship
Adapting Public Library Knowledge Organisation for Diverse Communities
Get PDFAs knowledge organisation systems in public libraries are designed to be controlled and consistent, they struggle to keep pace with the needs of diverse and changing communities. With a theoretical basis in post-structuralism, this literature review explores the ways that adaptability can be built into these rigid systems to appropriately honour community truths and create more useful and welcoming collections. Three broad avenues of inquiry are presented. Librarian-led adaptability explores librarian training and initiatives. Tools like folksonomy and crosswalks are suggested to augment current systems. Finally, historical, international, and critical adaptations to Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) are discussed. The field of critical classification overwhelmingly centres on knowledge organisation in academic libraries, leaving a gap in the literature related to public libraries and DDC adaptations focused on equity, diversity, and inclusion. This review seeks to prove this topic’s merit for more rigorous study and calls for the strengthening of a community of practice
Evidence Synthesis Institute Canada 2024: Librarians Advancing Interdisciplinary Research
Get PDFEvidence Synthesis Institute (ESI) Canada hosted its annual event virtually from March 18-21, 2024, offering an in-depth training opportunity on evidence synthesis (ES) methods. This report outlines and contextualizes the goals and objectives of the workshop, with reflections from the perspective of an attendee. The intensive four-day workshop, conducted in partnership between the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) and the University of Victoria Libraries, aimed to enhance librarians’ capabilities in supporting systematic reviews and other ES projects across various academic disciplines. Originally inspired by a U.S. model and first piloted in 2022, the event focused on equipping participants with the foundational knowledge needed to apply rigorous, systematic, transparent, and reproducible techniques for literature synthesis crucial for producing high-quality research outputs with reduced biases. The curriculum included topics covering the full lifecycle of an ES review, and sessions were designed to provide both foundational ES knowledge and practical application strategies to integrate the training into participants’ professional roles. The workshop facilitated a collaborative and supportive environment, enabling participants to network with peers and experts, fostering a national community of practice. By preparing librarians to undertake more substantive roles in ES research projects, including as co-investigators, ESI Canada significantly contributes to skillset development, addressing increasing demand in this area. This workshop is particularly invaluable for early career librarians and those involved in interdisciplinary research support, furthering a precedent for effective ES training that is likely to influence future academic library services
Interventions in the Archives
No full textThe creation of a digital exhibit ends in a final product, but there are many more outcomes than what can be seen by simply experiencing the exhibit. The work that goes on between group members and their partners is often overlooked, but is sometimes the most important outcome of a project for those who were a part of it. The project that resulted in the exhibit: Fight, Fight, Fight! Anti-authoritarianism in second-wave feminist movements in Edmonton, Alberta as reflected in artifacts from the Karen Rowswell collection at the City of Edmonton Archives, was undertaken by three students for the course GSJ (Gender and Social Justice) 598/DH (Digital Humanities) 530 taught by Professor Deb Verhoeven. A subset of the project group collaborated on the Forum For Information Professionals (FIP) Conference presentation. We found that besides the exhibit itself, the results of this project were also found in the relationships and processes that we built. The digital exhibit can be viewed here: https://omekaprojects.artsrn.ualberta.ca/coea_ms-1210karenrowswell/s/FeminismAndAuthority
Reflections on my Foray into the Battle of Open Access
Get PDFThe movement towards Open Access is an important one, yet it is fraught with challenges surrounding misinformation, a lack of awareness, and a lack of institutionally-supported motivational initiatives. One new Library and Information Science Professional reflects on what it was like to support Open Access in her first job in an academic library, and her struggles and experience with wanting to implement more change than was realistically possible. This article also describes an example of running an Open Access Escape Room as an Open Access initiative, and explores the benefits of the gamification of learning. Not letting go of the goal of information accessibility for all, this young professional finds value in the small wins working towards large-scale positive change.
 
The Surge in Censorship Impeding Intellectual Freedom: The Challenge and Possible Solutions
Get PDFThough the library has transcended its role in many respects over time, its cardinal function remains to be the dissemination of information, and the rest of its roles have either derived from it or necessary extensions of it. As the cornerstone of libraries, Intellectual Freedom (IF) is inherently connected with the dissemination of Information. Hence, any curtailment to IF inevitably hinders the core of their functionality. With a recorded surge in various censorship attempts, IF has been in more turmoil over the past three years than ever. Per the latest statistics, censorship has increased in numbers, intensified tactically, and induced by violence with the hype of socio-political influences in the US. Also, inevitably, there are echoing incidents reported in Canada. This unusual amplification in numbers and virulent nature of censorship attempts has resulted in a drastic curtailment in the functionality of libraries, dwindling librarians’ capacities to uphold IF and ensure accessibility, inclusivity, and acceptance within library premises, resulting deprivation of the right to information and freedom of expression. This challenge has made the libraries self-interrogate how library professionals should uphold IF. While reflecting on the significance of IF and how censorship affects it, this study apprehends how this challenge affects the libraries and librarianship and its users in praxis and why it is a widespread, complicated, multi-faceted, and dilemma-packed issue to which finding a black-and-white answer is impossible. Arguing that this issue could be addressed only through research-backed, practical solutions, this paper presents some theoretical and pragmatic approaches that are worth adopting by librarians not only in upholding IF but also in enhancing inclusivity, accessibility, and acceptance. This qualitative research collates the contemporary knowledge on IF and censorship, as well as the legal and ethical frameworks pertinent to those notions and reflects on the statistical evidence available on the latest tendencies in censorship in the USA and reported similar incidents in Canada. Furthermore, in suggesting solutions, this study also sheds light on some interdisciplinary standpoints and certain generic approaches.
 
Vanderpump Rules: A LibGuide
Get PDFThis is a summary of a presentation delivered at FIP 2024 by Lia Rogers about a LibGuide created by Lia Rogers and Kat Lauro approaching Vanderpump Rules from an academic standpoint. We conceived the work as a LibGuide targeted towards media, communications, or English undergraduates and graduate students who are taking a popular reality television class with reality TV or Vanderpump Rules being a key text. We wanted to introduce the Vanderpump Rules as a text and engage with it with two avenues. The first, through an academic lens on reality television as a genre. The other through an understanding of how fan culture and cast engagement outside the boundaries of the episodes impacts how we consume and understand reality television. This part of our guide understands that fan engagement and voyeurism are an important aspect of consuming reality television, and this is even desired by the producers