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Before there was the We Need Diverse Books movement, there was Augusta Baker and her Books about Negro Life for Children bibliographies. Baker was a children's librarian at the New [...]

Librarians and information professionals need to be reflective practitioners who can analyze, understand, and communicate in culturally competent ways about social justice. This study analyzes the output of student responses to the assignment to record a video social justice story in four graduate library and information science (LIS) courses. Qualitative analysis reveals patterns of "calling out injustice" and "calling in the audience" that reflect students' social justice storytelling and that demonstrate abilities to engage and provoke audiences. The findings show that social justice topics in LIS are amenable to a variety of narrative strategies. Future LIS research should look more deeply at what students learn through assignments like these and how this pedagogy should affect ongoing social justice storytelling by library professionals. Teaching LIS students to be social justice storytellers is an important way of continuing to push the field to "walk the talk" of diversity and inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article addresses the issue of soft censorship within libraries, discussing instances where diverse books have faced resistance and challenges in being added to collections and how such practices hinder the diversification of library collections and weaken the profession's stance against censorship. It emphasizes the need for self-reflection, cultural competence and standing up for marginalized voices and narratives as strategies to combat soft censorship and promote diversity in libraries.

This essay aims to take an introspective look into soft censorship’s complexities and demonstrate how conforming to the ideals of soft censorship makes libraries perpetrators of implicit bias. It begins by defining the concept of book banning before delving into its long and complicated history, which dates back to 212 BCE. By initially looking back at the chronology of book banning, the authors aimed to make a case for how the practice of book banning has continuously been a concerted effort to whitewash and sugarcoat history and to continue dismantling our public educational institutions. The essay dives into disseminating implicit bias through soft censorship in libraries and information sciences. The authors justify how soft censorship directly undermines the intellectual freedoms of library users and readers and demonstrate how, by engaging in soft censorship, libraries are not only perpetrators of implicit bias but are also catalysts of inequity within their institutions. The essay then gives readers a step-by-step guide on resisting censorship in their respective roles. After that, it urges readers to take action and concludes with an important message emphasizing the need for a cultural approach to combat censorship. By doing so, we can begin dismantling the inequities plaguing the library and information science field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there are calls for new paradigms within the profession, there are also existing subgenres that fit this bill if they would be fully acknowledged. This essay argues that underrepresented and otherwise marginalized scholars have already produced significant work within social, cultural, and community‐oriented paradigms; social justice and advocacy; and, diversity, equity, and inclusion. This work has not been sufficiently valued or promoted. Furthermore, the surrounding structural conditions have resulted in the dismissal, violently reviewed and rejected, and erased work of underrepresented scholars, and the stigmatization and delegitimization of their work. These scholars are "outsiders‐within‐LIS." By identifying the outsiders‐within‐LIS through the frame of standpoint theories, the authors are suggesting that a new paradigm does not need to be created; rather, an existing paradigm needs to be recognized and reprioritized. This reprioritized paradigm of critical sociocultural work has and will continue to creatively enrich and expand the field and decolonize LIS curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses that in fall 2021, Cooke and Valerie Byrd Fort from the South Carolina Center for Community Literacy introduced the virtual program the Augusta Baker Storytelling Experience: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Programming for Children of All Ages (AB Kids). It mentions that the AB Kids team looks forward to offering more programs in the fall of 2022, focusing on a range of diversity-related issues.