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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 [...]

The opportunity to expand pedagogy is an especially good thing for library educators, particularly when library professionals do not have formal training as teachers and instructors. We have a responsibility to ourselves and our students to grow intellectually and share growth and new knowledge with others. We should be promoting and practicing critical self-reflection and thinking critically about and even critiquing the information we consume and the sources from which it originates. This is an ongoing and iterative process that requires that we consistently read and remain abreast of new and interdisciplinary ideas that can challenge and inform our practice. This perspective essay details my personal journey of critical self-reflection, or "conocimiento," that facilitated the strengthening and deepening of my critical library instruction and pedagogy.

In this autoethnographic article I reflect on my experiences as a now-tenured faculty member of color, which have been punctuated by incivility, bullying, stress, and abuse. As part of reconciling several acute events, I came to a distinct realization of what I had been going through; I was able to name it, and I was able to articulate the strategies I had been using to cope and thrive. This reflective piece is not meant to minimize the experiences of non-minority faculty, but it is absolutely meant to highlight and emphasize the specific challenges of being faculty member of color in library and information science, and in the academy writ large.

It is widely understood that effective children's and youth librarians must be innovative, aware of current/popular trends, and able to build rapport with young patrons. However, more emphasis must be placed on the fact that it is essential for these librarians to be prepared to identify and meet the needs of a patron population that is becoming increasingly diverse. The annotated resource list provided here shares resources that support children's/youth services librarians in developing and strengthening skills of cultural competence defined as "a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency or among professionals and enable that system, agency or those professions to work effectively in cross-cultural situations" (Cross et al. 1989, 7). Further, the annotated listing of materials serves to increase practitioners' acquisition of equity literacy defined as "the knowledge and skills that enable us to recognize, respond to, and redress conditions that deny some students access to educational and other opportunities enjoyed by their peers" (Gorski 2014).

In a study of the information behaviors of graduate students enrolled in an online Masters of Library and Information Science (MLIS) program, it was determined that learners engage in threaded discussions not only for cognitive purposes but for affective reasons as well. The information sharing among students was particularly prolific during a session in which medical ailments and information were discussed. Data were collected from an asynchronous class in a graduate LIS program, and were examined through learner/context analysis and textual analysis. This study used syllabi, course construction, specific assignments and requirements, and other details that contribute to the totality of the learning environment. Specific attention was given to the threaded discussions assigned in the class. This data provided insight into the students' activities and learning during 15 weeks, and enhanced the overall context for the small world that develops within an online learning community. Students connected with their peers and instructor through copious exchanges of information during which a concerted and consistent effort was made to connect with one another by using personal names, engaging in humor and joke-telling, using emoticons, and expressing support and empathy.

Using a social justice framework, we discuss our experiences as faculty members of color working in Library and Information Science (LIS).  We present our educational trajectories as well as our professional engagement with teaching, research, and service.  This piece contributes to the growing literature on diversity in LIS by articulating African American and Latina perspectives of academia, which are underrepresented demographics in LIS and more generally in higher education in the United States.

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]

We all have digital footprints and legacies, even if we aren't the ones actively curating our own trajectories. Virtually every move we make online is tracked in some way, and [...]

With the aid of an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Diversity offered the first full fellowships under the Spectrum Scholarship program for 12 students to pursue doctoral degrees in Library and Information Science at accredited institutions around the country.  The Fellows were drawn from the four underrepresented ethnic populations and are in various stages of study from early course work to near completion of their doctoral degrees.With the goal of increasing racial and ethnic diversity among the profession’s next generation of Library and Information Science (LIS) faculty and leaders, the program has provided an unprecedented opportunity for the scholars.  It has also created the ability to extract a wealth of information from the scholars about their experiences as doctoral students.  The major goal of this research is to capture that information, especially the advantages and disadvantages those students experienced both as Fellows and as minority students in LIS PhD programs. The results of this research will inform LIS education and pedagogy and provide documented evidence of experiences that can lead to the improvement of doctoral education for minorities in the future and enrich the knowledge on which future initiatives are based.

These numbers are up only slightly for African Americans, which made up 3.2% of LIS faculty according to the 2012 report. "Considering the Ethnoracial and Gender Diversity of Faculty in United States College and University Intellectual Communities." "The Virtuous Circle: Increasing Diversity in LIS Faculties to Create More Inclusive Library Services and Outreach.". [Extracted from the article]

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]