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Ethics in Linked Data
Editors: B.M. Watson, Alexandra Provo, and Kathleen Burlingame
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-133-5
Physical Description: 6x9; 482 p.
Discussions about linked data and its potential are often utopian and technophiliac, rarely examining darker implications or harmful consequences. Since technology cannot exist outside of social, cultural, and economic spheres, it is important for creators and stewards of linked data and its related systems to recognize and address the impact (whether intended or not, positive or negative) on the communities, individuals affected.
The central premise of this book is that it is imperative:
- to foreground ethics rather than apply them as an afterthought,
- to acknowledge and mitigate the damage caused by existing systems,
- to create a place and space of justice for the minoritized,
- and to enable more ethical outcomes in linked data projects.
This book collects the voices of practitioners, technologists, and developers working on linked data initiatives; scholars working at the intersection of ethics, cultural heritage, and technology; and workers in GLAMS, among others in order to explore emerging and changing technical and ethical landscapes. Contributions investigate the intersection of linked data with such topics as gender, indigenous knowledge, inclusive data creation, authority control, identity management, systems design, codes of ethics, sustainability, critiques of fundamental linked data models, and more.
B.M. Watson is a white queer crip & nonbinary settler living in Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh, and Squamish. They are pursuing their PhD at the University of British Columbia’s iSchool focusing on equitable cataloging in libraries, archives, and museums. They also serve as the Archivist-Historian of APA’s Consensual Non-Monogamy Committee and on the Editorial Board of the Homosaurus.
Alexandra Provo is Metadata Librarian at New York University’s Division of Libraries and co-coordinator of the NYU/LIU Dual Degree Mentorship Program. She is also a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute, where she teaches a course on metadata.
Kathleen Burlingame is Electronic Discovery and Access Librarian at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries and chairs its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Discovery strategic team. Burlingame has worked on numerous linked data initiatives and co-founded the LD4 Ethics affinity group.
Land in Libraries: Toward a Materialist Conception of Education
Editors: Lydia Zvyagintseva and Mary Greenshields
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-139-7
Physical Description: 6x9; 193 p.
Now Available!
"Bless us, these lands, said the rememberer. These lands aren’t our lands. These lands aren’t your lands. We are this land." – Joy Harjo, Poet Laureate of the United States, An American Sunrise: Poems, W.W. Norton, 2019, p.108.
The question of land is largely absent in libraries. Deeply committed to the neoliberal project as a guiding ideology of the profession, libraries exist at once as ahistorical, atheoretical, and landless institutions in their understanding of themselves, their work, and their impact on people. This edited volume seeks to contribute to the growing body of work on libraries and the anthropocene, decolonization, and climate change through writing in theory and practice. We are interested in both non-metaphorical (actual, material) as well as conceptual perspectives on land. We are interested in centering land as a foundational category underpinning social relations, as a necessity for the function and reproduction of capitalism, and as a place where we work and learn together. Fundamentally, we live on the land and how we live in relation to the land matters to how we understand ourselves as individuals and a society.
Lydia Zvyagintseva is a settler librarian and immigrant from Kharkiv, Ukraine. She is currently the Head of Digital Scholarship Services at the University of Alberta. She holds graduate degrees in French Language and Literature, Digital Humanities, and Library and Information Studies, and has published on data, labour, and refusal. She has worked in public and academic libraries, including the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus and the Edmonton Public Library. She lives in Amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton) on Treaty 6 territory.
Mary Greenshields is a settler librarian and doctoral student from the lands of the Stoney, Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, Niitsitapii, Cree, and Métis. Her research interests exist at the intersections of feminism, love studies, critical pedagogy and librarianship, and settler-Indigenous relations. She lives and works in Florence, Italy.
Serapis: The Sacred Library and Its Declericalization
Authors: Stephen Bales and Wendi Arant Kaspar
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-097-0
Physical Description: 5.5x8.5 inches; 216 p.
Now Available!
The Greco-Egyptian syncretistic god Serapis was used by the 3rd century BCE Ptolemaic pharaohs to impose Greek cultural hegemony and consolidate political power. The Alexandrian Serapeum, sometimes referred to as The Great Library of Alexandria’s “daughter library,” may be seen as an archetype for institutions where religion and secular knowledge come together for the reproduction of ideologies. The Serapeum, however, is by no means unique in this regard; libraries have always incorporated religious symbols and rituals into their material structures. Very little research has been conducted concerning the sociocultural and historical impact of this union of temple and information institution or how this dynamic interrelationship (even if it may now be implicit or partially concealed) stretches from the earliest Mesopotamian proto-libraries to our present academic ones.
Serapis complements and extends the work done in a previous monograph written by Bales: The Dialectic of Academic Librarianship: A Critical Approach as well as the book chapter “The Academic Library as Crypto-Temple: A Guide to Theory and Practice,” published in the Library Juice edited volume, Class and Librarianship: Essays at the Intersection of Information, Labor, and Capital. The book explores the role of the historical and legacy religious symbols and rituals of the academic library (referred to as the “Serapian Library”) as a powerful ideological state institution and investigates how these symbols and rituals support hegemonic structures in society. Specifically, the book examines the role of the modern secular “Serapian” academic library in its historical context as a “sacred space,” and applies the theories of Karl Marx, Louis Althusser, Ivan Illich, and other thinkers to explain the ramifications of the library as crypto-temple.
Stephen Bales is a Professor in Global Languages and Cultures at Texas A&M University. He has a master’s degree in Information Science and a PhD. in Communication and Information from the University of Tennessee—Knoxville.
Wendi Arant Kaspar is a Professor in International Affairs at Texas A&M University. She has a MLS from the University of Washington and a MS in Management from Texas A&M University – College Station. Her research interests include Human Resources and Management in Libraries, Innovation in Library Services, Outreach and Liaison.
Trans and Gender Diverse Voices in Libraries
Editors: Kalani Adolpho, Stephen G. Krueger, and Krista McCracken
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-120-5
Physical Description: 6X9 incles; 560 p.
Now Available!
In the library profession, and in the world as a whole, the experiences of trans and gender diverse people often go unnoticed, hidden, and ignored. But we are here. Trans and Gender Diverse Voices in Libraries is entirely written and edited by trans and gender diverse people involved in the field: its fifty-seven authors include workers from academic and public libraries, special collections and archives, and more; LIS students; and a few people who have left the library profession completely.
This book is not intended to be the definitive guide to trans and gender diverse experiences in libraries, but instead to start the conversation. It is our hope that this book will help trans and gender diverse people in libraries realize that they are not alone, and that their experiences are worth sharing.
This book also demonstrates some of the reality in a field that loves to think of itself as inclusive. From physical spaces to policies to interpersonal ignorance and bigotry, the experiences recounted in this book demonstrate that the library profession continues to fail its trans and gender diverse members over and over again. You cannot read these chapters and claim that Safe Zone stickers and “libraries are for everyone” signs have done the job. You cannot assume that everything is fine in your workplace because nobody has spoken out. You can no longer pretend that we don’t exist.
Kalani Keahi Adolpho (they/them and he/him) is a mixed Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian), queer, and trans person living in Richmond, VA. They are a Processing Archivist at Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries, and a member of the Homosaurus Editorial Board. Kalani holds a BA in History and an MLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His work focuses on diversity residencies, ethical description practices, metadata for trans and gender diverse communities, and trans and gender diverse inclusion more broadly.
Stephen G. Krueger (ey/em or he/him) is the Scholarly Publishing Librarian at Dartmouth College. Ey holds a B.A. in English from Warren Wilson College and an M.S.L.S. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and is working on an M.A. in Arctic and Northern Studies from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Stephen is the author of Supporting Trans People in Libraries (Libraries Unlimited, 2019).
Krista McCracken (they/them) is a queer non-binary archivist and public historian. They work as the Researcher/Curator for the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre and Arthur A. Wishart Library at Algoma University. Their work focuses on community archives, access and outreach.
Residencies Revisited: Reflections on Library Residency Programs from the Past and Present
Editors: Preethi Gorecki and Arielle Petrovich
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-110-6
Physical Description: 6X9 incles; 349 p.
Many academic libraries across the country have developed and maintained library diversity residency programs in support of a larger campaign to diversify librarianship as a profession. Library diversity residencies strive to provide early-career librarians of color with the experience and toolkit necessary to pursue a successful lifelong career in academic librarianship.
Beyond the residents themselves, there are various stakeholders involved in every residency program: residency coordinators, library administrators, and the professional organizations that back them. This book provides a space for the perspectives of all types of residency stakeholders to intersect, thereby producing a holistic narrative of library diversity residencies. The intended audience for this narrative is all academic librarians and administrators currently involved or interested in library diversity residency programs or generally interested in diversity initiatives.
On paper, diversity residencies have the potential to do so much good: jump-start someone’s career, offer much-needed entry-level employment for recent graduates, and even offer the (false) promise of diversifying a predominantly and problematically white field. This collection will leave everyone asking: who do these programs really help?
Preethi Gorecki is the Communications Librarian at MacEwan University. In 2018, she started her career in librarianship as a Library Faculty Diversity Fellow at Grand Valley State University. Preethi holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from Concordia University in Montréal, Québec, Canada and a Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) degree from the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada. Her research interests include practices for diversifying librarianship, project and task management tools and techniques for everyday academic librarianship, and student engagement as related to student wellness.
Arielle Petrovich is the College Archivist at Beloit College. She holds an MS in Library and Information Science from Simmons College and a BA in American Studies from Smith College. Her research interests include strategies for diversifying the archival profession, de-mystifying the archives, and fostering historical empathy in the archival classroom.
What Gets Them to Read Like That?
The Story of the Woman Who Got Millions of Children to Read
Author: Geneviève Patte
Translator: Tegan Raleigh
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-132-8
Physical Description: 6 x 9 ; 240 p.
Thousands of children have discovered the joys of reading thanks to Geneviève Patte, a pioneer in establishing libraries specifically for children and promoting literacy in France. What Gets Them to Read Like That? is the remarkable tale of Patte’s life story and her social engagement as a librarian, which originated with her appreciation of stories told by Parisian refugees her family hosted during the period of the Nazi occupation.
Patte’s experience in the United States as a Fulbright scholar in the 1950s and travels throughout the world have confirmed her dedication to creating the library as a welcoming place, particularly for immigrants and children from marginalized communities. For Patte, the library is somewhere that everyone belongs and everyone’s voice can be heard. What Gets Them to Read Like That? is a passionate story and an ode to the imagination, illustrating the vital importance of granting children autonomy through reading and community-building.
This book was originally published in French as, Mais qu’est-ce qui les fait lire comme ça? Patte is currently the director of “La Bibliothèque Ronde” in the working-class Parisian suburb of Clamart.
Underground: From Deadbeat to Dean A Memoir
Author: Peter McDonald
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-107-6
Physical Description: in.; 450 p.
In this engaging, often hilarious memoir of a life in punk rock, one-time music promoter and longtime librarian, Peter McDonald, takes us on a wild tour where as a boy he heard a firefight between Che Guevara and armed militia in the Venezuelan jungle on to living with a young street urchin named SAMO who would go on to become the artist Basquiat. At once poignant and part confessional, this memoir is perhaps like no other in that it becomes in the end a journey of spiritual awakening out of one man’s disillusionment with the rock’n’roll industry. From a boyhood in the tropics, to boarding schools in Europe, on to shamanic training in the Northwest, we follow an itinerant iconoclast in this riotously engaging work. McDonald traces his coming of age during the Vietnam War, which he narrowly avoided by going to college in Canada. He would then come to spend five years alone in the Alaska wilderness that forged in him a lifelong devotion to environmental advocacy and stewardship. It is certainly an otherworldly journey that is part imagination, part fable, and unapologetically the author’s own truth.
McDonald writes with forthright honesty about all these vicissitudes. With an FBI file for political arrests, to national recognition for his writing and scholarship, McDonald eventually brought his wide experience and deep commitment for social justice to his choice of a profession in librarianship. He rose to become Dean of Library Services at Fresno State from which he retired in 2019. As a co-founder of the Progressive Librarians Guild in 1989, McDonald went on to serve as editor of many scholarly journals, as well as the governing Council of the American Library Association. This is his story.
The Collector and the Collected: Decolonizing Area Studies Librarianship
Editors: Megan Browndorf, Erin Pappas, and Anna Arays
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-090-1
Physical Description: 5.5 x 8.5 in.; 316 p.
The Collector and the Collected: Decolonizing Area Studies Librarianship explores the paradigm of “area studies” — a way of supporting regionally-focused collecting, processing, and liaison work — in the academic library through an explicitly anti-colonial lens. By centering debates on the politics and problems of area studies in libraries, we consider how libraries are rethinking their approaches to collecting global resources and serving our constituencies in a contemporary and progressive manner. While libraries need to address the problematic nature of area studies, we see a larger academic trend in the push for “global” initiatives which ignore historically, linguistically, and culturally significant sites of difference, inequity, and asymmetrical power relations.
What does it mean to break down the artificial divide between “collectors” of knowledge and those of us who have these knowledges “collected” for use? What work is required to decolonize collections, collecting practices, and practices of access originally designed to help Euro-American scholars study “the other?” Chapters examine questions of identity among library users and librarians, the historical and contemporary violence of collecting, and structural critiques of area studies and global studies in academic libraries. Author contributions include a wide variety of area studies “regions” and the book is organized to develop conversation cross-regionally.
Megan Browndorf works as East European Studies Liaison and Reference Librarian at Georgetown University.
Erin Pappas is Research Librarian for the Humanities at the University of Virginia, where she supports Slavic Literatures and Languages, Media Studies, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality.
Anna Arays is the Librarian for Slavic and East European Studies at Yale University.
Dismantling Deficit Thinking in Academic Libraries: Theory, Reflections, and Action
Authors: Chelsea Heinbach, Rosan Mitola, and Erin Rinto
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-095-6
Physical Description: 5x8 in.; 145 p.
Students come to universities with identities, knowledge, and lived experiences that contribute to their success. They offer unique viewpoints and enrich the spaces they inhabit through their differences. However, educators often default to deficit thinking, an unintentionally harmful mindset that aims to support students by attempting to “fix” their perceived shortcomings. Dismantling Deficit Thinking in Academic Libraries weaves theory, practice, and reflection to introduce deficit thinking and provide alternative strategies and educational principles that have the power to transform our work with students.
Dismantling Deficit Thinking in Academic Libraries serves as a guide for librarians interested in the challenging but crucial work of re-conceptualizing the academic library to honor the knowledge, experiences, and strengths students bring to the university community.
Chelsea Heinbach is a teaching and learning librarian at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas where she works to create meaningful learning experiences for undergraduate students.
Rosan Mitola is the interim head of Educational Initiatives for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she leads the library instruction program and provides leadership for the Libraries’ educational role on campus.
Erin Rinto is the learning and research librarian at the University of Cincinnati.
LIS Interrupted: Intersections of Mental Illness and Library Work
Editors: Miranda Dube and Carrie Wade
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-108-3
Physical Description: 6x9; 311 p.
Within the realm of library work, conversations about mental illness are too frequently pushed to the sidelines, whispered about behind office doors, or covered up for others’ comfort. LIS Interrupted is a book that directly addresses those conversations in an edited collection of firsthand experiences from library workers. This book draws these conversations into public view and in doing so brings the experiences of mental illness to the forefront–offering space for comfort, connection, and community.
The intention of this work is to provide a collection of both personal narratives and critical analyses of mental illness in the LIS field, thus offering a unique opportunity to explore the many intersections with labor, culture, stigma, race, ability, identity, gender, and much more to provide context for positive change. LIS Interrupted is geared towards library workers, educators, and students in a variety of environments as a text, resource, guide, and place of refuge.
Miranda Dube is librarian in New Hampshire. Her research interests include library services for domestic and sexual violence survivors, as well as the intersection of LIS workers with mental illness and addiction. When not working or doing research you can find her on call with the local crisis center, crocheting, or hanging out with her two pet rats.
Carrie Wade is the Health Sciences librarian at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and a backpacking subject specialist at REI in Brookfield, Wisconsin. Her research interests focus on analyzing historical discourses in Library and Information Science and other fields as a means to plot out a more just, equitable, and liberated future for libraries and the people who work in them.
Borders and Belonging: Critical Examinations of Library Approaches toward Immigrants
Editor: Ana Ndumu
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-082-6
Physical Description: 6x9; 311 p.
This book is number four in the Litwin Books/Library Juice Press Series on Critical Race Studies and Multiculturalism in LIS, Rose L. Chou and Annie Pho, series editors.
Borders and Belonging explores the role of libraries as both places of belonging as well as instruments of exclusion, xenophobia and assimilation. For over a century, North American libraries have liaised between immigrant communities and mainstream society by providing important sociocultural and educational services. Yet, outreach efforts have largely adhered to “Americanizing” ideals that reinforce ethnocentric and fatalist attitudes particularly toward undocumented and/or underprivileged migrants, refugees and asylees. As immigration continues to dominate public consciousness and political debates, the library profession must interrogate presumptions of immigrant incompetence or inferiority, and combat the uncritical positioning of librarians as rescue workers. We must also redress the historical inattention to the contributions of immigrants within the profession as well as within U.S. and Canadian societies. Through reflective essays, original research, and critical analyses presented by a range of specialists and thought leaders, Borders and Belonging challenges readers to dismantle problematic paradigms.
Ana Ndumu is a faculty member at the University of Maryland, College Park’s College of Information. She received both MLIS and PhD degrees from Florida State University and examines the cross between libraries, information and migration. Ana has many years of library experience and serves on various library association committees and boards. She presents and publishes on library services to immigrants, immigrant information justice, and racial representation in library and information science.
Seeking to Understand: A Journey into Disability Studies and Libraries
Authors: Robin Brown and Scott Sheidlower
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-106-9
Physical Description: 5x7; 128 p.
We are not unusual; we are not aberrant. We are disabled librarians. We work in libraries all over the country. Our differences are wide-ranging. We have the same genders, ethnicities and sexual preferences as the rest of the library community.
Some of us deal with mobility impairments. However, a large part of this community is dealing with invisible impairments.
This can be seen as not only academic research but also emancipatory research, since we seek to change the world. We would like to help create: A renewed commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion; Mass transit as an equity issue; A resource guide for developing a culture of empathy in your library; Why Medicare for All is an accessibility issue; How to make job ads equitable.
Our hope is that this book will offer affirmation to anyone who is a disabled library worker. It is also intended to be a resource to anyone who works with or supervises a disabled library worker.
Robin Brown is Associate Professor and Head of Public Services for the A. Philip Randolph Library of Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York [CUNY]. She has a MLS from Rutgers University (New Brunswick) and a MA in World History from Rutgers University (Newark). Her email is rbrown@bmcc.cuny.edu.
Scott Sheidlower is a Professor and head of circulation and the archivist in the library at York College of the City University of New York [CUNY] in Jamaica, Queens, New York City. He has an M.A. in Art History from NYU; an M.A. in Arts Administration, also from NYU; and an M.L.S. from Queens College/CUNY. He is co-author of Humor and Information Literacy: Practical Techniques for Library Instruction (Libraries Unlimited, 2011). He is also co-author of Engaging Diverse Learners: Teaching Strategies for Academic Librarians (Libraries Unlimited, 2017). His e-mail is ssheidlower@york.cuny.edu
Information Studies and Other Provocations: Selected Talks 2000-2019
Author: Jonathan Furner
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-118-2
Physical Description: 6x9; 320 p.
What is information studies? And why does it matter? UCLA professor Jonathan Furner takes a sideways look at some of the perennial questions facing the field in this selection of talks given at conferences, workshops, and other meetings over a two-decade period. Topics covered include the disciplinary nature of library and information science; the philosophy of information; the ontology of works, documents, and records; bibliographic classification and knowledge organization; vocabulary control and collaborative indexing; and information retrieval and scholarly communication.
Jonathan Furner (M.A. Cambridge 1990, Ph.D. Sheffield 1994) is a Professor in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He studies the history and philosophy of cultural stewardship, and teaches classes on the representation and organization of archival records, library resources, and museum objects. He has published over fifty papers on these and related topics, frequently using conceptual analysis to evaluate the theoretical frameworks, data models, and metadata standards on which information access systems rely. He served for six years (2014–2019) as chair of the Dewey Decimal Classification’s editorial policy committee. He is co-editor of book series for the MIT Press and Facet Publishing, and is a regular reviewer of contributions to journals and conferences in the fields of philosophy of information, knowledge organization, and bibliometrics.
Libraries and Nonprofits: Collaboration for the Public Good
Editors: Tatiana Bryant and Jonathan O. Cain
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-057-4
Physical Description: 6x9; 259 p.
Libraries and Nonprofits: Collaboration for the Public Good explores collaborations between libraries and nonprofits to provide impactful services and programming to communities. The case studies illuminate the strategies libraries use to create short and long term partnerships with nonprofits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and civil society organizations delivering unique services and opportunities for users, as well as the challenges of designing and coordinating these endeavors. Also addressed are the motivations, structures, and successes of nonprofit organizations that use library models for service delivery in the United States and abroad.
The authors highlight best practices for successful library and nonprofit collaboration geared towards libraries that have begun to participate in community engagement, outreach, and advocacy as well as public and social sector organizations interested in developing innovative service delivery models.
Tatiana Bryant is the Research Librarian for Digital Humanities, History, and African American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She holds a Masters of Public Administration, Nonprofit Management, and Public Policy from New York University. Her expertise includes nonprofit management, cultural heritage preservation, and outreach.
Jonathan O. Cain is the Associate University Librarian for Research and Learning at Columbia University. He holds an MA in Africana Studies from New York University and has expertise in community organizing.
Deconstructing Service in Libraries: Intersections of Identities and Expectations
Editors: Veronica Arellano Douglas and Joanna Gadsby
Series: Gender and Sexuality in Information Studies
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-060-4
Physical Description: 6x9; 386 p.
Research into the construction of librarians’ professional identities indicates a strong emphasis on our work as service providers, from both within the profession and the larger communities in which we exist. This collection of work by practicing librarians offers a historical-cultural context for the ethos of service in libraries and critically examines this professional value as it intersects with gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity, class, and (dis)ability. Deconstructing Service in Libraries: Intersections of Identities and Expectations explores the ways in which an ethic of service creates, stagnates, and destructs librarians’ professional identities and sense of self; analyze the power structures, values, and contexts that influence our personal, professional, and institutional conceptions of service in libraries; and deconstruct the the costs and consequences of negotiating personal identity with professional values. Inspired by Roma Harris’ Librarianship: The Erosion of a Woman’s Profession (1992), this collection seeks to rework the idea of service in libraries into a more feminist, empowering foundation and suggest alternative theories and values in which to ground our professional practice.
Veronica Arellano Douglas is Instruction Coordinator at the University of Houston Libraries. She received an MLS from the University of North Texas and a BA in English from Rice University.
Veronica is an ALA Spectrum Scholar. Her research interests include gendered labor in libraries, relational-cultural theory, and critical information literacy and librarianship.
Joanna Gadsby works as the Instruction Coordinator and a Reference & Instruction Librarian at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She holds a BA in Human Development from St. Mary’s College of Maryland, an MEd in Curriculum and Instruction from Loyola University, and an MLIS from University of Maryland, College Park. Her research interests include constructivist pedagogy, librarian and teacher identity, and gendered labor in librarianship.
NOW Available!
Remaking the Library Makerspace: Critical Theories, Reflections, and Practices
Editors: Maggie Melo and Jennifer Nichols
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-081-9
Physical Description: 6x9; 316 p.
The Maker Movement is a social phenomenon that has generated excitement around tech-centric making and learning throughout the world since the mid-2000s. Hailing from Silicon Valley, the Maker Movement has inspired hundreds of libraries across the US to integrate makerspaces into their own ecosystems to further support users’ learning and discovery. While the affordances of the Maker Movement have been highlighted extensively over the past decade, the limitations and drawbacks of this movement have been largely overshadowed. The Maker Movement has popularized a narrow, classist, predominantly white, and heteronormative conceptualization of maker culture. Makerspaces, like libraries, are not neutral, but rather are imbued with ideologies stemming from Silicon Valley that consequently dictate who makes, why making occurs, and what is considered making. This edited collection centers the limitations and challenges emerging from this particular brand of ‘maker culture,’ and emphasizes the critical work that is being done to cultivate anti-oppressive, inclusive and equitable making environments.
Many authors have focused on how to start a makerspace and/or the benefits of integrating one within a library. Alternatively, this edited collection captures how librarians and educators have disrupted and re-made their makerspaces in response to the constraints of the Maker Movement’s ‘makerspace.’ This collection offers readers a critical examination of library makerspaces at the site of praxis: theory, reflection, and action. Particularly, critical considerations around race, age, class, gender, sexuality, power, and ability will be centered in this volume. As such, the intended audience for this body of work are librarians, educators, administrators, and library professionals who work with(in) or are interested in library makerspaces.
About the Editors
Maggie Melo is an assistant professor in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She recently completed her PhD at the University of Arizona, where she was an American Association of University Women Fellow. Her work has appeared in portal: Libraries and the Academy, Hybrid Pedagogy, and Computers and Composition Online. She co-founded the University of Arizona’s first publicly accessible and interdisciplinary makerspace – iSpace – and strategically facilitated its growth from a 400-square-foot room in the Science-Engineering Library to a 5,000-square-foot facility soon to be housed in the University’s Main Library. She also founded the Women Techmakers Tucson Hackathon, the Southwest’s first women’s-only hackathon.
Jennifer Nichols is the Digital Scholarship Librarian at the University of Arizona, and a program lead for the iSpace, the first publicly accessible and interdisciplinary makerspace at the University. She grew the programming and operations of the nascent iSpace beginning in 2015 as a Fine Arts and Humanities liaison, and continues to expand partnerships and programming between campus and community entities. Her current research centers around designing for equity and inclusion in digital spaces, library services, and makerspaces. Prior to her career as an academic librarian, Nichols was a Young Adult librarian with Pima County Public Library for nearly 8 years. In this capacity she created digital media and maker technology workshop series for teens, and coordinated and led an IMLS/MacArthur funded YouMedia Learning Labs planning grant to create and employ a Youth Design Team of 15 members ages 14-21 to plan the 101 space at the Joel D. Valdez Main Library.
Forthcoming in November, 2020!
Now Accepting Pre-Orders of This Title!
Beyond Accommodation: Creating an Inclusive Workplace for Disabled Library Workers
Authors: Jessica Schomberg and Wendy Highby
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-086-4
Physical Description: 6x9; 210 p.
Accommodating disabled people in the library workplace is just the start. Truly creative changes that make the workplace more genuinely democratic and healthful for disabled individuals have the potential to increase the well-being of all workers. Increasingly corporatized institutions, the widening wealth gap, and reactionary neoliberal policies of austerity present daunting challenges. In solidarity, we can find the collective strength to survive, to resist, and to change the system. Library workers’ experiences of disability are navigable, but also complex and fraught with paradox. This book exposes the unique qualities of the library workplace, including the caretaking nature of the profession and its shadow side. We ask whether it is possible to negotiate a safe path between the exercise of personal power and deference to the hierarchical structure. Imaginative choreography is needed to sidestep the neoliberal pressure to classify, normalize, commodify, manage, or control the experience of disability.
Critical disability theory is the base from which this book explores innovative, inclusionary praxis that challenges traditional, exclusionary views of disability. The book shows the practical applications of theoretical concepts for both academic and lay readers. It does not stop with critique; the critical analysis is a springboard to guide readers in exploring the effectiveness of libraries’ organizational and institutional practices, and to question the fairness of state and federal government policies (e.g., the Americans with Disabilities Act). The result is an empowering, consciousness-raising journey through “the system,” with the authors and interviewees as guides modeling assertive self-advocacy.
Jessica Schomberg has worn a variety of library hats at Minnesota State University, Mankato, including cataloging, assessment, user experience, and liaison work. Jessica has written on disability-related topics for Library Trends, In the Library with the Lead Pipe and Letters to a Young Librarian, as well as writing from the perspective of a librarian with disabilities in the Library Juice edited anthology The Politics and Theory of Critical Librarianship.
Wendy Highby is the Social Sciences Librarian at the University of Northern Colorado in Weld County, ground zero of Colorado’s fracking boom. She wrote about her anti-fracking activism in “Beyond the Recycling Bin,” a chapter in the LJP book Progressive Community Action. Other topics of her wide-ranging scholarship include open access advocacy, facilitation of faculty publication funds, the anti-intellectual satire of Stephen Colbert, and the use of narrative and creative expression to teach copyright law. A former paralegal, she became a librarian in mid-life. She grew up in southeastern Arizona’s Gila River Valley amidst crop-dusted cotton fields. Diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s disease in 2004, she is an environmentalist, poet and practitioner of qi gong.
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Archives and Special Collections as Sites of Contestation
Editor: Mary Kandiuk
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-062-8
Physical Description: 6x9; 512 p.
Series: Series on Archives, Archivists, and Society
Archives and special collections play a critical role in promoting social justice. This collection of essays interrogates library practices relating to archives and special collections. Funding and political choices often underpin acquisition, access and promotion of these collections, resulting in unequal representation, biased interpretations, and suppressed narratives. Archives and Special Collections as Sites of Contestation explores the reinterpretation and resituating of archives and special collections held by libraries, examines the development and stewardship of archives and special collections within a social justice framework, and describes the use of critical practice by libraries and librarians to shape and negotiate the acquisition, cataloguing, promotion, and use of archives and special collections. Chapters in this volume discuss the development of new collections through community outreach to marginalized and underrepresented groups, efforts to amend the historical documentary record through digitization projects, cataloguing, authority and description of archives and special collections, using a critical practice framework, ethical and political issues relating to donors, appraisal and access, curation, stewardship and promotion of controversial or sensitive collections, and the decolonization of space and collections.
Mary Kandiuk is the Visual Arts, Design & Theatre Librarian and a Senior Librarian at York University in Toronto, Canada. She holds a Master of Arts in English and a Master of Library Science from the University of Toronto. She is the author of two bibliographies of secondary criticism relating to Canadian literature published by Scarecrow Press and co-author of Digital Image Collections and Services (ARL Spec Kit, 2013). She is co-editor of the collection In Solidarity: Academic Librarian Labour Activism and Union Participation in Canada, published by Library Juice Press in 2014. Her most recent publications include articles on the topic of academic freedom.
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Confronting the Democratic Discourse of Librarianship: A Marxist Approach
Author: Sam Popowich
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-087-1
Physical Description: 8x5;334 p.
The idea that libraries are crucial democratic institutions has a long history in librarianship. It remains dominant despite a long tradition of critical library movements within the profession. In Confronting the Democratic Discourse of Librarianship, Sam Popowich argues that the democratic tradition is part of a larger liberal tradition within librarianship which sees librarianship as neutral, pragmatic, and independent of social, economic, or political concerns. It is this perspective that lends librarianship a “sacred” aura which needs to be dismantled if we truly want to change the profession.
Taking a broadly Marxist approach, Confronting the Democratic Discourse of Librarianship traces the connections between library history and the larger history of capitalist development. These connections suggest that the relationship between the library and capitalism is closer and more insidious than the democratic tradition allows. Drawing on theories of ideology and politics, and looking at recent research in critical librarianship, this book makes a case for the structural interconnection of librarianship and capitalist exploitation. As a result, oppression is entrenched within the profession due to the library’s role in the social reproduction of capitalism, while the oppressive structures of society are obscured by the very ideology of democracy that holds sway within the field.
Sam Popowich is the Discovery and Web Services Librarian at the University of Alberta and a PhD student in Political Science and International Studies at University of Birmingham. His research interests include critical theory, technology, and labor.
Educating Librarians in the Contemporary University: An Essay on iSchools and Emancipatory Resilience in Library and Information Science
Author: Joacim Hansson
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-058-1
Physical description: 5X7; 218 p.
Library education is changing. At a time when librarianship is increasingly seen as part of the information industry, Library and Information Science is also searching for its place in a new and rapidly developing university landscape.
This book analyzes the development of the contemporary university in light of present critical social theory, focusing on such aspects as academic acceleration, organizational accretion and the rise of an ”entrepreneurial spirit,” all of which have both epistemological and organizational consequences. Library and Information Science has proven well-suited to meet this development. One way has been through the rapid international growth of the iSchool movement, now counting close to a hundred member schools all across the world. iSchools not only meet the requirements of contemporary university development, but also contribute to a recontextualization of librarianship and library education. As the iSchool movement relates to a view of information as a commodity and the ”iField” to increased economic growth, it recontextualizes the library sector, traditionally connected to democratic development based on the ideas of the Enlightenment.
Educating Librarians in the Contemporary University is written from a European perspective, and examples such as the EU research platform, Horizon 2020, Government Research Proposals, and policy documents from European iSchools are used in an attempt to understand the current development in Library and Information Science and its relevance for librarianship. As the European Research and Development Sector increasingly connects universities to the solution of various ”social challenges” with emphasis on commercial collaborations, the view on knowledge and use of university resources are affected in a way which seemingly make critical analyses difficult.
Questions are asked about the relation between iSchools, late capitalism and the development of Critical Librarianship. Is there a way of fulfilling the ambitions of the critical theory classics and achieve research and an education environment which encourage emancipatory goals within the iSchool movement?
Joacim Hansson is professor of Library and Information Science at Linnaeus University in Växjö, Sweden. He has done research in several subfields of LIS. His prime research interests have been on critical classification and studies on the institutional identity development of libraries. He has also done several studies on the epistemology and development of Library and Information Science as a scientific discipline.
Greening Libraries
Editors: Monika Antonelli & Mark McCullough
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-936117-08-6
Physical description: 286 pages
It is difficult to turn on the television or read a news story today without learning about how green and sustainable practices are being implemented throughout society. Libraries are not exempt from these broader trends. In some cases, libraries and librarians have been at the forefront of these efforts. Greening Libraries provides library professionals with a collection of articles and papers that serve as a portal to understanding a wide range of green and sustainable practices within libraries and the library profession.
The book’s articles come from a variety of perspectives on a wide range of topics related to green practices, sustainability and the library profession. Greening Libraries offers an overview of important aspects of the growing green library movement, including, but not limited to, green buildings, alternative energy resources, conservation, green library services and practices, operations, programming, and outreach.
Winner of the 2013 Green Book Festival Award in the category of Best Business Book.
Comics and Critical Librarianship: Reframing the Narrative in Academic Libraries
Editors: Olivia Piepmeier and Stephanie Grimm
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-080-2
Physical description: 7x10;388 p.
Though it is still not uncommon to hear the question “Comics? In libraries?!”, comics collections have existed in academic institutions for over fifty years.
Whether a seasoned comics librarian or a comics fan with a budding interest in the field, readers will find that Comics and Critical Librarianship provides a holistic consideration of comics librarianship practices with a critical edge. Presented through case studies, original research and essays, and personal reflection, the book engages with topics from collection and cataloging to teaching and outreach, with contributors representing academic libraries and academic archival collections of varying sizes and populations across the United States and Canada.
Olivia Piepmeier is the Arts & Humanities Librarian at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
Stephanie Grimm is the Art and Art History Librarian at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA.
Ethical Questions in Name Authority Control
Editor: Jane Sandberg
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-054-3
Physical Description: 6X9; 418p.
Catalogers hold very specific types of power when they describe people, families, and corporate bodies. When creating a personal name authority record, for example, catalogers determine the authorized name by which an individual will be known, then identify a few characteristics of the individual that distinguish them from others, while balancing their judgment with respect for the individual’s self-concept and management of their public identity. This is a powerful position, and that power must be exercised ethically.
As name authority control moves toward an identity management model, catalogers are taking on new roles, authority data is used in innovative ways, and libraries increasingly interact with non-library datasets and name disambiguation algorithms. During this transition, it is imperative that the library community reflect on the ethical questions that arise from its historical and emerging practices.
This collection explores and develops this framework through theoretical and practice-based essays, stories, interviews, taxonomies, content analyses, and other methods. As it explores ethical questions in a variety of settings, this book will deepen readers’ understanding of names, identities, and library catalogs. The chapters from this volume are intended to spark conversations among librarians, archivists, library technologists, library administrators, and library and information science students.
Jane Sandberg received her MLIS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is the Electronic Resources Librarian at Linn-Benton Community College in Albany, Oregon, where she coordinates library cataloging and systems. Her research interests include linked data approaches to name authority control, queer and trans local histories, open source software in rural communities, and historical dimensions of online transgender activism.
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Reference Librarianship & Justice: History, Practice & Praxis
Editors: Kate Adler, Ian Beilin, and Eamon Tewell
Publisher: Library Juice Press
ISBN: 978-1-63400-051-2
Physical Description: 6X9; 322p.
Reference work often receives short shrift in the contemporary discourse and practice of librarianship. Reference Librarianship & Justice: History, Practice & Praxis highlights the unique position of reference librarianship, a liminal and dialectical space, potentially distinct from the power dynamics of classroom instruction and singular in its mission and practice. At heart, reference is a conversation and partnership. The stakes are significant, not only because of the unique potential for social justice work but because of the risk that the profession is now overlooking reference’s central importance. This book makes a passionate case for reference work in a manner that is historically, socially and politically compelling.
The book’s three sections explore the praxis, history and practice of reference librarianship in the context of social justice. Praxis grounds us theoretically while seeking to trouble and broaden traditional academic conventions, drawing on diverse epistemological frameworks and disciplines both inside and outside of LIS literatures. History grounds us in the past and makes the case that reference librarianship has a long tradition of social justice work, providing intellectual access, partnership and guidance from the Jim Crow South to the War on Poverty. Finally, Dispatches from the Field explores the contemporary practice of social-justice oriented reference librarianship, in prisons, in archives and beyond. We see how the rich genealogy of social justice in reference librarianship is at work today.
Kate Adler is the Director of Library Services at Metropolitan College of New York. She has a MA in American Studies from the CUNY Graduate Center and an MLIS from Queens College, CUNY. Her professional interests pivot around intersections of critical theory, social justice and librarianship.
Ian Beilin is Humanities Research Services Librarian at Columbia University. He received his MSIS from the University at Albany and his PhD in History from Columbia University. He has published and presented on topics in critical information literacy, neoliberalism in the academy, and modern German history.
Eamon Tewell is Reference & Instruction Librarian at Long Island University, Brooklyn. He received his MLIS from Drexel University and his MA in Media Studies from LIU Brooklyn. Eamon has published and presented on the topics of critical information literacy, popular media and active learning in library instruction, and televisual representations of libraries.