What can school librarians do about library and book censorship? First, ask questions. Find out what your principal and your district have put into policy and what your principal's expectations are for your school library. Then, communicate with your classroom teachers. For ourselves, school librarians should work with colleagues, especially other…

Now more than ever school librarians need to be advocates. COVID brought to light so many things that are wrong with the education system around the country. According to the author, they learned that, although they talk about equity and access for their students, they are not even close to equity and access being a reality for all. As the…

Resulting from the collaboration between five practicing professionals and an LIS faculty member, this article illuminates the experiences of librarians and archivists who engage with LIS students on a continuous basis as guest speakers in LIS classrooms. The phenomenological approach helps to elicit first-hand accounts that encapsulate…

This essay considers the institutionalization of critical library instruction in the decade since the publication of "Critical Library Instruction: Theories and Methods." Drawing on the work of Sara Ahmed and Rod Ferguson, I suggest that because library instruction is marginalized within librarianship, critical library instruction can…

As part of the national Future Ready Librarians initiative at the Alliance for Excellent Education, Mark Ray and Shannon McClintock Miller serve as national advocates for school library programs and librarians. Mark and Shannon began their library advocacy careers in school libraries. For eight years, Shannon was the district librarian in Van…

When thinking of collaborating with campus partners on activities to increase the retention of students in science majors, who comes to mind? Usually other academic departments--but are science librarians included? Academic librarians are charged with supporting retention on university and college campuses. However, what exactly can science…

In "Media Revolution: Its Educational Implications," Richard Pratte argues that in order to stay relevant, American education needs to be concerned with how technology and media affect society. In this brief theoretical article, Pratte provides a prescient view of a landscape that has become ever more complex in the intervening fifty…

We seem to instinctively crave information that confirms our biases. Rather than learning knowable things, we shrink inside ourselves and hunker down with the familiar, comfortable information that feeds our narrative of what we think we know, of how we think the world works. Students do not naturally know how to open up their perspective to other…

In 2020 the tenth edition of the "Intellectual Freedom Manual" will be published by American Library Association (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF). As with each new edition, this one includes guidance on the latest issues, the newest policy statements related to intellectual freedom (IF), and the core documents that outline the…

El Parnaso is an interesting cultural center in the small city of Young, which is located a bit north of Trinidad, Uruguay. This center is a non-profit organization dedicated to meeting the information needs of its population, and it contains a children's library and a music library. El Parnaso hosts a wide variety of activities for children and…

In his article "The McDonaldization of Academic Libraries?" Brian Quinn explores to what extent and to what effect academic libraries have become "McDonaldized," according to the concept developed by sociologist George Ritzer. Quinn identifies a number of ways in which the four dimensions of…

The COVID-19 pandemic has had limited effects on access to and use of information. In the last few decades, much information has been digitised, if not created and produced, online. Confined in physical space and sitting at a desk (or kitchen table), people are able to connect to the outside world through various applications on a laptop and other…

In this article the author discusses the evolution of the profession of librarianship and the compromise of educating librarians in schools instead of by apprenticeship. He poses a series of questions, some more rhetorical than others: (1) Is Technical Services an intellectual concept or an administrative device?; (2) Can the routines and rules of…

In this article, the author gives an overview of Dunkin's article on education in the library profession. He believes it is clear that Dunkin thought too much attention was focused on practice, and not enough on theory--though there was room, and need, for both. Dunkin poses a series of questions, some more rhetorical than others: (1) Is Technical…

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…