Background: The recruitment of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) has been an ongoing effort for specialized libraries and library programs, especially as they try to fill technical roles while combatting internalized biases and candidates' potential self-deselection by not applying or otherwise removing themselves from the recruitment…

This special issue on race relations and racial inequity in Library and Information Science (LIS) is a response a recent wave of advocacy, activism, and protests. Its explicit purpose is to address the lack of research on race and inequity within our field. The purpose of this contribution to the issue is to substantiate that statement by…

Narrative inquiry, a phenomenological qualitative research methodology, examines individual human experiences--stories. Yet, researchers in Library and Information Science (LIS)--a human-focused profession--have infrequently used it. This article introduces narrative inquiry and provides a literature review of the few LIS studies using it. Next,…

Dr. Elfreda Chatman was a professor of library and information science at the University of North Carolina and Florida State University in the 1990s and early 2000s until her passing in 2002. Her research incorporated the disciplines of education, sociology, and LIS, covering topics at the nexus of these fields, from which she worked to develop a…

According to the American Library Association (ALA), organizational sustainability requires social equity, and serving diverse populations is mandated in the ALA Library Bill of Rights and its Policy Manual on Diversity. Preparation to serve diverse and marginalized populations is a key ingredient in creating the type of resilient leaders needed…

This study measured the relative academic impact of articles by LIS practitioners by analyzing library and information science articles published between 2005 and 2014. The results revealed that, although practitioners were not the main knowledge contributors, the academic impact of articles by practitioners was not significantly lower than that…

Political Information Literacy (PIL) is a vital and essential set of skills pre-dominantly discussed in Library and Information Studies disciplines. PIL is necessary to navigate the convoluted political information landscape, including the threats to democracy and the spreading of misinformation, disinformation, and fake news. Having PIL is…

The increased accessibility of technology is often employed as rationale for data extraction and surveillance. This paper examines critical perspectives on surveillance and educational technologies from Library and Information Science (LIS) literature, as well as those from disability studies that concern technology development more broadly. This…

This article addresses a framework for conceptualizing the preparation of leaders for the library and information science (LIS) profession. The framework has three components: curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment (CPA). Moreover, this framework is mirrored in examples from two LIS programs (one in Finland and one in the United States) and…

This essay analyzes the debate about neutrality in the library literature and identifies a fundamental moral dilemma that generates debate. It then advances an argument in favor of library neutrality based on Wayne Bivens-Tatum's intellectual history of library values in "Libraries and the Enlightenment" and the ideal of liberal…

According to LIS research, the U.S. library and information science field reflects more than 135 years of white racialized, monocultural pedagogy. Critical race theory helps us understand why Blacks remain on the margins of the LIS profession. Armed with critical racial knowledge, the Black Caucus of the American Library Association embarked on a…

Jeffrey Beall's blog listing of potential predatory journals and publishers, as well as his "Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-Access (OA) Publishers" are often looked at as tools to help researchers avoid publishing in predatory journals. While these "Criteria" have brought a greater awareness of OA predatory journals,…

Using the practice of embedded librarianship, a professor from the Graduate School of Education and the Education Librarian at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey collaborated to investigate its impact on the inherent transactional distance that exists in an online graduate course. Using Michael G. Moore's three relational distances…

The purpose of this research is to get university students' views on a promising library and information education model. This study was designed in the phenomenological pattern, which is one of the qualitative research methods. The study group of the research consists of 80 students studying at various universities in Kazakhstan in the 2021-2022…

This article continues the discussion of the experiences of disabled and neurodiverse Ph.D. students in Library and Information Science programs in American and Canadian universities, following up on the previous report that addressed their struggles during and in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. This article directs attention to…