ABOUT THE COLLECTION

The Critical Librarianship and Pedagogy Symposium brings "together the ongoing, but parallel discourse surrounding critical pedagogy among academic librarians, critical pedagogy scholars, and teaching faculty."

The symposium was held November 15-16, 2018 at The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ. The symposium was sponsored by The University of Arizona Libraries.

For more information about the symposium, visit the 2018 Critical Librarianship and Pedagogy Symposium website.

Recent Submissions

  • Disrupting Traditional Power Structures in Academic Libraries: Saying No, How to Do it, and Why it Matters

    Cassidy, Melanie; Versluis, Ali; Menzies, Erin; University of Guelph; University of Guelph; Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (The University of Arizona, 2018-11-16)
    Many academic libraries face austerity measures, personnel reductions, or compression; the weight of increased workloads results in diminished mental health, increased precarity, and an inability to engage in critical teaching and learning practices. These challenges sit at the intersection of resilience, precarity, and neoliberalism. Within academic libraries, resilience is endorsed as a means of negotiating precarious employment by encouraging non-permanent staff to continually prove their value to the institution or risk not being retained. The neoliberal perspective endorses an environment where individual culpability is assigned at the cost of challenging institutional practices. This session seeks to interrogate our position as library staff within this construct, both in terms of how we are influenced by this intersection and how we support it. Participants will share experiences, develop best practices, and establish a “resilience taxonomy” to provide support in resisting overwork, precarity, and other negative side-effects of the neoliberal academic library.
  • Resisting capitalist and neoliberal conceptions of information literacy

    Gregory, Lua; Higgins, Shana; University of Redlands (2018-11)
    This roundtable discussion explored the alignment of information literacy with neoliberal and capitalist conceptions of labor and corporate interests. The roundtable was accompanied by a 12 page zine which highlighted quotes from the history of librarianship in the U.S. and its connections with the rise of capitalism. Roundtable questions posed in the session, and a reference list for further reading, are also included in the zine. Email the authors for a print copy.
  • Neutrality is Polite Oppression: How critical librarianship and pedagogy principles counter neutral narratives and benefit the profession

    Ferretti, Jennifer A.; Maryland Institute College of Art (The University of Arizona, 2018-11-28)
    The debate about whether or not libraries and information professionals should be neutral seems perpetual. Championing neutrality over a critical perspective intentionally furthers the oppression of not only marginalized patron populations, but of marginalized colleagues. Rooted in principles of critical pedagogy and critical librarianship, this talk will illustrate how neutrality impacts the information professions and the communities we serve, as well as ways in which our expectations of our students to critically evaluate sources can be applied to our own work. We ask our students to think about what information is missing within a resource. It’s time we not only ask our profession the same (who isn’t at the table, what isn’t being discussed, etc.), but also that we take action to counter narratives of neutrality in our everyday practices, including in the classroom and our work spaces.
  • A Practice of Connection: Applying Relational Cultural Theory to Librarianship

    Arellano Douglas, Veronica; Chiu, Anastasia; Gadsby, Joanna; Kumbier, Alana; Nataraj, Lalitha; University of Houston; Stony Brook University; University of Maryland, Baltimore County; California State University, San Marcos; Hampshire College (The University of Arizona, 2018-11)
  • Peers, Guest Lecturers, or Babysitters: Constructions of Power in the Library Classroom

    Arellano Douglas, Veronica; Gadsby, Joanna; Evans, Sian; University of Houston; University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Maryland Institute College of Art (The University of Arizona, 2018-11)
  • Using Synchronous Posting to Locate Student Pain Points

    Binnie, Naomi; University of Michigan (The University of Arizona, 2018-11)
    The nature of undergraduate library instruction sessions means we often do not see the same students more than once. We rarely begin the class knowing students’ names, their majors, their confidence levels or how they’re feeling that day. I will discuss beginning my instruction sessions with a student activity featuring synchronous, anonymous posting in an effort to create a safe space and to empower students by centering their voices, particularly the voices of students from marginalized communities who may not feel safe in the typical classroom environment. I will discuss how I assess student needs, pain points, and confidence levels in the beginning of class rather than at the end.
  • Deconstruct to Reconstruct: Challenging Critical Librarianship

    Leung, Sofia; Pho, Annie; MIT; UCLA (The University of Arizona, 2018-11)
    The practice of critical librarianship is often viewed and approached in segmented pieces, due to the nature of specializations within the profession. Those who engage and practice critical librarianship often may focus on certain areas like pedagogy, archival theory, classification or categorization, and scholarly communication, among other topics. This presentation will deconstruct the core values of librarianship and rhetoric within critical librarianship in order to begin reconstructing and reimagining how libraries can explicitly center marginalized communities. We want to build a broader framework that explicitly draws the connections/relationships between critical pedagogy (how we teach), critical information literacy (what we teach), and the infrastructure, policies, and practices of the libraries within which we work. We will challenge western knowledge practices and engage participants in collectively developing a new framework of librarianship that will inform and shape our pedagogy.
  • Teaching CRAAP to Robots: Artificial Intelligence, False Binaries, and Implications for Information Literacy

    Seeber, Kevin; University of Colorado Denver (The University of Arizona, 2018-11)
    Researchers studying artificial intelligence and semantic computing are developing algorithms capable of processing large amounts of textual data and rendering judgment on its contents. Specifically, the field of sentiment analysis is focused on creating code that applies what programmers call “common sense” to evaluate whether writing is factual or opinionated, as well as how emotional the author was. This presentation will argue that these algorithms rely on false binaries, over-simplification, and poorly-constructed checklists, similar to the approach often used when discussing information literacy with first-year college students. Instead of employing this approach, this session will argue that librarians must recognize that human interpretation lies at the core of information literacy, and that we need to embrace that complexity rather than depend on algorithmic evaluation.
  • Practising Digital Pedagogy Librarianship: Building Critical and Queer Feminist Communities

    Patel, Kush; Cong-Huyen, Anne; University of Michigan (The University of Arizona, 2018-11-16)
    This workshop, led by the Digital Pedagogy Librarians at the University of Michigan Libraries, aims to address the nature and nurturing of digital pedagogy librarianship beyond its relationship to digital tools to ask: what roles do critical and queer feminist principles play in enriching our approaches to digital pedagogy and how might we constitute mutually transformative communities of practice around those principles?
  • Contested Sites of Critical Library Pedagogy

    Almeida, Nora; Beilin, Ian; New York City College of Technology, CUNY, Brooklyn, NY; Columbia University, New York, NY (The University of Arizona, 2018-11-16)
    In this presentation we will explore critical library pedagogy in relation to different physical places and dialogic spaces. Using the idea of the library as a “third space” as a point of departure, we will consider whether alternative spatial contexts or modes of analysis might enable new forms of critique that are embodied, culturally grounded, and creative.
  • Design Thinking in an Hour? Or, Design Thinking: A Cautionary Tale

    Arteaga, Roberto; Pacific Lutheran University (The University of Arizona, 2018-11-16)
    Design thinking (DT) is a methodology that has become popular across many sectors due to its iterability and flexibility. As its adoption spreads throughout higher education settings, DT is now starting to appear in library literature and conferences. As teaching librarians, we may be tempted to adapt popular methodologies in the hope of increasing the reach of our work, considering how undervalued and misunderstood our work can be, but we should also consider whether DT is a potentially harmful practice. By discussing DT, what it can do, and where it can be most useful, I will present a case for why librarians who teach need not engage in a practice that treats learning as something that needs a solution and appears to sideline students and their lived experiences. Those who practice critical librarianship would be better served by adopting a student-centered pedagogy that shifts power and agency to the students, while simultaneously educating others on the work they do, why they do it, and how it contributes to student learning.
  • Critical Approaches to Evaluating Student Privacy & 3rd Party Apps

    The University of Arizona, 2018-11-16
    This information literacy resource was created by participants and facilitators during a workshop titled "Student privacy & third-party apps : Examining a university’s Terms of Service" at CLAPS 2018. Through reading actual contracts between technology vendors and the University or Arizona, the group of academic librarians, library administrators, and faculty developers synthesized the steps to take and information to look for in these contracts to better understand how student and worker information is collected and used by third-party vendors.