Author: Elizabeth Reilly

Libraries as Sanctuary Spaces

saunders2011
Essay by SLIS Asst. Professor Laura Saunders

Mayor Marty Walsh of Boston (home to Simmons College School of Library and Information Science), and Joe Curtatone of Somerville (my home town) have both reaffirmed their commitment to remain sanctuary cities despite two executive orders signed by President Donald Trump threatening to cut off federal funding to those cities.

In an open letter, Mayor Curtatone asserted “Our city-Somerville, Massachusetts-will not waver… Somerville will stand with you regardless of your race, creed, color, sex, nationality, legal status, religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation.” In this letter, Curtatone also acknowledged that Somerville stands to lose a lot in terms of loss of federal funds. Somerville receives about $6 million per year in federal funds, or about 3% of its annual budget. He pointed out that those funds go to support important services including the schools’ free and reduced lunch program, substance abuse programs, and homeland security services.

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Link Round-Up: January 23-27, 2017

Since ALA Midwinter 2017 just recently concluded, the links this Friday relate to ideas discussed at this year’s meeting in Atlanta. If, like me, you were unable to physically attend the meeting, I encourage you to look through all things tagged #alamw17 on Twitter to get a sense of the conversation. Reading through articles written post-ALA Midwinter, censorship and the resistance against it was a popular topic. Some of my thoughts on this topic were explored in last week’s blog post.

Next week, UNBOUND will feature a post by one of our favorite guest bloggers, Professor Laura Saunders!

  1. Library Journal’s Recap of ALA Midwinter – “Not Business as Usual”
  2. OIF Condemns Government Agency Censorship
  3. One attendee’s reflections on how ALA 2017 “was different than others”
  4. “Library Service in a World That’s Getting Closer”
  5. “Less Normative Collections”

Thoughts on Access & Information

Hello and welcome back to UNBOUND! I went on a short hiatus because I was working on the (now finished!) Library Test Kitchen video, which was mentioned in my previous blog post. Plus, I went on winter break for a few weeks.

This week of transition, and especially today, are historically significant for many reasons. I will not go into those reasons as that is not the purpose of this blog. However, no matter how, or if, you voted in the 2016 election, no one can deny that there are bound to be some quite drastic and sweeping changes with the new Trump administration. Among these impending changes are issues that hit close to home for many members of the library and information science community, such as education, privacy, and access to information.  One of these changes has already happened; any mention of “global warming” or “climate change” has been removed from the White House website.  Again, regardless of personal thoughts on this issue, it is exactly that, an issue. What I mean is that climate change (or the lack thereof) is an issue with multiple arguments, theories, and proposed solutions. To remove this information from the public domain is scary and in direct violation of the American Library Association’s (ALA) Core Values of Librarianship which include social responsibility, intellectual freedom, and access.

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What MAKES A Library?, Issue No. 1 – Design Thinking

Design Thinking and Doing Design, part 1

Diagram of design thinking. Orange and white.

Design Thinking. Backward Design. Accessibility. SAMR. Universal Design for Learning (UDL). These days, in discussions of the future of librarianship, pedagogy or education in general, there are so many terms and acronyms thrown around but what do they all mean? Many of these terms are borrowed from engineering, urban planning, and design, to name a few. Are people in the library and information sciences field using them properly? You also may read those terms and think, “These don’t belong together!” I’m here to make the claim that they do and that they should be studied together in order to be the most successful. “What MAKES a Library” is a series of articles for UNBOUND in which I will define these terms and explore how these concepts are being put into action in libraries while showing where the intersections of these ideas can be ways to utilize them in library spaces. This article’s focus is on design thinking.

Before I go any further, allow me to introduce myself as the 2016-2017 Dean’s Fellow for SLIS Initiatives and your resident UNBOUND blogger. Just this fall, I began my quest to earn my Dual Degree Masters in Archives/History aka goodbye social life, hello manuscripts. I fulfill many librarian stereotypes; for example, I have a cat (named Gabriel, Gabe for short), I went to an all women’s college (Anassa Kata Bryn Mawr), I’m listening to classical music as I write this and I absolutely love to read. When you hear the word, “librarian”, I’m willing to bet (unless you are a past or current MLIS student) that an image of an old, crotchety grey-haired lady with a tight bun and cat-eyed glasses whisper-yelling “Shhhh!” comes to mind.
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Link Round-Up: October 3-7, 2016

Happy October! Check out some of this week’s trending news and topics in the world of library and information science…

Tennessee: Nashville Public Library Launches BoomBox, New Service Streams Music by Local Artists

via The Tennesseean (some really great local music available for free!)

Videos: Quick Visits to Tech Labs Inside the Marriott Library (U. of Utah) and Bizzell Memorial Library (U. of Oklahoma)

via InfoDocket

Library and Archives Canada to offer its public services from a new service point in Vancouver

via Library and Archives Canada News

IMLS and COSLA Working Together to Study Public Library Data Collection in U.S.

via IMLS