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.