Description

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How can librarianship be liberatory? How does librarianship help people to be free? How is library capacity and expertise used to increase freedom, justice, and community? This invigorating collected volume from Core unpacks these questions, and many others besides, to reveal the many ways that library workers and their institutions are applying skills, knowledge, abilities, professional ethics, and personal commitment to practice liberatory librarianship. These examples will serve as guideposts and inspiration for readers undertaking their own efforts. With a special emphasis on the voices of non-white practitioners, the themes and stories explored in this volume include

• histories of several liberatory efforts, such as the Digital Library of the Caribbean’s (dLOC) open access repository of Caribbean and circum-Caribbean resources, restorative justice at the UK's SOAS Library, and examples of unsiloing DEI work;
• the work of visionary, liberatory librarians such as Dr. Alma Jordan, Lillian Marrero, Rosa Quintero Mesa, and Judith Rogers;
• innovative programs such as those at Oakland Public Library and Stanford University’s KNOW System Racism Project;
• library instruction for college students with intellectual and developmental disabilities and a liberatory archival training program; and
• the radical and liberatory power of empathy in librarianship for imagining and enacting change.

About the Author

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Brian W. Keith, MLIS and MBA, is a professor and the dean of library services at Eastern Illinois University. Previously, he was associate dean and the university librarian at the University of Florida. Brian has envisioned and shaped libraries in terms of spaces, services, collections, and partnerships. He has an extensive record of professional accomplishment and national and international scholarship and service focusing on DEAIJ. He is a past recipient of the SirsiDynix—American Library Association & Allied Professional Association’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Promoting Salaries and Status for Library Workers, and he was an Association of Research Libraries Leadership Fellow.

Laurie Taylor, PhD, is the associate university librarian for collections and discovery at the University of Connecticut Library. She was previously the senior director for library technology and digital strategies at the University of Florida, and the operational lead and digital scholarship director of the Digital Library of the Caribbean. In 2018, Laurie was named Caribbean Information Professional of the Year by the Association of Caribbean University, Research and Institutional Libraries.

Shamin Renwick, MLIS, PhD, FCLIP, is a senior librarian II at the School of Education Library, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, and has served as director of library services at St. George’s University, Grenada. She has been a librarian for more than 36 years, 24 of them as an academic librarian. Renwick was awarded the ACURILEANA Star 2007 for research and publication and the ACURILEAN Medal for significant contributions to ACURIL (the Association of Caribbean University, Research and Institutional Libraries). In 2012, she was named an Outstanding Graduate of the 1980s of the Department of Library and Information Science, UWI Mona Campus.