RCL Blog

The following reflection on a museum exhibit was initially written for the course LIS 717: History on Display: Museums, Exhibitions, and Public History. Our assignment was to visit a free museum of our choosing in the Chicago area and write about a singular exhibit. The instructions emphasized analyzing the aesthetic choices of the display, including the lighting, paint colors, case materials, use of glass, interactivity, chronology, relationship of the exhibit to the visitor's body, and more. These guiding concepts brought the unique attributes of this exhibit into a sharper focus.

The “Contemporary Casta Portraiture: Nuestra ‘Calidad’” exhibit at the National Museum of Mexican Art features Delilah Montoya's photography, presenting the multicultural lives on the Mexican borderlands and Southwest United States ("Contemporary Casta"). This project is a commentary on 18th-century Casta paintings. These works typically stood as a series of sixteen paintings that promote the colonial framework of racial hierarchy by asserting that Spanish blood was gradually degraded through mixed-race families with Indian and African ancestry (Leibsohn, Mundy). Montoya created a series of sixteen candid photos and utilized 21st-century genetic DNA tests to track the subjects' ancestry as far as 10,000 years back. Her work demonstrates that race and culture are socially constructed and not an exact science or natural order. 

The entry of the exhibit presents a series of five reproduced casta paintings ranging from a Spanish couple and their child portrayed with dignity to more disruptive portraits of mixed-race families. These paintings are placed against a bright orange wall with painted frames. The viewer is met with the symbol of sophistication that turns out to be two-dimensional. Denying these paintings the authority of a traditional frame and keeping them out of glass disrupts the absolutism the paintings imply. To the left of these paintings is black text on a beige section of the wall explaining the conceit of the exhibition and more information on the artist.

Montoya's photos are placed on the room's beige walls, allowing the viewer to walk through in a circle to view all the pieces. They are framed in modern, simplistic wood box frames with a wood panel underneath. This section holds a black-and-white map with a test tube of sand on either side. Each tube is labeled with a familial designation, as the sand symbolizes the individual’s ancestry. The map establishes the regions the family is from and the casta to which the family would be assigned. 

In the above photo (click here for the photo, map, and accompanying audio), the left sand represents the mother's brother while the right represents the father. In the middle of the exhibit, a glass box stood with a book on casta paintings and the labeled colors of sand. In this example, the mother’s brother is represented in orange sand indicating Native American ancestry, and the father is represented in white sand, indicating northern European ancestry. The other options for sand were Mediterranean, southwest Asian, southwest Asian, northeast Asian, south African, and Sub-Saharan. 

        The photos are not in order of caste, which disrupts the idea of progressive ‘dilution’ of Spanish blood. As the participants were from the same regions of Texas and New Mexico, this created a sense of neighborhood and integrated community in a way the original Casta paintings rejected. While this exhibit utilizes test tubes, maps, and Casta classifications to demonstrate scientific analysis of its subjects, the placing of the photos works to reinforce that the artist intends to present each family with equal respect and humanity. 

This project's source material is based on treating non-Spanish people as lesser objects rather than embodied subjects. While approaching the same form through different intentions, Montoya and the exhibit curators had to create an intentional presentation that combated the original point of view. The artists creating Casta paintings had immense power and control, both politically and in the act of creation since they were painters rather than photographers. Montoya’s choice to photograph candid scenes and the supplemental text box that explains that these scenes were part of one-hour sessions are both powerful objections to the impersonal colonial perspective. 

As visitors walk around the room, they can scan QR codes on the photos that link to “family monologues” where the subjects discuss their family history and the photo’s context, as well as another image of the map that illustrates migration. The audio component of this project adds significant context to the images and sand representations. Participants told personal anecdotes, family stories, tragedies, and their journeys to understanding where their families came from. The photos feel intimate and current, while the maps and test tubes feel more distant and historical. Hearing directly from these sources is a necessary bridge that shows the personal narratives the families have regarding their geographic origins. (Click here for the photo, map, and audio of the above image).

       Test tubes denote a sterile, scientific process while sand and wood connect the project to the earth. The colors used for each region somewhat correlate with the skin tones of the ethnic groups represented. The genealogical assessment combined with unposed scenes of domestic lives brings subjectivity to the genre of casta imagery. Montoya and her interviewees show how each unique family has a long history impacted by political forces that changed over time.

Another orange wall section in the center of the room, where the casta paintings were displayed, shows scientific art of reptiles and flowers next to text explaining that the Spanish systematized ethnographic hierarchy in the context of similar ideas about race rampant in the Enlightenment Era. Another text box explains DNA tracing and the intention behind pursuing it for the project. These text portions are kept brief and include both English and Spanish translations, as was consistent throughout the museum. This informational center of the space didn’t distract from the circular experience of walking from photo to photo but still made context a priority. 

The wall with the exit door is blank other than a short profile on the artist, which features a photo of her next to black text on a grey rectangle, and a large quote from her placed above in bold black text. The quote states that the exhibit is an “investigation of culture and biological forms of ‘hybridity’” intended to show viewers the “resonance of colonialism as a substructure of our contemporary society that was constructed by an imposition of sovereignty.” This quote is also placed in Spanish above a section of the portraits in the same font and size. Looking up to see these quotes high on the walls created a sense that the artist was overlooking the exhibit.

           This room is one of the first doors a visitor could walk through when entering the museum. It is next to the large gift store, which led me to visit it right before leaving. Its light and neutral walls differ from the rest of the museum, which uses the orange featured on one wall of this exhibit heavily throughout other rooms, as well as blue, pink, and yellow. The wall color and bright white lighting complement the unadorned photography in creating a sense of authenticity. The space is smaller than other rooms and not connected to any other exhibit. This allowed the work to excel in its self-contained 16-part scale. 

Works Cited:

“Contemporary Casta Portraiture:  Nuestra ‘Calidad.’” National Museum of Mexican Art, Pilsen, Chicago. Accessed 2024. https://nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org/events/contemporary-casta-portraiture.

Leibsohn, Dana, and Barbara E. Mundy. “Casta Painting.” VistasGallery, 2015. https://vistasgallery.ace.fordham.edu/items/show/1659.

Montoya, Delilah. “Contemporary Casta Portraiture: Nuestra Calidad.” Contemporary Casta portraiture: Nuestra calidad. Accessed 2024. http://www.delilahmontoya.com/ContempCasta/. 

If you love libraries and all things archival, then visiting Newberry Library in downtown Chicago should be at the top of your bucket list.

This semester, a group from Dominican University, including two faculty members and fifteen students ranging from undergraduate to Ph.D., took a field trip to Newberry Library. The outing was hosted by two of Dominican’s student organizations: the Information Science Student Association (ISSA) and Society for Archivist of America Dominican University Chapter (SAADUC).

This intimate sheaf of librarians enjoyed a private viewing of rare books, photographs, and postcards held at Newberry. Dominican alum Anula Lopez, the Ayer Librarian and Assistant Curator of American Indian and Indigenous Studies, provided access and information for these special collection items. 

Into the Vault

In one of the Newberry's reading rooms, carefully selected items were set on tables for perusing. The selected old books were displayed lovingly on soft blue book supports, with gently weighted “book snakes” holding them open. Gloves were provided for students wanting to leaf through the ancient tomes, some of which dated back to the 17th century.

Not surprisingly, some of the items had fascinating tales to tell. One such item was Mi Ultimo Pensamiento, a poem written by Filipino propagandist and writer José Rizal. During his family's last visit before his execution by firing squad, Rizal dropped hints that some of his writings were hidden in an alcohol stove and in his shoes. The Spanish colonial government executed Rizal for his work, which was considered critical to the Philippine Independance movement.

A brighter anecdote came from the background of an anonymously written one-act play thought to be written by an Indigenous author, which was donated to Newberry Library in 2018. Together with Victorino Torres Nava, a native Nahuatl speaker and linguist, Anula translated the short comedic and satirical play, which is sometimes called The Old Lady and Her Grandson. The plot features a grandmother who strictly forbids her grandson to eat honey, which Lopez said her study of the Nahuatl language helped discover was likely an alcoholic drink. Further study revealed the matriarch in the play to be pregnant!

Diversity Issues in Librarianship

Librarians go through great lengths to meet the diverse needs of their learning community. “Decolonization” may be a bit of a buzzword in academia, but it is nonetheless an extremely important concept. Institutions such as the Newberry Library that preserve cultural heritages play a crucial role in allowing historically marginalized groups to have their stories told accurately and respectfully. 

When a student asked where she currently sees decolonization efforts in the field of librarianship, Anula answered, “It depends what you mean by ‘decolonize.’ “ For example, it is not enough for institutions preserving Indigenous culture to have an Indigenous member on staff, because those staff members will need support as well. Anula explained she has adopted the term ”internationalist," which recognizes the universal utility in preserving cultural property.

It is not always clear how to respect cultural patrimony, Anula explained. The Newberry Library gives first right of refusal of donated artifacts belonging Native American people, but items intended for return to rightful owners may instead end up in a museum or government institution. While some headway was made during COVID in updating cultural protocols, there is still more work to be done.

Indigenous Chicago

After the meeting room, the group saw The Newberry's current main exhibit in the Trienens Gallery, Indigenous Chicago. For several years, Anula worked on the project gathering maps, photographs, treaty documents, and other historical records. The exhibit pronounces the powerful message, “Chicago has always been a native place.”

“Home to the Potawatomi, Odawa, Ojibwe, Peoria, Kaskaskia, Myaamia, Wea, Sauk, Meskwaki, and Ho-Chunk peoples,” reads the exhibit's website, "the place we now call Chicago has long been a historic crossroads for many Indigenous people and remains home to an extensive urban Native community." The exhibit combines works from current Native artists with items from the Newberry's extensive Indigenous collection.

Indigenous Chicago includes eye-catching and informative labels covering the history of treaties, the importance of terminology, and activism and resistance. Another placard tells the history of important Native organizations such as The Indian Council Fire. Meticulously curated, the displays work together to ask the audience: "How does our understanding of Chicago change when seen through Native perspectives?

Thinking of making your way to the The Newberry soon? While open to the public, The Newberry is not part of the Chicago Public Library system. Members of the public can apply for a Newberry reader's card, which they can use to browse the Newberry's non-circulating collections. Readers can use the online catalog, finding aids, and research guides to browse the library's many offerings. Just like at our Crown Library, readers can use the “Ask a Librarian” feature to for direct research help. 

The Rebecca Crown Library is taking an active role in celebrating el Día de los Muertos on campus. Check out our upcoming events and resources:

• In collaboration with the Organization of Latin American Students, the library is hosting a celebration of the traditional holiday of "Día de los Muertos", Day of the Dead. The Calaveritas & Velitas event will have 3-d printed skull painting, champurrado, face painting and a photo booth.

   

• The Rebecca Crown Library is also one of the locations of University Ministry's ofrendas which will be highlighted in the Día de los Muertos Celebration Event. University Ministry welcome you to drop-off photos of your deceased loved ones and friends at the University Ministry Center. They will place all photos on our ofrendas. If you would like for your photos to be returned once our celebration have concluded, please make sure to write your name and email address somewhere behind the photo.

• If you want to learn more about Día de los Muertos, The Rebecca Crown Library has also curated resource guides both in Spanish and in English. These guides contain information and history about Día de los Muertos, information about ofrendas (alters), and also has fun videos and recopies for making your own sugar skulls!

   

•  We also want to highlight our ever growing Spanish Language Collection. You can also request that we add new materials if there is a book you are dying to read.

Isn’t writing great? The written word is an excellent way to organize thoughts, express creativity, and discover passions. Whenever I have been disciplined enough to pick up a pen – or keyboard – and produce a written self-expression, it has nearly always paid wonderful dividends.

The blog staff at Rebecca Crown Library is looking for submissions for our blog, and that means you. Are you taking a class you’re excited about and want to gush? Did you visit a really cool library recently and want to nerd out about it? If you are a graduate student in the Library and Information Science program or an undergraduate student working at the library, we want to know what’s cooking in that noodle of yours.

Below are just a few terrific reasons why you should contribute to the RCL blog.

Express Your Passion

Isn’t it the worst when you turn in an excellent paper that only your professor reads? A thoughtful discussion post, short paper, or class project description could make an excellent blog post. Your passion for learning is contagious so let your little light shine.

Learning can happen in sporadic ways. Perhaps a tangential topic comes up in class that you’d like a platform to explore further (recently for me, it has been prison librarianship). The RCL blog can be an excellent platform to channel that interest and share it with others. 

For example, a decade ago, out of pure passion I began blogging about Newbery Award winning children’s books. Fast forward to the present when I am in the Youth Literature graduate program here at Dominican. 

Reset, Reflect, Rekindle

Feeling a mid-semester motivational slump? Creativity is a powerful balm for your brain. Writing about a library-related topic you care about may be exactly the endorphins your brain craves. For integrating creativity with learning, I also highly recommend attending a workshop in our Innovation Lab and/or familiarizing yourself with our Recording Studio. But I digress!

Reflecting on our experiences are essential for growth. Are you graduating at the end of the semester and want to reflect on your academic journey thus far? Are you thinking about declaring or changing your major? There have been some excellent reflection posts on professional development experiences such as internships and conferences on the RCL blog. This could be a fantastic platform to share your insights. 

Blogging can be a safe, structured way to pursue interests. Last semester, writing for the RCL blog was the catalyst I needed to research libraries in Iceland. Researching for the post allowed me to gather information I needed to rekindle my love for traveling. And I’m glad I did! The inter-continental adventure changed my life.

Connect with your Community

There are many activities on campus to enrich your mind and connect you with community. This week I attended two events: The Journey of a Reconnection Taino, led by Dr. Lizette Rivera in celebration of Indigenous Peoples Day, and Blackened Bodies at the Hands of White America, a lecture by Dr. Safiyyah Kai El-Amin. Attending a campus event and writing a post not only allows us to reflect on what we’ve learned, but connects us with the stories and wisdom of others in our learning community. 

Writing is an important expression and self-affirmation of values, but it also shows one cares about the intellectual and creative needs of their learning community. That internship you had last summer? That class you took that exceeded your expectations? That library conference you attended? Let your community know about these experiences and become part of an informal mentoring process that enriches yourself and others.

Create Resume material

A blog piece byline shows employers your capability to write comprehensively on a topic. Especially if you are interviewing for a library position, hiring managers may be impressed you took the time and effort to write about a topic relevant to the library field. 

Perhaps you’d like to practice a professional development skill, such as interviewing. Writing a blog piece after interviewing a professor, librarian or educator is a great way to learn from their experiences and develop this useful skill. Who knows, a strategic interview could lead to future collaboration or provide you with useful connections.

As you can see, there are many reasons to write for the RCL blog. Your learning community is waiting for your insights – so let it rip. Don’t let those brilliant insights fade forever in tonight’s dreams. 

For information on submission: Want to Write for the RCL Blog?

“Supercrips” is a term and stereotype that refers to someone who overcomes their disability in a way that is seen as inspiring under the public eye. This person is viewed as a heroic figure and an inspiration for overcoming their “impairment” against all odds. The action of overcoming their “impairment” is often viewed as the person outright rejecting their disability or the complete erasure of the disability through the ownership of superpowers.. 

 Being able to pass important milestones and achievements are thought of as extremely unlikely for those with disabilities. And when they are successful in life, it is typically explained away as this person having an unnatural superhuman strength or ability rather than just being an accomplished human being. There is a belief that people with disabilities must possess some magical powers or an inordinate amount of strength to live a similar life to able-bodied people. Much of this stems from the vast majority of society not being able to imagine living a life that differs from them, and the result of this is that very little is done to cater or adhere to the struggles that others may face when trying to find space and acceptance within societal structures that have not been built with them in mind. Disabilities are conditions that the dominant society has not prepared for and does not want to see. Because of this, social spaces and communities do not have the capacity to include people with disabilities. This lack of thought or care is typically a side effect of the larger issues surrounding the stereotype of “supercrip”. One that leads to the habit of a large portion of our society being overlooked and undermined. The term “supercrip”, serves as a distraction by putting the responsibility of being accepted within dominant society on disabled people rather than the actual societal structures that prevent them from being included due to the lack of accessibility rather than ability..  

Furthermore the belief in this stereotype, subconsciously hints at the idea that disabled people inherently do not belong in these spaces because they themselves cannot access it. These thoughts place blame on those with disabilities and make it their responsibility to be included. Disabilities become something that has to be overcome, as though the disability is the barrier rather than the man-made obstacle or infrastructure that have physically designed these acts of exclusion for this community. What is worse is that stereotypes like “supercrip” create a sentiment that when disabled people do overcome the barriers, this is viewed as an unnatural feat that would take superhuman strength.  

The supercrips stereotype is really a masquerade for ableism, as explained by English professor, disability rights advocate, and author Tobin Siebers. Siebers discusses how one's disability is typically exaggerated for the purpose of affirming able-bodiedness – only through extraordinary powers, can the disabled person validate themselves according to abled normativity and standards. Societal structures and their lack of inclusionary practices are not questioned or examined, instead disabled people are viewed as being incapable of existing in the same spaces as able-bodied people, and if they do happen to succeed, their success is infantilized, commodified, and at some points completely erased. This is why it has been extremely important and valuable for the disabled community to reclaim the term by redefining what the word crip means to them. The term “crip” can be all encompassing for those with invisible and visible disabilities as well as mental illnesses, and neurodivergence. This word has even found its way into academia through the study of “crip theory”, which studies how dominant and marginalized bodies, as well as sexual identities are understood in society and how to reimagine that understanding for those facing discrimination. While such words are still being explored by those with disabilities, it is important to remember that this is not a universally accepted term and should NEVER be used by those outside of this community amongst other such terminology.   

When disabled people are not viewed as a “supercrip”, they tend to become a lesson for those who exist outside of the community, rather than an individual. They become a caricature of themselves for able-bodied people to reflect upon so they can say,  “See here look, if “THEY” can do it, why can’t you?” Or “imagine if that was you, be thankful that it isn’t and live life accordingly”. These beliefs put disabled people on a pedestal that leaves very little room for them to be multifaceted autonomous individuals. Instead they are given a martyr narrative for able-bodied people to use for their own benefit. A consequence of not being able to fulfill this role or being too successful “despite” their disability is that many people begin to believe that there never was a disability in the first place 

There is a well documented pattern of people who exist outside of this community believing that people who are disabled can’t exist in society without serving the purpose of being a lesson for able bodied people to reflect upon. There is an overwhelming belief that disabled people are living a life that is less than and that they are incapable of having a fulfilling life because it does not fit into societal standards. It can go so far as having any accomplishments made by disabled people downplayed, viewed as a conspiracy, or completely denied. These harmful thoughts continue to be recycled each generation and the biggest resurgence of it exists in gen Z’s social media platform TikTok, with the trending denial of Helen Keller’s existence. This can also be seen in the overwhelming amount of videos claiming that Stevie Wonder is not really blind with “evidence” of him reacting in ways that people believe a blind person is incapable of. These beliefs then feed into the idea that disabled people are not autonomous, nor do they have the right to be because they are viewed as incapable of being so. While this concept is not new, we must ask ourselves why it is such a struggle to see disabled people as capable in their own rights, as well as why society views changing our methods as a downgrade in our standards. 

While there are a multitude of reasons for why these ideologies and politics exist, our job as a library is to ensure that we are actively playing the role of an ally.  An ally, as defined by Dictionary.com, is “the status or role of a person who advocates and actively works for the inclusion of a marginalized or politicized group in all areas of society, not as a member of that group but in solidarity with its struggle and point of view and under its leadership.” The role of ally is one of extreme importance to the Rebecca Crown Library. Because of this, for June we will be working to celebrate disability pride month and its theme “we want a life like yours” through our in displays that can be seen in person or online through our digital collection. This theme encompasses the idea that people with disabilities are deserving of experience that they are too often denied. Please visit the Rebecca Crown Library to celebrate their stories. 

Work Cited

Bypassing the supercrip trope in documentary representations of blind visual artists | Disability Studies Quarterly. (n.d.). https://dsq-sds.org/index.php/dsq/article/view/6485/5092#:~:text=Tobin%20Siebers%20explains%20that%20the,to%20abled%20normativity%20(111). 

Eisenmenger, A. (2022, October 3). Ableism 101. Access Living. https://www.accessliving.org/newsroom/blog/ableism-101/ 

Lollino, S. (2022, September 3). I AM NOT YOUR SUPERCRIP - facing disability. Facing Disability. https://facingdisability.com/blog/i-am-not-your-supercrip 

Remembering Tobin Siebers, English professor, disability studies advocate |  The University Record. (n.d.). https://record.umich.edu/articles/tobin-siebers-english-professor-and-disability-studies-advocate-dies/

Greetings from Tech Services! I was lucky enough to work as an intern in the Technical Services department of Rebecca Crown Library for six months this year. And what a rewarding six months it was. Although internships are usually one year (July-June) mine was just a little bit expedited and we packed a lot in. My main responsibilities as an intern were to update displays, catalog books, weed the collection, help with events and do the bidding of the tech services overlords.  

I also had a lot of professional development opportunities. I joined the event planning committee and the social media team and got real experience with the inner workings of the library. I am so grateful for these experiences and will use them to guide my degree and career. 

One of my responsibilities was to create a monthly rotating display for the Contemplation Space. This was one of my favorite aspects of this internship. Every month I had the opportunity to scour the catalog for relevant titles to put on the shelves for a cohesive display. It was a great way to get to know the collection and then get those books on a shelf where patrons will see them. I really enjoyed making my displays as diverse and revolutionary as possible. I am particularly proud of my displays for Arab-American Heritage, Women’s History month, and Pride month. It was important for me to show students that our collection is meant to represent them, and this monthly themed display gave me that opportunity. I also learned that I really like making displays and will be taking that knowledge with me long past this internship and into future positions.

This post continues upon a previous blog post about the May 2024 LOEX conference in Naperville, IL. This conference focuses on instruction librarianship in colleges and universities. The theme for this year was “Branching Out: Growing and Adapting your Information Literacy Practice.” The majority of the presentation slides are now available on the LOEX website and linked in this and the previous post. 

On Saturday I started with Cultivating an Inclusive Garden: DEI Engagement and Outreach on Display in Academic Libraries (slides) by Alex Boris, the Commons Librarian from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Amanda Breu, the Head of Access Services & Media Librarian from the University of St. Cloud State University, and Molly Olney-Zine, Instruction and Outreach Librarian at the University of Delaware.

This presentation focused on the potential of book/media displays to progress diversity, equity, and inclusion. They discussed the ability of displays to improve circulation rate, reduce information overwhelm, promote inclusion, cultivate partnerships, and mimic successful approaches popular among booksellers. 

Breu described their work updating multiple displays around their libraries monthly. They used the Alma collections feature to create digital book displays and provided QR codes visible on the physical display to route patrons to the online catalog. The most popular displays at Breu’s library were “Banned Books, Horror/Thrillers, and Graphic Novels.” 

Olney-Zine created a partnership with Student Diversity and Inclusion to create student-led displays. This expanded into more partnerships with other student groups and to online displays and exhibits. The library featured displays for Women’s History Month, Asian Pacific Islander and Desi American Heritage Month, and Autism Inclusion. Part of their assessment of success was whiteboard engagement, as they placed a whiteboard near the display for students to give comments, suggestions, and responses to prompts. 

Boris conducted a diversity audit of her library’s collection and found it lacking significantly in culturally diverse, inclusive, and intersectional books. Slowly, she made intentional purchases that made the production of inclusive displays easier. She stressed the importance of creativity and decor in drawing student’s eyes to the books. Her team produced reader advisory brochures to accompany the displays that gave recommendations in different genres, which all included a wide range of perspectives, as well as bookmarks with the QR code to request acquisitions. 

Next, I attended Generative AI: Teaching Students the Applications, Risks, Best Practices, and Alternatives (slides) by Tracy Coyne, the Distance Learning and Professional Studies Librarian, at Northwestern University.

Coyne has facilitated student workshops on understanding and responsibly utilizing GAI.  She utilized Ethan Mollick’s definition of generative AI as  “a word completion tool,” that predicts “what the next word in a sentence should be so it can write a paragraph for you, what an image should look like based on a prompt.” She outlined that students may use GAI to write emails, generate ideas, get an overview of a topic, translate text, and seek improvements to their writing. She mentioned Elicit, Consensus, and Research Rabbit as rising tools in generative AI research.

She described the positives of GAI, including “natural language prompts, remembers whole conversations, brainstorming, generates keywords” and other helpful features that speed up repetitive tasks, arrangement, and starting points for writing. The negatives and limitations are troubling, including “incorrect answers (“hallucinations”), false citations, outdated content, plagiarism and copyright infringement, labor, privacy” and a lack of critical thinking and the presence of human biases. The effects of biases create notoriously racist, sexist, and prejudiced outcomes. Coyne showcased the AI-generated response to “toys in Iraq” as photos of toy soldiers with guns, as featured in the Washington Post. 

Her lessons suggested the use of the C.L.E.A.R method to write prompts, which stands for Concise, Logical, Explicit, Adaptive, and Reflective. Students were taught to evaluate information for authority, purpose, accuracy, and bias. The lessons also worked to better familiarize students with the library resources to show them how their databases can lead them to more accurate information with ease. She suggested using GAI to generate boolean searches that are then used in library searching. 

I then attended Seeding Success: Growing Information Literacy through Curriculum Integration by Scott Schumate, Coordinator of Resource Management and Digital Services, and Jenny Harris, Assessment and Information Literacy Librarian, both from Austin Peay State University.

These librarians are embarking on two separate credit-bearing library courses: LIBR 2001: Empowering Information Seekers in the Digital Age and LIBR 2400: Ethical and Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Like many librarians throughout the conference, they reiterated the difficulties and limitations of “one-shot” library instruction. As teachers, the librarians can’t create ongoing relationships with the students in the same way that they are able to in semester-long classes. This allows them the privilege of memory regarding where the student’s understanding is and where it can progress to. 

One of the activities practiced in Schmate’s class stood out to me as an especially useful tool in comprehending GAI. The students were all given a paper that was written by ChatGPT and told to grade it. Reversing the classroom in this way puts students in the position to think critically about the quality of a generated essay. It also prompted the students to conduct the research themselves to find the missing sources for any claims made in the essay. 

This experience was enriching and inspiring. I look forward to creating my own research as I progress in my career. The academic library field is in an interesting transition period, particularly regarding artificial intelligence. As the field adjusts to the changes in how the scholarly community relates to information systems, it is inspiring to see so many passionate and talented librarians working to help students reach their fullest potential.

The month of June, otherwise known as Pride Month, is a time for us to celebrate the accomplishments, beauty, strength, and resilience of the LGBTQ community. Every year a different theme is taken on to help acknowledge all the work this community has done, with this year's theme being “Reflect. Empower. Unite”. Oftentimes as librarians, we like to reflect upon the work we have done as an institution for society by asking, “What positive impact has the library had on queer people?”. All in all, it can be said that the library provides a safe space, offers important materials, resources, and representation, hosts queer-based events, and more. Keeping all of this in mind, I find the library's ability to organize and build community to be one of its greatest strengths in regards to supporting LGBTQ people and materials. The best example of this is in the creation of “The Task Force on Gay Liberation.”

The Task Force on Gay Liberation was founded in the 1970s and is recognized for being one of the very first professional organizations in the U.S that was formally organized to protect the rights and promote awareness of gay and lesbian people. The creation of this group is credited to Janet Cooper and Israel Fisherman after meeting in 1970 at the ALA Conference in Detroit at the Social Responsibilities Round Table Session. During this meeting they found themselves looking for more representation and support for the gay community, which eventually turned into them becoming that source of support. As the organization grew their goals expanded to include the creation of bibliographies, revision of library classification schemes and subject headings, building and improving access to collections, and fighting job discrimination. Alongside this, the group continued to evolve by extending their protection and promotion of gay liberation to those who are Bisexual and Trans as well.

Iconic political figures such as Barbara Gittings, who was the second coordinator of the Gay Liberation Task Force in 1972, worked alongside Frank Kameny to contribute to the elimination of homosexuality as a mental disorder from the DSM in 1972. This in turn influenced the cataloging and classification practices for gay subjects and allowed for more nuanced narratives and perspectives to be held within the library. Gittings is also known for compiling the first Gay Bibliography, a list of gay-positive books and information resources. While her intentions were primarily to improve patron access to gay information and materials that have a positive view on homosexuality, it had a long-lasting impact on cataloging overall. The impact the Task Force had on librarianship only continued through Sanford Berman’s guidance in advising them to revise gay and lesbian subject headings and classifications. The actions that the Task Force took after this advice was given led to new ground being broken as a movement to democratize subject cataloging practices began and continues to influence present-day cataloging practices.

Today, The Task Force on Gay Liberation is now known as, the Rainbow Round Table (RRT). They are formally considered to be a part of the American Library Association and are fully committed to serving the information needs of the LGBTQIA+ professional library community, as well as the LGBTQIA+ information and access needs of individuals at large. They are dedicated to encouraging and supporting free and necessary access to all information, as reflected by the missions of the American Library Association.  In addition to this, they provide awards, grants, and scholarships to those who create and provide aid in the development of queer works, studies, programs, initiatives, and so on that support the needs of the LGBTQ community. They are also known for hosting the Stonewall Books Awards which honors books of exceptional merit in the covering of LGBTQIA+ experiences.

During this month, it is important to remember that it is the people and the community we build around us that truly brings about the change we need. Acceptance is not easily won, and we must continue to actively fight for the rights of all people regardless of their sexual orientation, gender expression, personal identity, and otherwise. Alongside this, it is of equal importance to celebrate the wins of the LGBTQ community, which is why I am happy to say that for the first time ever, the Rebecca Crown Library is proudly displaying a wide range of Pride flags to celebrate the month of July.

Work Cited

American Library Association. (n.d.). Rainbow Round Table (RRT). https://www.ala.org/rrt

Brewer, S. (2018, June 5). Out of the closet & onto the shelves: Librarians and the oldest gay professional organization in the U.S. – American Library Association Archives – U of I Library. https://www.library.illinois.edu/ala/2018/06/05/out-of-the-closet-onto-the-shelves/ 

The fight for positive and accurate LGBT information in Librarie. (n.d.). https://about.proquest.com/en/blog/2016/The-Fight-for-Positive-and-Accurate-LGBT-Information-in-Libraries/

Google's AI Overviews as a Teaching Tool

A new feature of Google search presents opportunities for information literacy instructors.

Google's recent decision to begin including AI Overviews at the top of their search results presents library instructors with a strong metaliteracy teaching tool. These overviews pull information from a variety of sources and present the user with an artificial intelligence powered overview of the topic or query. As of 5/30/24, this appears above all other search results. Librarians will be relieved to know that the cited information is linked under the overview - and the user has the ability to "check the source" if they are so inclined. Google's Search executive Liz Reid recently said this is all about letting "Google ... do the Googling for you."

I am certainly not the first to wonder if that might significantly reduce traffic - add revenue - for websites and content creators whose work is populating the overviews, and there have been numerous embarrassing examples of these AI Overviews simply getting it wrong. I encourage you to search for "Google AI Overview Fails" on your social media platform of choice for some funny - and some disturbing - examples. Leaving these questions aside for a moment, Google's AI Overview also presents those teaching information literacy with a powerful teaching tool:

• These overviews open conversations about the overlap between information literacy and emerging AI technologies and platforms.
• Because these overviews draw on such a variety of sources, they are inroads to talking about intellectual property and the ethical use of other's work.
• They give librarians a concrete way to discuss AI - something that many academic libraries are stepping up and tasking themselves with. 
• They give us ways to help library users better understand how and why they are seeing what they see online.
• Those interested in critical librarianship can discuss the issues related to add-revenue loss for content creators, the ethics of encouraging users to trust a model that hallucinates, or even the environmental impact that this will have.
• These overviews can also be seen as powerful research tools - and something worth discussing with increasingly busy students who can should be empowered to use them ethically and efficiently.

I hope that it is obvious that there are many ways that these AI overviews can be incorporated into a lesson about how information lives, and how it is created online. I can see this connecting to the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy and seems to overlap easily with several of the threshold concepts academic librarians are encouraged to address in our work with students. I will elaborate on this in future posts, but for now I want to highlight a specific activity you can use to start asking students these questions.

Assumed Intent and Google Search: Beyond Confirmation Bias

Present students with the following images, or generate ones more appropriate to the course content.

Ask students to briefly jot down, 'What do you notice about the two images below?'

What we are seeing here is the assumed intent of the Google search algorithm. The keywords we use actually do matter(!) and will change the results that we are presented with. Google is designed to present users with results that answer our question - not provide the most accurate or most authoritative information. Google assumes to know what we want based on how we ask. This is not necessarily a good or bad thing, and in fact is a great opportunity to teach students how to be better internet users and better researchers.  The AI Overview could be used to highlight all of these ideas to students - and I imagine students working in groups to find similar examples that could be shared out with the whole group. Hopefully in the end, students can better understand how using a more neutral vocabulary will yield better results. This also parallels the importance of using a controlled vocabulary when searching disciplinary databases, so I can easily see this activity leading into a disciplinary research workshop. 

These AI overviews are useful to students - and if we are encouraging them to be metaliterate learners and creators, I think it is incumbent on us to empower them to use these tools effectively and ethically. There is also room for us to encourage students to be critical of these tools - as more and more will certainly proliferate. Metaliterate learners need to must learn to evaluate not just the information that they are encountering but the platforms they are using to find that information. Encouraging students to explore Google's AI Overviews can be a very tangible, accessible, and practical way to get students doing just that.

As far as the difficult questions all of this raises, I think that is also up to the next generation to begin answering. After all, it will be their media, their work, their faces, and their sweet sweet content that has fed and will continue to feed these large language models.

On the 3rd and 4th of May, the instruction intern team at Rebecca Crown Library attended the LOEX (Library Orientation Exchange) conference in Naperville, Illinois. The 2024 theme was Branching Out: Growing and Adapting your Information Literacy Practice. This conference focuses on instruction librarianship within academic institutions. 

The morning of Friday, May 3rd, began with the preliminary speaker, Maura Seale, who discussed critical literacy pedagogy, labor issues in libraries, and the influence of AI. Her discussion of one-shot classes, a continued topic throughout the conference, is relevant to our internship at RCL, where we have all taught one-time-only library sessions to students. Seale advised that these work well when it is the beginning of an ongoing partnership, whether through follow-up classroom visits, research consultations, or project collaborations. This provides librarians the time and connections to impart critical information literacy skills. She discussed the importance of human conversation in learning and the value of this labor, which can be undermined by unrealistic demands on librarians' work capacities and by using AI in substitution for research consultations. 

Seale quoted Brian Merchant's blog post from the Substack Blood in the Machine: "There’s a tight labor market, high employment, and companies are very eager to embrace technological tools to either replace human workers or wield as leverage against them.” She mentioned the trend hype cycles of technology in academia, recalling the use of tools such as SecondLife, that were quickly discarded when the trend faded. She referred to slow librarianship as an alternative to fast-paced, trend-chasing, competitive approaches that can lead to burnout and decreased human connections. 

After this session, the interns (Mary Laffey, Keeley Flanigan, and I) attended four sessions throughout the day, starting with: 

Assessing College Students' Everyday Information Seeking: Implications for IL Instruction, facilitated by Stephanie Ward and Rachel Dinnen, who are Teaching and Learning Librarians from the University of Northern Colorado.

This session focused on a study performed by Ward and Dinnen, who asked students who "previously had IL instruction to describe their thinking as they completed information-seeking tasks and selected information sources" (LOEX). They learned that students mainly performed basic verb searches and judged the results by the indicators of the website's appearance and domain name. The librarians noticed a lack of investigation into the author of sources and connected this to a theme of “saying one thing and doing another,” meaning that the students know that sources should be interrogated for authority, but in practice, this is overlooked. To help students improve their overall information seeking, librarians can demonstrate keyword revision in instruction, build on tendencies to examine objectivity and bias, and practice lateral reading.

Our next session was The Incarcerated One-Shot: Applying Critical Pedagogy to Support Information Literacy Skill Development in Higher Education Prison Programs by Rebecca Blunk, a Reference & Instruction Librarian at the College of Southern Nevada. 

This was an enriching talk on a topic outside of any of our day-to-day work experiences. Blunk first introduced us to the prisons she works within and the demographics within, noting the disproportionately large population of people of color, specifically Black individuals, in prisons, contrasted with the overrepresentation of White individuals in academia. Amongst college-seeking incarcerated people, the White population remains overrepresented. She connected this to the school-to-prison pipeline. She then gave a timeline of college education within prisons in America. 

Blunk explained the volunteer training visiting librarians undergo in Nevada, including an acknowledgment that they will not bring any technology into the institution. She discussed the critical pedagogy that informs her work, referencing Pablo Friere, Michel Foucault, and Henry Giroux. She quoted Giroux, who stated that Friere believed education should be a "political and moral practice that provides the knowledge, skills, and social relations that enable students to explore the possibilities of what it means to be critical citizens while expanding and deepening their participation in the promise of a substantive democracy" (Giroux). Blunk stated the difficulty/impossibility of truly implementing this belief when the students are actively kept from participating in many aspects of society. 

Blunk explained the challenges of her role as a visiting academic librarian in prisons, focusing on the "old school" teaching she must use due to the lack of technology. She prints screenshots of search results, online resources, and presentation slides. She discusses imparting information literacy tips by asking the students to share something they are an expert in, how they came to know the topic, stereotypes about it, the most important parts of it, and keywords one could use to research it. 

After this session, we stopped by a poster session featuring Rebecca Crown Library’s Megan Hoppe, who demonstrated the social media overhaul they facilitated in the past year. This was an exciting look at the progress in RCL's outreach efforts and the collaborative effort that our librarians, archivist, and student workers undertake to communicate with library patrons. 

The next session I attended was Growing Critical Information Literacy in our General Education Program by Grounding Ourselves in an Ethic of Care by Perri Moreno, Student Success Librarian, and Catherine Baird, Online and Outreach Services Librarian, both from Montclair State University. 

This session stressed the importance of caring for the genuine well-being of ourselves as library workers and for the student body. They stated, "Working conditions are learning conditions," emphasizing that by caring for our library staff and faculty, student learning will benefit in the long run. They recommended the books Transforming Hispanic-Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice by Gina Ann Garcia and Feminists Among Us: Resistance and Advocacy in Library Leadership edited by Shirley Lew and Baharak Yousefi. Moreno and Baird have switched to taking a proactive approach to teaching sessions rather than reactive. They have decreased their time spent teaching writing courses, which was a strain on the library staff and inhibited their ability to help other disciplines as thoroughly. They learned this partially by tracking their work activities, which showed how packed their schedules were. They maintained a good relationship with the English department while creating more space to enact an ethic of care for themselves. 

Similar to the first speaker, they mentioned embracing slow librarianship and doing "less with less." They also discussed the integration of critical information literacy, explaining how librarians face institutional challenges when working to impart critical thinking skills that challenge and critique hegemonic structures. They mentioned sneaking these teachings into their lessons without naming them directly, which was a strategy mentioned by other speakers in an era of DEI pushback. 

The last session I attended on Friday was Fertilizing the Social and Emotional Roots: Assessing Belonging, Confidence, and Connectedness in Academic Library Programming by Kate Langan, an Engagement Librarian from Western Michigan University. 

This session discussed flourishing, which Langan quoted Deigh in defining as "the ability to develop personal standards and practices to navigate not only for the good of the self but for the collective good of society" (Deigh, 2010). She referred to a LibGuide she created on the topic, which includes her references and slides from the LOEX presentation. She stated that flourishing with information for early adults in college looks like an "increased sense of belonging and legitimacy, improved confidence in academic abilities, and having stronger connections to the university community." Langan was able to help students flourish at Western Michigan University through a library "Amazing Race," which acquainted them with the physical space and varied resources through a collaborative game. This presentation stressed the importance of community for college students, many of whom feel isolated in their experiences. The library has valuable potential to gather students and provide a safe space for exploration and engagement. 

This blog post will continue soon with learnings gathered from day 2, but until then, the intern team is grateful for the opportunity to have heard from professionals in the field! It is exciting to see the kind, thoughtful, and intelligent work librarians are sharing with universities across the country. It was interesting to see the repeated themes of concerns and developments within varied types of academic libraries.