Deconstruct to Reconstruct: Challenging Critical Librarianship

Presentation. Critical Librarianship & Pedagogy Symposium, November 15-16, 2018, The University of Arizona. Session Description: 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. However, taking a step back and looking at how various areas of librarianship are intertwined allows us to apply more thoughtful approaches to critical librarianship. 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. The speakers want to challenge western knowledge practices and engage conference participants in collectively developing a new framework of librarianship that will inform and shape our pedagogy. How do we explode the current understandings of scholarly communication, collections, and public services as it relates to critical librarianship? Often, these different areas within librarianship are described as separate functions without much connection to one another. This is problematic if we aren’t practicing what we preach. How can we teach students to transgress without truly deconstructing/exploding our own notions of librarianship? How do we contend with the fact that our current systems of building, cataloging, and making collections “accessible” restricts us to being able to add only certain kinds of knowledge? For example, when instruction librarians teach one-shot sessions, students are often only seeing a small slice of the scholarly communication and research cycle. We often only have time to cover one or two learning outcomes usually focused on helping students complete their research assignment, while trying to slip in some critical information literacy (for those of us so inclined). Our understanding of critical pedagogy asks teachers to put more trust in students and help them recognize the larger systems and structures of oppression at work. Is it possible to do this in a one-shot? Can we talk about why we’re even asked to come into the classroom and tie it back to the neoliberal commercialization of knowledge and the underpinnings of Enlightenment-era ideals? How can we expand our often narrow perspective to include larger conversations of knowledge value, even within the field of information science itself? 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. This requires ongoing discussion, acknowledging the limitations of our current systems, and collaborative world-building among all of us who work in libraries and archives. We would like to start this conversation here, share our thoughts of deconstructing, and ask our community of fellow librarians, archivists, and library workers to discuss this with us and continue these conversations.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.Proceedings from the Critical Librarianship & Pedagogy Symposium are made available by the symposium creators and the University of Arizona Libraries. Contact the CLAPS committee at https://claps2018.wordpress.com/contact/if you have questions about items in this collection