The following titles are available for people interested in writing a book review for the SRRT Newsletter. Please contact me directly at
laurakoltutsky@gmail.com if you are interested and let me know which book you would interested in reviewing.
Thanks,
Laura Koltutsky
SRRT Newsletter Reviews Editor
Litwin Books & Library Juice Press
This edited collection brings together contributions that explore ethics in linked data initiatives. Discussions about linked data and its potential are often utopian and technophiliac, rarely examining darker implications or harmful consequences. Since technology cannot exist outside of social, cultural, and economic spheres, it is important for creators and stewards of linked data and its related systems to recognize and address the impact (whether intended or not, positive or negative) on the communities, individuals affected. Engaging in critical and ethical analysis is ultimately an optimistic endeavor aimed at exposing problematic issues, generating best practices and guidelines, and opening up positive and generative possibilities for the implementation and use of linked data in GLAMS (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums, Special Collections).
The question of land is largely absent in libraries. Deeply committed to the neoliberal project as a guiding ideology of the profession, libraries exist at once as ahistorical, atheoretical, and landless institutions in their understanding of themselves, their work, and their impact on people. This edited volume seeks to contribute to the growing body of work on libraries and the anthropocene, decolonization, and climate change through writing in theory and practice. We are interested in both non-metaphorical (actual, material) as well as conceptual perspectives on land. We are interested in centering land as a foundational category underpinning social relations, as a necessity for the function and reproduction of capitalism, and as a place where we work and learn together. Fundamentally, we live on the land and how we live in relation to the land matters to how we understand ourselves as individuals and a society.
CORE and ALA Editions
How does librarianship help people to be free? How is library capacity and expertise used to increase freedom, justice, and community? "Liberatory Librarianship: Stories of Community, Connection, and Justice," published by ALA Editions in collaboration with Core, unpacks these questions, and many others, to reveal 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 edited by Brian W. Keith, Laurie Taylor, and Shamin Renwick 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
Rowman & Littlefield
Our nation is rocked by ideological divisions threatening both the work of educators and the core of our democracy. Individuals and groups are attacking public education and implementing policies antithetical to education in a democratic society. They seek to impose their own beliefs upon students and educational institutions by censoring materials, ideas, and practices they find objectionable. They promote intolerance through exclusionary and discriminatory policies and practices concerning persons of different racial, ethnic, religious, national origin, gender, or political identities. They advocate abandoning discussion of culture and identity-despite their importance to student success-to ensure that preferential consideration continues for the prevailing culture. And they close off open dialogue and scrutiny of factual evidence, instead imposing their own agendas. In doing so, they politicize education, bring partisanship into the classroom, promote indoctrination, and undermine education's democratic goals.
At their best, public schools are an anathema to indoctrination and authoritarianism because they bring a wide range of perspectives into the classroom and teach students to think independently. A democratic and pluralistic society requires that individuals honor and respect differences in identities and beliefs, endorse the pursuit of truth through examination of factual evidence, and participate in open dialogue to resolve issues of difference. Education in a democratic society must support the development of these attitudes, skills, and values in young people. Yet our nation's culture wars are being fomented by those who have a contradictory vision of American education.
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Laura Koltutsky
Learning Projects Librarian
University of Calgary
She/Her/Hers
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