News from the Field

David Free

Cambridge University, UCSD partnership for East Asian collections awareness

The University of California-San Diego (UCSD) Library and the Cambridge University Library have launched a multi-year partnership that aims to broaden the awareness, access, and use of the extensive East Asian collections held by the two institutions. With the sponsorship of the Avery-Tsui Foundation, the two universities will foster interlibrary collaboration, initiate, and support research visits by scholars seeking to use the respective collections, as well as create and promote activities that highlight the collections and expertise held within the libraries.

The collections at each institution are unique and complement one another. The Chinese collection of Cambridge University Library is among the finest of its kind outside China. The first Chinese book Dan xi xin fa fu yu—an odd fascicle of a Chinese medical treatise—entered the library as early as 1632, part of a gift from the Duke of Buckingham. The oldest items in Chinese collections are Chinese-inscribed oracle bones dating from the 12th-14th century BC, and the oldest printed book is a Chinese Buddhist sutra dated 1107.

UCSD’s holdings focus on more recent history and contemporary Chinese collections, such as the Chinese Cultural Revolution Posters Collection, the Chinese village research archive, the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars Friendship Delegations Digital Collection, and the Chinese Independent Films Collection.

ACRL sets 2023 Legislative Agenda

Each year, the ACRL Government Relations Committee, in consultation with the ACRL Board of Directors and staff, formulates an ACRL Legislative Agenda. Drafted with input from key ACRL committees, ACRL leaders, and the ALA Public Policy and Advocacy Office, the ACRL Legislative Agenda is prioritized and focuses on issues at the national level affecting the welfare of academic and research libraries. The ACRL Board of Directors recently approved the 2023 ACRL Legislative Agenda.

The 2023 ACRL Legislative Agenda focuses on five issues that will be the focus of ACRL’s advocacy efforts in 2023–2024, listed in priority order: upholding intellectual freedom; federal funding for libraries; net neutrality; open access and federally funded research; and the Affordable College Textbook Act. The agenda also includes a watch list of policy issues of great concern to academic librarians that have no currently pending legislation. Read the full agenda on the ACRL website at https://www.ala.org/acrl/issues/washingtonwatch.

NISO announces Peer Review Terminology Standard

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) is pleased to announce the publication of the Peer Review Terminology Standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.106-2023), which will support open research by simplifying the communication of peer review roles and practices and fostering greater transparency in the peer review process. The new standard offers simplified terminology that will make the peer review process more transparent to authors, reviewers, and readers across the journals that adopt it. A shared set of definitions will also enable the community to compare peer review processes across publications more easily. The Peer Review Terminology Standard is freely available at https://www.niso.org/standards-committees/peer-review-terminology.

Clarivate releases Journal Citation Reports 2023

Clarivate recently released the 2023 update to its annual Journal Citation Reports (JCR). This annual release identifies more than 21,500 high-quality academic journals from across more than 250 scientific and research disciplines. Only journals that have met the rigorous quality standards for inclusion in the Web of Science index are selected, to ensure that users can confidently rely on the information and data provided to foster and support collective community goals to adhere to research integrity norms. The annual reports incorporate a variety of metrics, including the widely recognized Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and the Journal Citation Indicator. To explore all available data, metrics, and analysis, visit https://clarivate.com/products/scientific-and-academic-research/research-analytics-evaluation-and-management-solutions/journal-citation-reports/.

New from ACRL—The Critical Librarianship and Pedagogy Symposium: Reflections, Revisions, and New Works

ACRL announces the publication of The Critical Librarianship and Pedagogy Symposium: Reflections, Revisions, and New Works, edited by Yvonne Mery and Anthony Sanchez, an anthology that provides a toolkit for critical library pedagogy that recognizes how knowledge is created within historical and deeply politicized contexts.

Academic librarianship is due for a major paradigm shift in response to the existential threats facing the library profession and higher education, and library workers are leading this shift with new ideas about community, feminism, education, and social change.

The Critical Librarianship and Pedagogy Symposium collects expanded and updated presentations given at the Critical Librarianship and Pedagogy Symposium (CLAPS) held biennially at the University of Arizona Libraries. Authors working in library or disciplinary teaching fields explore intersections between information literacy and critical pedagogy and provide current thinking, assessment, and reflection on their practices of teaching students how to recognize and critique the oppressive power structures inherent in educational systems. The work done by librarians is analyzed to reveal the socioeconomic frameworks that drive the costs of our labor.

Divided into five parts—Critical Pedagogies in the Classroom, Feminist Library Practices, The Labor of Librarianship, Practices of Care, and Community Archives—chapters include explorations of the advent of neoliberalism in higher education, social justice, white fragility, supporting neurodivergence in education, and disability rights activism. They use lenses such as queer, intersectional, feminist, and critical race theory to examine subjects and include practices for sustainable teaching, facilitating dialogue in the classroom, and using tools such as user experience or empathic design. The Critical Librarianship and Pedagogy Symposium offers ways to incorporate critical pedagogy theory into your own practices as educators, both within the library and in higher education.

The Critical Librarianship and Pedagogy Symposium: Reflections, Revisions, and New Works is available for purchase in print and as an ebook through the ALA Online Store; in print through Amazon.com; and by telephone order at (866) 746-7252 in the US or (770) 442-8633 for international customers.

FEDLINK awards recognize federal library community achievement

The Federal Library and Information Network (FEDLINK) has announced the winners of its national awards for federal librarianship, which recognize the many innovative ways that federal libraries, librarians, and library technicians fulfill the information demands of the government, business, and scholarly communities and the American public. Federal libraries and staff throughout the United States and abroad competed for the awards. The award winners are honored for their contributions to federal library and information service throughout the year and include Nimitz Library, US Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland; Spangdahlem Air Base Library, Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany; Amber L. Collins, library program manager/command librarian, US Army Corps of Engineers, Alexandria, Virginia; and Mirche Gjorevski, library technician, Garmisch Library, US Army Garrison, Bavaria, Germany. Complete information on the most recent honorees is available at https://www.loc.gov/flicc/FliccForum/index_forumandwards.html.

ACRL releases Creators in the Academic Library

ACRL announces the publication of Creators in the Academic Library: Instruction and Outreach, edited by Alexander C. Watkins and Rebecca Zuege Kuglitsch, and Creators in the Academic Library: Collections and Spaces, edited by Rebecca Zuege Kuglitsch and Alexander C. Watkins. These books explore how to teach specifically for creator research and deepen students’ understanding of their own practice, as well as how academic libraries can build collections, spaces, and communities that serve creators.

Engineering students, designers, studio artists, and other student creators have unique research needs that libraries are well-positioned to meet. They use academic literature to inspire and ground creation, but also seek information from trade literature, patents, technical standards, and how-to manuals. They apply tacit knowledge and need to learn not only how to write within academic discourse but also create objects, designs, and experiences.

Creators in the Academic Library: Instruction and Outreach looks at technology, tools, and techniques for creation; inspiring creativity through research; creators’ unique information needs; and grounding creation in research. It offers learning strategies and objectives that can help you teach all manner of creators.

Creators in the Academic Library: Collections and Spaces explores tailoring collections for creators, making in the academic library, creating experiences in the library, and cultivating creator communities. It documents spaces and collections that strive for equity and authenticity, for playfulness and joy, and offers strategies for creating a library open to all comers seeking a place to create in a liberating environment.

Creators in the Academic Library: Instruction and Outreach and Creators in the Academic Library: Collections and Spaces are available for purchase in print and as ebooks through the ALA Online Store; in print through Amazon.com; and by telephone order at (800) 621-2736 in the US or (773) 702-7010 for international customers.

Revised ACRL Standards, Guidelines, and Framework Companion Documents

The ACRL Board of Directors approved revised and updated versions of several of the association’s Standards, Guidelines, and Framework Companion Documents at its June 2023 meetings.

“Companion Document to the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education: Instruction for Educators”: Developed by the ACRL Education and Behavioral Sciences Section (EBSS) Instruction for Education Committee, this document provides guideposts for librarians and inform their information literacy practices. It may serve to inspire library instruction in school of education classrooms as well as reference services for teacher education students.

“Guidelines Regarding the Security of Special Collections Materials”: Developed by the ACRL Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) Security Committee, primary goal of these guidelines is to assist special collections staff in preserving and effectively stewarding cultural heritage materials for current and future access and preservation, objectives that are inherently tied to the promotion of user accessibility, safety, and rights.

“Proficiencies for Assessment in Academic Libraries”: Developed by the ACRL Value of Academic Libraries and Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committees, the updated proficiencies provide a common definition of assessment responsibilities and describes the ethics, knowledge, skills, abilities, behaviors, and mindsets to empower both those with and without formal leadership positions to engage in library assessment.

All ACRL Standards, Guidelines, and Frameworks are freely available on the ACRL website at https://www.ala.org/acrl/standards.