News from the Field

David Free

Choice, LibTech Insights Publish AI Literacy White Paper

Choice announces the ninth publication in a series of white papers designed to provide actionable intelligence around topics of importance to the academic library community. The paper “Building an AI Literacy Framework: Perspectives from Instruction Librarians and Current Information Literacy Tools” provides readers with a better understanding of the place of AI literacy in information literacy and empowers library workers to include AI literacy in their instruction sessions.

Researched and written by Sandy Hervieux, the head of the Nahum Gelber Law Library at McGill University, and Amanda Wheatley, associate librarian at McGill University, the researchers interviewed instruction librarians from the United States and Canada about AI literacy. In their analysis of the interviews, the authors identify prominent themes and concerns related to AI and developing a robust framework for AI literacy.

A generous contribution from the Taylor & Francis Group provided funding for this research. “Building an AI Literacy Framework: Perspectives from Instruction Librarians and Current Information Literacy Tools” is published under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and is available on the Choice 360 website at https://ow.ly/jlcI50Tevhx.

Library of Congress Opens Award Nominations for Outstanding Federal Libraries, Librarians, and Library Technicians

To honor the innovations and successes of federal libraries, librarians, and library technicians in meeting the information demands of government, businesses, scholarly communities, and the public, the Federal Library and Information Network (FEDLINK) in the Library of Congress has opened nominations for its 27th annual awards for federal librarianship. The nomination packet includes the nomination form, selection criteria, and a list of supporting materials. All completed nominations must be emailed to fliccfno@loc.gov no later than 11:59 p.m. EST on November 20, 2024. For nomination materials, visit the Awards section of the program’s website at https://www.loc.gov/flicc/Awards/fedlinkawards.html or email fliccfno@loc.gov.

New from ACRL—Training Library Instructors, 2 Volume Set

ACRL announces the publication of Training Library Instructors, Volume 1: A Guide to Training Graduate Students (Publications in Librarianship #82) and Training Library Instructors, Volume 2: A Guide to Training Librarians (Publications in Librarianship #83), edited by Matthew Weirick Johnson. These volumes provide detailed, easily implemented and modified plans for courses, internships, teach-the-teacher programs, and other instructional methods and opportunities for graduate students and library workers at all levels of teaching experience.

Pedagogy impacts all parts of library work and culture. It changes the way we interact with learners regardless of setting and however we name or define the teaching moment, from research help to outreach to leading meetings. Pedagogy is a praxis of relation and studying it can improve all aspects of our work and organizations.

In two volumes, Training Library Instructors collects examples of how we train our colleagues to teach, whether they’re student workers, non-librarian staff, new or experienced librarians, or something else entirely. Volume 1, A Guide to Training Graduate Students, focuses on teacher training for graduate students in LIS programs and in academic libraries. It presents existing literature and theories, approaches to teaching library school students to teach, and critical reflections from librarians about their varied experiences receiving teacher training. In Volume 2, A Guide to Training Librarians, librarians share their knowledge about teaching, learning, and pedagogy through a variety of replicable activities: formal and informal workshops, courses, communities of practice, peer observation, and more.

Training Library Instructors is available for purchase in print, individually and as a set, and as ebooks 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.

Project MUSE, USHMM Announce Landmark Initiative

Project MUSE, a division of Johns Hopkins University Press, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) are proud to announce a landmark initiative to host the most comprehensive scholarly resource on Nazi persecutory sites, The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945 (ECG), as a new open access, fully searchable, digital publication. Hosting ECG on the Project MUSE platform will allow users to dynamically engage with this empirically grounded prodigious resource of thousands of camps, ghettos, and other sites of persecution operated by the Nazis and their allies.

Project MUSE and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum are committed to broadening access to and increasing engagement with this vital scholarship. This new digital publication will be an invaluable resource for wide-ranging audiences including scholars, researchers, Holocaust survivors and their descendants, digital humanists, educators, students, librarians, archivists, nonprofits, and the general public. Users will gain straightforward entrance to extensive bibliographic citations comprising research in more than a dozen languages and varied source bases including material in hundreds of archival collections, survivor and eyewitness testimonies, memoirs, diaries, memory books, and up-to-date scholarship. Learn more at https://about.muse.jhu.edu/resources/USHMM-encyclopedia-holocaust-camps-ghettos.

ACRL Releases Creating an Inclusive Library: Approaches for Increasing Engagement and Use with Students of Color

ACRL announces the publication of Creating an Inclusive Library: Approaches for Increasing Engagement and Use with Students of Color, edited by Ngoc-Yen Tran, Michael J. Aguilar II, and Adriana Poo. This collection provides an opportunity to further engage with issues affecting students of color and to take action to provide more just and equitable teaching and learning environments.

The critical work of being more inclusive and anti-racist in academic library teaching, collections, and community is ever more important in today’s social and political climate. In six sections, Creating an Inclusive Library explores the various methods used by librarians, archivists, and library workers to increase or enhance engagement with and use of library spaces, resources, services, and materials by students of color.

1. Welcoming and Sense of Belonging
2. Culturally Relevant Practices
3. Building Representation and Inclusion
4. Collaborations and Co-Creation
5. Community Building and Engagement
6. Fostering Diverse Student Employees

The resources, strategies, and approaches in Creating an Inclusive Library can help all library workers engage with this vital work and build a community of support. As the nature of diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism work in higher education and academic libraries continues to evolve, it is ever more critical to continue this work, to be allies for those engaged in it, and to share how you are creating more inclusive and anti-racist spaces, materials, and services at your library.

Creating an Inclusive Library: Approaches for Increasing Engagement and Use with Students of Color 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.

D2O Seeks Funding for Expanding Access

The MIT Press has entered the fourth funding cycle for Direct to Open (D2O), its model for open access monographs. D2O empowers authors so that they can reap the benefits of publishing their work open access regardless of their—or their institution’s—ability to pay a Book Processing Charge. This diamond OA approach has special relevance for Humanities and Social Sciences scholars as well as independent researchers around the globe. Immediate, un-embargoed access to the latest scholarship puts researchers around the world on a more level playing field and enriches scholarly communication. Libraries and consortia can commit to support the program through November 30, 2024. More details are available at https://mitpress.mit.edu/D2O.

Choreo Insights Now Supports Full Range of WorldCat Languages

OCLC has expanded the analysis capabilities of Choreo Insights to support the full range of languages represented in WorldCat, the world’s most comprehensive database of information about library collections. At a time when collection librarians and area studies librarians are focused on assessing diversity in their collections, this change allows collection analysis to address works from under-represented groups.

Choreo Insights is an extensive library analytics solution that uses WorldCat holdings data to align academic library collections with institutional focus areas, emerging curriculum priorities, and future trends. Originally released with the top 70 languages in WorldCat, Choreo Insights now allows libraries to include all 483 languages available in WorldCat for collection analysis. More information about OCLC’s Choreo Insights is available at https://www.oclc.org/en/choreo-insights.html.

Library of Congress Digitizes NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Records

A major portion of the processed records of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund are now available online for the first time from the Library of Congress. Spanning the years 1915–1968, with most dating from 1940 to 1960, these records document the organization’s work as it combated racial discrimination in the nation’s courts, establishing in the process a public interest legal practice that was unprecedented in American jurisprudence.

About 80% of the approximately 80,000 items have been digitized thus far resulting in approximately 210,300 images in the digital collection. The digitization will greatly expand research access to this significant collection of primary source materials for scholars and students studying the civil rights movement. The organization’s records cover a host of topics, including segregation in schools, on buses, and in public facilities; discrimination in housing and property ownership; voting rights; police brutality; racial violence; and countless other infringements of civil rights.

Digitization of the collection was done in collaboration with the Legal Defense Fund and was made possible with the generous support of the Ford Foundation. Learn more and view the newly digitized records at https://www.loc.gov/collections/naacp-legal-defense-and-educational-fund-records/about-this-collection/.