Internet Reviews

Dawn Behrend

Dawn Behrend is associate librarian and dean of university libraries at Lenoir-Rhyne University, email: dawn.behrend@lr.edu

American Educational Research Association. Access: https://www.aera.net/.

Founded in 1916, the American Educational Research Association (AERA) seeks to
advance educational research, practice, and policy. Their website’s easy-to-navigate structure and comprehensive content make it an indispensable resource for education scholars and students alike. The site is structured around six main sections that include news and announcements, events such as annual meetings and webinars, professional development, governance and elections, policy statements, and community and professional resources.

The website functions as an advocacy hub, frequently sharing major policy statements and updates about AERA’s legal actions, federal advocacy efforts, and collaborations with other organizations, such as the STEM Education Coalition, to defend the integrity of educational research. AERA Highlights provides the latest news about the organization and education research. Organized chronologically, the news and announcements address current research policy and funding, calls for grant proposals, and publications calls for AERA journals such as Review of Research in Education and AERA Open.

Previous webcasts of AERA lectures and events, such as the Brown lecture series in education research, are available through the site. Site visitors can also view videos of prominent sessions from the organization’s annual meetings. Moreover, AERA’s Online Paper Repository serves as an open-access clearinghouse of full-text papers presented at the annual conference. Users may search the papers by author or subject area such as curriculum studies or postsecondary education.

Opportunities for professional growth are another core feature of the website. AERA offers multiple professional development opportunities to serve researchers at different career stages. With assistance from the National Science Foundation, AERA’s grants program provides research funding for graduate students, faculty, and other doctoral-level scholars. Focusing on the most recent developments in educational research, AERA’s Virtual Research Learning Center provides access to introductory and advanced courses on research methods and data analysis. An online jobs board is available for those seeking employment opportunities in education research.

Serving as an informational resource and a professional networking platform for the global educational research community, the AERA website is a valuable tool for researchers, educators, and policy advocates for up-to-date information on educational research, funding, professional development, and policy advocacy. Academic librarians can use the AERA website as a reliable tool to support education faculty and students by locating resources that directly inform teaching, scholarship, and program accreditation. — Michele Frasier-Robinson, University of Southern Mississippi, Susan.FrasierRobinson@usm.edu

Center for Democracy & Technology. Access: https://cdt.org/.

According to its website, the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) is “the leading nonpartisan, nonprofit organization fighting to advance civil rights and civil liberties in the digital age.” Its mission is fivefold, with all its principles advocating for and protecting digital citizens, both socially and governmentally, as technology progresses at the speed of light. The CDT website is a collection of material related to the cause, including information about the organization, writings on modern digital issues related to the areas of focus, and collections of topical resources, ranging from the digital response to the coronavirus pandemic to what the center has deemed as “Techsplanations,” defined as an “educational entry point” to the automated world.

The CDT website is impeccably organized, with four clear and concise menu items. First, Who We Are is a hover menu that leads to different webpages that give introductions to contributors, the international offices of the CDT, and more. Second, Latest is a one-click webpage that leads to the collection of latest insights, organized by date. This page makes it clear that the website is consistently and thoroughly updated, with multiple resources posted per week and sometimes per day. Third, Areas of Focus is a hover-menu listing topics that span from “Cybersecurity & Standards” to “Free Expression.” Each topic leads to an overview of that subject area for the center, curated collections of related resources, and any interactive tools or databases the center has developed. Fourth, Collections are groups of resources organized by issue, covering a broader range of topics than the Areas of Focus section and featuring writings and reports on each subject.

The importance of the work done by CDT cannot be overstated, especially in our current digital and political climate. The CDT website is a thorough, organized, and clear collection of works that allows users to easily navigate through the plethora of information that the organization has created and aggregated. It is an invaluable resource for beginner, intermediate, or advanced digital rights research. Academic librarians may find the CDT website especially useful for guiding students and faculty to credible, current resources on digital rights and technology policy. Its structured collections and searchable databases make it a strong reference point for research support and curriculum integration. — Sydney Orason, University of Alabama at Birmingham, sorason@uab.edu

Invisible Histories. Access: https://invisiblehistory.org/.

Invisible Histories is a nonprofit archival collection of queer histories in thirteen Southern states. Although primarily an online, digitized collection, it also features exhibits, classes, and other programming throughout the South. In addition, Invisible Histories provides opportunities for educators and archivists to participate in various “teach-ins” to share their own knowledge, work, and experiences.

The website contains a rich array of archival materials but also serves as a central space to grow and promote LGBTQ1 collections. The website provides detailed instructions on how to donate collections, whether to community archives, university archives, or Invisible Histories. Furthermore, there is a database of physical collections. With the current climate of federal and state actions targeting both academia and queer existence, having a central nongovernmental database is essential.

The impressive depth of the collections is highlighted through user-centered, well-designed pages that are engaging, and even fun, to explore. A good example is the section on zine archiving, which features a Mississippi-based Southern Memory Workers zine, fittingly one about the practice of archiving zines. Another notable area is the Born This Way digital archive that ensures the preservation of queer TikTok, Instagram, and other social media content.

Geared toward the ground-up DYI archivist, Invisible Histories nonetheless will be
useful for those of all experience levels to learn more about preserving queer history in a time where erasure of that history is a real threat. This resource can help academic librarians strengthen LGBTQ1 collections by providing models of inclusive archiving, guidance on donation practices, and access to a centralized database of queer histories in the South. It also offers programming and teach-ins that librarians can adapt for instruction, outreach, and community engagement. Highly recommended for those new to archiving, new to
LGBTQ1 collections, or generally interested in the preservation of community created content. — Bart Everts, Rutgers University, bart.everts@rutgers.edu