01 September
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On
In Lockout
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Long Island University, Brooklyn faculty will be locked out by management as of 12:01am September 3rd, in other words, late Friday night. This is an aggressive act against the membership by management, and it is equal parts enraging, terrifying, and sad. It feels like a betrayal, really, and worse than thing felt when we went on strike five years ago. Faculty have a contentious relationship with administration at my campus, and the relationship keeps getting worse. I’m secretary of the union because in my life I tend to be secretary of all the things. That means I’ve spent an awful lot of time taking notes,Read More →

07 July
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On
In Conferences, Library instruction, Radical teaching
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Many thanks to the team at UBC libraries and WILU 2016 for inviting me to present the keynote address at this spring’s conference. The theme of the conference was “intersections,” which resonates on many levels including the politics of identity and the politics of space. I chose to talk about the ways that librarians intersect with catalogs as texts and tools, and the work we all do to connect people to resources through networks of organization and control that are as inevitable (I think) as they are problematic. I’m posting this talk on a morning that includes news of the murder of Philando Castile on the heelsRead More →

28 June
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On
In Conferences, open access
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I was thrilled to be asked to talk about my work with Radical Teacher for the SPARC/ACRL Forum this year. The theme was “Flipping to Open,” and I really loved hearing from David Free about the impact of going open on College & Research Libraries. Free discussed strategies that C&RL used to increase engagement with the online journal once print ceased. They hired someone to do community engagement work via social media, organized Google hangouts with article authors, and crowdsourced the 75th anniversary issue. Scott Walter got huge shouts-out for being the steward of much of this transition. As an avid reader of C&RL, I reallyRead More →

07 June
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On
In Conferences, Standards
With 2 Comments

I had a super busy spring schedule of talks, and spent a bunch of it trying to work through my feelings about the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education and the Standards for Information Literacy for Higher Education and what these two documents have to tell us about the professional infrastructure of “information literacy.” I gave three versions of this talk, first at Purdue University Libraries, then at UCLA’s Department of Information Studies, and finally in Scranton, Pennsylvania, at the Pennsylvania Library Association College & Research Division Spring Workshop. I am grateful to the librarians, library students, and library faculty who shared thoughts and feedbackRead More →

07 June
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On
In Conferences
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I had a fantastic time at WILU 2016 in Vancouver, not least because it was in Vancouver. What a beautiful place, and the University of British Columbia campus is exceptionally beautiful. If you know me, you know I’m training to run the New York City marathon, and it was a gift to be able to put in some miles along Spanish Banks and up and down the stairs to Wreck Beach. I was most struck by the presentations that showed what people are doing with the new Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. I’ve been a bit of a skeptic, but learning how theRead More →

06 May
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On
In Conferences
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With the ACRL 2017 papers/panels/workshops deadline upon us, I am rushing to figure out if there are any last flourishes I want to put on the few proposals I’m involved with this year and what else I might want to rush into the queue in case I still want to talk about it in a year. Which has me thinking about what has oddly turned out to be one of the hardest parts: selecting an appropriate conference tag. The ACRL national conference is always one of my favorites. Great, thoughtful speakers (usually), a chance to see colleagues from all over the country, sessions that (almost)Read More →

03 May
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On
In Conferences

Huge thanks to Troy Swanson and Tish Hayes at Moraine Valley Community College for the invitation to address the Information Literacy Summit last Friday. Theirs was the very first invitation I had ever received to talk to a group of librarians, and when I got the email in the fall I was beyond flattered and also not wholly convinced that I could come up with 45 minutes of things to say that would keep people engaged. I am really glad I said yes. There is nothing like a deadline, and I was so happy to have it as a push to work through some newRead More →

25 April
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On
In Conferences, Gender and Sexuality in Information Studies

I am back at my desk in Brooklyn after a weekend in Vancouver, British Columbia, staring at my screen and wondering how to get back to the ordinary tasks of my worklife. So I thought I’d write up a few brief reflections on what was, for me, a really wonderful event. I’m going to do it in a numbered list, since I’m jet lagged and behind on three writing deadlines. Organizing with good people makes all the difference in the world. Baharak Yousefi and Tara Robertson are two such good people. Competent, willing to do the clerical work, with expansive political visions that rooted everyRead More →

15 April
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On
In Conferences

I spent the day in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania with the library workers of the Associated Colleges of Western Pennsylvania at their spring workshop. I gave a talk about queer theory and cataloging and classification, something that I’ve written about and always love talking about. You can see my slides here, and the text of my talk here. I am grateful to Lindsay Sakmann from Albright College and Ben Hoover from Bucknell, home of the mighty fighting bison, for the invitation, management of logistics, and many LOLs over dinner and throughout the day. I was lucky to share the bill with April Hathcock and Derrick Jefferson. AprilRead More →

15 April
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On
In Publications

As someone who works on an open access journal, I have more respect than many for the labor involved in moving digital platforms. Huge congrats to Jill Emery, Michael Levine-Clark, and the rest of the team at Collaborative Librarianship for their first issue on the Digital Commons platform. And thanks too for the invitation to share “What Collaboration Means to Me.” I’ve been reading and writing a lot about infrastructures lately, and more and more believe the invisible work of building those is what matters the most. I appreciated the opportunity to say a little about that in this new issue.Read More →