The Idea

We propose a series of workshops, panels, debates and cultural programs designed to foster civic, social and cultural engagement through the Scott Collections and Research Department’s Information Literacy program.

Aside from the overarching goal, this series will:

• help us to infuse the democratic values of our profession into our teaching methods and content (radical pedagogical and professional praxis)
• remind us of the role of libraries in bearing witness to history, as spaces of memory
• consider the research and information gathering needs of our academic community beyond their academic work – i.e. their information needs as citizens, as humans
• value programming which is timely and relevant to important current events – in part because we need to connect the learning which occurs in their subject-based classrooms with what’s happening right now, to help students/faculty translate their growing knowledge and skills to praxis, to assist them in developing a language of resistance

In offering this series of programming we would also like to acknowledge and value the unique freedom and autonomy that librarians have from curricular and disciplinary demands and drive ourselves to make use of that freedom and our academic freedom as well. For as we know well, those who do not use their freedom tend to lose it.

Advertisements