‘Librarians’ views on critical theories and critical practices’
For the second radlibchat at 20.00 (BST) on Tuesday 1st September, we will be discussing Schroeder and Hollister’s (2014) journal article Librarians’ views on critical theories and critical practices. This link is to an open access post-print of the article.
The discussion will be hosted by @RadicalLibs on Twitter using the #radlibchat hashtag.
Final questions, and some points about the article to help frame discussion for each question are as follows:
Q1. To what extent does critical theory play a role in your professional life?
The authors separate ‘holistic’ and ‘functional’ aspects of applying critical theory to LIS professional practice.
Q2: Can you give an example of how you apply critical theory specifically, in practice?
68% of respondents in the article learned about critical theory at university, but only 14% encountered it in a LIS course.
Q3: The authors advocate for critical theory to be taught on LIS courses. To what extent is this a solution? What else is needed?
The authors argue critical theory provides “a structural framework for librarians’ involvement in social justice issues.”
Q4: Do you agree with the authors’ foregrounding of social justice as a concern in LIS, and the utility of critical theory?
Q5. How can we make critical theory more mainstream within LIS? What are good examples you’ve seen of this?
You are very welcome to add questions or suggest improvements to the list above. You can:
- Make a suggestion in the comments below
- Tweet a suggestion to @RadicalLibs on Twitter
- Edit the list on the RLC Etherpad for this chat
Further comments and discussion are encouraged in the comments below on this blog post. The intention here is to encourage for further discussion and to enable those not on Twitter to participate in the discussion.
We are very interested in suggestions for articles to discuss at future #radlibchat chats – these can be made using the Google Form here.
References
Schroeder, R. and Hollister, C.V. (2014) ‘Librarians’ views on critical theories and critical practices’, Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian, 33(2) pp.91-119. DOI: 10.1080/01639269.2014.912104
