Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

In October 2020, the authors accepted an invitation to participate in an experimental collaboration observing an equitable, global, and inclusive process. Inspired by an Inclusive Classroom webinar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the shared Decolonizing Checklist, the authors considered our tasks: 1) to develop a checklist or brief guide that is international in scope to help librarians worldwide develop their own or other educators’ instructional materials, that is antiracist or inclusive, and 2) to publish the checklist/guide and a reflective essay of the process.

9.30 - 10.00 Registration

10.00 Welcome and housekeeping

10.15 - 11.00 Group Discussion.

11:00-11:40 Presentation

11.00 - 11.40 Decolonising LSE Collections - Kevin Wilson (London School of Economics)

11.40 - 11.50 Tea break

11:50 - 13:10 Presentations

11.50 - 12.30 Broaden my Bookshelf: working with the University of Huddersfield SU to tackle the attainment gap -…

We all have an original nature, with our own authentic wants and needs. We act spontaneously. Then we meet other people. Very soon, who and what we want to become and even who we believe ourselves to be becomes influenced or even defined by others. Such internalised messages can become self-limiting, and the friction between the self-concept imposed from without and a person’s true nature within can be painful and may even result in mental ill-health (Dykes, Postings, Kopp, & Crouch, 2017, p. 179). For repressed groups, such as women and black, Asian and minority ethnicity (BAME) people, the messages received about who a person is and what they should be are often harmful and repressive. These groups are systematically shown that that they do not matter to society, not least through the lack of BAME role models and the abrogation of their cultural heritage. BAME women suffer intersectional repression and are among the hardest hit.

By Naomi L. A. Smith, Assistant Library Manager and part-time Library student at UCL (@LibrarygirlN). This blog post is based on an essay originally produced for INST0021 Managing Information Organisations module for the MA Library and Information Studies at UCL.

Although Black Lives Matter (BLM) is making more and more of us re-question our privilege and think about discrimination and Western power structures, this exploration needs to also extend to our workplaces. Librarians must recognise that rather than challenging systems of oppression, academic libraries have historically contributed to it by favouring white cisgender male authors at the expense of all others. Similarly, the membership figures of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) confirm there is under-representation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME ) staff in the library and information science sector.

While I am delighted to be here, I have to admit that I thought long and hard about whether to accept the invitation to speak today. I am aware that we’ve heard a lot of voices like mine, that voices like mine can drown out other people's voices, and that really it is time for me, for us at CILIP to stop speaking and start listening.

But we also have to be accountable, to our members, to the profession, to society at large. We have to explain ourselves – not to dictate terms but to set out a commitment to change and to learn, and to listen.

Because all of us that hold leadership positions in this sector have to confront the fact that we are where we are because of a system of unseen privilege – a system which lifts some of us up while holding others down. The basis of that privilege is rightly being challenged. We are being challenged, rightly, to reflect on that privilege critically and to think about the impact it has on other people’s right to shape our profession.

As a profession, we aspire to universality – but we have to be critical about what ‘universal’ really means. I don’t want to be complicit in a system that promotes some voices at the expense of others.