Robert Schroeder – författare

As political polarization has continued to grow within and beyond the United States in past decades, the challenges of engaging in open and constructive dialogue have become increasingly apparent. The effects of this tension are evident in numerous aspects of library work, including interactions and relationships in our local contexts and in our larger professional community, as well as all areas of the library—classrooms, collections, technology, management, programming, LIS programs, and library spaces.Reflective dialogue asks us to pause before reacting, to ground ourselves in a sense of compassion for ourselves and others, and to use that grounding to open a space to listen and to speak with the goal of recognizing a shared humanity and appreciating difference. In four sections, Libraries Promoting Reflective Dialogue in a Time of Political Polarization explores the various ways in which librarians experience and respond to political polarization and its effects, both in our everyday work and in our professional communities:Libraries as Dialogic Spaces: Limits and PossibilitiesDialogue amid Polarization and Extreme Skepticism: Challenges and OpportunitiesSpecial Collections and Archives: Past and Present in ConversationThe Information Literacy Classroom: Uneasy Questions, Creative ResponsesDivisive times can spark positive social change with more intentional reflection, listening, and empathy across social groups and identities. Libraries Promoting Reflective Dialogue in a Time of Political Polarization can be a catalyst and a resource for reflective and constructive dialogue, and a prompt for asking hard and sometimes uncomfortable questions about what reflective dialogue is, what forms it might take and in what contexts, who it does or does not include, and what its possibilities and limitations are.

“[T]his collection is something rare and important for the discipline of librarianship.” — from the Foreword by Barbara FisterAutoethnography is a type of research that uses writing and self-examination to explore far-ranging cultural, political, and social issues through personal experience. It is a qualitative, reflexive, ethnographic method where the researcher is also the subject of inquiry. Using autoethnography as their research method, the 21 academic librarian authors of The Self as Subject: Autoethnographic Research into Identity, Culture, and Academic Librarianship investigate aspects of what it means to be a librarian. Starting with a reflective examination of themselves, they each investigate questions of culture, values, and identity. The Self as Subject presents a collection of reflective narratives that, taken together, explore the varied dimensions of librarianship in the present moment. It also examines autoethnography’s potential to help librarians answer questions that cannot be answered by traditional, empirical research methods and to reveal voices that are obscured by aggregations of data. All of the pieces in this volume share some characteristics: Each one is the result of a rigorous examination of the self and lived experience, and each one moves between the subjective and the cultural in its analysis. How the authors do this, however, varies widely—from a graphic novel to speculative fiction to rigorous academic analysis. The Self as Subject provides an opportunity to expand our understanding of rigor and the practice of research in LIS, and explores what it means to be a librarian in this age of disruptive change, and how the various identities and experiences we bring to our practice shape our experience of librarianship. The Self as Subject is for any librarian interested in research and research methods; the use of literary genres in research; alternatives to large empirical studies; questions of identity and social justice; and those looking to step out of their comfort zone and approach learning from a new and challenging vantage point.

Dieser Buchtitel ist Teil des Digitalisierungsprojekts Springer Book Archives mit Publikationen, die seit den Anfängen des Verlags von 1842 erschienen sind. Der Verlag stellt mit diesem Archiv Quellen für die historische wie auch die disziplingeschichtliche Forschung zur Verfügung, die jeweils im historischen Kontext betrachtet werden müssen. Dieser Titel erschien in der Zeit vor 1945 und wird daher in seiner zeittypischen politisch-ideologischen Ausrichtung vom Verlag nicht beworben.