Think about all we covered during this term in Reference & Instruction. What stands out to you as most valuable for you as you consider your interest in libraries and work (of any kind) you may do in the future? What learning or skills will you take with you as you continue learning and head into a life after Carleton? What was the biggest surprise? What would you have liked to have done if it were a longer term?
In hindsight, information literacy, in all its nuance, stands out as the key theme upon which we focused on in Reference and Instruction this term. Though attending a graduate program in Library and Information Sciences is not within my foreseeable or immediate post-Carleton future, as a hopeful future historian, of a postcolonial bent, the ACRL’s frame, “Authority is Constructed and Contextual,” was of paramount importance to me in the discussion of critical literacy. Though the ACRL was presumably envisioning “authority” in a broader sense, i.e. in relation to the ability of the information-literate to determine whether a source is written by an author of certain credentials, I could not help but think about Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s concept of epistemic violence, in which he explores how the power structures exclude, marginalize, and erase the voices and experiences of colonized, enslaved, or otherwise subjugated historical actors. As I look forward to the coming years in which I undergo an areas studies master’s in hopes of then getting a PhD in history, the ACRL’s insistence that authority is not inherent but constructed, shaped by the communities, institutions, and power structures that confer it, seems to me to apply, of course, to the work of the reference librarian whose intent it is to enhance critical literacy in their libraries’ patrons; but also a historiographical imperative; that is, I must interrogate not only what sources say, but who has been denied the authority to speak, and why. Too, their frame on “Scholarship as Conversation,” broadly defined here as the network of “scholars, researchers, and professionals [engaged in an ongoing discourse sustained by] new insights and discoveries occurring over time as a result of varied perspectives and interpretations,” struck me as having equal import, though I still found myself relating it to my engagement with postcolonial or subaltern studies scholars. Like Trouillot, Sadiya Hartman has reckoned with redress. Her concept of critical fabulation in Wayward Lives has informed the ways in which I have tried—and likely come up short of—to fit marginalized voices within scholarly conversations that don’t easily lend themselves to their representation. Relating this back to my experience in Reference this term, I realized that is incumbent upon everyone, from authors of scholarship, to the librarians who can provide ease of access to both information and the critical literacy with which to engage with such information, to researchers, to consumers of research, in the ecosystem of research must use their judgement in deciding what to produce, provide access to, and consume. After this term, I have begun to see how the work of research librarians is especially pivotal in the context of the ever-growing presence of Gen-AI (both within and without this ecosystem of scholarship), the near-ubiquitous presence of predatory and conglomerate publishers, and data harvesting, as these phenomena continue to make the politics of information evermore fraught. I leave with the impression that, as people fundamentally concerned with the intellectual health and welfare of the communities they serve, that many reference librarians are aware of the power they hold in upholding or enacting social equity and justice, though I am aware that not every reference librarian might be as social justice oriented and historically-minded as the ones at Carleton. I will carry the conversations I had with these librarians, least of all Adam, forward into my own praxis.
On the point of AI, reading and talking about the use of it, both in the generative sense in, say, college classrooms, and in regards to the threat it poses to millions of jobs and the workers who fulfill them (one domain for this being libraries), left me feeling somewhat perturbed. Conversations regarding AI, including ones that I’ve had with my professors and classmates, and those that I’ve listened to by “experts,” seems unfortunately to point to, on one end of the spectrum, a wary yet gradual acceptance of its presence, and the need to cultivate AI literacy and recognition of the positive possibilities of its use as a tool; and on the other end, the idea that it will infiltrate every aspect of our lives, whether we like it or not. I still don’t have a prediction, let alone an answer, to the question of how this will affect my prospects as someone who wishes to enter the academy. On one hand, I think academics—humanists in particular—will continue to value human-produced work, or at least literature, and that is what I will hold on to in my own scholarship. In other words, historical thinking matters, and that is something that AI, at least currently, can only hazard an attempt at doing. Reading the AHA’s guiding principles for artificial intelligence bolstered my belief in this. On the other, though I am no expert, I know that AI is becoming exponentially better with each passing year, so I still cannot help but wonder whether I or other academics will, eventually, in the distant or not-so-distant future, have much say in whether or not it is present in the scholarship we produce in some capacity.
In terms of what surprised me the most this term, I knew quite little about the monopoly that data cartels have over every quarter of the realm of data, but especially higher education and academic libraries. I find myself still feeling quite helpless in this regard. That being said, considerable efforts to establish open access was heartening to learn about.
One thing that I would like to have learned more about or done more work to materialize was how academic libraries like Gould can support, or at least interact with, local libraries. Given that the milieu local public libraries serve are much more likely to contain people with inhibited access to information or education, I think that, when possible, well-funded academic libraries ought to use their, what I presume to be, relative privilege and resources to bridge the gap between academic prestige and community need by sharing digital databases, specialized collections, or professional expertise with their local public counterparts. I still need to learn about whether this is or how it might be made to be possible, but given that Carleton, as a whole, sees itself as community-oriented and locally grounded, it feels like something important to discuss and probe.