Library
http://hdl.handle.net/10211.3/123502
2024-03-28T14:50:12ZWhose History?: Expanding Place-Based Initiatives Through Open Collaboration
http://hdl.handle.net/10211.3/217192
Whose History?: Expanding Place-Based Initiatives Through Open Collaboration
Visintainer, Sean; Anckle, Stephanie; Weischedel, Kristen
Hoffman, Kimberly Davies; Clifton, Alexis
Texas’s Rio Grande Valley (RGV) population is predominantly Tejano (Texans of Hispanic ancestry). It is a region undergoing rapid growth, transforming from a rural farming and ranching region to a conurbation of municipalities stretching along the Rio Grande River, from Brownsville to Roma. Home to 1.2 million people, by 2050 the population of the RGV is projected to be greater than 2 million (Hoque et al., 2014).
The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) is the RGV’s foremost higher education entity. Formed in 2013 from two legacy institutions, UTRGV’s 2018 enrollment was 28,644 students, with 87.8% of students identifying as Hispanic (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, 2018). UTRGV aims to be the nation’s first “B3” institution—bilingual, bicultural, and biliterate (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, 2016, p. 15).
UTRGV’s Teaching and Learning (T&L) program is a key producer of Latinx school teachers in the RGV, Texas, and beyond. UTRGV Library’s Special Collections2 (SC) acquires, preserves, and makes rare and unique documents related to the culture and history of south Texas accessible to researchers. Whose History? project facilitators include a T&L faculty member and two librarians: the Head of Special Collections and the Digital Archivist. The T&L faculty member guides lesson plan creation using place-based education (PBE) pedagogical practices, while the librarians assist with teacher-candidate research and the online publication of select lesson plans.
2020-07-01T00:00:00ZValidation Theory and Culturally Relevant Curriculum in the Information Literacy Classroom
http://hdl.handle.net/10211.3/216480
Validation Theory and Culturally Relevant Curriculum in the Information Literacy Classroom
Quiñonez, Torie L.; Olivas, Antonia P.
In four separate undergraduate information literacy classes where students predominantly identified as Latinx, two instruction library faculty revamped the standard information literacy curriculum to emphasize Latinx scholarship. They affirmed student life experience as authority in order to understand how validation theory affects the student scholar identity of first year Latinx college students from a large metropolitan area in the U.S.-Mexico border region. The two librarians who designed and team-taught these information literacy sessions are also both Latinx and come from urban borderlands backgrounds. Both identify as first-generation college students and one identifies as having a mixed status family background.
2020-01-01T00:00:00ZPoached Barrier Reef: Evaluating Articles on the Web
http://hdl.handle.net/10211.3/216301
Poached Barrier Reef: Evaluating Articles on the Web
Opdahl, Judy; Kane, Denise
First-year undergraduate students are novices at consuming web information due to a lack of critical information literacy skills. This recipe is designed to satisfy first-year students’ thirst for knowledge by demonstrating web article evaluation and allowing students to savor the experience of the internet buffet.
2020-01-01T00:00:00ZAre You Being served? Embracing Servant Leadership, Trusting Library Staff, and Engendering Change
http://hdl.handle.net/10211.3/214774
Are You Being served? Embracing Servant Leadership, Trusting Library Staff, and Engendering Change
Meulemans, Yvonne; Matlin, Talitha
It is self-evident that academic libraries and librarianship are changing in substantive
ways, ranging from the types of material we collect, to the way we approach information literacy
instruction, to our positions within college and university organizational charts. In response to a
rapidly changing environment, library administrators may try to quickly bring about changes in
library policies, structure, and more. However, in the process, library administrators may
inadvertently adopt rigid top-down approaches that can disenfranchise and disengage library
workers, resulting in outcomes that serve neither students nor workers. A servant leadership
approach to authority and influence may be a means to reverse this frustrating trajectory.
Servant leadership requires that administrators focus on the existing expertise and the
development potential of library workers as the means for ensuring fulfillment of the library’s
mission in an environment of constant change. Furthermore, this approach requires
administrators to begin by accepting library workers’ perspectives as their reality, instead of
dismissing those perspectives. This approach shares the same foundations of two central
practices of librarianship: reference and instruction. Librarians must believe users’ information
needs, listen to their experiences, and, with this information, consider ways to aid the user in
progressing toward their goal. A challenge to this approach is that it requires more work for
library administrators and library workers through consideration of different types of information
and looking closely at voices of disagreement and resistance. While servant leadership appears
more complex with slower progress, the end result of sincere engagement and effort by
everyone in the library has the potential to aid in achieving the changes needed to keep
academic libraries thriving.
2019-01-01T00:00:00Z