The topic of this week's episode is the long history of biases inherent to the book reviews used for library collection decisions. Elizabeth is joined by academic librarian Pamela Hayes Bohanan to discuss 60 years of research and reflection about the limited exposure librarians get to the large corpus of potential acquisitions. While perspectives differ, there is little disagreement that publishers, editors, and book review publications are impacting what appears in your local public and academic libraries.
Podcast notes
Pokornowski, E., & Schonfeld, R. C. (2024, March 28). Censorship and Academic Freedom in the Public University Library.
Best, P. (2024). How to Combat the Biased School Library Book Selection Process. Gordon, Rosalie M. (1961).
Why you can't find conservative books in public libraries. Human Events, 18, 591-4. Macleod, B. (1981).
Library Journal and Choice: A Review of Reviews. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 7(1), 23-28. Kister, K. (2002). The conscience of a reference reviewer. Journal of Information Ethics, 11(1).
April Liberalism in Practice Panel Discussion: McCarthyism in the Stacks:
ILV presents the first in a series of panel discussions on Queer Liberalism, cohosted by our partner organization, the online magazine Queer Majority. QM’s Editor-in-Chief Rio Veradonir will moderate. Each discussion will feature a panel of prominent and emerging thinkers with relevant experience and expertise. The goal of the series is to recenter queer discourse on liberalism, by critiquing anti-liberal trends in the movement and modeling a more moderate, reformist approach. After each discussion, there will be a live Q&A.
August panelists include Wilfred Reilly, Iona Italia, Phil Illy, Jimmy Bangash and Ben Appel.
Hush-Hush: The Hidden Ways that Book Reviews Impact Library Selections