The national conversations on race and gender, sexuality and class are not restricted to politicians or social media. They are also a big focus of librarians.<\/p>\n
In the fall, our Graduate School of Library and Information Studies<\/a> launched a unique master\u2019s track, Information Equity, Diverse Communities, and Critical Librarianshi<\/a>p. And this spring, the program has been bringing those classroom conversations on race, gender, sexuality, class and information equality to the public forum by hosting a webinar series featuring national library and information science scholars.<\/p>\n The webinar series, Voices for Information Equity, began on Thursday, Jan. 28, with Tracy Drake, a historian and archivist at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. All lectures in the series run from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m., and are free and open to the public. Please, click here<\/a> to register for any of the semester\u2019s five lectures.<\/p>\n \u201cPretty much all parts of library and information studies actually have to do with equity,\u201d said Melissa Villa-Nicholas, assistant professor in URI\u2019s graduate library program and organizer of the webinar series and master\u2019s track. \u201cIt goes anywhere from archives to collections to reference, but really it\u2019s just every single part of librarianship. Library and Information Studies is assumed to be a neutral field, but it\u2019s actually very political.\u201d<\/p>\n The opening speaker, Drake, inaugural archivist at Reed College whose scholarship focuses on radical empathy and anti-racism in society and information, is co-founder of Blackivists, a group of trained Black archivists that prioritizes Black cultural heritage preservation. She spoke on on \u201cAll Power to the People: Centering Collections and Communities in the Archives.\u201d<\/p>\n On Feb. 25, DeAnza Williams, a doctoral student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, will discuss \u201cSeeing Black Boys in 21st<\/sup> Century Young Adult Literature.\u201d On March 25, the topic shifts to prison libraries and access for people who are incarcerated as Jeanie Austin of the San Francisco Public Library talks about \u201cInformation Access, Systemic Oppression, and Incarceration.\u201d<\/p>\n On April 8, Sarah Lamden, professor of law at the City University of New York and a member of the Mijente Immigrant Defense Project, discusses how digital library tools are being used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to track immigrants and how those practices conflict with privacy policies. The series closes April 22 with Miriam Sweeney, associate professor in Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama, exploring privacy issues associated with emerging technologies in library services and programming.<\/p>\n \u201cOur students and our community should learn a direct skillset out of these lectures. For example, in the talk about Black boys and young adult literature, I hope our students and the community of librarians will think, \u2018I\u2019m going to go out and purchase these books that are representative and have a diverse array of experiences,\u2019\u201d said Villa-Nicholas. \u201cFor the broader academic or public community, this is hopefully a way of getting to know our field and that these conversations, which are really compelling, are happening every day.\u201d<\/p>\n