a few thoughts on Teaching for Justice: Implementing Social Justice in the Lis Classroom

Teaching for Justice: Implementing Social Justice in the Lis Classroom by Nicole A Cooke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the first Library Juice Press publication I have read. The title may seem to be only relevant for people who are teaching people to be librarians, however, there is much of relevance for library practitioners as the different chapters explore theoretical frameworks as well as teaching. Many of the exercises described by the authors of the different chapters could be applied or modified for a workplace. It is helping me think about professional development to work on, building on some work already being done to address social justice in libraries.

A strong point in this books is about social justice being a key part of every library service. It is part of who is not using the library, who is included in the collections (and this is all collections from those for children to local studies), and who is targeted in programs and services. What languages are collected and have programs or services provided in also matters.

I read this book slowly because it is the kind of book which needs to be read and thought about, and now parts need to be reread.

Each chapters has detailed bibliographical information making additional reading easy to do. This book is written by people in the USA, but there is much of relevance for Australian (and other) library staff.

The book would be useful reading for many library staff. It would be an interesting one for a staff reading group discussion.

My copy now has post-it note flags sticking out from it, some with writing on them for additional prompts. This is why ebooks can be handy, for less messy note taking, but paper is also fine for reading.

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