Digital Commons Network^™

The Band Of American Ladies : Children’S Librarians And The Creation Of Children’S Literature In The Long 19th Century, Suzanne Stauffer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Copyright And Fair Use For Graduating Studio Art Majors, Jessica Hronchek

Faculty Publications

This lesson was designed as a part of a seminar for art majors preparing work for their Senior Show and is intended to inform students preparing to begin careers as practicing artists or art educators. The lesson incorporates a short lecture on copyright and fair use, a class discussion about copyright and artistic practice based on preparatory readings, an in-class research exercise of art copyright case studies, and student presentations on their findings and opinions. In addition to raising awareness of copyright and the CAA Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts, this lesson is particularly …

Libraries Are The Homes Of Books: Whiteness In The Construction Of School Libraries, Suzanne Marie Stauffer

Faculty Publications

The bibliographic instructional work, The Children’s Book on How to Use Books and Libraries, issued seven times between 1937 and 1973, utilized the metaphor of the library as the “home of books.” That “home” was constructed as a private, white, middle- class space in which children, who are invited guests, not residents, were expected to behave according to white, middle-class social norms and cultural values. The children depicted were uniformly white, able-bodied, and middle class as well. American cultural values such as individualism, competition, and pragmatism and utilitarianism were celebrated. This work critically analyzes the whiteness of the presentation, including …

Objective Research? Information Literacy Instruction Perspectives, Terry Dwain Robertson

Faculty Publications

Common understandings of “objective” research include values such as “factual” and “interpretive neutrality”. There is a growing consensus that the person, the “subject”, doing the research counts as much as if not more in the interpretive outcomes than the “facts” alone, and that “interpretive neutrality” is not possible.

The presentation offers an alternative framing of “objective research” as the grounded, intentional and savvy analysis of an “object” in conversation with a community of peers/experts for the purpose of creating knowledge.

Following Ferraris’ ontology, three classes of “objects” exist (1) Natural objects: exist whether or not a person notices them. Example: …

Latino Stats: American Hispanics By The Numbers, Leticia Camacho

Faculty Publications

Today, 53 million Latinos live in the US, and Latino Stats provides an informative, positive portrait of this fast-growing population group. T he book, written by Malavé and Giordani, a Hispanic American mother and daughter research team, provides statistical data gathered primarily from government, private sector, nonprofit, and media sources. Ten chapters cover the basics of immigration, voting and politics, jobs and the economy, family and community, youth and education, health and environment, criminal justice, entertainment, technology, and sports and identity. Each chapter starts with a quote from a famous Hispanic American followed by a short introduction and a section …

Critical Theory, Libraries And Culture, Jenny Bossaller, Denice Adkins, Kim M. Thompson

Faculty Publications

There are disparate notions among people within the broad field of information and library science regarding exactly what comprises information science. One broad definition is provided by Tefko Saracevic: “Information science is a field of professional practice and scientific inquiry addressing the problem of effective communication of knowledge records – ʻliteratureʼ – among humans in the context of social, organizational, and individual need for and use of information” (1055- 1056). At its most basic, it seems that information science could be a neutral science if, indeed, it studies everything that is communicated, in any form. However, as noted in the …

Situated Practices Of Information Use And Representation: An Ethnographic Study Of A Web Design Project For Boys, Kristen Rebmann

Faculty Publications

This article explores the production practices employed by children building personal webpages in a semi-structured afterschool program: the Fifth Dimension (5D). Following a critical Multiliteracies (CritMLs) approach to learning design, this ethnographic study introduced web-building practices to the children of the 5D and followed their production of personal webpages over a 9 month period. By structuring the intervention this way, it was possible to simultaneously observe the development of both the webpage as artifact as well as the child-participant. Along these lines, the study describes the unique and particular social contexts from which personal webpages emerge and develop over time. …

Rendering Information Literacy Relevant: A Case-Based Pedagogy, Andy Spackman, Leticia Camacho

Faculty Publications

The authors describe the use of case studies in a program of extracurricular library instruction and explain the benefits of case teaching in developing information literacy. The paper presents details of example cases and analyzes surveys to evaluate the impact of case teaching on student satisfaction.

Developing Children's Interest In Reading, Suzanne Marie Stauffer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Storytelling, Folktales And The Comic Book Format, Gail De Vos

Faculty Publications

The reading process in comics is an extension of text. In text alone the process of reading involves word-to-image conversion. Comics accelerate that by providing the image. When properly executed, it goes beyond conversion and speed and becomes a seamless whole. In every sense, this misnamed form of reading is entitled to be regarded as literature because the images are employed as a language. There is a recognizable relationship to the iconography and pictographs of oriental writing. When this language is employed as a conveyance of ideas and information, it separates itself from mindless visual entertainment. This makes comics a …

Graphic Novels And The Reluctant Reader, Gail De Vos

Faculty Publications

What has happened to influence this change? First, the quality of comic books, particularly graphic novels, is now formally acknowledged. Graphic novels, the sturdy, lengthy comic books that contain one story or a set of related stories, are now being sporadically reviewed in selection journals as well as being the focus of a large number of recent articles. But the most compelling reason is wider awareness of our highly visual culture and its impact on our youth. Far from receiving stories from television and film passively, readers of comic books are actively constructing meaning from the text and illustrations and …