How do you supervise a graduate student working in a library—and not just adequately, but well? What is a valuable and meaningful work experience? How can libraries design more equitable and ethical positions for students?Learning in Action: Designing Successful Graduate Student Work Experiences in Academic Libraries provides practical, how-to guidance on creating and managing impactful programs as well as meaningful personal experiences for students and library staff in academic libraries. Fourteen chapters are divided into four thorough sections: Creating Access Pathways Developing, Running, and Evolving Programs for LIS Students Working with Graduate Students without an LIS Background: Mutual Opportunities for Growth Centering the Person  Chapters cover topics including developing experiential learning opportunities for online students; cocreated cocurricular graduate learning experiences; an empathy-driven approach to crafting an internship; self-advocacy and mentorship in LIS graduate student employment; and sharing perspectives on work and identity between a graduate student and an academic library manager. Throughout the book you’ll find “Voices from the Field,� profiles that showcase the voices and reflections of the graduate students themselves, recent graduates, and managers.   Learning in Action brings together a range of topics and perspectives from authors of diverse backgrounds and institutions to offer practical inspiration and a framework for creating meaningful graduate student work experiences at your institutions.

Helping readers understand the challenges and barriers faced by teens in urban communities, this one-of-a-kind resource offers real-world recommendations, case studies, and experience-based programmatic solutions for fostering crucial media literacy skills. Information and digital literacies are essential skills to survive and thrive in today's media-saturated world. But minoritized and economically disadvantaged youth in urban communities often lack these critical media literacy competencies. Offering a multi-faceted perspective, this book guides those who serve teens in libraries towards implementing innovative and transformative learning experiences. Librarians and YA specialists who serve urban youth in public, school, and academic libraries will gain insight on how factors such as lack of information and communication technology proficiency, inadequate technology and internet access, and instructional inequity place urban teens at high risk for media and informational illiteracy; receive hands-on and strategic guidance for connecting successfully with and creating spaces for teens in urban communities, illustrated through teen reflections, narratives from librarians and educators across the US, and voices from scholars in the field; learn about several successful media literacy programs that have been implemented in libraries and communities, from Hip Hop Studies at Virginia Tech to youth podcasting, a zine club, Black Girls Film Camp, and others; and find a toolkit of additional resources such as handout templates, sample lesson plans, and information about books and websites.

"The book is effervescent with potential to transform our work in everything from our relations with students to our role in developing teaching cultures on campus." -from the Foreword by Margy MacMillan Teaching and learning communities are communities of practice in which a group of faculty and staff from across disciplines regularly meet to discuss topics of common interest and to learn together how to enhance teaching and learning. Since these teaching and learning communities can bring together members who might not have otherwise interacted, new ideas, practices, and synergies can arise. The role of librarians in teaching and learning has been reexamined and reinvigorated by the introduction of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, which offers a conceptual approach and theoretical foundations that are new and challenging. Building Teaching and Learning Communities: Creating Shared Meaning and Purpose goes beyond the library profession for inspiration and insights from leading experts in higher education pedagogy and educational development across North America to open a window on the wider world of teaching and learning, and includes discussion of pedagogical theories and practices including threshold concepts and stuck places; the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL); disciplinary approaches to pedagogy; the role of signature pedagogies; inclusion of student voices; metaliteracy; reflective practice; affective, behavioral, and cognitive aspects of learning; liminal spaces; and faculty as learners. This unique collection asks each of the authors to address this question: What do we as educators need to learn (or unlearn) and experience so we can create teaching and learning communities across disciplines and learning levels based on shared meaning and purpose? Six fascinating chapters explore this question in different ways: Building a Culture of Teaching and Learning, Pat Hutchings and Mary Deane Sorcinelli Sit a Spell: Embracing the Liminality of Pedagogical Change through the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Linda Hodges The Crossroads of SoTL and Signature Pedagogies, Nancy L. Chick Bottlenecks of Information Literacy, Joan Middendorf and Andrea Baer Developing Learning Partnerships: Navigating Troublesome and Transformational Relationships, Peter Felten, Kristina Meinking, Shannon Tennant, and Katherine Westover When Teachers Talk to Teachers: Shared Traits between Writing Across the Curriculum and Faculty Learning Communities, Kateryna A. R. Schray Building Teaching and Learning Communities is an entry into some of the most interesting conversations in higher education and offers ways for librarians to socialize in learning theory and begin "thinking together" with faculty. It proposes questions, challenges assumptions, provides examples to be used and adapted, and can help you better prepare as teachers and pursue the essential role of conversation and collaboration with faculty and students.

Librarianship is still a predominantly white profession. It is essential that current practitioners as well as those about to enter the field take an unflinching look at the profession's legacy of racial discrimination, including the ways in which race might impact service to users such as students in school, public, and academic libraries. Given the prevalence of implicit and explicit bias against Black and African American people, authors Folk and Overbey argue that we must speak to these students directly to hear their stories and thereby understand their experiences. This Special Report shares the findings of a qualitative research study that explored the library experiences of Black and African American undergraduate students both before and during college, grounding it within an equity framework. From this Report readers will learn details about the study, which focused on the potential role of race in the students' interactions with library staff, including white staff and staff of color; gain insight into Black and African American users' perceptions of libraries and library staff, attitudes towards reading, frequency of library usage, and the importance of family; understand the implications of the study's findings for our practice and for librarianship more broadly, including our ongoing commitment to diversifying the profession; and walk away with recommendations that can be applied to every library and educational context, such as guidance for developing an antiracist organization and more equitable service provision.