Thursday, April 16, 2015

LibGuides: Tool of Oppression

Alison Hicks wonders if LibGuides software is a tool of oppression. (See http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/journal/libguides-pedagogy-to-oppress/ ) I don't get it. Would Nicole Pagosky's Ferguson Resources ( http://libguides.library.arizona.edu/ferguson ) be more social justice-y if it were on WordPress and not part of the Arizona University Libraries system of LibGuides? Why the emphasis on the container? Also... I'm not clear about the hostility toward our traditional library resources. Hicks says "librarian-defined notions of value and authority conceals an industrial-era adherence to library-centric, behaviourist learning theories and provides a textbook example of Paulo Freire’s banking model of education." So... it would be less oppressive if students do NOT learn about scholarly resources? Why the hostility toward faculty assignments that provide a structured exercise? I'm at the reference desk of a community college where students are asked to do a basic bibliography with a recipe. Find five books, three articles, and two multimedia items on your topic. Use a certain format for the bibliography. Oppressive?? They have to find library resources. Oppressive? It's just an exercise - like doing scales when you are learning to play a musical instrument. Would it be more social justice-y if students did not know how to do a systematic search using a variety of sources and note that many publication types can be useful? Would it be more social justice-y if students never dealt with scholarly resources?

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