Anthony Bernier

This Is Our Library, and It's a Pretty Cool Place: A User-Centered Study of Public Library YA Spaces

This study sought to collect data from teens and librarians about their preferences and recommendations for the effective design of physical library spaces for teens. Librarians and teens at twenty-two U.S. public libraries filmed narrated video tours of their young adult (YA) public library spaces. The researchers used qualitative content analysis techniques to analyze the video data and to develop a framework for guiding the design of effective YA public library spaces. In addition to providing specific recommendations for user-centered YA library space design, this study highlights the need for continued user input into the design and maintenance of YA public library spaces as teens’ needs evolve and vary across time and from community to community.

“It Is Silly to Hide Your Most Active Patrons”: Exploring User Participation of Library Space Designs for Young Adults in the United States

This article advances the first attempt to collect and examine empirical data on young adult (YA) spaces in public libraries from institutions across the United States by surveying current practices in new and renovated buildings. Analysis of an online survey of 257 library and information science (LIS) professionals produced an innovative Youth Participation Index (YPI) used to document the relative intensities of youth involvement in the design and execution of YA spaces. Libraries claiming higher levels of youth participation reported significant quality service improvements across a wide range of outcomes. However, after several decades of advocating for youth involvement in the delivery of library services from many LIS sources, only a minority of the libraries surveyed reported high YPI scores, and the specific mechanisms for enacting youth involvement require further investigation.

Not Free, Not for All: Public Libraries in the Age of Jim Crow

Not Free, Not for All arrives at an auspicious, if not ironic, moment in the history of public libraries in the United States: contrasting centennial celebrations of the very Carnegie buildings that excluded so many in the American South for so long, while also elevating the first African American (first woman and public librarian) as Librarian of Congress. Cheryl Knott, associate professor at the University of Arizona, presents the mature social history to which library and information science must aspire to advance its historiography beyond self-congratulation and institutional exceptionalism. Knott writes forcefully: ‘It is fantasy to believe that the public library was one of the few institutions not implicated in a system of racism or that separate public libraries from African Americans were just an unfortunate exception to the public library’s true democratic nature’ (p. ) Knott’s examination of library history under racial segregationist policy in the Southern states (known in the United States as ‘Jim Crow’), builds upon two previous works: Patterson Graham’s A Right to Read () on African American exclusion from Alabama’s libraries during this same period, and Wayne Wiegand’s more recent and broader celebration of the public library in American culture, Part of Our Lives: A People’s History of the American Public Library (; see following review). Knott subtly pursues the different experiences and meanings of libraries for African Americans, as well as how they ultimately resisted race-based restrictions. But unlike so many library histories, Knott also addresses how local whites, library professionals, local officials, even the American Library Association, instituted, colluded, and defended segregation. Like all quality social history, Knott charts different courses for the diverse groups of actors, in this instance between the late nineteenth century and the s. She expertly examines founding documents and policies of new libraries, circulation and holdings records, many secondary accounts created during the period, and archival records connecting administrative regimes to segregationist policy. Knott crunches down hard on the lingering legacy of public library equanimity and self-styled myths of democratic access—exposing just how broad exclusionary policy existed throughout the south, how deeply ingrained were so many interests and strategies to defend it, and how library history has ‘whitewashed’ the story. Librarians, especially white middle-class women, so often imagined as magnanimous cultural apostles, prove explicit proponents and defenders of Jim Crow segregation. And while not Knott’s focus, the American Library Association’s complicity in segregation also plays a significant role. Whites closed libraries rather than view African Americans as civic equals. Beyond the stories of institutional exclusion, however, Knott’s key contribution resides in African American resistance and persistent aspirations toward valuing libraries as essential to their citizenship. As with similar struggles against ‘American Apartheid’, for access to public schools, transportation, swimming pools, parks, and many other municipal resources, significant progress toward racially integrated libraries did not occur until the s and s, not until after, Knott argues, the post–World War II era articulated the budding revolution we now call the Civil Rights Movement. Like all quality social history, Knott features the collective agency and volition

[Review of] Not Free, Not for All: Public Libraries in the Age of Jim Crow

Not Free, Not for All arrives at an auspicious, if not ironic, moment in the history of public libraries in the United States: contrasting centennial celebrations of the very Carnegie buildings that excluded so many in the American South for so long, while also elevating the first African American (first woman and public librarian) as Librarian of Congress. Cheryl Knott, associate professor at the University of Arizona, presents the mature social history to which library and information science must aspire to advance its historiography beyond self-congratulation and institutional exceptionalism. Knott writes forcefully: ‘It is fantasy to believe that the public library was one of the few institutions not implicated in a system of racism or that separate public libraries from African Americans were just an unfortunate exception to the public library’s true democratic nature’ (p. ) Knott’s examination of library history under racial segregationist policy in the Southern states (known in the United States as ‘Jim Crow’), builds upon two previous works: Patterson Graham’s A Right to Read () on African American exclusion from Alabama’s libraries during this same period, and Wayne Wiegand’s more recent and broader celebration of the public library in American culture, Part of Our Lives: A People’s History of the American Public Library (; see following review). Knott subtly pursues the different experiences and meanings of libraries for African Americans, as well as how they ultimately resisted race-based restrictions. But unlike so many library histories, Knott also addresses how local whites, library professionals, local officials, even the American Library Association, instituted, colluded, and defended segregation. Like all quality social history, Knott charts different courses for the diverse groups of actors, in this instance between the late nineteenth century and the s. She expertly examines founding documents and policies of new libraries, circulation and holdings records, many secondary accounts created during the period, and archival records connecting administrative regimes to segregationist policy. Knott crunches down hard on the lingering legacy of public library equanimity and self-styled myths of democratic access—exposing just how broad exclusionary policy existed throughout the south, how deeply ingrained were so many interests and strategies to defend it, and how library history has ‘whitewashed’ the story. Librarians, especially white middle-class women, so often imagined as magnanimous cultural apostles, prove explicit proponents and defenders of Jim Crow segregation. And while not Knott’s focus, the American Library Association’s complicity in segregation also plays a significant role. Whites closed libraries rather than view African Americans as civic equals. Beyond the stories of institutional exclusion, however, Knott’s key contribution resides in African American resistance and persistent aspirations toward valuing libraries as essential to their citizenship. As with similar struggles against ‘American Apartheid’, for access to public schools, transportation, swimming pools, parks, and many other municipal resources, significant progress toward racially integrated libraries did not occur until the s and s, not until after, Knott argues, the post–World War II era articulated the budding revolution we now call the Civil Rights Movement. Like all quality social history, Knott features the collective agency and volition

Not Free, Not for All: Public Libraries in the Age of Jim Crow: ByCheryl Knott. Pp. 312, ill. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. 2015.

Not Free, Not for All arrives at an auspicious, if not ironic, moment in the history of public libraries in the United States: contrasting centennial celebrations of the very Carnegie buildings that excluded so many in the American South for so long, while also elevating the first African American (first woman and public librarian) as Librarian of Congress. Cheryl Knott, associate professor at the University of Arizona, presents the mature social history to which library and information science must aspire to advance its historiography beyond self-congratulation and institutional exceptionalism. Knott writes forcefully: ‘It is fantasy to believe that the public library was one of the few institutions not implicated in a system of racism or that separate public libraries from African Americans were just an unfortunate exception to the public library’s true democratic nature’ (p. ) Knott’s examination of library history under racial segregationist policy in the Southern states (known in the United States as ‘Jim Crow’), builds upon two previous works: Patterson Graham’s A Right to Read () on African American exclusion from Alabama’s libraries during this same period, and Wayne Wiegand’s more recent and broader celebration of the public library in American culture, Part of Our Lives: A People’s History of the American Public Library (; see following review). Knott subtly pursues the different experiences and meanings of libraries for African Americans, as well as how they ultimately resisted race-based restrictions. But unlike so many library histories, Knott also addresses how local whites, library professionals, local officials, even the American Library Association, instituted, colluded, and defended segregation. Like all quality social history, Knott charts different courses for the diverse groups of actors, in this instance between the late nineteenth century and the s. She expertly examines founding documents and policies of new libraries, circulation and holdings records, many secondary accounts created during the period, and archival records connecting administrative regimes to segregationist policy. Knott crunches down hard on the lingering legacy of public library equanimity and self-styled myths of democratic access—exposing just how broad exclusionary policy existed throughout the south, how deeply ingrained were so many interests and strategies to defend it, and how library history has ‘whitewashed’ the story. Librarians, especially white middle-class women, so often imagined as magnanimous cultural apostles, prove explicit proponents and defenders of Jim Crow segregation. And while not Knott’s focus, the American Library Association’s complicity in segregation also plays a significant role. Whites closed libraries rather than view African Americans as civic equals. Beyond the stories of institutional exclusion, however, Knott’s key contribution resides in African American resistance and persistent aspirations toward valuing libraries as essential to their citizenship. As with similar struggles against ‘American Apartheid’, for access to public schools, transportation, swimming pools, parks, and many other municipal resources, significant progress toward racially integrated libraries did not occur until the s and s, not until after, Knott argues, the post–World War II era articulated the budding revolution we now call the Civil Rights Movement. Like all quality social history, Knott features the collective agency and volition

82.95 (HB);

While instructors know the importance of successful small group collaboration, and the value of the skills required to execute them, students continue to prefer to work independently. The promise and development of recent online tools, however, and streams of recent research on small group collaboration, continue to produce less-than-satisfying or sufficiently generalizable pedagogical interventions. This study examines a more systematic attempt to direct students through specific tasks designed to improve their experience and produce higher quality student learning outcomes. Two groups of graduate students across four required online classes were surveyed about their attitudes and the steps they take when engaging assigned small group projects. The first group was offered a pre-recorded lecture as a resource while the second group was offered the same lecture plus additional specific ground rules to help avoid common negative experiences. Both groups were asked to complete surveys about their experiences. While many students continue to exhibit less-than-productive behaviors and practices, even after engaging the guidelines, some improvements did emerge. The study points out that more attention to pedagogical intervention is indicated if instructors hope to improve learning outcomes in valuable small group collaborations.