Librarians have a long history of fighting for social justice, and today the need to continue the fight seems as strong as ever. You may find that members of your community are eager to get involved as well, but how can you help them? How can you provide them with resources that you know are unbiased, reliable, and accurate?

In this asynchronous eCourse, information literacy experts Dawn Stahura and Des Alaniz will show you how. Together, you’ll look at instruction sessions through the lens of critical information literacy, discussing the inherent biases and systemic oppression in how information is disseminated and processed. This eCourse will provide you with useful strategies to incorporate the process of knowledge creation into your instruction sessions, while highlighting the racial disparities found in publishing.

Each week will consist of a discussion board question, readings, and an assignment that allow students to practice incorporating each week’s theme into an instruction session.

• Week 1: Introduction and overview of ACRL frameworks, libraries and neutrality, and the radical catalog
• Week 2: Inherent biases in subject headings, Library of Congress subject headings, and controlled vocabulary.
• Week 3: Process of knowledge creation and critical annotated bibliographies.
• Week 4: Evaluation of sources, fake news sites, and critical cultural producers.
• Week 5: Zines and other alternative media.

After participating in this eCourse, you will be able to

• design instruction sessions that address inherent biases in library systems;
• locate and incorporate alternative texts in your instruction session to humanize the research process and address the lack of marginalized voices in scholarly publishing; and
• demonstrate the importance of teaching the process of knowledge creation as a way to understand systemic oppression in scholarly research