University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Mapping Race and Racism in U.S. Library History Literature, 1997–2015

Velez, LaTesha; Villa-Nicholas, Melissa

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/103581

Description

Title
Mapping Race and Racism in U.S. Library History Literature, 1997–2015
Author(s)
  • Velez, LaTesha
  • Villa-Nicholas, Melissa
Issue Date
2017
Keyword(s)
  • U.S. library history literature
  • Race
  • Ethnicity
  • Racism
Abstract
This paper is a critical bibliography which examines U.S. library history literature from 1997 through 2015 to map the current research around race, ethnicity, and racism in such literature. Seventeen years ago Wayne Wiegand (2000) examined fifty years of published research literature (1947–1997) in American library history looking for varied theoretical perspectives. He argued for the use of more critical theories, and for library historians to join with social and cultural historians to help contextualize library history within broader cultural and social forces in the United States. The paper examines the progress of histories around race, racism, and people of color in libraries since Wiegand's call, and discovered that theoretical perspectives around library histories have broadened into the areas of race and ethnicity, but that there is still much research to be done. Many topics and time periods are still underresearched. For example, the paper found few or no articles that focus on race or ethnicity in the histories of U.S. private libraries, the predecessor to the public library, special libraries, or library education; it also found many articles in ethnic studies journals rather than LIS journals.
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press. The School of Information Sciences at Illinois. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Series/Report Name or Number
Library Trends 65 (4). Spring 2017
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/103581
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2017.0017
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2017 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Owning Collections

Library Trends 65 (4) Spring 2017: Spanning the Information Sciences : A Celebration Marking Seventy Years of the Doctoral Program in the School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign PRIMARY
Library Trends 65 (4) Spring 2017: Spanning the Information Sciences : A Celebration Marking Seventy Years of the Doctoral Program in the School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Edited by Alistair Black and Emily J.M. Knox.