world literature – Community and Junior College Libraries Section (CJCLS)

2016 Best Books (& Blogs, Articles, Podcasts, etc.) Lists

by Lindsay Davis

It’s hard to believe the end of the semester is here. Soon, we’ll be seeing more and more “best books of 2016” lists—Times Critics’ Top Books of 2016, NPR’s Book Concierge: Our Guide to 2016’s Great Reads, NPR’s The 10 Best Books of 2016 Faced Tough Topics Head On, Book Riot’s Best Books of 2016, Goodreads Choice Awards 2016, Flavorwire’s 15 Best Books of 2016, Jezebel’s The Best Things We Read in 2016 That You Still Can Too, Chicago Public Library’s Best of the Best Books 2016, and World Literature Today’s 75 Notable Translations of 2016 to name a few.

What about you? Are there books or articles you read—or podcasts you listened to or videos you watched—this year that were useful to you in your work as a librarian?

I’m having a hard time thinking about last spring semester, but, this fall, I read chapters from Heidi Buchanan and Beth McDonough’s The One-Shot Library Instruction Survival Guide, 2^nd ed. (2017), which I enjoyed. There is a lot of practical advice in this easy-to-digest read. I also read Amanda Hovious’ Designer Librarian blog and Kate Ganski’s My So-Called Librarian Life blog, which allowed me to think about my instruction efforts a bit more. I was also impacted by Anne-Marie Deitering’s post “Culture is What People Do” in her info-fetishist blog. Most recently, I read Stonebraker’s (2016) “Toward Informed Leadership: Teaching Students to Make Better Decisions Using Information.” (It is behind a pay wall.) I enjoyed this article because it offers some practical information about how to incorporate evidence-based management strategies– decision awareness, process creation, and decision practice–into library instruction, both in a credit information literacy course or in the one-shot environment.

If you’re itching for some professional reading over your winter break, check out LIRT’s Top 20 Articles in 2015 list that was released this summer. ACRL also has a Goodreads account. Don’t forget, the CJCLS Blog also has a list of books and articles written by community and junior college librarians , which you can find in the CJCLS Scholarship page. (We’re still working on updating the citations to MLA 8.)

Please let us know what books, articles, blogs, podcasts, websites, etc. helped you in your work this year in the comments. Also feel free to share any curated book lists like the ones mentioned at the beginning of this post. And, finally, if you published a peer-reviewed article or book this year, let us know. We will be happy to add it to our section’s growing bibliography.

Happy Reading! Happy Holidays!

Global Literature in Libraries Initiative

By Lindsay Davis

The #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign isn’t just for school libraries or public libraries. Community college, college, and university libraries also need diverse books. When I attended the National Diversity in Libraries Conference, I attended a great lightning round program, Academic Libraries Spearheading Diversity and Cultural Initiatives on University Campuses. In that program, the University of Cincinnati Libraries discussed their Reading Around the World book club.

What is your community college or community college library doing to highlight materials from other parts of the world? Do you have a collection of translated works from your international students’ home countries? Do you have a book club focusing on books from around the globe? How do you learn about books from other countries?

The Global Literature in Libraries Initiative (GLLI), newly founded by Rachel Hildebrandt, works to raise awareness of world literature:

…for adults and children at the local, national and international levels. We intend to do so by facilitating close and direct collaboration between translators, librarians, publishers, editors, and educators, because we believe that these groups in collaboration are uniquely positioned to help libraries provide support and events to engage readers of all ages in a library framework that explores and celebrates literature from around the world.

We want to increase the visibility of international works in English translation so that more readers can enjoy the amazing diversity in these books and the perspectives they present. And we would like to do this by increasing cooperation between literary translators, international literature advocates, and librarians, who are already experts at guiding readers to new titles. Whether you are a children’s librarian or a YA blogger, a rural library director or a teacher at a large urban school with a diverse student population, we would welcome your insights as we explore collaborative opportunities to encourage readers to explore beyond the boundaries of their own culture and language.

Goals & Projects:

Book lists and guides tied to major translation awards and library themes
Programming ideas for various library user groups: children, teens, college students, adults, English Language Learners, etc.
ALA conference involvement: workshops and sessions, networking through various ALA units and offices to explore the best ways to provide information and services to librarians
Joint webinars with various ALA offices
Publisher and journal lists organized by vendors/distributors to help librarians more easily acquire books in translation
Advocacy on behalf of small publishers to increase their visibility on the review platforms that librarians commonly use for their acquisitions decisions
General education efforts to help librarians understand more thoroughly the value of translated literature and of contemporary foreign-language literature
Pan-publisher catalogs crafted specifically for librarian users, as a form of “one-stop” shopping to learn about new works coming out in translation
Exploration of ways in which non-US publishers of English translations and non-US, non-English-language publishers can more easily promote their works among libraries (Global Literature in Libraries, “About,” 2016)

If you would like to get involved with GLLI, please contact Rachel Hildebrandt at rehildebrandt@gmail.com. GLLI also have a Facebook group, which you can find here.