Author: Jennifer Gilley

Congratulations to our incoming WGSS Officers for 2023-2024

Kari Weaver, Chair

Esther Medina De León, Vice-Chair

Renee Kiner, Secretary

Nadia M. Orozco-Sahi, Member-at-Large

The theme for this year’s Women’s History Month LibGuide is “Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories,” focusing on the many ways that women have been passing on our heritage in word and in print to communicate the lessons of those who came before us. This year’s guide includes books, both fiction and non-fiction, that relate to this theme.

The LibGuide was created by the Collections Committee of the Women and Gender Studies Section.

The following 4 posters were exhibited as part of the WGSS poster session at ALA Annual 2022. To read the abstracts and see the posters, go to the Research Poster page.

	Balancing Profession and Family: A Survey of the Challenges Working Moms Face in Libraries Suzanna Yaukey (Towson University) and Lesley Brown (Montgomery College)
	Developing an Inclusive and Diverse Artificial Intelligence (AI) Collection in the Humanities and Social Sciences Colleen Seale and Stacey Ewing, University of Florida
	Dressing Down: Sexism, Racism, and Classism in “Professional” Attire and the new Librarian Jenni Jacobs, Texas Tech University
	Information and Communication Technology Literacy for Women in Sustainable Employment Lesley J. Farmer, California State University Long Beach

The WGSS Collections Committee is working on a project to create a toolkit for DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility) and collecting in Women’s and Gender Studies. We have created a Padlet where we are gathering resources to put into this toolkit. We would love your contributions! The Padlet is public and you can add resources on your own (if you create an account, you can edit your own post, but you are unable to edit others). It is currently very informal, as we wanted to just keep it open and easy to add anything; we will continue to keep it open and refine it over the next academic year into a more formal resource. We hope that you will find it useful for your own practices!

The Companion Document to the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education: Women’s and Gender Studies is now available on the ACRL website.

Drawing on key texts from WGS and critical information literacy, the WGSS Guidelines for Women’s and Gender Studies Information Literacy incorporates WGS threshold concepts into the ACRL Information Literacy (IL) Framework and provides an intersectional feminist context for each Frame. This document is intended to support faculty and librarians who seek to integrate critical information literacy into their curriculum. Learning outcomes that accompany each Frame reflect a feminist pedagogical viewpoint.

I am very happy to report that the Collections Committee has published a freely accessible LibGuide, hosted by ACRL, containing OA and OER resources in Women’s and Gender Studies. acrl.libguides.com/WGSScollections/home

The list was originally compiled by the 2019-2020 Collections Committee, and we worked this semester to check links, add new resources and put it into a LibGuide (the thanks for the bulk of this work goes to Tori Hopper!). This is a work in progress and we are always taking suggestions, which you can provide using the link on the LibGuide.

–Erin Hvizdak

Jane Nichols, associate professor and head of the teaching and engagement department at Oregon State University, has won the WGSS Award for Career Achievement in Women and Gender Studies Librarianship. Nichols was selected for her tireless commitment to women and gender studies, social justice, critical pedagogy, and feminist publishing.

See more information about the Award.

Nicola Andrews, instruction and first year experience librarian at the University of San Francisco has won the 2021 Significant Achievement in Women and Gender Studies Librarianship Award for her publication “It’s Not Imposter Syndrome: Resisting Self-Doubt as Normal for Library Workers” (In the Library with the Lead Pipe, June 10, 2020).

See more information about the Award.

ALA is shifting all SYMPA discussion lists to ALA Connect by May 1, 2021. This will allow our section to better manage conversations, ensure access and help with continuity, and streamline engagement for all ACRL members.

Will my WGSS listserv subscription automatically be transferred to ALA connect? 

NO. Your listserv subscription is not automatically transferred to ALA connect. You will need to add WGSS in your ALA Connect account. Information on how to do that is below.

How do I post to the new list?

All section ALA Connect home pages now have discussion list functionality and WGSS subscribers can begin using the following discussion list address. You can post to the WGSS list once you have subscribed to ALA Connect and designated our section as part of your group.

ALA-ACRL-WGSS@ConnectedCommunity.org

When a member sends a message to the new Connect email address, it will post directly to your group’s ALA Connect Community.  Additionally:

• Members of this community will get an email notification with the full message. They can respond either directly via email or by logging into Connect and replying to the discussion post within the community.
• Members can adjust their Connect settings to receive individual email notifications in real-time or a digest format.

How do people subscribe?

Current ACRL Members
All ALA members have an ALA Connect account connected to their ALA login. Members of ACRL interest groups/sections are automatically added to the appropriate unit’s Connect space when they add the section or interest group to their ALA-ACRL membership, and will have automatic access to the discussion list functionality. 

Non-Members
Non-members are welcome to create a free ALA Connect account and have access to numerous resources. Non-members can post to this unit’s list address once they create a free account, log in, and join the community.