October 29, 6:00 pm—SCARLA general interest meeting
Join SCARLA (the Student College and Research Libraries Association—the Rutgers chapter of the Association of College and Research Libraries) on Tuesday, October 29 at 4:00 p.m. EDT for our next general interest meeting! Come chat, make friends, learn more about past SCARLA activities like our Banned Books Week readings, Critical Librarianship Collective, guest speakers and alumni and networking panels, help plan this year’s events, and find out how you can get involved.
Zoom: https://rutgers.zoom.us/j/2244511291?pwd=ZmNIVnNBYStkcW1CQ0lxZ0tzRXMxUT09
Banned Books Week!
More books are being targeted for censorship than ever—according to the ALA, over four thousand titles were challenged in 2023, 65% more than in 2022, with organized pressure groups increasingly targeting public libraries as well as school libraries.
Join SCARLA (Student College, Academic, and Research Libraries Association) on Tuesday, September 24 at 7:00 p.m. EDT for a free-ranging discussion of censorship and book challenge issues and readings from our favorite banned books.
Sign up here (Rutgers login required) if there are particular books you want to read from, resources you want to share, or things you want to talk about. Or just show up!
Resources and information:
- ALA’s Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2023
- “Censorship Attacks”: Dr. Tasslyn Magnusson’s database of book bans and challenges in the United States, sponsored by the EveryLibrary Institute
Zoom: https://rutgers.zoom.us/j/2244511291?pwd=ZmNIVnNBYStkcW1CQ0lxZ0tzRXMxUT09
SCARLA General Interest Meeting
SCARLA—the Student College and Research Libraries Association, the Rutgers chapter of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)—is holding its first meeting of the new semester!
Please join us on Tuesday, September 10, at 7pm EDT via Zoom.
If you are interested in learning more about the academic library community and career opportunities. Come chat, make friends, learn more about SCARLA activities. SCARLA sponsors several events like our Banned Books Week event, Critical Librarianship Collective, guest speakers and alumni and networking panels. We have open leadership positions, so please come to find out how you can get involved.
Post MI-Employment: the First Five Years
Please join SCARLA on April 16th at 7pm for Post MI-Employment: the First Five Years. We’re excited to welcome three panelists who are recent grads of the RU-MI program, all employed in higher education settings.
Joining us on April 16th are:
- Michael Murphy, RU MI ’22, Politics, Policy, and Data Librarian at Seton Hall University
- Chelsea Rizzolo, RU MI ’20, Instructor / Librarian at Brookdale Community College
- Victoria Sun, RU MI ’23, Business & Research Support Services Librarian at Penn Libraries
Topics to be covered include: How do I parlay my internship into a full-time gig? How do I make the leap from paraprofessional to librarian status? How do I leverage student leadership and publication experiences into marketable assets of my candidacy and CV? What is the best advice for a graduate student preparing to enter the academic library job market?
All will share a bit about their job search and initial months in their current positions, in addition to talking about the specific aspects highlighted above. There will also be time for Q&A from attendees.
This event is co-sponsored by the MI Colloquium, and is an eligible Colloquium event. It will be recorded for those who cannot attend on the 16th. Please use the following link to register: https://rutgers.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIkfu-prTwpGdNFQsvNLiGjl80bQyJfbRCH
Can’t wait to see you there!
CritLib Collective with Fobazi Ettarh
Join SCARLA on Tuesday, March 19 at 7pm EST for our CritLib Collective event series, a space where students, faculty, and librarians can gather for informal discussions on important topics related to critical librarianship. For this iteration of our series, we are reading “Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves” by Fobazi Ettarh. You can find the open access article here.
Fobazi Ettarh will be joining us for the meeting to give a short talk about her experiences writing this article and what she has learned since, with time for discussion to follow.
Register for CritLib Collective here. Bring your questions, thoughts, and anecdotes! We are excited for the conversation!
Fobazi M. Ettarh started out in libraries as a school librarian, then was an academic librarian doing mostly public facing roles such as instruction and student success. She is currently in her deferment year for her PhD at University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. In the meantime, she is an independent scholar and consultant for library organizations and training.
Fobazi’s research is concerned with the relationships and tensions between the espoused values of librarianship and the realities present in the experiences of marginalized librarians and library users. In 2018, she coined the term and defined the concept of “vocational awe,” which describes, “the set of ideas, values, and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in beliefs that libraries as institutions are inherently good and sacred, and therefore beyond critique.” In her article “Vocational Awe: The Lies We Tell Ourselves,” she describes how vocational awe can lead to burnout and a sense that one’s own self-care is less important than the work being done.
Fobazi Ettarh’s critical work on libraries, labor, and identity has been published in In the Library With the Lead Pipe and edited collections, including the Critical Library Pedagogy Handbook and Knowledge Justice: Disrupting Library and Information Studies through Critical Race Theory. She has given invited talks at numerous professional and scholarly conferences and events, including the Library as Place Symposium, and keynotes at the Association of College and Research Libraries and Library Journal Directors’ Summit.