The idea of the “commons” is often invoked in discussions of the academic library’s future, but these references are usually vague and rhetorical. What exactly does it mean for the library to be organized as a commons, and what might such a library look like? Does the concept of the commons offer a useful lens for identifying the library’s injusti…[Read more]

This visualization and accompanying short essay articulates both a broad definition of what constitutes “scholarship as social change,” any knowledge production that has a goal of exploring, articulating, and intervening in inequities and injustices, past and present, as well as projects that helped inspire the contributions of to the Curated Fut…[Read more]

Imagining the future of libraries and especially of digital exhibits cannot be completed without exploring the role games can play in the future of collection curation. Besides their popularity, games facilitate and inform our understanding through interactive engagement, and have been shown to serve as alternative modes for designing learning…[Read more]

Our podcast series holds the microphone up to archivists, scholars, and museum staff who work with collections pertaining to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) communities. Thus far, two paths have emerged: (1) reinterpreting archival, library, museum content that come from predominantly white colonial perspectives; and (2) introducing…[Read more]

An academic library cannot meaningfully serve its campus without also serving the range of communities within which faculty, staff, and students are embedded. Just as lines on maps are cartographic simplifications of reality, the distinctions we make between the university and surrounding communities are arbitrary and constructed. Though not…[Read more]

As the third installment of the CLIR Collaborative Writing Project, this year we introduce The Curated Futures Project as the first of a series of collaborations which respond to the theme “A Third Library is Possible.” The Curated Futures Project serves as a guide for GLAM professionals to navigate beyond discussions of decolonizing our ins…[Read more]