The Evolving Information Landscape and Neutrality
Diana Moronta
Neutrality in libraries has been debated and evolved over time, with some understanding this concept as aspirational (Lamdan & Szydlowski, 2018). However, it is often criticized for its role in maintaining the status quo.
Under neutrality, library instruction, in its broadest terms, involves teaching information literacy skills and concepts by presenting information as unbiased and apolitical. However, by attempting to teach information neutrally, we fail to acknowledge the information-seeking experience and diverse perspectives that librarians and learners bring to the classroom.
Further, it hinders conversation around inequities learners face when accessing information, evaluating sources, authority, and hierarchy granted to different sources of information. Neutrality also demonstrates indifference to communities navigating life on the margins (Farkas, 2017). Moreover, it limits how librarians can create critical dialogue about often-unequal realities of accessing information.
As educators, our role in facilitating information literacy goes beyond mechanics of teaching learners how to access a piece of information. We help them navigate an increasingly complex and complicated information landscape, detect pitfalls of misinformation and disinformation, as well as guide them to examine validity of prevailing perspectives about how information is created, organized, and consumed.
Librarianship will continue to debate and question merits and drawbacks of neutrality in our spaces and service points for years to come. This question will only become more prevalent as our information landscape evolves, and with it, as information needs of learners change. However, as this conversation unfolds, we can bring these questions to our classrooms and challenge neutrality by integrating critical pedagogy frameworks into our teaching practices. Encouraging dialogue, and including active learning in our instruction to foster expansion of our learners’ practices when seeking information, helps them recognize inequities in power structures in order to imagine a more inclusive information ecosystem.
Diana Moronta
References
Farkas, M. (2017, January 3). Never Neutral. American Libraries Magazine. https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2017/01/03/never-neutral-critlib-technology/
Lamdan, S., and Szydlowki, N. (2018, December 19). Guest Post: Library Neutrality: Keep It, Question It, or Forget It? RIPS Law Librarian Blog. https://ripslawlibrarian.wordpress.com/2018/12/19/guest-post-library-neutrality-keep-it-question-it-or-forget-it/