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What's New in Open Shelf

Two mid-life library people walk into a mentoring match…

Can mentorship help you in a career transition? Toby explores this as he recounts his decision to walk away from a tenure-track faculty position to become a librarian. Through OLA MentorMatch, he met with Jennifer Peters who helped him find where to focus on his job search.

Features and Columns

Words matter

Words can be both very precise and interpreted widely. As such there is no single authoritative definition of anything.

Editorial guidelines: A statement of principles

A lack of editorial guidelines is problematic, particularly when making decisions as to whether a given article should be published or not (i.e., censored).

Inclusive librarianship: On whiteness

As for librarians of colour, a focus on whiteness is very beneficial. I found this true for myself and I got a great response from librarians of colour.

Sharing our words, transforming our relationships

As members of the OLA Cultural Diversity and Inclusion Task Force, we choose our words carefully.

Language and power in the academic library classroom

Language is an enactment of power. What it means to make choices on what I say and how I say it, affects those in the classrooms I teach in.

Racialized is the new Black, and Brown and …

When I think back to my early understandings of race, I recall being five years old and passing some older boys who spat on me …

Making room for diverse voices in our schools

It can be easy to say that our school library learning commons is a safe space [but] simply saying something out loud does not make it true.

Carro, transporta libros or book truck: Navigating library stacks in two languages

For those of our colleagues with another first language, learning library jargon in English can sometimes mean getting disconnected from your mother tongue.

What the … [add library superlative language here]?

Humans have created numerous theoretical lenses to give order to and make sense of the world.

Political correctness and society—have we really gone mad?

It seems entirely proper that people about whom the words are used can also have a say in how they like to be described and referred to.

UNESCO Year of Indigenous languages: What are you doing?

We at Open Shelf want to learn more about how Ontario libraries will honour Indigenous languages in 2019.

Super Conference 2019: Unleash your inner editor

We all have something to say but not always the opportunity, experience or technical expertise to share our ideas out to the OLA community.

More columns

Should we still be teaching classic texts such as To kill a mockingbird?

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