The demand to
decolonise the curriculum has moved from a protest movement at the margins to
the centre of many institutions, as reflected by its inclusion in policies and
strategies and numerous initiatives in libraries and archives that have responded to
the call, and are critically examining their own historic legacies and
practices to support institutional and societal change.
Narrative Expansions: Interpreting Decolonisation in Academic
Libraries explores the ways in which academic libraries are working to
address the historic legacies of colonialism, in the context of decolonising
the curriculum and the university. It acknowledges and explores the tensions
and complexities around the use of the term decolonisation, how it relates to
other social justice aims and approaches, including critical librarianship, and
what makes this work specific to decolonisation.
The book is
international in scope, and considers the contextual nature of decolonisation,
with discussion of the impacts of settler colonialism, and post-colonial
contexts with authors from Canada, the United States and Kenya, as well as universities in the UK.
Split into
two sections, the book first addresses experiential contexts, discussing the
environment in which the academic library is enmeshed: legacy knowledge
systems, the neo-liberal university, the pervasive Whiteness of the higher
education sector, the global publishing industry - how these structures are
constitutive of coloniality and how they can be challenged. It then brings together theory and practice featuring case studies
interpreting what it means to 'decolonise' in information literacy, collection
management, inclusive spaces, LIS education, research methods and knowledge
production through the lens of critical pedagogy, critical information literacy
and Critical Race Theory (CRT). The book also addresses the impact and
implications of the Whiteness of university library staffing.
Bringing
together the theory and practice of an area of critical concern to the academy,
this book is an important reference for academic librarians, educators and
researchers in LIS, education and sociology.
