Short description:

Libraries and the Global Retreat of Democracy focuses on how libraries coordinate their work in political and information literacy and how these efforts can be improved, the recommendations and examples within which will serve as inspiration and motivation to its readers.

Long description:

This latest volume of the Advances in Librarianship series presents original research exploring the modern state of democracies and social institutions, the contributions of libraries to the health and progress of democracies, and the political problems currently facing libraries as institutions. It details the best practices of library programs that provide political literacy education and promote civic engagement within communities. These practices include ways in which libraries can help diffuse political polarization, address significant policy issues of our day, promote political information literacy, support civic engagement, and facilitate participation in democratic processes.

Libraries and the Global Retreat of Democracy: Confronting Polarization, Misinformation, and Suppression is structured in three sections - questions of personal and state democracy, investigations of how the information infrastructure shapes these democracies, and explorations of the ways that libraries can and do contribute to democracy. Situating libraries within political conversations, highlighting their centrality to these discussions, Libraries and the Global Retreat of Democracy focuses on how libraries coordinate their work in political and information literacy and how these efforts can be improved, he recommendations and examples within which will serve as inspiration and motivation to its readers.

Table of Contents:

Section One: What is Democracy?

Chapter 1. Actually-Existing Democracy and Libraries: A Mapping Exercise; John Buschman

Chapter 2. A Right to be Misinformed? Considering Fake News as a Form of Information Poverty; Nicole A. Cooke

Chapter 3. Facts (Almost) Never Change Minds: Libraries and the Management of Democracy-Supportive Public Perceptions; Bill Crowley

Section Two: How the Information Environment Contributes to / Detracts from Democracy

Chapter 4. Container Collapse and Misinformation: Why Digitization Creates Challenges for Democracy; Christopher Cyr

Chapter 5. Fighting Fake News: The Cognitive Factors Impeding Political Information Literacy; Rajesh Singh and Kyle N. Brinster

Chapter 6. Information Obstacle Course: Seeking the Right to Asylum at the US-Mexico Border; Amy Dickinson

Section Three: Libraries as Virtual and Physical Spaces for Democracy

Chapter 7. Beyond Fake News: Learning from Information Literacy Programs in Ukraine; Maria Haigh, Thomas Haigh, Maryna Dorosh, and Tetiana Matychak

Chapter 8. ?Politic Talks? in Academic Libraries of the South to Address a Global Democracy Recession in the United States: An Exploratory Website Analysis; Bharat Mehra and Joseph Winberry

Chapter 9. Raking the Forests: Information Literacy, Political Polarization, Fake News, and the Educational Roles of Librarians; Paul T. Jaeger and Natalie Greene Taylor

Chapter 10. Libraries Of, By, and For the People: Reimagining Strategies to Enhance Democratic Culture within LIS Spaces and Programming; Daniela K. DiGiacomo, Shannon M. Oltmann, and Colleen Hall