Puzzlement and Praxis in the Academic Library: Critically Reimagining Collection Practices with Students

In Brief

This article mobilizes critical librarianship and critical/decolonial pedagogical strategies for disrupting and reconceiving collection practices in academic libraries. The authors—an academic librarian and a curriculum/pedagogy professor—argue that librarians can contend with the political tensions that underlie their collection management practices by actively questioning—or puzzling—with students and opening up library collections to students. The authors (a) highlight how undergraduate students were invited to engage with their library’s collection management practices, (b) discuss examples of student-curated collections from a recent initiative, and (c) consider how the initiative informs current and future possibilities for student involvement in library work and knowledge management. In opening up the library collections to students, this work decenters the librarian-as-expert paradigm while also illustrating both the challenges and possibilities of demystifying and shifting our approach to information science.

By Cee Carter and Sarah Keener

Introduction: Storying our Everyday Puzzlements

Figure 1

Several Student-Curated Featured Collections on the Library Shelf

When writing this article, Sarah Keener (she/her) was the library director for a small, rural college in the northeast. She’s had one foot in education and academia and the other in outdoor and hands-on trades for the entirety of her working life. This duality influences her interdisciplinary and expeditionary approach to the academic library, an approach that has also been shaped by the years she spent as a middle school teacher, school librarian, craft educator and student, and coach. As a white educator in a remote area that is socioeconomically diverse but predominantly white, the persistent sense of discomfort and uncertainty she confronts in this role arises largely from her inevitable participation in oppressive practices and colonial systems, and from the uneven power dynamics that seem inherent to being a teacher of any kind. This question, to paraphrase Maluski and Bruce (2022), has become central to her work and mission in education: What is my role in dismantling oppressive practices?

Cee Carter is a fifth-generation Black woman educator and an Assistant Professor at the University of Vermont. Her previous work as a middle school educator and non-profit educational leader exposed the larger political economy of race that facilitates educational investments for reform. That is, how race is leveraged for policy intervention and profit in public education. In response, her scholarly work aims to shift normative curricular and pedagogical practices (Sykes, 2011)—asking more of how we construct and pursue our conceptions of justice in the era of neoliberal public education reform (Carter, 2024). A question that animates her educational inquiry is: How can educators, leaders, policy makers, and researchers rethink strategies for pursuing educational justice?

This collaborative article is an outgrowth of the authors’ studies in Cee’s Curriculum Theory course that Sarah took while pursuing her M.Ed. and working as an academic librarian. Cee designed the course to unsettle curriculum as a purely practical pursuit and open “disciplinary codes… so that they [students] may learn … their modes of operation, their rules and conventions, so that they may see knowledge and meaning as the products of ongoing discourses” of which they are part (Ashbee, 2021, p. 11). The authors emphasize how questioning rules and conventions with students and other faculty can create an interdisciplinary critical librarianship praxis for disrupting and reconceiving academic library collections. Furthermore, their co-authorship of this article highlights the benefits of continued collaborative learning beyond the classroom informed by critical theory, or studying and exposing the power relations that underlie our work in academic institutions. Illustratively, the initiative outlined below opened the library and encouraged a pedagogical approach that challenges binaries between librarian-patron, teacher-student, librarian-professor, library-classroom, and theory-practice.

Literature Review

Disrupting and Reconceiving Collection Practices

Library collections and the collection practices that shape print and electronic resources and services are influential throughout the knowledge cycle. Selection and deselection criteria determine what we include and exclude, and these processes are inherently biased, even when careful measures are taken to promote neutrality and inclusivity. The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) (2024) suggests re-examining collections through a social justice lens, defining diversity, and setting progress goals as key activities for reimagining collection practices. We also argue that critical and decolonial theory are key for mobilizing practices that intervene on hegemonic collection practices. Yet, we also heed Tuck and Yang’s (2012) argument that decolonization is not a metaphor and posit that decolonizing work takes more than implementing simple quick fixes (Mutonga & Okune, 2022; Stahl, 2024; Watkins et al. 2021).

Libraries offer, and limit, information and information services for institutions of higher learning. Therefore, in libraries, the ongoing project of disrupting and reconceiving collections practices requires a holistic and systemic approach to re-examining “acquisition practices and systems, including approval plans and demand-driven acquisition programs” (Research Planning and Review Committee, 2024, p. 234) whose subtle ideologies are often more accountable to the market than to other critical and participatory goals we might pursue in libraries. In their autoethnographic exploration of disability in academia, Dreeszen Bowman and Dudak (2025) discuss how the tyrannical neoliberal foundations of academia extend to the library and consider how we might “advance knowledge and offer possibilities for new practices” (para. 10). Disrupting and reconceiving collection practices with students offers a generative space for examining the librarian’s role in knowledge management as well as practicing asset-based approaches and open pedagogy through a lens that confronts epistemicide or the active and violent eradication of knowledge systems. Working with students and initiating critical conversations between librarians and other faculty also responds to the demand to diversify and “decolonise libraries and other knowledge infrastructures” (Mutonga & Okune, 2022, p. 190).

Asset-Based Praxis: From the Classroom to the Library

Asset or strength-based approaches to teaching and learning emphasize the strengths (Heinbach et al., 2021; Maluski & Bruce, 2022), cultural experiences (Gay, 2002; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Nasir et al., 2021), and navigational practices (Yosso, 2005) that learners and educators bring to libraries and classrooms. An asset-based pedagogical perspective pushes against deficit-oriented practices, which view students in terms of perceived academic weaknesses and lead to “compensatory educational interventions” (Ladson-Billings, 1995, p. 469). Thus, critical pedagogies scholars theorize asset-based approaches through examining the historical and sociopolitical contexts of education to bolster learning encounters that affirm, critically notice, and open possibilities for intervening on myriad forms of injustice (Muhammad, 2023).

Heinbach et al. (2021) extend strengths-based praxis into library stewardship and highlight the many learning experiences students draw on to meet their academic needs. Their asset-based praxis prompts them to ask more of institutionalized knowledge systems, and provokes librarians to consider how academic library services can acknowledge, and better serve, the needs and complexities of students’ lives. Toward reconceiving librarians’ roles in supporting students, Maluski and Bruce (2022) heighten our consciousness around the dangers of using deficit-based assumptions to diagnose perceived student needs. They compel us to reconsider how we “evaluate student needs, understand their strengths, and make a better learning environment for them and work environment for us” (para. 38). We draw on these critical approaches to asset-based pedagogies as foundations for inviting students to grapple with practices for counteracting exclusion and bias in knowledge management practices.

Open Pedagogy and Participatory Instructional Design

In higher education, there is a growing demand for more, and more diverse, opportunities for substantive student engagement and empowerment. This participatory approach aligns with open pedagogy, which thrives on practices and “renewable assignments” that support “students to see themselves as active creators of information rather than passive consumers” and invite them to “contribute to the production and dissemination of knowledge” (Research Planning and Review Committee, 2024, p. 232). In the academic library, this work can take many forms, such as participatory instructional design, critical approaches to pedagogy and curriculum, student employment and leadership, peer mentorship and collaboration, co-construction of knowledge, advocacy and activism, and outreach and programming to encourage students’ sense of belonging.

Student-centered learning encounters foreground “autonomy, competence, and relatedness” (Werth & Williams, 2021, p. 48) as well as inclusivity and practical application of learning. Additionally, critical information literacies center the need for epistemic justice, particularly within places and processes dominated by colonial content systems and management strategies, where “information is understood as a product shaped by cultural, historical, social, and political forces” (Laverty & Berish, 2022, p. 1). We underscore lessons about the colonial and sociopolitical nature of academic libraries as “academic librarians function within this hegemony and reflect a culture of whiteness” (Laverty & Berish, 2022, p. 3). So, in addition to ACRL’s (2024) concerns about workload and sustainability of open pedagogies, we encourage librarians to bear in mind how the “implicit assumption that open pedagogy is inclusive may further stall the critical work needed to examine, revise, and reimagine educational resources as a way to create new and underrepresented forms of knowledge in the academy ” (Brown & Croft, 2020, p. 1). Open pedagogical practices should consistently be interrogated with a critical lens, and interdisciplinary study can support instructor revisions. These considerations shaped Sarah’s approach to opening up her academic library’s collections. The Student-Curated Featured Collections initiative showcases students’ unique strengths and perspectives by inviting them to thoughtfully curate and share their own collections with the community. The initiative also creates space for students to grapple with the problematic histories and institutional priorities that shape the academic library by critically exploring complexities in library collection policies and practices.

Conceptual framework: Puzzlement

“Informed by prior theoretical readings or other sources, these expectations [from prior research] are often surprised by experienced social realities in the field, and the ‘puzzlement’ provoked by the tensions between expectations and lived experiences becomes the starting point for theorizing.”

Haverland and Yannow (2012, p. 405) use the term puzzlement to address the disconnect between social researchers’ preconceptions and the lived realities they encounter when conducting research. While their work focuses on social research and public administration, they describe key dynamics in the ongoing pedagogical conundrums we grapple with as we integrate theory into our practices. Heinbach et al. (2021) define praxis as the “sometimes ambiguous space between the practical and the theoretical” whereby we can leverage “theory to inform our practice, and practice to inform the theory we read and internalize, in order to develop the most powerfully equitable libraries and educational experiences we can” (p. 2). Puzzlement connotes the perplexity and bewilderment we feel in this liminal space, and it also highlights the iterative nature of the process.

Myriad tensions emerge from any substantive engagement in praxis, even in the more mundane aspects of our practice. Pointedly, curriculum is often conceived as a systematic and practical design pursuit that emphasizes sequencing and progression (Ashbee, 2021), sanctioned disciplinary knowledge approved by the ruling technocratic class (Apple, 1999), as well as disciplinary literacies (Gebhard, 2019). When critical and decolonial perspectives open curricular discussions beyond the purely practical, theory can seem inaccessible or impractical to practitioners working in education or library and information sciences. They may feel overwhelmed when asked to engage in dense theoretical work while consumed by daily stresses and responsibilities of caring for themselves and their communities amid flaring partisan tensions. However, as educators, we cannot ignore “how and why something as simple as a curriculum,” as well as knowledge management practices, “contains the same violence of colonialism, imperialism, slavery, capitalist exploitation, genocide and empire” (Rose, 2019, p. 27). So, Cee’s graduate course is designed to actively help students puzzle over their specialized educational practices by pointing to how we (un)intentionally accept and participate in curricular and pedagogical work that is deeply flawed and unjust while also encouraging them to design learning engagements that critique power. Apple (1999) would characterize this approach to puzzling over curriculum and pedagogy as engaging with “the difficult … and contentious ethical and political questions of content, of whose and what knowledge is of most worth” and how these questions “have been pushed into the background in our attempt to define technically oriented methods” (p. 34).

The process of unsettling taken-for-granted practices (Ghaddar & Caswell, 2019) that align with neoliberal and colonial logics is never easy nor complete, a reality expressed by Tuck and Gaztambide-Fernández (2013) in their call for a refusal to:

require that new works in curriculum studies soothe settler anxieties. There must be work inside curriculum studies that dis-invests in settler futurity, that refuses to intervene, that observes a writ of ‘do not resuscitate.’ […] Meanwhile, settlers in curriculum studies must hold one another accountable when they invade emergent work by requiring it to comfort their dis-ease. (p. 86)

Such complexities in relation to power, knowledge, and settler colonialism—or the ways that we continue to occupy unceded land—take our ethical and political questioning further. On one hand, settler colonial critique illuminates the ongoing violence of land occupation that sustains the physical institutions where our work takes place. It reminds us that the grounds we occupy are more than a mere setting for critical pedagogical and curricular practice (Grande, 2004). We work on sites of ongoing decolonial struggle. On the other hand, Tuck and Gaztambide-Fernández’s (2013) settler colonial critique orients us toward the political task of contesting sanctioned disciplinary knowledges and narratives by “rethinking the aims of research… to forward” Indigenous “sovereignty and wellbeing” (p. 85). Our work is fraught with ethical tensions that don’t have simple solutions. Yet, acknowledging these tensions do help us continuously question as we revise and improvise our pedagogical practices to intervene on hegemonic collection practices. With such far-reaching ethical and political implications for contesting dominant knowledge and narratives, theory should be accessible to everyone for the purposes of puzzling and practice—especially students. So, we turn to a discussion about how Sarah made theory accessible in her collections work to begin disrupting hegemonic collection practices.

Puzzling Over Collection Management with Students

Students explored the complexities of library collections and policies through their curated featured collections and other collaborations, such as an independent study, student library worker projects, and an Environmental Humanities workshop in archives and collection maintenance. They considered overall goals for decolonization and diversity audits, deselection, continuity, and future implications of their decision-making. This work created direct opportunities for students to thoughtfully puzzle over their choices and the potential consequences as they engaged with the big questions that “libraries in diverse postcolonial and settler-colonial sites around the world, are grappling with—what to remember and what to forget in attempts to decolonise” (Mutonga & Okune, 2022, p. 189). Students who curated collections struggled with their final choices and realized that the publishing industries are highly influential, representation of diverse perspectives and authors is limited in spite of their best efforts, and personal bias is inevitable in the selection process.

In one instance, a colleague invited Sarah to facilitate a workshop for her course titled The Meaning of Things, an Environmental Humanities seminar exploring the significance of both human-made and natural objects. Sarah invited students to help her think about the project of weeding the library’s dated reference section during their unit about museum collections and archives. Students voiced many thoughtful questions and observations as they considered the volumes on the shelves and their tasks alongside the goals and implications of collection maintenance, “decolonization” and the rightsizing approach for systematically shaping responsive, customized library collections (Miller & Ward, 2021). These students’ insights further illustrate the benefits of including students, as learners and as stakeholders, in library collections practices:

If something is outdated, we need to consider keeping it as a throughline [for existing collections] versus making room for newer stuff.
The decisions seem to be case by case: Where we have an extensive and unique collection on a specific topic, should we keep it?
There are many overtly racist books, but they show something important [about misinformation as historical artifacts of racism and the need to question “experts”], so what do we do with them?
What if we stored the outdated books in the storage? Especially where they are part of a special theme/collection. But, how would this work?
Sure, we want people to be able to research niche topics if they have a PhD; but, we can also think about people who will have an easier time using the library [that has been “rightsized” and is simpler to navigate]; more people will benefit from having easy access and engaging, up-to-date collections.
Once you remove things and it becomes less cluttered, it’s more user friendly.
How should the library be organized? It’s useful to have books on the same topic together, but also nice to have featured collections that are curated for you.

The conversation expanded as they considered the historic and present role of the reference section, and students shared their thoughts about online versus print resources:

I use online resources a lot. I like reading for leisure but I find it hard using a book as a resource; online is much more accessible.
They’re a valuable tool for classes—discussion and independent projects. There’s a lot more we have access to online, which is really nice; I’m kind of sad about losing college access when I graduate.
You can search by keyword to access vast, diverse resources.
If you can’t afford required texts that are in print, you have to rely on course reserves, which is challenging.
For recreational materials, you want a book; research, you want online.
[There are limitations to print resources] Even the ecology field guide books—which are admittedly nice to have in the field—are extremely expensive, and many are outdated (due to shifting habitat and migration patterns, removing scientist’s names from birds, etc.).
What print resources do students want/need in the library? pleasure reading, guide books, course reserves, graphic novels/comics, maps, large format, foreign language.

Each of these comments demonstrates the nuances of students’ thinking about these tough issues, which don’t have clear-cut answers or simple fixes.

Opening Up the Collections

Introducing Student-Curated Featured Collections

The college library where Sarah worked promotes patron-driven acquisitions as a means to invite and respond to employee and student requests and recommendations. In an effort to open collection development to students in a more substantive and comprehensive manner, she experimented with a student-curated featured collection initiative. The concept for the student collections arose in response to several library objectives: to acquire more books for the library that might not fit neatly into our selection criteria—such as works of fiction and poetry, and subjects outside the scope of the college’s core disciplines; to highlight the library’s vast existing physical holdings; and to create more meaningful ways for students to engage with and contribute to the library space and broader local community.

As a member of the Work Colleges Consortium, the college receives financial support for a wide variety of work and service-learning opportunities. The library made creative use of this funding to support student-curated collection development because the initiative aligns with the service, work, and educational goals of the Work Program. Additionally, the initiative supports both the library’s efforts to diversify and unsettle collections, and the college’s institutional commitment to student agency and anti-racist practices. The Work Program sponsored and helped promote the opportunity. It paid for book purchases and compensated students for their time, although students did not receive any academic school credit for their participation. Students whose work assignments were in the library were permitted to use their weekly required work hours on the project, and students who did not work in the library were hired for paid independent contracts.

How it Worked

The job posting for Library Featured Collections, as advertised to the entire student body, outlined the following responsibilities:

Learn about accessibility and DEI in library collection development
Choose a featured collection theme that is of personal interest and would also benefit the library/greater college community
Develop and implement selection criteria to research and curate a focused book collection for the library
Assist librarian with book orders, online and in person
Assist librarian with book processing, as needed (cataloging, covering, adding spine labels, etc.)
Create a display and present the collection in some format (poster, video, social media post, slide deck, book talk, etc.)

In addition to being in good standing with the Work Program, the posting lists the following requirements:

Committed to including diverse voices, perspectives and formats
Excited to share interests with the community
Love of books and reading
Reliable, organized and able to work independently (with support from librarian)

At the beginning of the semester, Sarah met with interested students to discuss their ideas and questions and to review the collection development guide, which provides a comprehensive set of instructions, selection criteria, and expectations. They were also encouraged to browse past student collections for inspiration. After the initial meeting, Sarah was available to support students as needed, both in person and via email. These ongoing conversations provided Sarah and the students opportunities to puzzle together while they engaged with the theoretical and practical complexities that arose throughout the process.

After settling on a theme, students developed their own collections, selecting five to ten new titles each. These were ordered, whenever possible, through the local bookstore. The library has a strong working relationship with the bookstore, which created an additional benefit of encouraging students to engage with knowledgeable and passionate community members, outside the college bubble, who provide a valuable local resource. Students then helped process—and in some cases, catalog—their books and materials. They were responsible for assembling their own displays, which consisted of a collection poster, a description, and a list of titles and authors, and any supplemental materials, such as existing library holdings, printed articles, magazines, and links or QR codes for podcasts or websites. The collections are publicly available to the college and local community, and the library compiled a pamphlet of all collection materials to display with the collections in the library and to share digitally with students and employees.

After briefly introducing their collections at a weekly all-school community meeting, students planned, advertised and hosted an event or other form of presentation. Past events and presentations have included a bonfire with s’mores and spooky excerpts from “Into the Woods: Folklore, Folk Horror, and The Stories We Tell”; a coloring and collage night to celebrate “Feel Good Reads”; a TikTok reel featuring the books in “Uplifting BIPOC Authors”; and a book talk and related film screening for “Magical Women.”

Figure 2

Fall 2023 Collections poster

Figure 3

Spring 2023 Collections poster

Figure 4

Informational Collections poster

Examples of student collections. The best way to illustrate this initiative is to let the students’ projects speak for themselves. Each of the three examples below has been shared with student consent and includes the description, a book list, and associated media, followed by some student reflections about the process. These collections show three topics from students in three different majors. They were selected as examples that demonstrate the students’ intentionality in both selecting featured books and writing descriptions that articulate their intended goals for the collections.

Example 1: Magical Women Collection. Alice, Fourth-Year Ecology Major

Figure 5

Poster Alice illustrated for their “Magical Women” Collection

Description. Sirens, Witches, and Cloudwatchers. We have all held magic within us since the beginning of time. This collection aims to look specifically at women, their stories, and their interactions with magic. Each takes a different perspective on magic, whether it is the world seen through the eyes of a child, the flicker at the edges of our vision, or fantastical powers. From classics such as Wise Child to recent releases like Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart, these stories move across time and space, from Scotland to New Jersey to Nigeria. We hear from magical beasts, witches, and burgeoning artists. These stories deal with the ways that patriarchy, racism, homophobia, and transphobia have worked to oppress women of all identities and the magic they hold, all while still finding moments of hope, joy, and liberation. Each of them ask the same question: Where do we find magic, and, within that, where do we find ourselves?

Book List. Wild Seed, Octavia Butler; Fifty Beasts to Break your Heart, Gennarose Nethercott; Chlorine, Jade Song; The Icarus Girl, Helen Oyeyemi; We Were Witches, Ariel Gore; Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado; Wise Child, Monica Furlong; The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Ghosts, Soraya Palmer; Maiden, Mother, Crone: Fantastical Trans Femmes, Gwen Benaway; Woolgathering, Patti Smith; The Women Could Fly, Megan Giddings

Student Reflections. Alice described the experience as a “capstone” and a highlight of their final semester:

I think the student collections has been a beneficial … way to connect to the library, and I know that a lot of the people who don’t even work in the library were excited to get involved. … It’s been a way to make the space more welcoming. When someone checks out one of my books, it’s exciting and I can talk to them about it. It’s nice to know that I’m helping the library grow.

Example 2: Rural American History Collection, Rory, Third-Year Natural Resource Management Major

Figure 6

Rory beside his “Rural History” collection

Description. I chose to create a selection concerning rural history because of how significantly that history impacts us all. In this collection, I’ve tried to weave together a wide (though ultimately limited) range of experiences in rural America so that readers can understand the complicated and diverse conditions that rural life entailed. In choosing the works for this selection, I’ve done my best to balance a selection of works that will cover local history and works that illustrate the regional differences in America’s rural communities. In addition to trying to grapple with the different regions in America, I’ve looked to incorporate works on groups often underrepresented in previous historical scholarship. Despite the wide range of these subjects, I hope that those interested will get valuable insight into what life was like and what that means for us now.

Book List. The Last of the Hill Farms, Richard Brown; Tall Trees, Tough Men, Robert Pike; Ramp Hollow, Steven Stoll; Whaling Captains of Color, Skip Finley; In Pursuit of Gold: Chinese American Miners and Merchants in the American West, Sue Fawn Chung; The Voice of the Dawn, Frederick Matthew Wiseman; Beyond Forty Acres and a Mule, Debra A. Reid; Farm Boys, Will Fellows; Beloved Land, Patricia Martin; South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, Imani Perry; We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy, Natalie Baszile

Example 3: Feeling and Dreaming During the Climate Crisis Collection, Meredith, Fourth-Year Environmental Humanities Major

Description. Living through environmental crises and change is an emotional experience. How can we hold and care for ourselves and each other as we face existential planetary shifts? This collection intends to speak to this emotional connection to Earth to foster connection and resilience individually and communally. Our feelings for nature and our place within it are powerful—how are you listening to that power?

I chose this featured collection because I’ve witnessed myself and those around me navigate grief, hopelessness, anger and more when experiencing, learning about, and fighting Earth’s deterioration. These books and resources aim to help us connect with our feelings and express our dreams through the climate crisis.

Book List. Entering the Ghost River, Deena Metzger; A Rain of Night Birds, Deena Metzger; Earth Emotions: New Worlds for a New World, Glenn A. Albrecht; Parable of the Sower, Octavia E. Butler; Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer; Borealis, Aisha Sabanti Sloan; Staying with the Trouble, Donna J. Haraway; Joyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times, Carla Bergman and Nick Montgomery; The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings are Trying to Tell You, Karla McLaren; Depression: A Public Feeling, Ann Cvetkovitch; The Last Beekeeper, Julie Carrick Dalton; Meltwater, Claire Wahmanholm

Articles and Podcasts. Climate Doom to Messy Hope, UBC Climate Hub. The Revolution Will Not Be Psychologized, The Emerald Podcast. Big Planet Big Feels: Grief, Mental Health, and Community, Madi, Earth First

Student Reflections. Meredith worked in the library for their on-campus job, so they were involved in all aspects of the collections project, as well as other library activities. They shared several things they liked and learned about:

Overall, the process of choosing a theme, the media, and how to structure the display was a great hands-on experience in learning what the collection policy is and how the books are organized within the library. … For instance, our discussions on how graphic novels should be organized in [our] library (since the fiction section is small etc.) seems representative of students’ desires moving collection policies into the modern age. … I think that semester’s range of featured collections showed what topics and media forms students want in the library. The fact [that] I was learning about deaccessioning books at the same time that I was making my collection definitely informed [me of] a big-picture view on collection policy! … It was important in my process to choose different categories of books so that something new could be added to each part of the library (new fiction novels, new poetry, new social/environmental justice essays, etc). This also gave people options in how they wanted to engage with my topic.

Benefits

The classroom community has the potential to become a space for generating “excitement” and “recognizing one another’s presence” (hooks, 1994, pp. 7-8). Beyond helping students feel heard, seen, and excited about their tangible contributions to the library spaces and collections, this initiative provided a pathway for direct participation in the college’s stated efforts to unsettle some of the oppressive systems and structures deeply ingrained in higher education and present in our own academic library. As emphasized in recent ACRL trends reports and previously mentioned in this article, academic libraries are leaning into co-creation of knowledge, open pedagogies, and re-imagined collection practices as key strategies for this work. The special collections project incorporates all of these with asset-based strategies that promote student agency and celebrate students’ multidimensional and expansive interests, backgrounds, ideas, and areas of expertise.

Furthermore, the collection development process itself fosters critical thinking by teaching students about selection policies and criteria, which is particularly relevant today. Through direct engagement with library themes, students gain greater perspective on epistemic justice, bias and neutrality, racism and exclusion in collections and cataloging, profit and distribution with the publishing industry, and various accessibility considerations. Student participation helps expand and enhance library collections. As students tend to be in touch with different networks and publishing pipelines than librarians, it has the potential to counteract library worker bias. They are often plugged into more independent and radical voices, and more contemporary trends and movements. By sharing dynamic, creative, and well-researched collections on a variety of topics, students contribute to the co-production and dissemination of cross-disciplinary knowledge. This process and the product has the potential to inform their own and others’ learning moving forward.

As a librarian, Sarah enjoyed chatting with students about their collections, and she loved observing library visitors as they noticed and commented on them as well. The students’ engaging descriptions, questions, and selections captured her imagination and curiosity, as she found herself gravitating toward their picks when looking for a new book. These collections take up space and command attention. The library looks and feels different, perhaps because it’s unusual for students to be so directly and transparently responsible for content and displays; the prominently displayed materials don’t always fit preconceived notions about what college library books and resources are supposed to look like. We also have the potential to conceive of library books in new ways when we have a personal connection to the people and processes responsible for acquiring them.

Coalescing around any given student’s theme, visitors encounter graphic novels, pamphlets, books of poetry, imaginative children’s books, and young adult fiction intermingled with new nonfiction, memoirs and first-person historical accounts, heady and artistic independent press publications, and dense anthologies. Unsurprisingly, the “Feel Good Reads” collection about sex and body positivity and education—which proudly displayed titles like The Post-Structuralist Vulva Coloring Book, by Elly Blue; The Bump’n Book of Love, Lust and Disability, by J. Tarpey et al.; and It’s My Pleasure: Decolonizing Sex Positivity, by Mo Asebiomo—garnered some shy giggles but also a lot of sincere interest and appreciation.

In some cases, it seemed students used their platform as an opportunity to advocate for causes and to resist and disrupt library and academic conventions. Perhaps students were also less concerned with appropriateness of selection because of the project’s relatively open parameters and because they are not as informed or constrained by the academic library paradigm that trained library workers work within.

Challenges

While we did not encounter this problem in the first two semesters, we can anticipate that the growing popularity of student-curated featured collections will necessitate a more formal and competitive application process, which would take additional time to develop and conduct. Furthermore, the eligibility requirement that students must be in “good standing” in their school academics and work responsibilities in order to take on new extracurricular projects seems reasonable; however, it has the unwanted consequence of excluding a portion of the student body who nevertheless deserves to have a voice in library collections. This deserves further consideration, and it highlights the need to maintain multiple avenues for student involvement in the library.

Although this issue has not yet been brought to the library’s attention, it’s foreseeable that someone might object to the content of a collection or to the perspectives expressed by the creator of a collection and lodge a formal complaint. In anticipation of this possibility, the library should be prepared for how to engage with this situation in a manner consistent with how the library and school would manage similar instances of challenges, keeping in mind the nuances of censorship, bias, free speech, and discrimination.

Funding presents another potential challenge. Because this project was sponsored by the college Work Program, which is funded directly by the federally-funded Working Colleges Consortium, its budget did not come out of the library or college budget. Book purchases were not made “at the expense of” regular library materials, and importantly, it was easier to create objectives and selection guidelines that did not strictly align with all of the academic library selection policies and procedures. The Work Program also compensated participating students for the time they spent developing and sharing their collections. This did not seem to be a key motivation for participants, but undoubtedly sweetened the deal and perhaps supported more thoughtful selections and extension activities. It’s unclear whether students would have signed up if they hadn’t been paid, and this is something to follow up with. Furthermore, the continuity of any grant-funded program, particularly given today’s political climate, is uncertain. While the student collections initiative could be integrated into library practices in different ways, it would need to be significantly re-imagined if this funding model shifts.

Perhaps the greatest challenge is the amount of time and energy needed to support an initiative like this in a consistent and responsive manner, from launch to finish, every semester. As mentioned in the section about open pedagogy and instructional design, the scope of these renewable, participatory, individualized projects invites questions about their long term sustainability. Library staff juggle many priorities, so the featured student collections initiative must be seen as a worthy priority in order for it to succeed as a routine practice, semester after semester. Without a committed staff member, and without the approval and budgetary support of library supervisors and college administration, it would be difficult for the project to continue in a meaningful and visible manner, if at all. Carving out time for these collaborative library initiatives is difficult for all partners in the work, regardless of their mutual appreciation for these partnerships and desire to work together—as any educator or busy college student can attest to.

Next Steps

Along with the additional benefits that came out of this initiative, opening library collections and collection practices are a primary objective. Some initial ideas for expanding or adapting this project, and related collection management practices, include the following:

Encourage peer collaboration within the collection development process;
Find ways to include students in routine library collection development;
Invite classes to curate collections related to course topics;
Provide a space in the library for visitors to share informal feedback about the individual collections, their presentations and/or the project as a whole.
Make more explicit metacognitive and generative connections to critical curriculum theory and decolonial studies;
Explore how to assess resources for value and quality without being gatekeepers;
Experiment with online resource collections featuring digital primary sources, films, podcasts, journal articles, and blogs;
Feature the collections, with their descriptions, on a page of the library’s online catalog;
Enrich the research and selection process with bookstore visits, author and educational workshops and webinars; and
Present the initiative and share goals with faculty and administration, and invite more future collaboration with projects that engage and empower students with critical theory.

Sarah’s emergent work with instructors and students on other library projects, some mentioned in this article, would also clearly benefit from continued critical puzzlement and experimenting. As we’ve repeatedly acknowledged, collections are only one facet of the library, and there are rich connections to be explored by opening interdisciplinary collaborations through the library. In the authors’ own readings and conversations, we’ve encountered many other possibilities to center students so they can shake up the library and higher education.

Puzzling Together

“How can we as library workers [and educators] dismantle the oppressive practices of the spaces that we are embedded within and very much a part of?” – Maluski and Bruce, 2022, para. 9

As we close, we heed Stahl’s (2024) warning about universalizing solutions, which are often “unwilling to brook surprise, to imagine the possibility that a flawed system’s shortcomings can sometimes produce positive outcomes” (p. 32). Instead we offer closing points about how our ongoing puzzlement, with each other and with students, returns us to important questions and theories that frame our work and pushes us to do it beyond a politics of correction and exposure. Sarah’s collections development project, supported by Cee’s student-centered critical curriculum theory course, echoes Drabinski (2013) (as cited by Stahl, 2024) who encourages critical and queerly informed librarians to “transform … moments [of encountering bias or idiosyncrasies in the catalog] into another point where the ruptures of classification and cataloging structures can be productively pulled apart to help users understand the bias of hegemonic schemes” (p. 107). That is, the study of critical library theory and curriculum theory among librarians, faculty, and students informs how they use the library and how they can demystify the politics and disciplinary practices of information science.

Collaborative study is just one key approach for transforming libraries, classrooms, and our engagements within them (Rashid et al., 2023). We have found it fruitful to have each other as inquiry partners who are navigating the same critical foundations with different backgrounds and disciplinary perspectives. We do this work as part of reimagining the academy, which prompts us to be critically aware of how disciplinarity functions as we contend with its colonial foundations. We have much more to do, and for now, we are keen on building our “instinct to question” (Stahl, 2024, p. 32) rather than providing a list of quick fixes that have the potential to be absorbed into the larger hegemonic structure we are tasked with deconstructing.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to our publishing editor, Ian Beilin, and the editorial board for your encouragement of this contribution. We would also like to acknowledge the labor and professional service of Jeannette Ho and Betsy Yoon, our peer reviewers. We appreciate your thoughtful engagement throughout the publication process. Finally, thank you to the students whose work, reflections, and enthusiasm brought life to the projects and this article.

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asset-based strategies, Collection Practices, critical curriulcum theory, critical librarianship, open pedagogy, praxis