David Sibley, university librarian at The Chicago School, recognizes the specialized requirements for a library serving students seeking clinical degrees who are enrolled in degree programs online and on campuses spread across the country. The challenges include providing the same level of service to every student, assisting graduating students in preparing for their certification exams, and identifying resources for alumni who may not have access to an academic library. In addition, recent efforts by politicians across the country to ban books from school libraries have inspired Sibley and his fellow librarians to take a stand in defense of access.
Following a recent restructuring of the system, Sibley oversees library operations across all The Chicago School’s campuses. “One of the things that we did four years ago was to unify the separate campus libraries into one university library to streamline and maximize students’ abilities to go to one library,” he says. “And if they move to another area and transfer to another campus, they could expect the same service and policies at each location.
”To facilitate this access for students to materials across campuses, The Chicago School library has adopted a digital-first model. This nimble approach allows for a small physical footprint while at the same time offering access to more than 290 databases and a Psychological Assessment Collection consisting of 215 unique assessments, as well as e-books and academic journals.
Sibley and his team are also working to ensure that alumni have access to resources that will allow them to research without needing to be enrolled. This includes tools like Google Scholar, which contains hundreds of thousands of scholarly articles, and public libraries, which in the digital age offer a surprising array of resources for professional development.
A growing concern to academic librarians on all levels is censorship. According to the American Library Association, which sponsors a Banned Books Week every September, the Office for Intellectual Freedom identified 729 challenges to library, school, and university materials and services in 2021, which resulted in more than 1,597 individual book challenges or removals from library shelves.
“I’m very passionate about the idea that the materials that are being banned the most are those that deal with traditionally marginalized communities,” Sibley says, citing research that shows students who see themselves reflected in the literature they read in school have better outcomes. To censor materials is to deny marginalized communities the opportunity to see themselves in the printed record.
Libraries are a public forum that embody the American ideal of equality. “Everyone should feel welcome in our library to learn and engage with new ideas and new information,” Sibley says. “Everyone should know that librarians are here to help people meet their goals in whatever they’re doing.
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