WA 2016 Week 03: Du Bois & scientific sociology, #WOCinTechChat stock photos, LIS Mental Health Week

Weekly Whaaa…?

“The Case for Scholarly Reparations” and #critlib scholarly communication

A great read starting off this week was Julian Go’s The Case for Scholarly Reparations, a review essay on Aldon Morris’ The Scholar Denied. The main argument—seemingly shared by Morris and Go—is that Du Bois’ Atlanta School began scientific sociology, despite the fact that the standard historical narrative gives that honor to the University of Chicago.

This is the story Morris tells: Du Bois was marginalized partly because Du Bois and his colleagues were right, and mainstream sociology was wrong, and yet mainstream sociology had all the power to define right and wrong in the first place. - Go

Go acknowledges that it’s a startling claim, so I’ll suggest you read the review in full. It’s worth thinking about how this argument pertains to current scholarship. To the extent that LIS is a social science, this sort of history remains crucial for who our received narratives legitimize and who they cast as marginal.

So yes, all social science is parochial. The difference is that some of these standpoints get valorized as universal and others get marginalized as particularistic. Some become heralded as objective and true, others get resisted as subjective or irrelevant. - Go

If you teach scholarly communication, LIS, or other social sciences, wouldn’t this make a rousing conversation starter? Whose claims to insight get treated by scholarly networks as valid, perhaps even universalizable, and whose claims to insight are dismissed or constrained?

#WOCinTechChat Stock Photo Shoot

Courtesy of Julia @sparkymonster on Twitter, here’s a link to a great collection of photos:

Heyyy it's collection of Creative Commons stock images of WOC in tech https://t.co/LyaZXV8QOC #alamw16

— Julia (@sparkymonster) January 10, 2016

These pics are Creative Commons CC BY 2.0 licensed, and would do well for the next time you need an image for informatics, computer coding, knowledge workers, information professionals, etc.

Furthermore, their chats are monthly—here’s their site and their Twitter.

LIS Mental Health Week

I can’t express how grateful I am to Cecily Walker and Kelly McElroy for organizing #LISMentalHealth Week, and to everyone who wrote a blog post or shared things online.

Mental health issues and mental illness have in various ways affected almost everyone I know and hold dear. The more we recognize how pervasive these issues are for our patrons and ourselves, the better.