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New Books in Library Science

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This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.

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August 12 · 55 min
Lauren Stara, "Planning Library Spaces: A Practical Guide for Library Building Projects" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Planning Library Spaces: A Practical Guide for Library Building Projects (Bloomsbury, 2025) is a book designed for librarians, trustees, local government officials, architects, and interior designers who are designing or planning to build, renovate, or reconfigure library spaces. Most librarians embark upon a library building project with little experience in space planning, architecture, or construction. Written by a registered architect and professional librarian, this is a guidebook for librarians embarking on a library building project. It includes a brief history of library facilities, placing them in the context of public buildings. An introduction to library planning principles and a discussion of library design concepts and trends are presented, including the impact of the 2020 pandemic on library design. Sections on working with architects, building design/construction terminology and the basics of reading architectural drawings provide insight into unfamiliar jargon and visual communication. Extensive illustrations and photographs show examples of library layouts and furniture and equipment, and the final chapter addresses the challenges inherent in a major building project. As library services change, buildings must adapt to accommodate and provide these new innovations. Buildings are living things, and this book will offer guidance to those embarking on a project of any scale or size. Guest: Lauren Stara is a registered architect and a librarian, specializing in library building design. Her past library experience includes everything from front desk clerk to director. As a Library Building Specialist for the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, Lauren administers grant funds and provides technical assistance and advice from initial planning through construction of public library projects. She writes, consults, and speaks on library design, service design, and future trends in libraries and is coauthor of Responding to Rapid Change in Libraries: A User Experience Approach (2020). Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
August 3 · 49 min
James W. Cortada, "Beyond the Facts: Tacit Knowledge and the Hidden Infrastructure of Our Informed Times" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Beyond the Facts: Tacit Knowledge and the Hidden Infrastructure of Our Informed Times (Bloomsbury, 2025) describes tacit knowledge, what it is, how it used and its role in our current data driven world. Author James Cortada argues that fuzzy, hard-to describe information is greater and more, important than just hard facts. What is tacit knowledge? It is what we might consider knowledge that is unable to be fully communicated; knowledge that we understand implicitly, but it is a bit hard to explain. For example, it is the kind of knowledge one needs to ride a bicycle, but that cannot be described precisely on paper in the way one might be able to explain how to cook a dish. Tacit knowledge is the least understood type of information and one of the most difficult to communicate. Yet there is more tacit knowledge in our lives than the specific facts one can find in a book, on the Internet or in the simple form of a fact. This book is designed to introduce the reader to the concept of tacit knowledge and how to recognize and use it. This book offers definitions of tacit knowledge and compares the topic to explicit knowledge, then describes how the former is used today. The author argues that both types are used today and explains how one can use both types of knowledge in their lives. This book is essential primer to understanding tacit knowledge and learning how to use it to your advantage. Guest: James (Jim) Cortada is a senior research fellow at the University of Minnesota. He is a leading authority on the role of modern information. He holds a PhD in modern history but worked at IBM Corporation for nearly 40 years in sales and consulting. He has written several books on the business history of the computer industry and just over a dozen on the history and use of information over the past two centuries. So, he straddles the subject between historical evolution and its current uses. Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
July 31 · length unknown
The YIVO Library in New York: Personal Reflections on Its History and Collections
In the mid-1930s a group of New York Yiddishist intellectuals established the Central Jewish Library and Press Archive, whose collections became the nucleus of the YIVO Library when the Institute relocated from Vilna to New York in 1940. Over the succeeding decades, the Library grew by leaps and bounds, thanks to the dedication of its librarians and supporters. It emerged as a “collection of collections,” absorbing the extensive personal libraries of prominent Yiddish writers, scholars, and book collectors. Crucially, after 1945 the Library also recovered large portions of the Vilna YIVO’s prewar holdings along with thousands of rabbinic works from Vilna’s Strashun Library. Throughout its history, the YIVO Library has been a beehive of scholarship and bibliography, which has been fostered by such outstanding figures as Mendl Elkin and Dina Abramowicz. In this presentation, Zachary M. Baker will offer some personal reflections on the legacy that the YIVO Library’s founders and builders have left behind. View the bibliography for this talk: here This lecture originally took place on February 19, 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
May 15 · 53 min
Angela I. Fritz, "AI and Digital Leadership: Transforming Libraries, Archives, and Museums for the Future" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
AI and Digital Leadership: Transforming Libraries, Archives, and Museums for the Future (Bloomsbury, 2026) explores how galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) are navigating new leadership styles and organizational frameworks to help meet the challenges posed by a digital society. During this time of digital transformation, galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) are facing a generational challenge that calls on them to rethink their roles and responsibilities, re-evaluate policies and practices, and re-envision creative management and use of their collections. While AI is not new for GLAMs, the rapid development of generative AI has accelerated the pace of change along with a host of risks and benefits. For cultural heritage institutions, the stakes for implementing emerging AI technologies are high as GLAMs navigate questions relating to cultural relevance, limited resources and expanding backlogs of digital collections. GLAMs must also contend with the major intellectual and social implications for supporting entirely new approaches to learning, scholarship and public engagement. As GLAMs strive to keep pace, this book turns to explore how cultural heritage institutions can draw on a model of digital leadership to help them meet the challenges posed by the ethical implementation and use of generative AI in the stewardship of distinctive collections. Although digital leadership has been widely written about in the fields of business management, communication and marketing and information technology, it has not yet been addressed in a book format for the GLAM sector. In addition to discussing the basic definition and concepts of digital leadership, this book explores digital leadership as a critical framework for GLAMs to advance digital stewardship programs, professional development and staff training initiatives, and institutional advocacy in the age of AI. Guest: Angela I. Fritz is Assistant Professor at the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Iowa. Previously, she has held leadership positions at the Wisconsin Historical Society, the University of Notre Dame, and the Office of Presidential Libraries and Museums at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Dr. Fritz has a PhD in American history and public history from Loyola University-Chicago, a master’s degree in history from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and a master’s degree in library science with a concentration in archival administration from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Mentioned during the episode, is an upcoming special issue of Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Practitioners guest edited by Dr. Fritz. You can learn more about this special issue on the journal’s homepage. Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
April 29 · 28 min
Are Libraries the Hidden Book Market? with Erin Cox of Words & Money
What if the most powerful tool in your book marketing strategy isn't social media — it's your local library? In the debut episode of The Publishing Playbook, host Sarah Russo of Page One Media sits down with publishing veteran Erin Cox to unpack one of the industry's most overlooked opportunities: libraries. With a career spanning publicity at Scribner and HarperCollins, agenting, and her current role as publisher of Publishing Perspectives and co-founder of Words and Money, Erin brings rare, 360-degree expertise to the conversation. Together, Sarah and Erin break down how libraries actually buy books, why they're a powerful (and underutilized) marketing channel for authors, and the misconceptions that are costing publishers real money. Whether you're a debut author, a seasoned writer, or publishing-curious, this episode will change how you think about getting your book into readers' hands. Words & Money: https://www.wordsandmoney.com/ Publishing Perspectives: https://publishingperspectives.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
#112
April 26 · 54 min
Kirsten Clark, "Practical Project Management for Librarians" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Librarians continue to work under budget constraints while still needing to increase the user experience and remove barriers to library resources. Learning to evaluate the best options for managing projects to accomplish goals while balancing with the reality of day-to-day work needs is integral to overall success. In Practical Project Management for Librarians (Bloomsbury, 2025), Kirsten Clark takes readers through the process of learning how to balance the goals of the project with the reality of working in libraries today, what key questions can help move readers effectively through the project process and choose the right tools, best practices to ensure sustainability in project plans as well as outcomes, and how to incorporate diversity, inclusion, and accessibility principles into your project management. This practice guide provides step-by-step instructions to determine what project management tools and techniques match the needs of the particular library project and person/team's skills level, while also providing these in the context of libraries' specific cultures and norms. Guest: Kirsten Clark is the director of Library Enterprise Systems at the University of Minnesota Libraries, USA, where her department oversees systems for five system campuses as well as ensures consistent and transparent application of access policies for students, faculty, researchers, and community users. In a career that has spanned working for small liberal arts colleges to research universities, she has led projects within a variety of library areas including research and instruction, collection development, access and information services, and information technology and systems. Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
#111
April 21 · 41 min
Wade Bishop et al., "A Critical Look at Information Science and Librarianship in a New Age" (Emerald Publishing, 2026)
A Critical Look at Information Science and Librarianship in a New Age: Constellation of Insanity (Emerald, 2026) fosters a platform for information scientists to engage in reflection and contemplation regarding the profound questions of our era. By drawing insights from pioneers in the field whose contributions were once marginalized or, in some instances, overlooked within the realm of information science, chapter authors strive to re/center the field's focal point. Chapter authors draw from a diverse array of frameworks including critical theory, deconstruction, queer theory, borderlands, among others. What sets this book apart is its direct confrontation of the status quo and aggressively re/claims intellectual space for “others”. This is the only book to critique the entire discipline of Information Science from as many angles as possible in one volume and as far outside of the traditional organizations. Guest: Wade Bishop is a Professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. His research foci include research data management, data discovery, geographic information science, as well as the study of data occupations, education, and training. He has published many works evaluating the services and resources of academic and public libraries. He earned an MLIS from the University of South Florida School of Information and a PhD from Florida State University’s School of Information. Renate Chancellor is Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Access, Ethics, & Belonging at the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University. She holds both a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Information Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and is affiliated with the Syracuse University Lender Center for Social Justice. Dr. Chancellor’s research is grounded in critical race theory and critical cultural information studies, with a focus on access, equity, ethics, belonging, and social justice in Library and Information Science (LIS). She is the author of seminal biographies of Black librarians, including E.J. Josey: Transformational Leader of the Modern Library Profession and Breaking Glass Ceilings: Clara Stanton Jones and the Detroit Public Librarypractices, which foreground Black leadership and institutional transformation in librarianship. Her current research explores information objects and fugitive epistemology, with particular attention to alternative knowledge systems and practices of resistance. Dr. Chancellor serves on the editorial boards of The Library Quarterly and Education for Information and is the recipient of numerous honors, including the ALISE Excellence in Teaching Award (2014) and the Norman Horrocks Leadership Award (2012). Joe Sánchez is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Information Studies at Queens College (CUNY). He studies the information worlds of BIPOC high school students, subcultures and information, and undergraduate research experiences for underrepresented students. He earned a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. He serves on the editorial board of Library Hi-Tech, the advisory board of the Library of Congress Literacy Awards Program, the American Library Association (ALA) Spectrum Doctoral Fellows Program, and ALA’s Committee on Accreditation. He is a Mellon Fellow and a Google/ALA Fellow in the Libraries Ready to Code Program and a Founder of the iSchool Inclusion Institute (i3). Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
March 8 · 1 hr 1 min
Karen Kohn, "Assessing Academic Library Collections for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Assessing Academic Library Collections for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (Bloomsbury, 2025) provides a practical, step-by-step approach to designing and implementing evaluation projects targeting a variety of DEI goals in academic library collections. Offering both flexibility and detailed guidance, this book begins with a discussion of aspects of diversity that librarians could target in their assessment projects and notes project planning considerations such as defining a scope and timeline. It particularly notes how larger academic libraries can narrow the scope of a project to make it feasible. Subsequent chapters explain different methods for assessing a collection, with many examples throughout. Methods include: - List-checking involves comparing the collection to a list of recommended books. - Metadata searching produces a count of library holdings that contain certain subject headings or use specific call numbers. - Diversity coding allows staff to create their own categories and assign them to books in a sample. All three of these methods can be used to analyze the collection by subject matter. It is possible to use diversity coding to examine author identities as well, a sensitive endeavor for which this book provides both cautions and guidance. A fourth approach focuses on organizational efforts or inputs. This method involves tracking and reflecting on the library's progress towards goals the staff have set, which could involve a variety of collections-related activities, including staff development, changes to workflows, revising policies, or increasing outreach. The book describes advantages and limitations of the four methods, allowing librarians to make an informed choice of which to use. It also offers resources for implementing each of these strategies as well as guidance on creating one's own evaluation tools. Three chapters by guest authors provide examples of DEI assessment projects from academic libraries. A concluding chapter discusses sharing findings and suggests a range of changes libraries can make to their collecting practices. Guest: Karen Kohn is the Collections Analysis Librarian at Temple University in Philadelphia, where she serves on the DEI in Collections Committee and the Open Education Group. Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
March 4 · 46 min
Amelia Acker, "Archiving Machines: From Punch Cards to Platforms" (MIT Press, 2025)
We're so pleased to welcome Dr. Amelia Acker, author of Archiving Machines: From Punch Cards to Platforms (MIT Press, 2025) to the New Books Network! This book describes the struggle between the computing technologies that archive data and the cultures of information that have led to platforms that assert control over its use. Acker examines the origins of data archives and the computing processes of storage, exchange, and transmission. Each chapter introduces data archiving processes that relate to the evolution of data sovereignty we experience today: from magnetic tape and timesharing computer models from the 1950s, to the establishment of data banks and the rise of database processing and managed data silos in the 1970s, to file structures and virtual containers in cloud-based information services over the past 40 years. Your host is Dr. Adam Kriesberg, Associate Professor at the Simmons University School of Library and Information Science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
February 14 · 1 hr 12 min
Linda Quirk, "Forgers, Fakers, and Publisher-Pirates" (U Alberta Press, 2025)
Whether print or digital, text or image, artistic or scientific, rare or common, historic or contemporary, most of the content we encounter contains accidental mistakes—ranging from typos to factual errors to errors arising from prejudicial assumptions—and a significant proportion of it also contains deliberate misinformation resulting from various forms of forgery, fakery, and piracy. In Forgers, Fakers, and Publisher-Pirates (U Alberta Press, 2025), Linda Quirk introduces the work of notorious and lesser-known forgers, reveals the various ways in which experts and authors have faked their own identities—ranging from carefully-selected pseudonyms to falsified ethnicities to fraudulent credentials—and explores a number of shady publishing practices. We can all become better readers and better at protecting ourselves from scammers by improving our understanding of the nature of the content before us. Linda Quirk is a librarian (Bruce Peel Special Collections, University of Alberta, Edmonton) whose research and publications focus on a group of women who, in the nineteenth century, did pioneering work in various fields and whose writings helped to break down the barriers then preventing women from full participation in Canadian society. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom (2022) and The Social Movement Archive (2021), and co-editor of Armed By Design: Posters and Publications of Cuba’s Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (2025). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
February 6 · 1 hr 1 min
Cindy Anh Nguyen, "Bibliotactics: Libraries and the Colonial Public in Vietnam" (U California Press, 2026)
Libraries in French colonial Vietnam functioned as symbols of Western modernity and infrastructures of colonial knowledge. Yet Vietnamese readers pursued alternative uses of the library that exceeded imperial intentions. In Bibliotactics: Libraries and the Colonial Public in Vietnam (U California Press, 2026), Cindy Any Nguyen examines the Hanoi and Saigon state libraries in colonial and postcolonial Vietnam, uncovering the emergence of a colonial public who reimagined the political meaning and social space of the library through public critique and day-to-day practice. Comprising government bureaucrats, library personnel, journalists, and everyday library readers, this colonial public debated the role of libraries as educational resource, civilizing instrument, and literary heritage. Moving beyond procolonial or anticolonial nationalism framings, Bibliotactics advances a relational theory of power that centers public reading culture contextualized within the library infrastructure of the colonial information order. As the first comprehensive history of the colonial and national library in Asia, this book contributes new insights into publicity, colonial and postcolonial studies, and the histories of Vietnam, libraries, and information. Bibliotactics is available open access from Luminosa. Visit here to download a copy for free. Cindy Anh Nguyen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Studies and the Digital Humanities program at the University of California, Los Angeles. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom (2022) and The Social Movement Archive (2021), and co-editor of Armed By Design: Posters and Publications of Cuba’s Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (2025). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
January 27 · 54 min
Melissa Adler, "Peculiar Satisfaction: Thomas Jefferson and the Mastery of Subjects" (Fordham UP, 2025)
As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Peculiar Satisfaction: Thomas Jefferson and the Mastery of Subjects (Fordham UP, 2025) examines how the ideals and contradictions of the nation’s founding live on in libraries, archives, and museums. Thomas Jefferson championed an informed citizenry as essential to democracy, yet the systems he built to organize knowledge reinforced racial and ideological hierarchies that persist today. Melissa Adler explores Jefferson’s lasting influence on public institutions, from his personal library, which became the foundation of the Library of Congress, to his archival practices in government record-keeping and his museum at Monticello as a site of colonial knowledge production. Through an interdisciplinary lens, she reveals how his methods of classification and preservation shaped national memory and democratic participation. Drawing from archival research and critical theory, Peculiar Satisfaction exposes the paradoxes of access, exclusion, and control embedded in information systems. As censorship and disinformation threaten democracy, Adler argues that understanding these foundational structures is essential to defending the role of knowledge in public life. Melissa Adler is Associate Professor at Western University (London, Ontario) in the Faculty of Information & Media Studies. She is the author of Cruising the Library: Perversities in the Organization of Knowledge (Fordham) Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom (2022) and The Social Movement Archive (2021), and co-editor of Armed By Design: Posters and Publications of Cuba’s Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (2025). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
#105
January 7 · 45 min
Terra Jacobson and Spencer Brayton, "Valuing the Community College Library: Impactful Practices for Institutional Success" (ACRL, 2025)
Valuing the Community College Library: Impactful Practices for Institutional Success (2025, ACRL) provides a holistic approach to exhibiting community college library value through historical context, practical applications, and future thinking. Through case studies, editorials from administrators, and practical approaches, it addresses why community college libraries exist and should exist, and the nuanced approaches to how library workers situate themselves at their institutions. Community college libraries need to provide access to content, people, space, and technology and offer instruction, but can also serve as an outreach arm in advancing the mission of open enrollment and affordable access to higher education. Valuing the Community College Library can help you be an advocate for your library on campus and in your community. Guests: Terra B. Jacobson (Chicago, IL) has been the dean of the Learning Resource Center at Moraine Valley Community College (Palos Hills, IL) since 2016 and has worked in community college libraries since 2009. She has a M.S. in Information Science (Indiana University, Bloomington) as well as a M.S. in Library Science (Indiana University, Bloomington). Terra received her Ph.D. in Information Studies (Dominican University, IL). Her dissertation title is: The Value of Community College Libraires: Executive Leadership Team Perceptions of the Community College Library. Terra is the 2021 recipient of the Illinois Library Association’s Valerie J. Wilford Scholarship Grant for Library Education. She also received the ALA College Libraries Section Innovation in College Librarianship award in 2014. Terra participates locally as a board member for the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries and works extensively with the Network of Illinois Learning Resources in Community Colleges (NILRC). She recently published the book Valuing the Community College Library: Impactful Practices for Institutional Success (2025) with ACRL. She currently teaches online at the State University of New York and at Dominican University in the School of Information Studies. Spencer Brayton is director of Library Services at Waubonsee Community College (northeastern Illinois, USA). His research and publication interests include media and information literacy, community college libraries, coaching and leadership. Spencer received his Master of Arts in Library and Information Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Master of Science in Management from the University of St. Francis (Joliet, IL), and is currently pursuing a Doctorate of Education in Higher Education from the University of Southern Mississippi. Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
#14
January 1 · 41 min
Dagmar Schafer, "Ownership of Knowledge: Beyond Intellectual Property" (MIT Press, 2023)
Ownership of Knowledge: Beyond Intellectual Property (MIT Press, 2023) provides a framework for knowledge ownership that challenges the mechanisms of inequality in modern society. Scholars of science, technology, medicine, and law have all tended to emphasize knowledge as the sum of human understanding, and its ownership as possession by law. Breaking with traditional discourse on knowledge property as something that concerns mainly words and intellectual history, or science and law, Dagmar Schäfer, Annapurna Mamidipudi, and Marius Buning propose technology as a central heuristic for studying the many implications of knowledge ownership. Toward this end, they focus on the notions of knowledge and ownership in courtrooms, workshops, policy, and research practices, while also shedding light on scholarship itself as a powerful tool for making explicit the politics inherent in knowledge practices and social order. The book presents case studies showing how diverse knowledge economies are created and how inequalities arise from them. Unlike scholars who have fragmented this discourse across the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and history, the editors highlight recent developments in the emerging field of the global history of knowledge—as science, as economy, and as culture. The case studies reveal how notions of knowing and owning emerge because they reciprocally produce and determine each other's limits and possibilities; that is, how we know inevitably affects how we can own what we know; and how we own always impacts how and what we are able to know. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
#32
Dec 28, 2025 · 32 min
Abigail Bainbridge, "Conservation of Books" (Routledge, 2023)
An interview with Abigail Bainbridge and Sonja Schwoll
Dec 22, 2025 · 50 min
Suzette van Haaren, "The Digital Medieval Manuscript: Material Approaches to Digital Codicology" (Brill, 2025)
We increasingly encounter medieval books as digital facsimiles—zooming in on high-resolution images, clicking through virtual pages, or engaging with interactive displays. But what actually happens when a parchment manuscript is translated into a digital object? How does this change affect our understanding of cultural heritage? In The Digital Medieval Manuscript: Material Approaches to Digital Codicology (Brill, 2025), Suzette van Haaren explores the digital medieval manuscript as a unique cultural artifact, not just a copy of its physical counterpart. Through three case studies, van Haaren reveals how digital manuscripts function in libraries, museums, and scholarship today. Blending manuscript studies with digital humanities, this book offers a fresh materialist approach to the discourse surrounding the digitisation of cultural heritage and provides a nuanced view of how it shapes the way we perceive, handle, and preserve medieval manuscripts in an increasingly digital world. This episode makes reference to other scholars in the field of digital codicology, several of whom have spoken about this work on New Books Network. Listen to Bridget Whearty speak about Digital Codicology: Medieval Books and Modern Labor; Michelle R. Warren speak about Holy Digital Grail: A Medieval Book on the Internet; and Astrid J. Smith speak about Transmediation and the Archive: Decoding Objects in the Digital Age. Van Haaren also mentions the work of composer Mark Dyer, specifically the Scribe project. Digitised manuscripts discussed in this interview include the Bury Bible, Der naturen bloeme, and the prayer book of Mary of Guelders. Images from Der naturen bloeme are also available on Wikimedia Commons. Suzette van Haaren is a postdoc in the CRC Virtuelle Lebenswelten at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Her research reflects on the impact of the increasing digitisation (and virtualisation) of historical heritage. She is interested in the Middle Ages in contemporary media contexts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Dec 21, 2025 · 58 min
Amanda Nichols Hess, "Information Literacy and Critical Thinking: Using Perspective Transformation to Break Information Bubbles" (ALA, 2025)
Higher education is about transformation: research shows that the most well-prepared graduates are those who have experienced changes in how they think about and experience the world around them. Combined with flexible information-seeking and evaluation skills, learning ways to break information bubbles is essential for dealing with today's challenging, complex information environment. Jack Mezirow's transformative learning theory, which frames how adults think about and interact with the world around them, offers a way forward. In Information Literacy and Critical Thinking: Using Perspective Transformation to Break Information Bubbles (2025, ALA) Amanda Nichols Hess invites academic librarians to consider critical librarianship, pedagogy, and information literacy instruction in tandem with transformative learning theory, demonstrating tangible ways to integrate these concepts into their practice. Readers will discover an overview of critical library pedagogy and transformative learning theory, showing how reflection and action lie at the core of both ideas; in-depth exploration of the ten phases of the perspective transformation process and how they relate to key facets of critical librarianship, critical pedagogy, and critical information literacy; important theoretical and research viewpoints that elucidate perspective transformation; real-world scenarios modelling how one's own praxis can support learners; and a myriad of ideas, reflection questions, opportunities for action, and additional resources to spur readers to look beyond their own information bubbles and facilitate environments where learners can do the same. Guest: Amanda Nichols Hess, PhD, is the coordinator of instruction and research help at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. She holds a PhD in educational leadership, an education specialist certificate in instructional technology, and a Master of Science in information. Amanda’s research focuses on information literacy, instructional design, online learning, and the intersections of these topics—particularly in library-centric professional learning. Her work has been published in College & Research Libraries, Communications in Information Literacy, Journal of Academic Librarianship, and portal: Libraries and the Academy, among other venues. In addition to editing and authoring books for ACRL and ALA Editions, Amanda also authored Transforming Academic Library Instruction (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019). Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dec 11, 2025 · 1 hr 7 min
James A. Jacobs and James R. Jacobs, "Preserving Government Information: Past, Present, and Future" (Freegovinfo Press, 2025)
We're pleased to welcome James A. Jacobs and James R. Jacobs, authors of Preserving Government Information: Past, Present, and Future (FreeGovInfo Press, 2025), to the New Books Network. In this book, Jacobs and Jacobs introduce the different US federal institutions tasked with managing and preserving government information in a range of media formats from paper to digital. They examine how preservation practices of the past affect the preservation of digitally published government information today, analyze publishing and preservation data to characterize the current gaps in preservation, and look to the future by charting a path to a distributed Digital Preservation Infrastructure for government information while explaining key concepts in digital preservation along the way. Your host is Dr. Adam Kriesberg, Associate Professor at the Simmons University School of Library and Information Science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dec 7, 2025 · 58 min
J.D. Sargan, "Trans Histories of the Medieval Book: An Experiment in Bibliography" (Arc Humanities Press, 2025)
Archival collections are political spaces: the decisions that govern whose histories are preserved, when, and by whom are not neutral. They reflect the communities that make them. For most of western history queer, trans, and gender non-conforming people were excluded from such communities. Premodern trans experiences went largely unreported and reconstructing such histories relies on the piecing together of ephemeral glimpses. Literary scholars developed tactics and tools to read through the traces, with hugely generative results that highlight the richness of non-normative premodern genders. But how do we move beyond the limits of the trace to uncover a more expansive history of premodern gender non-conformity? In Trans Histories of the Medieval Book: An Experiment in Bibliography (Arc Humanities Press, 2025), J.D. Sargan takes a methodological approach to that question. Sargan explores how experiment in applying trans approaches to the study of the premodern book offers alternatives both for trans histories and for book historical methods. J. D. Sargan is a book historian. He was educated at Queen Mary University of London and the University of Oxford. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Georgia and teaches a course in Queer Bibliographies for California Rare Book School. He researches the social dynamics of book use. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom (2022) and The Social Movement Archive (2021), and co-editor of Armed By Design: Posters and Publications of Cuba’s Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (2025). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dec 1, 2025 · 57 min
The Library of Lost Maps: An Archive of a World in Progress
At the heart of University College London lies a long-forgotten map library packed with thousands of maps and atlases. Professor James Cheshire stumbled upon it, and spent three years sifting through hundreds of dusty drawers to see what was there. He was stunned to uncover some of the most significant maps and atlases from the last two centuries - many of which had not seen the light of day for decades. In The Library of Lost Maps: An Archive of a World in Progress (Bloomsbury, 2025) we discover atlases for the masses that expanded nineteenth-century horizons, and maps that were wielded by those in power to wage war and negotiate peace; charts that trace the icy peaks of the Himalayas and the deepest depths of the ocean; and pioneering maps produced to settle borders in central Europe or the wealth of those in inner-city London. Maps have played a vital role in shaping our scientific knowledge of the world, showing the impact of climate change and inspiring the theory of plate tectonics. They have also guided politicians, encouraging both beneficial reforms and horrific conquests, the consequences of which we continue to live with today. Brimming with astonishing discoveries, The Library of Lost Maps reveals why cartography really matters and how map-making has helped transform our understanding of the world around us. Our guest is: Professor James Cheshire, who is Britain’s only Professor of Geographic Information and Cartography. A world-leading map maker, he is an elected fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and has been recognized with awards from the Royal Geographical Society and the British Cartographic Society. When he is not making, writing about, or teaching with maps, he spends his time scouring eBay for them in the hope that one day he’ll have a map library of his own. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is an experienced writing coach and developmental editor for academics. She is the producer and host of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a Ph.D. in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell. Playlist for listeners: A Brief History of the World in 47 Borders Once Upon A Tome The Translators Daughter Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins Efforts to Aid Refugees From Nazi Germany We Take Our Cities With Us The Ungrateful Refugee Where Research Begins Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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