Atla Annual 2025

This listen and learn session approaches LibGuides within the history of research aids and seeks to understand the relationships between intellectual freedom, institutional identity, bibliography, and access. We begin by situating LibGuides within the broader tradition of readers’ aids, specifically the role of printed bibliographies and digital pathfinders to understand why LibGuides have become so common throughout librarianship. We also explore how their form reinforces function in terms of scholarly authority and information guide.
We then examine the conflict between institutional identity, as developed by standardized web content, the librarian’s own intellectual freedom, and patron access. In short, we seek to understand what assumptions librarians and patrons have about LibGuides and if those assumptions impact guide content, not just guide design. We take this question to be especially important for theology librarians who may be working within contexts that require doctrinal or confessional agreements between faculty, staff, and students. We seek to understand how the theology librarian maintains intellectual freed and access to information (oft expressed core values of librarianship) amidst the strictures that often accompany church politics.
Finally we close the session by identifying a series of practices that librarians can deploy and encourage others to share their own experiences and practices. Two main points, LibGuide creation should be approached with the same meticulous approach as would be granted to bibliographies and special attention should be directed toward the container collapse between institution and resource.

Learning Outcome

Audiences will be encouraged to think about the history and form of LibGuides, not just their content. We will end the session by suggesting best practices to create LibGuides in a theological setting.

Audience Engagement

During the session we will have multiple opportunities for group conversation and to hear how others have addressed the questions of intellectual freedom, institutional identity, and guiding users to information.