For a full publication record and work in the publication pipeline, see my CV on the "experience" page
This was an invited contributed article I wrote for Taylor & Francis' Public Services Quarterly, a journal focusing on the public service elements within academic libraries. I found myself consistently struggling with the predominance of business-centric marketing principles in library social media. This struggle is influenced by my own political views of the world and the influence of capitalism on library work. My goal is for this article to generate more thoughtful reflection on how we talk about and how we enact engagement with our library communities.
Citation for published article: Christie Kliewer (2018) Library Social Media Needs to be Evaluated Ethically, Public Services Quarterly, 14:2, 170-182, DOI: 10.1080/15228959.2018.1447418
The Version of Record of this manuscript has been published and is available in Public Services Quarterly, October 16, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1080/15228959.2018.1447418.
Abstract: Library literature about engagement has drawn from business marketing practices for years which has unsurprisingly influenced our approach towards social media communication. This article will evaluate how continuing this practice without a critical evaluation of the ethics behind marketing practices is contradictory to our institutional values. The principles discussed in this article may be useful for current library workers and administrators looking to engage in reflective practice in their outreach efforts. In response to the pervasiveness of marketing culture in library outreach our field has an obligation to support and encourage authentic interactions with our patrons without jeopardizing what makes us different from businesses. I will explain why a marketing perspective limits our efforts, initiate a discussion about this issue, and highlight some examples of effective engagement.
This was a conference paper presented at the What Is: Life? Conference at the University of Oregon April 6-8, 2017. The conference was largely attended by Communications and New Media scholars and was an opportunity to discuss library concepts of information literacy with non-librarians. This presentation was originally made available on Medium.
Citation for published article: Kliewer, C., Phillips, G. A., & Massanelli, M. (2017, April 8). Information & anxiety: The impossibility of 'literacy' and the necessity of agency. Panel presentation at What Is Life?, Portland, OR. Retrieved from http://ddc.duq.edu/library-scholarship/2
Abstract: Our lives are continuously affected by the information that we encounter in ever-increasing volume. The growing awareness of the dangers of uncritical information consumption (e.g. “fake news”) heightens the relevancy of questions investigating the nature of truth and fact. This anxiety manifests on a more personal level in terms of our vulnerable digital selves—identities can be stolen, personal archives can be lost. Anxiety is deeply personal but can affect public lives, professional lives, teaching, and scholarship as it leads to a loss of nuance and an unwillingness to participate in information creation and exchange. Our personal lives suffer, and so too does public discourse.
Our goal is to give you a framework to understand the concepts in Information Science which deal directly with the issue of reliable information sources and trust in the age of the internet. We are a group of information professionals working in the library and archives fields. Our professional values are specifically codified in order to deal with information anxiety and promote critical thinking, and our daily work is to foster responsible interactions with information. We will draw upon these values as examples in order to find interdisciplinary points of similarity among our audience, and demonstrate strategies for approaching information anxiety across the professions represented.
CC BY NC 4.0