#LSLS23

LSLS23 took place at the Kathryn A. Martin Library on the campus of the University of Minnesota Duluth on June 9, 2023. This year’s theme, “Matter of Fact: Promoting Information Literacy in an Age of Fake News,” invited attendees to explore how libraries and library workers experience the unique challenges presented by the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation. We wanted to know how library workers are promoting intellectual freedom and information literacy at their libraries, and to be inspired to better serve our communities by promoting intellectual freedom and the pursuit of truth while actively countering disinformation and censorship.

barbara fisterKeynote Presentation: “Standing Up for the Truth: The Place of Libraries in the Public Sphere”

Barbara Fister is an academic librarian who taught college students how information works for over three decades before becoming a scholar-in-residence with Project Information Literacy (PIL). Along the way, she wrote weekly columns for Library Journal and Inside Higher Ed as well as fiction. She developed and taught courses on research methods, book culture, international crime fiction, and (most recently) Clickbait, Bias, and Propaganda in Information Networks, and she co-authored the 2020 research report, Information Literacy in the Age of Algorithms. Her PIL Provocation Series essay, Lizard People in the Library, was adapted into an article for The Atlantic. She lives in Mankato and is eagerly looking forward to seeing the pollinator flowerbeds she planted last fall come to life.

LSLS allows library staff to share their expertise, learn from their colleagues, and network to develop a stronger community of information professionals. Staff from all types of libraries are encouraged to attend. The event is organized and supported by library staff and educators from Minnesota and Wisconsin; for a full list of our supporters, see https://lakesuperiorlibrariessymposium.com/about/supporters/.