Libfocus Link-out for March 2025

Welcome to the March edition of the Libfocus link-out, an assemblage of library-related things we have found informative, educational, thought-provoking and insightful on the Web over the past while.

CRAAP test image from Georgia Southern University, remaining images taken from this month's linkout articles

The one change that worked: I found an escape from online life by swapping my home office for the library.
In this short article for the Guardian, Dale Berning Sawa describes the transformational benefits of using a university library as her home office.

The Book Club for Masochists.
Meet Anna Ferri, Matthew Murray, Megan Whyte and Jam (RJ) Edwards who run a monthly podcast aimed at helping library staff to widen their reading choices to better support their patrons. Hear their discussions of titles they have read from randomly chosen genres that include bizarro fiction and steampunk.

University libraries must be ‘access brokers’, not knowledge repositories.
Liam Bullingham investigates in his Times Higher Education opinion piece the changing nature of libraries in access provision in times of budget cuts and changing reading habits of students and staff.

Open Science at the generative AI turn: An exploratory analysis of challenges and opportunities.
Open Access paper in the journal Quantitative Science Studies summarising the pros and cons of generative AI with regards to Open Science, looking at knowledge, infrastructure and societal actors. If you just want an overview of the findings look at this figure.

SCONUL publishes results of their first Library Technology Report.
A comprehensive analysis of the technology landscape for academic and research libraries. It provides detailed profiles of the products and services used in those spaces, as well as assessments of their functionality and value for money.

SCONUL publishes results of their survey looking at the Future of the Systems Librarian.
As library environments are becoming increasingly automated and digitised, the systems librarian functions as a key ‘in-between’ role, acting as a translator and bridge between technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Changes in Light.
Changes in Light, a short video, directed and edited by artist Anna MacDonald, brings attention to the colonial legacies that influence library design and the importance of work being done to address this.
Made in collaboration with IALS Librarian Marilyn Clarke, library staff and videographer Marisa Zanotti, Changes in Light explores the impact of the affective qualities of libraries on those who use them as a way of revealing the colonial complexities of law itself. The film explores staff’s embodied responses to colonial legacies alongside an exploration of movement and light within the building, offering a nuanced perspective on the complexity of structural change within institutions.

Trinity College Dublin celebrates renaming former Berkeley library after poet Eavan Boland.
The renaming of Trinity College Dublin’s former Berkeley Library after Eavan Boland is “rooted in the determination of staff and students that the building should no longer commemorate a slave owner”, the audience at an event to celebrate the change has heard.

Gone and Mostly Forgotten: A Slice of Academic Librarianship’s Professional Past.
Steven J. Bell reflects about Library Issues, which was published by Mountainside publishing from 1980 until 2016. The fascinating thing about Library Issues is that instead of speaking to library people it targeted academic administrators who "needed a quick introduction to and insight into any library matter". Well worth a read.

Rethinking Authority and Bias. Modifying the CRAAP Test to Promote Critical Thinking about Marginalized Information.
Emily Jaeger-McEnroe suggests a few modifications to the original CRAAP test that provide a means to evaluate marginalised information and prevent its exclusion.