Research Paper: New Best Practices for Diversity in Youth Collections

”A sad tale’s best for winter: I have one

of sprites and goblins”

—The Winter’s Tale, II.i

This section of my website is where I'll post certain research projects I'm working on for my Masters in Library and Information Science degree. While these are assignments I have created for classes; they are not published academic works. No part of these papers may be copied without my permission. If you want to chat about this information or have questions regarding my courses, feel free to contact me at deidrebrill@gmail.com or DM me on Twitter @dreadpiratemama.

What you’re about to read IS NOT RELATED TO SHAKESPEARE.

I KNOW I’M SORRY DON’T HATE ME.

But like Walt Whitman, I contain multitudes. I took a class on Collection Development, which is a fancy term for “libraries picking which books and whatnot to offer”. It was fascinating. And it’s something I already have some input on in my own part-time library job. Which means you may find me wandering the Young Adult section of a suburban California library, stroking the spines of books and drunk on power. Or you can check out the fascinating information I researched about really ghastly trends of homogeneity in publishing and librarianship. Basically, books are mostly being written and selected by straight, white, able-bodied people And we need to all do better in educating ourselves, identifying our own biases, and calling for books from authors that are not like us, who tell tales of people who are not like us. And that all starts with the youths. Take a peek.

Literature Review: Shakespearean Online Community

"Our court shall be a little academe,

Still and contemplative in living art"

--Love's Labour's Lost, 1.1

This section of my website is where I'll post certain research projects I'm working on for my Masters in Library and Information Science degree. While these are assignments I have created for classes; they are not published academic works. If you want to chat about this information or have questions regarding my courses, feel free to contact me at deidrebrill@gmail.com or DM me on Twitter @dreadpiratemama.

So what is a "literature review"? At the graduate/doctorate level, it's a summation of academic literature on a specific topic of interest. Think of it as a precursor to a full-on research project: a decent lit review will point out what's been studied on the topic so far, and shows where that research could/should be headed based on what's missing. For one class, we've spent the entire semester examining any "information community" of our choosing -- that is, any community of people who distribute/seek out information on a shared interest. I opted to explore the online community of people interested in Shakespeare, naturally.

Without further ado, a humble lit review. Anyone looking to cite or reproduce this information must inquire with me first.