Purpose - Legitimacy is a sustained scholarly topic of interest across many disciplines - including library and information science (LIS). That does not mean all is well. It is the thesis here that LIS replicates problems that scholars have identified from the broader literature in deploying legitimacy without grounding it. This is another example of Wiegand's (1999) argument: when appropriating a concept, LIS scholarship inadequately considers provenance or meaning, producing "tunnel vision and blind spots" and a literature that cannot connect or contribute to broader intellectual fields and scholarship, leaving it isolated. Design/methodology/approach - The concept of legitimacy in its originating fields is surveyed, followed by a sampling of LIS peer-reviewed publications. Those bibliographies were checked for publications in English; those unconnected to LIS were excluded; they must be cited 20+ times in Google Scholar, resulting in 13 items. When those bibliographies were checked, only two additional publications were identified, confirming data saturation of the sample. The resulting 15 publications were analyzed specifically concerning the definition and deployment of the concept of legitimacy against the more established literature, with three conclusions developed. Findings - "Legitimacy" is invoked more than described and ill-defined in LIS, which replicates earlier critiques of the legitimacy literature: "papers simply" deploy the term legitimacy "before moving on to discuss whatever particular type of legitimacy was studied." Only a few cited Suchman's landmark 1995 study. Second, a few of the LIS works sampled here do, however, attempt some definition, opening the possibility of dialog about the divergences with the broader legitimacy literature. Third, some theoretical clarifications are proposed to LIS concepts in light of the urgent issues LIS faces, making LIS legitimacy theory efforts highly relevant. Social implications - LIS has a clear conceptual path to address the many challenges the field faces in the contemporary political landscape by cleaning up its conceptualization of legitimacy to drive scholarship in a more practical, productive direction. Originality/value - As noted, no systematic approach to the concept(s) of legitimacy has been attempted in the LIS literature, replicating the conditions of Wiegand's 1999 critique of that literature as having "tunnel vision and blind spots." The beginnings of that work are attempted here.

Libraries are now deeply entangled in the culture-and-identity wars, with a prominent journal's call for papers noting the "pathological aspects of our modern information ecosystems" and libraries now characterized as sinister and indoctrinating. This is a sea change. A group of theorists outlined the nature and severity of our conflicts over identity, difference, and globalization approximately 30-35 years ago, forming an understanding how we came to be where we are now, and what is happening in and to libraries. This article (1) introduces those theorists and briefly outlines their theses on identity, difference and globalization and their cultural and political reverberations. Testing that analysis the paper will (2) examine an early inflection point: Richard Rodriguez' 1982 memoir Hunger of Memory: an early flashpoint in identity politics and educational research, curriculum and debates around school multiculturalism. Examining library and information science while those controversies swirled is telling, and forms a contrast. The paper will then move to the current political and cultural position of libraries (3) framed by the second inflection point of the 2016 US presidential election, which fully enveloped libraries in toxic and unexpected ways that our theorists anticipated. A conclusion follows (4) examining what we can draw from the historical comparison, and asks how well our theoretical description actually holds up and where LIS might go from here.

A recent book, Contemporary Democratic Theory, is about the decline of democracy. Not an explanation of the phenomenon, but rather a look at how democratic theory has responded. This paper adapts that approach. The context of progressive librarianship (PL) has likewise shifted and consolidated with the results of the 2024 US presidential election and its aftermath. This is not localized or short term, it is global and persistent—and for democracy as well as libraries. The time has come to step back and ask the equivalent questions to that book on democratic theory: what is PL now? How did PL adapt and how might PL adapt? Efforts to document the work of and define PL began in response to “considerable ambiguity about just what constitutes progressive librarianship”—an inquiry conducted over the course of 15 years. It revealed that PL is an umbrella term describing both scholarship and organizational activities, gathering together many labels, if not always comfortably. This paper traces those paths, and based on that history suggests ones for PL to take, and perhaps as important, not to take.

This submission is a reappraisal of emotional labor as it has been framed in LIS. The article gathered and characterized very recent LIS publications on emotional labor. Those publications imply expectations for administrative interventions: an emotional labor movement for librarians so to speak. Moreover, that shift has generated some distance from the meaning of emotional labor in research, more strongly linking the concept to expectations of self-care, whole-self-at-work, and compensation issues which don't have obvious operational applications when made specific to libraries. The management interventions would quickly become intrusive and/or erode privacy and liberties. What follows is a contextual statement that helps explain the sociology driving at least a part of these shifts, and a series of speculations that shed light on the topic.

PurposeDue to contemporary threats to democracy, the topic is highly prominent in news and social discourse. The Library and Information Science (LIS) field writes about democracy frequently and it is a core concept underwriting many common library practices, but it lacks a working definition of modern democracy. This article supplies a minimal definition of democracy specifically for LIS, and expands the concept to encompass a more empirically accurate concept of library roles in democratic societies that includes the sociology of democracy where libraries arguable play a more significant role.Design/methodology/approachThere is an unpacking of library assumptions about operating in democratic societies, an empirical survey of the conditions of modern democracy, and a baseline theoretical description of democratic functioning as it currently exists.FindingsA minimal definition of modern democracy situates library practices – and in some ways minimizes them. However, the role of culture – the sociology that democracy presumes – comes to prominence when the civil society role of libraries and the conditions of successful democratic functioning are examined.Originality/valueThere is now a minimal definition of democracy for LIS with this effort, but it needs expansion. In that sense, LIS is a leading example of the undertheorized role of the sociology that democracy presumes.

In this article, I seek to plumb the built-in civic engagement of libraries that sits alongside the efforts promoted in this issue. Key concepts are interrogated and democracy and democratic theory are the first, signaling the civic republican model of democracy and democratic citizenship, a model that is both old and durable, different from other forms of democratic theory. Second, modern conditions of democracy challenge the assumptions that civic republicanism rests on, leading to "polarization and cynicism." How they manifest for libraries is next explored. Operating as libraries, libraries engage democratic civic life in an important if overlooked way: equal respect—what it is and what it isn't and how it is made manifest in libraries from the library and information science literature. The concluding section ties together the strengths of libraries' support for democratic society in this essential aspect of the public sphere.

Purpose The broader analytical framing of systematically distorted communication (SDC) helps extract value out of the enormous amount of scholarship on fake news. Design/methodology/approach The massive literature on fake news has been the subject of handbook overviews, systematic literature reviews, summaries, taxonomies, citation studies and so on. Deploying these tools, the approaches that the literature takes can be characterized, Habermas' concept of systematically distorted communication (SDC) will then be presented in its context, reviewed and put to work to frame fake news research to tell us new things that individual pieces of specific analysis and research do not. Conclusions will be offered from this analysis. Findings Fake news research has become repetitive, revolving around themes such as the fate of journalism, the role of technology, remediating its effects and deep dives into definitional components (disinformation, misinformation, lies and so on). A broader framing of systematically distorted communication allows us to arrive at some conclusions about contemporary fake news: that it is a power strategy with a particular right-wing slant and it creates a sociology – that is, its own interpretive environment – hostile to democratic functioning. It answers the question: what is fake news for? Originality/value A perspective on fake news research is much needed and Habermas' concept is a useful framing mechanism for the large corpus of research. Systematically distorted communication asks – and answers – different questions of the research. Meanwhile, SDC itself is modified by its application to fake news research and contemporary conditions.

The data librarianship as a profession produces on workloads can't give us the answers we seek. The library and information science literature wants two irreconcilable things out of its workload data: 1) aggregate comparable data to document and measure use of libraries and its value; and 2) accurate descriptions to document and measure the individual work done by librarians. That is our Gordian Knot. We propose here to change the question asked: how can we achieve a reasonable balance of workload within a group of librarians? That of course implies a focus on a library of a specific type: here a medium-sized academic library of an R2 institution. The goal was to answer a common and longstanding question: we are in continual process of assessing what needs to be done and how/where to shift workloads, but how do we know we're doing it in a reasonable and fair way beyond anecdotes and intuitions? We developed a weighted measure of public services workload in order to assess and track and assign a) areas of declining workload, b) areas of increasing workload (data services), and c) a balance between library divisions contributing to public services.

As of this writing, the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and a capstone edited book that defines the narrative tradition of libraries and democracy have come and gone. They are related. There is cause for reassessment in light of those two decades and widespread worry about democracy, with parallels in libraries. The library and information science field must deepen its understanding of democracy, but do so in a way that does not abandon the historic commitments characterized in the capstone book. I propose a switch in perspective to libraries in the life of democracy, from democracy in the life of libraries. This article describes the defining narrative and then explores the idea of civic republican (active) citizenship, on which the defining narrative draws heavily, revealing a democracy-within-the-life-of-libraries perspective. "Actually existing democracy" is sketched in contrast, which fosters a libraries-within-the-life-of-democracy approach. Factors working against and for democracy in libraries in the past two decades are presented in the conclusion.

Does COVID-19 challen04ge the persistence of neoliberalism? The pandemic and popular resistance to globalization seem to coincide, and there considerable discussion of neoliberalism within LIS now. First, this paper defines the centrality of the market as neoliberalism. With that in place, the remaining parts of the paper will explore and document phenomena in and related to academic libraries that instantiate how neoliberalism stubbornly persists. Second, the continuing reliance on generational cohorts to characterize incoming students - generation-ism- is a manifestation of categories of consumption and marketing. The influence of generation-ism on academic libraries is significant in the form of design pressures on space and to market the college experience. Third, where neoliberalism does tend to drive higher education investments in facilities, it results in the "lazy river" trend. This will be examined in direct contrast to the finance/space pressures on academic libraries. The paper concludes with a short discussion of these factors and what this analysis can tell us about academic libraries going forward into a post-COVID-19 era.

This is a troubled age for democracy, but the nature of that trouble and why it is a problem for democracy is an open question, not easy to answer. Widespread wishing for responsible leaders who respect democratic norms and pursue policies to benefit people and protect the vulnerable don't help much. The issue goes well beyond library contexts, but it is important that those in libraries think through our role in democracy as well. Micro-targeting library-centric problems won't be effective and don't address the key issue of this volume. The author can only address the future if we recover an understanding of the present by building up an understanding of actually-existing democracy: (1) the scope must be narrowed to accomplish the task; (2) the characteristics of the retreat from democracy should be established; (3) core working assumptions and values - what libraries are about in this context - must be established; (4) actually-existing democracy should then be characterized; (5) the role of libraries in actually-existing democracy is then explored; (6) the source and character of the threat that is driving the retreat from democracy and cutting away at the core of library assumptions and values is analyzed; (7) the chapter concludes by forming a basis of supporting libraries by unpacking their contribution to building and rebuilding democratic culture: libraries are simultaneously less and more important than is understood.

Who plans for new and renovated libraries? Architects deploy master planning–based analyses to guide future development over the long term, heavily tilted toward analytical conclusions. In contrast, librarians tend to deploy design theory—solving problems in iterative solutions and redesigning for changing problems. Building and renovation projects inevitably bring interplay among groups (architectural firms, governing and financing entities) with their own influences, lenses of analysis, and social positioning. This study seeks to answer this question: Have we been or are we engaged in building or renovating libraries around master planning (architects), or are we solving library problems (design theory and librarians)? And what does the answer tell us about libraries and how they are being guided and shaped as they are built and renovated? A discourse analysis is performed on a sample of 15 years of library literature on building and renovation plans to answer the question.

Research attention has been focused on the public sphere and librarianship recently, generating disagreement, even controversy. This reflects long-running debates in LIS and related fields. This is not a stale rehash: how we think about the public sphere and libraries is an indicator of libraries in democratic societies and how we position them. A compact account of affinity groupings around this research in LIS will precede an account of the controversy suggesting the question, are there still actually existing public spheres as Habermas deployed the term? The answer clarifies the controversy, and the paper will explore and draw conclusions from it.

T his editorial was hard to write. An editorial about the political climate of libraries is not a simple task in ordinary times (whatever those were or will ever be again), but it is much more difficult to tackle since the 2016 US election. There is far more complexity now, for the country and for libraries too. Now that the 2020 US election is over, it does not look any simpler. As AbrahamLincoln’s Secretary of StateWilliam Seward said, “Therewas always just enough virtue in this republic to save it; sometimes none to spare” (quoted in Brooks 2020). The library issues that have arisen aremyriad and fundamental: disinformation, fake news and “fake” news, the values and actions of the profession and its primary association, a reckoning with injustice via systemic racism in society and the profession, identity politics, our relationship to democracy itself, COVID-19, and library budgets and personnel (Buschman 2017, 2018, 2019; Mehra andGray 2020; Peet 2020;Wiegand 2020). Those issues were only themost notable, and only one (COVID-19) shows promise of receding as an issue. Whatever happens in the next decade, good or bad, this era will be a watershed that affects the future of libraries. In addition to its geographic and meteorological contexts, “climate”means the “prevailing influence or environmental conditions characterizing a group or period” or the “prevailing trend of public opinion or of another aspect of public life.” Both of these definitions are useful

The period covered by the publication of Library Quarterly (LQ) has been one characterized by the arc of three defining contexts. First, libraries have been inextricably tied to educational institutions in the modern era. Second, libraries developed within democratic societies and took on aspects of the public sphere (as did classrooms), even while public spheres were being transformed in the macro sense. Third, these two contextual conditions predominated for half of our period but led to a fundamental conservative rethinking of civil society institutions like schools and libraries: neoliberalism as a loose set of economic and market principles projected into schools, universities, and libraries, resulting in economic and political inequalities and an undermining of democratic and civil society institutions. These three contexts do not explain everything about libraries during LQ’s run of publication, but they situate a great deal of that history.

Public libraries have been rhetorically cast as being in crisis for decades as an outmoded, unaffordable institution in high-profile venues. However, when challenged as such, public libraries are vigorously defended, and an abundance of data on their actual popularity, usage, and value is deployed. We come to the question of why this mode of questioning persists despite the manifest value that the public places on public libraries. This article proposes a two-track answer by exploring (1) the long running context of neoliberalism and corrective to our understanding of it and (2) the status of publicness within neoliberalism. The article unpacks the concept of "public" and how it has changed and come under specific threat-informed by our more robust understanding of neoliberalism-over the last several decades. Data and arguments about public libraries and improved quality of life, community, cultural heritage, economic assistance during hard times, or their role as third places do not necessarily fall on deaf ears, but, to deploy a metaphor, those ears have been reengineered not to hear or value them.

White papers - reports conveying research or recommendations on a complex issue - arrive in the inboxes of academic librarians, along with an obligation to monitor them if they can help one's library or university. They seem to invariably disappoint, the written equivalent of empty calories. This paper asks: is this true? If so, how so? And why? To answer, a selection method produced a modest subset of current, topical white papers to analyze - hence this article as a fragment on recent, topical white papers. A simple discourse analysis was performed to find if there was a broad pattern the documents followed, and if a more analysis was required. A clue as to why this pattern prevailed came from criticisms of prognostications about the current pandemic (as of this writing), leading to a return to the reports: who authored them, and how they are situated in political-sociological terms in LIS discourse? The concluding findings fit with earlier analyses, suggesting much about prestige in LIS and how that is maintained, how practices are (and are not) formulated - and what that has to do with the white papers.