S4 E21 | Hush-Hush: The Hidden Ways that Book Reviews Impact Library Selections

The Dissidents

The topic of this week's episode is the long history of biases inherent to the book reviews used for library collection decisions. Elizabeth is joined by academic librarian Pamela Hayes Bohanan to discuss 60 years of research and reflection about the limited exposure librarians get to the large corpus of potential acquisitions. While perspectives differ, there is little disagreement that publishers, editors, and book review publications are impacting what appears in your local public and academic libraries.

Podcast notes

April Liberalism in Practice Panel Discussion: McCarthyism in the Stackshttps://youtu.be/_xwjUR7tNGM?si=LlwxLTrZqEyvy7MC

Pokornowski, E., & Schonfeld, R. C. (2024, March 28). Censorship and Academic Freedom in the Public University Library.

Best, P. (2024). How to Combat the Biased School Library Book Selection Process.

Gordon, Rosalie M. (1961). Why you can't find conservative books in public libraries. Human Events, 18, 591-4.

Macleod, B. (1981). Library Journal and Choice: A Review of Reviews. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 7(1), 23-28.

Kister, K. (2002). The conscience of a reference reviewer. Journal of Information Ethics, 11(1).