Reference and User Services Quarterly, (RUSQ) will be publishing a special issue titled “Trusted Information in an Age of Uncertainty” in 2018. As editor of the Alert Collector column, I am looking for an author (or authors) of a column of some aspect of collection development around the special issue topic. My deadline is October 27, 2017. Please send your topic idea to shoresml@miamioh.edu.
The proposal for the special issue is thus:
“We are living in interesting times. As reference librarians, we are used to consulting reliable information sources to find the information that our users need. Professional organizations, educational institutions, government agencies have always been trustworthy providers of quality information. But now that we are living in a time when government speech is inhibited and some agencies are removing or revising their own publications, where do we find accurate and authentic information? Is the information provided by NASA, NOAA, the EPA, or the Bureau of Labor Statistics still useful? How do we know what is accurate and what has been revised to meet some other agenda?”
Your column could list sources your patrons or students would find useful for increasing their information fluency. Or your column could gather sources librarians can use to develop programs, workshops, or instructional sessions on increasing information fluency.
Alert Collector columns are typically 3,000-3,500 words long and include an introduction, a mix of print and online resources with paragraph-long annotations. See links below for past columns.
Past Alert Collector columns:
Learning Spanish Today: a Research Guide
Literary Resources