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Latina/o librarian technological engagements: REFORMA in the digital age

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Abstract

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, members of the librarian professional organization, REFORMA found themselves organizing at the juncture of the struggle for Latina/o rights and the digital age, anticipating a rapidly changing future with new technologies. This article looks at REFORMA’s history of activism around Information Communication Technology during the onset of the digital age. By detailing the actions that REFORMA members took during this time period, I maintain that Latina/o librarians’ advocacy and activism for Latina/o rights were critical to the librarianship profession in the digital age.

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Notes

  1. REFORMA’s principal goals include developing Spanish-language and Latina/o-oriented library collections, the recruitment of bilingual, multicultural library personnel, the promotion of public awareness of libraries and librarianship among Latinas/os, advocacy on behalf of the information needs of the Latina/o community, and acting as a liaison to other professional organizations (About REFORMA, 2012).

  2. REFORMA chapters function autonomously, working through their local library systems, state library associations and local organizations to achieve objectives (About REFORMA, 2012).

  3. The English-only movement is a political movement attempting to instate, through policy and law, the English language as the only permitted language in public institution throughout the United States (Barker et al, 2006).

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Acknowledgements

The author is sincerely grateful to K.R. Roberto and Linda Smith for their review and comments on this article. The author would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers, Lourdes Torres and María Isabel Ochoa-Alvarez for their helpful feedback. Finally, the author would like to thank Jessica Barron and Tracy Drake for their support and encouragement of this article’s publication.

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  1. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

    Melissa Villa-Nicholas

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Villa-Nicholas, M. Latina/o librarian technological engagements: REFORMA in the digital age. Lat Stud 13, 542–560 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/lst.2015.43

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