Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-22-2021

Publication Title

Journal of the Medical Library Association

Publisher

Medical Library Association; University Library System, University of Pittsburgh

Publisher Location

Chicago, IL

Volume

109

Issue

4

First page number:

528

Last page number:

539

Abstract

Health sciences librarianship has historically benefited from avoiding critical conversations around the role of race in the profession, reflected through a select few number of articles on the topic. The purpose of this study was to add to this body of literature and apply a critical librarianship framework on the early scholarly record of health sciences librarianship and the legacy of integration within the Medical Library Association (MLA). Three Southern medical works and the integration views of Mary Louise Marshall, the longest-serving president of MLA from 1941 to 1946, were thematically and textually analyzed to redress the profession’s long-standing legacy with Whiteness and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) representation. In reframing the historic past of MLA both through Marshall’s works and her views, the goal is to acknowledge ways in which the profession has impeded progress and present steps to remedy appropriate outreach for the future.

Keywords

Critical librarianship; Critical race theory; Historical revisionism; History of health sciences librarianship; Integration; JMLA; Library leaders; MLA; Whiteness in LIS

Disciplines

Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies

File Format

pdf

File Size

451 KB

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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