Joe Kohlburn is a doctoral candidate in information science, librarian, activist, and an arts advocate in St. Louis, MO.
I wrote an op-ed for the KC Star back in June to advocate on behalf of the long suffering Intellectual Freedom heads in Missouri. It's a dismal state of affairs, per usual, for school librarians, parents, kids, and others who value the freedom to read. Stickers of the below title are available for free if …
Continue reading "Op . Ed- Kansas City Star- Originally Titled “Book Bans are Bullshit”"
Adkins, D., Bossaller, J., Butler, E., CastaƱo, W., Cho, H. and Kohlburn, J. (2024), "Commitment to Justice, Empathy, and Community During COVID-19: Results from a Three-Phase Study of Public Libraries", Irvin, V. and Mehra, B. (Ed.) Reading Workplace Dynamics: A Post-Pandemic Professional Ethos in Public Libraries (Advances in Librarianship, Vol. 55), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 63-76. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0065-283020240000055006 This chapter concludes our three-phase study of institutional responses to COVID-19 …
Bially Mattern, J., Kohlburn, J., Moulaison-Sandy, H. (2024). Why Academics Under-share Research Data: A Social Relational Theory. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST) 75(8). https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24938 Our new theory deals with the mandates of industry and institutions and their impact on researchers. Our framing accounts for the under-sharing of data by researchers …
Earlier this week, we sent a letter to the Cameron School Board in Cameron, MO objecting to recent blocking of standing orders for books speaking to diverse readership, as well as use of BookLooks, which frankly is an absolute Orwellian nightmare of a censorship platform. A day or so later, we received a response from …
Great news today! Our MLA-IFC won the Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award given by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign! As always it is a great honor to be part of the MLA-IFC when it isn't winning awards, but I'm incredibly excited that our long years of work (especially long over the past 3 or so …
Continue reading "We won the Downs Intellectual Freedom Award!"
Abstract: Failure in serious games and its implications for scaffolding learning towards exploration remain understudied. We hypothesize providing more opportunities for safe failure leads to higher retention of concepts. Our case study examines the difference between including extra lives into a prototype serious game for geography through a quasi-experimental design that captured learning outcomes and …
Latest article, a pilot study on the impact that intellectual freedom challenges is having on Missouri public librarians. This trend in stigmatizing library workers is not good, and we need to make it stop. These folks are my colleagues and friends, who work everyday to provide access to information and resources for their community. We, …
The opinions expressed in the below blog post are mine, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the MLA, MASL, or the MO-ACLU. As a member of the MO House for the past seven years, I have to assume Cody Smith must know the true nature of the MLA, MASL, and MO-ACLUās suit against …
Continue reading "Defunding Libraries Hurts Missouri, Obviously."
What is there to say about the MO House of Representatives voting to remove funding from Missouri Libraries? I have no doubt that MO-Reps already know all of this, but for those of you who are unaware, MLA and MASL receive no state funding. They are all-volunteer-run membership organizations working on behalf of professional librarians. …
Continue reading "Missouri Legislature Hellworld Intellectual Freedom News Roundup"
The Missouri ACLU has announced a lawsuit on behalf of MASL and the MLA against Jackson County to address SB 775, and the undue burden it puts on school librarians as well as other librarians in the state. Given the overlapping peril with the latest HB's coming out to codify the Secretary of State's proposed …
Continue reading "MO-ACLU Files Lawsuit on Behalf of MASL and MLA"
Joe Kohlburn 