Unframing the Visual:: Visual Literacy Pedagogy in Academic Libraries and Information Spaces

Visual literacy is an interconnected set of practices, habits, and values for participating in visual culture that can be developed through critical, ethical, reflective, and creative engagement with visual media. Approaches to teaching visual literacy in higher education must include a focus on context and not just content, process and not just product, impact and not just intent. Unframing is an approach to visual literacy pedagogy that acknowledges that visuals are a pervasive part of everyday life, as well as embedded into every scholarly discipline.

In four parts, Unframing the Visual: Visual Literacy Pedagogy in Academic Libraries and Information Spaces explores:

• Participating in a Changing Visual Information Landscape
• Perceiving Visuals as Communicating Information
• Practicing Visual Discernment and Criticality
• Pursuing Social Justice through Visual Practice

Twenty-four full color chapters present a range of theoretical and practical approaches to visual literacy pedagogy that illustrate, connect with, extend, and criticize concepts from the Framework for Visual Literacy in Higher Education: Companion Document to the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Topics include using TikTok to begin a conversation on academic honesty and marginalization; supporting disciplines to move to multimodal public communication assignments; critical data visualization; and exclusionary practices in visual media.

In exploring the discussions and engaging with the activities in Unframing the Visual, you will find new inspiration for how to unframe, adapt, and apply visual literacy pedagogy and praxis in your work.

Maggie Murphy is an associate professor and art and design librarian at UNC Greensboro, where she works with students, faculty, and curators in the School of Art, Weatherspoon Art Museum, and Departments of Interior Architecture and Media Studies. Her scholarly interests include practice-based research methods for studio artists and speculative pedagogies for creative engagement with artificial intelligence. As a practicing artist, her print and mixed-media work explore the vulnerability of existential disquietude.

Stephanie Beene is an associate professor and art, architecture, and planning librarian at the University of New Mexico (UNM) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she supports the Art Department within the College of Fine Arts and the entire School of Architecture and Planning. Stephanie received an MSIS from the University of Texas at Austin, an MA in art history from the University of California, Riverside, and a BA in art and art history from Colorado State University. She served as a member of the Association of College and Research Libraries Visual Literacy Task Force and is active in the Art Libraries Society of North America, the Association of Architecture School Libraries, and the International Visual Literacy Association. Before coming to UNM, she worked at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, as the visual resources and arts librarian. Her research interests include visual and information literacy frameworks as they relate to trust, lifelong learning, and the politics of identity.

Katie Greer is an associate professor at Oakland University in Rochester, Minnesota. She has an MA in art history from the University of Notre Dame and an MLIS from Drexel University, and is currently pursuing a PhD in educational leadership from Oakland University. Her published research includes undergraduate information behaviors and best practices for online pedagogy and information literacy. She is currently studying the problems of conspiracy ideation and how that is affecting information professionals, and how librarians and educators can utilize pedagogical and affective strategies to help engender metaliterate and information literate learners.

Sara Schumacher is the architecture image librarian at Texas Tech University, where she works to improve visual media resources and promote visual literacy through discipline-specific and professional applications. She holds an MA in art history from the University of Oregon (2007) and an MS in information studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2011). Her research interests include ethical concerns surrounding using and creating visual media, disciplinary-based visual literacy instruction, and bias within visual collections. She serves as the content editor for the Visual Resources Association Bulletin, has published articles in Journal of Documentation, Journal of Visual Literacy, portal: Libraries and the Academy, and Art Documentation, and was part of the task force that authored the ACRL Framework for Visual Literacy in Higher Education.

Dana Statton Thompson is a research and instruction librarian at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky. In this capacity, she supports the teaching, learning, and research of students and faculty within the Arthur J. Bauernfeind College of Business. Dana holds an MLIS, an MA in art history, an MFA in studio art from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and a BA in journalism and studio art from Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. She is the president of the International Visual Literacy Association and an Institute for Research Design in Librarianship scholar. She served as a member of the Association of College and Research Libraries Visual Literacy Task Force and is active in the Art Libraries Society of North America. Her research and teaching interests focus on the intersection of visual literacy and news literacy, the integration of visual literacy instruction into higher education, and the scholarship of teaching and learning.