Comic book properties continue to dominate popular culture, and there has been continued growth in the academic field of Comics Studies. Graphic novels and comic trade paperbacks populate the shelves of many academic libraries. Single issue collections of “floppy” comic books, however, tend to find their home in special collections libraries because their flimsy construction, highly acidic paper, and, occasionally, the scarcity of certain specific issues warrants special storage and handling. Thoughtful consideration must go into any decision to begin or sustain these collections.
 
Comic Books, Special Collections, and the Academic Library collects best practices for the acquisition, preservation, storage, and cataloging of comics, particularly single-issue (or floppy) comics, within the special collections units of academic library collections. Four sections answer:

• Why Should Your Institution Collect Comics?
• Your Library Collects or Wants to Collect Comics. Now What?
• How Do You Engage in Library Instruction and Outreach with Your Comics Collection?
• How Can Comics Be Used as Primary and Secondary Source Material by Students and Faculty? 

Chapters address challenges specific to comic book collections in academic libraries, such as finding space and funds to build a collection, making diverse and inclusive collections, leading innovative library instruction sessions with comics, and working with undergraduate and graduate students on comics research. Comic Books, Special Collections, and the Academic Library can help you develop, cultivate, grow, catalog, and make use of comic book collections.

Engineering students, designers, studio artists, and other student creators have unique research needs that libraries are well-positioned to meet. They use academic literature to inspire and ground creation, but also seek information from trade literature, patents, technical standards, and how-to manuals. They apply tacit knowledge and need to learn not only how to write within academic discourse but also create objects, designs, and experiences.
 
In four parts, Creators in the Academic Library: Collections and Spaces explores how academic libraries can build collections, spaces, and communities that serve creators.

• Tailoring Collections for Creators
• Making in the Academic Library
• Creating Experiences in the Library
• Cultivating Creator Communities 

Chapters identify innovative ways the academic library can support creators by building new kinds of collections, resources, and experiences, including the use of rare books and archives; building a comprehensive technology and research equipment lending collection; performing in library spaces; supporting sustainability across disciplines; and creating equitable access to creator spaces, tools, and resources. Creators in the Academic Library documents spaces and collections that strive for equity and authenticity, for playfulness and joy, and offers strategies for creating a library open to all comers seeking a place to create in a liberating environment.
 

Engineering students, designers, studio artists, and other student creators have unique research needs that libraries are well-positioned to meet. They use academic literature to inspire and ground creation, but also seek information from trade literature, patents, technical standards, and how-to manuals. They apply tacit knowledge and need to learn not only how to write within academic discourse but also create objects, designs, and experiences.
 
In four parts, Creators in the Academic Library: Instruction and Outreach explores how to teach specifically for creator research, motivate learning, and deepen students’ understanding of their own practice.

• Technology, Tools, and Techniques for Creation
• Inspiring Creativity through Research
• Creator’s Unique Information Needs
• Grounding Creation in Research 

Chapters are grouped by learning objectives rather than discipline to highlight the throughlines that unite creators regardless of their field. They include methods for researching creative technology, tools, and techniques in different settings and disciplines; how to research for inspiration; adapting our tools and teaching to the unique information-seeking behaviors of creator disciplines; and how these skills can be transferred to students’ future careers. Creators in the Academic Library offers learning strategies and objectives that can help you teach all manner of creators.
 

Academic librarianship is due for a major paradigm shift in response to the existential threats facing the library profession and higher education, and library workers are leading this shift with new ideas about community, feminism, education, and social change.
 
The Critical Librarianship and Pedagogy Symposium: Reflections, Revisions, and New Works collects expanded and updated presentations given at the Critical Librarianship and Pedagogy Symposium (CLAPS) held biennially at the University of Arizona Libraries. This anthology provides a toolkit for critical library pedagogy that recognizes how knowledge is created within historical and deeply politicized contexts. Authors working in library or disciplinary teaching fields explore intersections between information literacy and critical pedagogy and provide current thinking, assessment, and reflection on their practices of teaching students how to recognize and critique the oppressive power structures inherent in educational systems. The work done by librarians is analyzed to reveal the socioeconomic frameworks that drive the costs of our labor.
 
Divided into five parts—Critical Pedagogies in the Classroom, Feminist Library Practices, The Labor of Librarianship, Practices of Care, and Community Archives—chapters include explorations of the advent of neoliberalism in higher education, social justice, white fragility, supporting neurodivergence in education, and disability-rights activism. They use lenses such as queer, intersectional, feminist, and critical race theory to examine subjects, and include practices for sustainable teaching, facilitating dialogue in the classroom, and using tools such as user experience or empathic design. The Critical Librarianship and Pedagogy Symposium offers ways to incorporate critical pedagogy theory into your own practices as educators, both within the library and in higher education in general.
 

Academic libraries and museums foster many outstanding collaborations supporting teaching, learning, and research within their respective institutions. These collaborations, like other progressive activities, require significant invisible labor, caretaking, and resources that have not always been documented.
 
Cultural Heritage and the Campus Community collects examples of successful academic library-museum collaborations and serves as critical knowledge for the cultural heritage sector. Authors from libraries and museums across the United States demonstrate how to develop and execute partnerships and bring forth new dimensions of transdisciplinary objects-based pedagogy, research, and learning centered on inclusive educational practices. Chapters explore visual thinking strategies and the Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education in the undergraduate classroom; restoring Indigenous heritage through tribal partnerships; using object-based teaching to motivate student research; and much more.
 
The collaborative approaches highlighted here demonstrate the power of possibility when two collections-centric entities unite to enrich our collective understanding of materiality, instructional approaches, and the importance of provenance. Cultural Heritage and the Campus Community also illustrates why interrogating past practices and value assignments within academic library and museum collections is essential to advancing culturally relevant approaches to knowledge sharing in physical and digital spaces.