Laureen Cantwell-Jurkovic is the Head of Access Services & Outreach at Colorado Mesa University’s Tomlinson Library. She earned her Master of Science in Library and Information Science from Drexel University, concentrating on academic libraries.

She is an experienced librarian specializing in access services, outreach, and information literacy. Her role includes providing leadership in access and delivery services to create an inclusive library environment, supervising staff, and evaluating services to meet the needs of a diverse campus community.

Understanding and Responding to Book Bans

Dr. Cantwell-Jurkovic walks us through how local activities at the level of school districts and municipalities ultimately influence policies at the county, state and even potentially national level. She emphasized the danger of these limitations which can come from people on all parts of the political spectrum. She then explored the unique properties of books, which have a special ability to build empathy through reading fiction, and Kirk explored how lack of access to books could have downstream effects when healthcare professionals are not exposed to diverse narratives as children. Finally, the importance of protecting libraries and books at the local level was highlighted.

Being a librarian, Dr. Cantwell-Jurkovic shared many resources with us. Some are included here and more will be available on our website in the show notes.

Organizations to Know:

American Library Association (ALA): www.ala.org

Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF): https://www.ftrf.org/

Data, Legislation, & Media Resources:

Other Documents/Publications: