LIS 597 - Human Library Literature Review

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • David Mucz

• This review reports on the current state of academic literature related to Human Libraries (HLs), their impact on Human Books and Readers, and their successful implementation. While HL events have been occurring regularly since 2000, scholarly work on the subject did not begin appearing until 2008. Published literature frequently focuses on the design, implementation and impact of organizing an HL. Surprisingly, there appears to be a considerable void in scholarship focusing on this type of activity especially within an academic library context. The literature sample for this review was compiled by searching through the general University of Alberta discovery service interface, library specific databases including Library and Information Science Source, Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA) and Emerald Full Text. The searches were not limited to a specific library type but instead focused on broad applications of HLs. A combination of search terms related to HLs, their implementation and impact were used. In addition further searches were done through Google scholar and the bibliographies of relevant sources were evaluated to find as many resources as possible. Overall nine sources were identified and analyzed based on their topic relevancy and content. The literature ranged from standard scholarly articles to reports and academic presentations.

• Date created

  2015-10-21

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Library Community Engagement
  • Literature Review
  • Human Library/Human Libraries

• Type of Item

  Review

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R30V89X1T

• License

  Attribution 4.0 International