Located on Treaty #13 (Toronto Purchase) territory, OCAD University offers an Indigenous Visual Culture (INVC) program that leads to a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree or an interdisciplinary minor. The curriculum combines courses in the cultural, social and political history of Indigenous peoples, preparing students to engage in global discourses in contemporary art practice through a profound understanding of story-telling as the foundation of visual culture.

A narrative framework is used to present an information literacy interaction with an INVC course from the perspectives of a librarian from the Canadian settler population and an assistant professor, who is a member of the Métis Indigenous nation. Research and evaluation models are presented; ones that emerged from traditional information literacy concepts informed and transformed by Indigenous knowledge systems. Finally, student learning outcomes from the course are presented through an exhibition of artworks and artist statements that display their visual story-telling skills.

What are the ethics behind caring, preserving, and displaying artwork created by Residential School Survivors? By looking at sketches and small handicrafts held by the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre this piece examines the possibilities for caring for this unique type of Indigenous artwork in a culturally appropriate and ethical manner.

Library work now has a role to play when it comes to decolonisation. This article outlines what Goldsmiths Library, University of London is doing, through the Liberate our Library initiative, to diversify and decolonise its collections and practices against the backdrop of worldwide movements for education and social justice led by both students and academics to challenge the dominance of the ‘Westernised university’.2

Examples of how we are doing this work are explained using critical librarianship as our guide, whilst recognising that we are still developing expertise in this evolving field of practice. This decolonisation work also uses critical race theory (CRT) as a means to dismantle racial inequality and its impact on higher education.

Here, I would like to acknowledge the excellent and inspirational content of ALJ, Critical Librarianship: Special Issue (v.44, no.2) and I see this article as an ongoing companion piece.

Goldsmiths Library's liberation work endeavours to empower its users with critical thinking and study skills whilst conducting their research using hierarchical systems and resources which in themselves are in the process of being decolonised.

Decolonising a library collection and a profession must of course always begin or at least happen in tandem with the self, through a process that Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o describes as ‘decolonising the mind.’3

Is the internet a tool for democracy or the manifestation of the global digital divide? Using the colonization of the internet as a starting point, this article outlines some current issues with knowledge equity, asking if democratic open access products like Wikipedia are the solution or another manifestation of the systemic bias of society. Whilst acknowledging librarianship has its own colonial legacies to address, the suggestion is made that critical librarianship can provide a response in the form of library–based edit-a-thons and Wikipedia workshops. These show how the power of Wikipedia can be used responsibly not just for enabling critical information literacy, but as an instrument for activism. In considering librarian interventions done so far at the University of the Arts, London, the article outlines future practical possibilities for decolonization, as well as looking more widely at how to democratize information in open access products and the Western publishing that sits behind them.

Chance encounters, some several years apart, form the basis of this article between 2 librarians and an artist, all 3 considering the process of decolonizing libraries within the wider context of colonial legacies in the societies in which they were born and in which they now live. The librarians Regina Vogel and Erica Foden-Lenahan have been friends and colleagues for many years, and their personal conversations over the years have often involved discussions of equality and injustice. The overlap in their professional interests led to this article proposal. A serendipitous meeting between Vogel and decolonial artist and curator Nistiman Erdede at an event2 organized by Abendschule Import in co-operation with the famous Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich and later when he visited the Kunsthalle Basel where Vogel is the librarian, changed the original direction of the article, but presented an opportunity for a 3-way discussion of decolonization in the context of a Swiss and a German art library and a refugee artist's experience. The Covid-19 border and workplace lockdowns necessitated that some of these encounters happened virtually.