A paper coauthored by Assistant Professor Travis L. Wagner and Vanessa Kitzie, associate professor of information science at the University of South Carolina, titled "'In Many Ways, You're This Person Who's Providing Light': Theorizing Embodied Responses to Information Absence with LGBTQIA+ Communities," has been selected as the winner of the 2024 Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE)/Bohdan S. Wynar Research Paper Competition. The coauthors will receive the award at a presentation during the ALISE 2024 Annual Conference, which will be held from October 14-17 in Portland, Oregon.
According to Wagner, their paper examines how LGBTQIA+ communities respond to the loss of information resources and spaces. Examples of these unique information resources and spaces include gay bars, queer-affirming blogs on sites like Tumblr, and Gay Straight Alliances in high schools. It also explores what this loss communicates about the role of information professionals in facilitating how these communities might seek, share, and recreate information spaces and resources. This research represents the first portion of their project. In the next stage of their project, Wagner and Kitzie will examine the documentation and recreation practices the LGBTQIA+ communities utilize when attempting to address information losses.
"The broader goal of the work is to explore the ways LGBTQIA+ [communities] engage in documentation and preservation work and then consider how, if at all, archivists and information professionals might aid in this work," said Wagner.
Wagner's research explores the social and technical challenges and opportunities informing how LGBTQIA+ communities digitally curate and preserve their identities, histories, and culture and identifies the roles and responsibilities of institutions in aiding that work. Wagner holds a PhD in information science from the University of South Carolina.