Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.

@nope4evr

Librarian and Liaison Program Lead, and LIS adjunct faculty. Instruction programs, higher education policy studies, valuation of library labor, qualitative methods. 🌱🐈‍⬛🚲☕️

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Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· 1d

Launching a campus FLC, Beyond the hype: Critically navigating GenAI in teaching, to examine implications of higher ed's rapid GenAI adoption in our labor & student learning. Format is discussion alongside activities to re-envision syallbi, policies, teaching strategies. GenAI is not inevitable

FALL 2026 FLC
Beyond the hype: Critically navigating GenAI in teaching FLC

Is GenAI inevitable? How do we engage in thoughtful pedagogy while managing GenAI rapid adoption in higher education institutions? In this Faculty Learning Community (FLC), we will collaboratively explore how to find agency over GenAI’s impacts on teaching labor & student learning. Open to faculty, staff, and grad students interested in intersections of critical pedagogy and AI literacy.

Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· 12d

Yes to @olivia.science’s whole post and I’m going to include especially this part on supposed ai automated plagiarism detection software in a fall faculty learning community

Argument from ignorance, which a panic attack might trigger, is not valid: there is no good AI, just because it's a confusing terminological mess. The same goes for descent into using AI-detection tools. Just because some prose may look like it's written using an AI tool, in fact there is no such thing as automated plagiarism detection software. They are a scam sold by the very same companies that create the AI systems used for plagiarism in the first place. And companies through such so-called tools want to further erode our trust in each other.

Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· 13d

Just finished @mollycrabapple.bsky.social ‘s Here where we live is our country, and it was fr life changing ⚡️

longhair orange cat sprawled out on table above Molly Crabapple’s book, Here Where We Live is Our Country

Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· 21d

ASU now has an incredibly cringe BA program in influencing. Who will be left to influence once everyone is an Influencer 🤢

ASU Program Description: The Bachelor of Arts program in content creation prepares you to become an influencer and strategic storyteller who thrives in the rapidly evolving creator economy. Program coursework emphasizes content planning, video and podcast production, global perspectives and personal branding.

Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· 22d

Re-upping my syllabus' GenAI policy for fall, reinforcing for students that I'd rather read a slightly flawed paper or a more sloppy paper that was imperfect than anything generated by ChatGPT and its ilk; and that I also agree to the same expectations, where I will never use GenAI as the instructor

"GenAI tools: Although I understand why students are using GenAI when they do, the use of ChatGPT or other GenAI tools are strongly discouraged in this class. Writing/creating is thinking and it's an essential process for thoroughly vetting our ideas and learning how to do the things we are here to learn. Although GenAI tools are not always inherently bad, they can be problematic for student learning and fair grading as they often provide incorrect information and string ideas together that don't necessarily make sense. Additionally, citations from LLMs are frequently wrong or hallucinated. Let’s also acknowledge the immense environmental toll. I’d rather read work that was a little more sloppy and could use some improvement than having students use GenAI spurred by feeling too much pressure for perfection. However, since I don’t want to fully police students, and rather than students using it and trying to hide that fact, if you do use it, you must notify me in your assignment and explain why and how you used it. I welcome questions and discussion on this. This will be a tricky space to navigate but we will figure it out together as we move through the course (particularly in the Module 6 discussion). See academic integrity policies at the end of the syllabus that provide campus and College of Information Science guidance. And, I do not ever use GenAI tools in my communication or grading, nor Turnitin. I would never ask students to not use it without agreeing to that myself."

Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· Jun 24

For my fall 2026 course, LIS 581, I am convening a panel again for library school students about practitioners' instruction experience in different types of libraries--looking for 2 K-12, public, and/or special librarians to participate with an academic librarian, date TBD. HMU please if interested!

flyer for LIS 581 course in fall 2026:
How to teach information literacy for librarians & educators

Fall 2026, first 7.5 weeks
Fully online, asynchronous, 3 credits
*no purchase of books or other materials needed

Educators require expertise with information literacy as our students navigate the ever-expanding information landscape. Learning to use, create, and critique information is complex and requires thoughtful instructional design. Students in this course will build expertise to confidently and creatively teach information literacy in a variety of environments and modalities through understanding associated learning theories and pedagogical approaches, the evolution of teaching information literacy, and current professional discourse.

Instructor: Nicole Pagowsky, PhD, MLIS
nicolepagowsky.com

Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· May 30

Current nonfiction and fiction (@nnedi.bsky.social)readings, now that I have time to read again post-dissertation

Governing Bodies by Sangamithra Iyer and Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· May 28

What would be a good option for donating my collection of zines from the 90s to early aughts on the Chicago music scene, other punk/diy/screamo stuff, and some library zines? I know of some potentials by name only, but what might be a best fit?

Photo of zine examples: Bamboo Girl, The Fury, Heartattack (Ebullition Recs), and War Against the Idiots--with blonde cat investigating the spread.

Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· Apr 21

On Thursday 4/23 I'll be talking about the complexity of qualitative methods via poststructural policy analysis from my dissertation research on library "value" discourse. Register below for this final segment of the @iassistdata.bsky.social qual data analysis series! us06web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Title slide for talk: Qualitative wayfinding: Dissertation reflections on poststructural analysis of academic library value discourse. IASSIST Prof Dev (series). Nicole Pagowsky, PhD, MLIS, University of Arizona, nfp@arizona.edu, April 23, 2026

Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· Apr 9

8/8

Analysis: interviews. Participants’ perceptions and understanding of VAL (slightly edited for clarity).

Sam: “So that, Dean, that we hired that trained me to this structure of communicating in that kind of framework of value. They were also really quick to point out the correlation studies that became, you know, kind of nothing burgers, in a sense, and I always always felt like this was such a sham, and it made me so sad that we were trying so desperately to connect ourselves to students’ GPA and retention by these kind of false mechanisms.”

Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· Apr 9

7/8

Connecting VAL discursive practices: VAL echoes fantasy economy rationalizing discourse, creating moral categories for those who enact the VAL research agenda (ethical professional) versus those who “maintain the status quo” (unethical or unprofessional). But perhaps reinforcing hegemonic structures and practices are how we maintain the status quo. Claiming support for marginalized groups through extractive initiatives without working to change their material conditions ultimately functions as elite capture. Through the language of access and equity, framing marginalized students as requiring the most surveillance through increased extraction of learning analytics data, or framing precarious librarians under-trained in value research as requiring increased measurement of value, works to launder corporate and powerful interests rather than improving conditions.

Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· Apr 9

6/8

VAL & elite capture: The ethical professional subject position is disciplined by discourse of elite capture (Táíwò, 2022). Meaning, performing inclusion without enacting material reforms works to strengthen the position of the elite.

Performing the call to gather and extract data from marginalized groups, stated as intended for their benefit, does not work to change the material conditions causing the marginalization in the first place.

Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· Apr 9

5/8

Deficiency is diagnosed by VAL through librarians’ inadequate training, paucity of interest, or insufficient morals: or, not operating as a professional. The VAL Research Agenda is the solution to the problem representations. Illustrative quote from my data: “Since the publication of the VAL Report, librarians have struggled with the desire to demonstrate that academic libraries have direct and independent impacts on student success” (Oakleaf & Kyrillidou, 2016).

Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· Apr 9

Visualization of VAL's reach (orange diamonds are still-active work; yellow squares are policies/documents produced from that work that hold soft power in the field). These products influence how positions are described, how work is carried out, & how we understand ourselves as a profession. 4/8

The VAL Committee oversees essential ACRL documentation, especially the strategic plan, the standards for libraries in higher ed, and proficiencies for assessment in academic libraries.

Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· Apr 9

3/8

Problem The library value project works as policy but is not categorized or studied as such; and although framed as advocacy, workers’ material benefits (pay, status, security) are not realized. Value (policy) discourse is dominant, making critique unsayable, and constrains how instruction librarians organize their work and understand themselves.

Purpose Identify how/where the dominant discourse governs and disciplines the doubly-feminized labor of library instruction to open up toward thinking otherwise about the value of our labor and how the field advocates for itself.

Objective Engage in a problematizing policy discourse analysis that pinpoints the discursive practices and governmentality enacted in the field via value policy.

Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· Apr 9

2/8

The value gaze: a panoptic enterprise of seeking substantiations of value for audit, while also perpetually self-surveilling as anticipatory monitoring (Pagowsky, 2026).

Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· Mar 25

Brilliant response to campus GenAI adoption and its supposed inevitability from Penn students www.thedp.com/article/2026...

"While it may seem convenient to plug a problem set or 40-page reading into ChatGPT, the drawbacks of AI usage are widely documented and increasingly detrimental. Students develop an overreliance on AI, social interaction and communication are reduced, AI programs produce and reinforce biased and false information without any accountability, and critical thinking is inhibited. As Penn students, our purpose is to take advantage of our education, not give it away to an AI model while we sit by passively."

Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· Mar 4

Abstract text, part 3 of 3

Within the doubly-feminized subfield of academic library instruction, value discourse materializes in policy and practice through what I term the “value gaze”–a panoptic enterprise of seeking substantiations of value for audit, while also perpetually self-surveilling as anticipatory monitoring. Constructed from deficit, librarians are exhorted toward allowable subject positions, primarily the ethical professional, achieved through compliance. VAL intertwines objectives from the fantasy economy into its rationalizing discourse; and rather than problematizing this power/knowledge configuration, the library/librarians instead are identified as the problem for not aligning to VAL’s moral imperatives. Going beyond approaches to assessment, this is a study on how calls for demonstrating value that uncritically reproduce reform in fact reinforce the very sociopolitical structures that work against advocacy efforts. Problematization of the dominant discourse and its disarmament of critique can offer the field an opportunity to engage in self-study on how these projects can better materially advocate for workers.

Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· Mar 4

Abstract text, part 2 of 3

In alignment with such neoliberal reform projects, VAL’s rationalizing practices naturalize audit’s inevitability and urgency, making critique virtually unsayable and imagining otherwise consequently unrealized, which calls for problematization. The following research questions guide this inquiry: (1) How does library value discourse materialize in the field through policies and practices? (2) Do value policy artifacts produce disciplining effects on the design and implementation of library instruction programs? and (3) What is the network(s) of institutions, individuals, practices, and policies that govern library valuation projects? Applying Bacchi’s “What is the Problem Represented to be?” (WPR) policy discourse analysis framework for empirical analysis of a 21-document corpus and nine practitioner interviews shows that VAL’s purported advocacy remains in the potential rather than the actual, and runs counter to practitioner experiences of material outcomes.

Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· Mar 4

Abstract text, part 1 of 3

Abstract: This study problematizes academic library value dominant discourse–or, the advised obligation toward demonstrating the library’s impact to campus using audit practices–through a Foucauldian-influenced poststructural analysis. Calls to demonstrate library value intensified with the commissioned 2010 Value of Academic Libraries (VAL) Report published by the Association of College & Research Libraries. Audit has been installed in higher education to operationalize divestment from public goods, reinforced by discourses of responsibilization and deficit. As a manifestation of audit culture, I position Kraus’ (2023) notion of the fantasy economy as a primary theoretical framework, which can be understood as ideological reframing of the disenfranchised labor market being the fault and responsibility of the education system.

Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· Mar 4

Getting these slides together for my upcoming defense, open to advice on approaching the presentation from those who have done especially poststructural qualitative studies! Abstract is here: www.nicolepagowsky.com/phd & in 3 parts threaded below... #qualitativemethods #phd #libraryinstruction

Dissertation defense presentation title slide: Materializations of the value gaze: A poststructural analysis of academic library instruction value discourse in policy and practice. Nicole Pagowsky, University of Arizona College of InfoSci

Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· Aug 24

Hope a pic of Bebop helps

long hair cat with blonde/orange fur looks sassy on table

Nicole Pagowsky, Ph.D.@nope4evr· Aug 19

Squeezing in some unofficial reading/re-reading before the semester starts on Mon, though not expecting to finish