abstract: This article draws on queer theory to explore the tensions between openness and regulation in library and information science against the backdrop of historical and digital protest media produced by student activists. It examines how these shifting dynamics inform the evolving role of the library in today’s digital era, characterized by information disorder. I begin by outlining queer theory’s utility for this project, highlighting its capacity to subvert existing identity categories beyond gender and sexuality and to embrace broader counterhegemonic possibilities without reinscribing binaries. I then analyze the indeterminacy embedded in historical banners and daejabos from the Kent State shootings and the Gwangju Uprising, as well as in contemporary livestreamed protest videos, to situate them within a continuum of queer media forms that challenge traditional information literacy concepts such as authority and coherence. From there, I trace the shift in libraries’ podcasting initiatives from faculty-driven research tools to platforms for student creativity, constructing this evolution as a library-driven queer turn toward openness, even within digital infrastructures that appear to demand tighter regulation. Ultimately, the paper calls for a queer reimagining of pedagogy and practice, open to indeterminacy, where students are empowered as agents of resistance and meaning-making through self-regulation.
Heejoung Shin (2026) studied this question.