Introduction

[...]shifting ideologies surrounding "the family” inform and carry implications for economic, political, cultural, and social practices and activities. [...]of this dominance and influence of the family, this special issue centers on family-focused library and information science (LIS) research and is borne from conversations and reflections posed at a 2019 iConference Session for Interaction and Engagement of the same name. [...]in "Students and Parents: How Academic Libraries Serve a Growing Population,” Marta Bladek employs multiple sources of data to draw attention to the challenges and barriers postsecondary students who are also parents must contend with as they attempt to access academic library services and supports. [...]the articles in this issue also highlight the diverse areas within LIS that may be enriched by a consideration of the family context, including the study of information practices (Han;McKenzie;Ortiz-Myers and Costello), archival practices and personal information management (Krtalić, Dinneen, Liew, and Goulding), consumer health information (Charbonneau and Akers), reader response theory (Velez), early literacy (Prendergast and Sharkey), and library service provision (Bladek).

"I felt there was a big chunk taken out of my life": COVID-19 and older adults' library-based magazine leisure reading

Reading is a central leisure activity among older adults, serving as a means of entertainment, escape, connection, and/or education. COVID-19 public library closures drastically altered this activity. Based on interviews with 21 older adults across Ontario, Canada, this study explores how library closures in the province affected older adults' magazine leisure reading practices. Analysis yielded three themes: COVID-19 transforming experiences of library as place, COVID-19 as time of loss, and COVID-19 as catalyst for adaptation. Participants voiced the many ways COVID-19 has shaped (often restricting) their choices related to magazine reading (where, how, and what they read, and where they located their magazines). While libraries remained virtually open during the pandemic, many participants chose not to switch to digital platforms (despite their technical proficiency to do so). As a result, they often stopped reading magazines completely, despite the loss this stoppage represented. At the same time, pandemic restrictions compelled others to use the online library services they had previously avoided. Ultimately, participants' experiences of magazine reading during the COVID-19 pandemic further our understanding of reading as leisure in later life and also trouble prevailing assumptions that older adults' resistance to digital media engagement is merely a reflection of age-related incompetence. [ FROM AUTHOR]

Digitization of Aging-in-Place: An International Comparison of the Value-Framing of New Technologies

Planning for aging populations has been a growing concern for policy makers across the globe. Integral to strategies for promoting healthy aging are initiatives for ‘aging in place’, linked to services and care that allow older people to remain in their homes and communities. Technological innovations—and especially the development of digital technologies—are increasingly presented as potentially important in helping to support these initiatives. In this study, we employed qualitative document analysis to examine and compare the discursive framing of technology in aging-in-place policy documents collected in three countries: The Netherlands, Spain, and Canada. We focus on the framing of technological interventions in relation to values such as quality of life, autonomy/independence, risk management, social inclusion, ‘active aging’, sustainability/efficiency of health care delivery, support for caregivers, and older peoples’ rights. The findings suggest that although all three countries reflected common understandings of the challenges of aging populations, the desirability of supporting aging in place, and the appropriateness of digital technologies in supporting the latter, different value-framings were apparent. We argue that attention to making these values explicit is important to understanding the role of social policies in imagining aging futures and the presumed role of technological innovation in their enactment.