Research Article

An Analysis of Anti-Fat Bias LibGuides: Are Libraries in the Thick of It?

Christie Silkotch

Library Assistant Professor, Science and Data Librarian

David W. Howe Memorial Library

University of Vermont

Burlington, Vermont, United States of America

Email: christie.silkotch@uvm.edu

Laura Haines

Library Associate Professor, Clinical and Education Librarian

Dana Health Sciences Library

University of Vermont

Burlington, Vermont, United States of America

Email: laura.haines@uvm.edu

Amalia Dolan

Library Assistant Professor, Clinical and Education Librarian

Dana Health Sciences Library

University of Vermont

Burlington, Vermont, United States of America

Email: amalia.dolan@uvm.edu

Received: 10 Sept. 2024 Accepted: 11 Mar. 2025

2025 Silkotch, Haines, and Dolan. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons‐Attribution‐Noncommercial‐Share Alike License 4.0 International (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar license to this one.

DOI: 10.18438/eblip30616

Abstract

Objective – This research investigates library research guides that share information about anti-fat bias to support weight-inclusive education or practice. By analyzing these guides, we seek to understand how academic librarians are engaging in this work and how they can continue to support weight inclusivity as educators, proponents of information literacy, and interdisciplinary partners.

Methods – The authors searched for and screened publicly available LibGuides from academic libraries that included content about anti-fat bias, weight stigma, and/or body liberation. Relevant guides were then evaluated with an original framework to examine their content for insight about their target audience and context.

Results – The authors identified and analyzed 36 relevant LibGuides, predominantly from college and university libraries. Thirty-three LibGuides came from institutions in the United States, and most of the institutions had at least one health sciences program, though eight offered no health-related programs. Thirty-two of the analyzed LibGuides presented anti-fat bias content in a tab within a larger guide, while the remaining few were standalone guides. The majority of guides with tab-level anti-fat bias content presented it as a social justice issue, though a few framed the content in a nutrition or other context. The most popular resource types offered in the guides were books, popular articles, videos, associations/organizations, and academic articles.

Conclusion – Weight inclusivity discourse is growing across disciplines and is an area that librarians are well-situated to support. Presenting anti-fat bias as a social justice and diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) issue in libraries is promising and highlights library workers’ commitment to anti-oppression efforts and learning. Work remains to be done to integrate more anti-fat bias content into academic curricula and education, and librarians should look to engage with disciplinary educators, learners, and colleagues to grow and support this work, particularly in the context of the health sciences.

Introduction

Weight inclusivity is rooted in the well-established areas of fat studies and fat activism. It is a growing, intersectional area of inquiry and practice that offers an alternative to weight-normative approaches to health, which emphasize weight and weight loss, by advocating for a more holistic and equitable understanding of body size, health, and well-being. Weight inclusivity rejects anti-fat bias, which is the implicit and explicit individual and systemic prejudice and discrimination that fat people experience because of their weight. Anti-fat bias and the weight stigma that results from it is increasingly recognized as a critical issue in social justice and diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) work. The weight inclusivity movement has gained mainstream attention recently due to an array of headlines: the proliferation of GLP-1 drugs prescribed for weight loss (Lovelace, 2024), the updated 2023 American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines for pediatric weight loss interventions (Hampl et al., 2023), new legislation prohibiting size-based discrimination (DiFilippo, 2024; Michigan Department of Civil Rights, 2024; NYC Press Office, 2023), and a growing number of books, podcasts, and articles about health equity and weight-inclusive practices by activists and scholars.

As health sciences, nutrition, and food sciences liaison librarians, the authors are interested in how information about anti-fat bias is presented and supported for academic library users amidst this larger conversation. Librarians are uniquely positioned to bridge popular and academic discourses. As educators, librarians formally support professional health sciences training through instruction and curriculum support. However, libraries also provide access to broader content, like popular reading and health graphic novels. Librarians also teach general information literacy and critical evaluation skills about topics like bias and methods, which are especially relevant to anti-fat bias and weight-inclusive practice. Are librarians engaging with these topics in their roles? If so, for what audience, and what context frames their work?

This paper investigates library research guides (LibGuides) that share information about anti-fat bias. Our analysis of these guides seeks to understand how the field of librarianship is engaging with the topic and how librarians can continue to support weight inclusivity as educators, proponents of information literacy, and interdisciplinary partners. LibGuides, as tangible artifacts and outputs of academic librarianship, can offer a glimpse into the work academic librarians are doing with and for their patron groups. Inventorying and analyzing LibGuide evidence can help to understand if and how librarians are educating about anti-fat bias or promoting weight-inclusive resources. This insight can offer opportunities for learning and growth within librarianship and the health sciences professions that we work with.

We use the term “fat” as a neutral descriptor of body size throughout this paper. As a result of anti-fat bias in culture, the word “fat” can have negative connotations, but we support its reclamation by activists because fatness is not inherently bad or undesirable.

Literature Review

Anti-Fat Bias in Medical Care

Understanding anti-fat bias in medical care and its impacts is essential to exploring this topic in libraries and information literacy. Bias against fat people has a long, deeply ingrained history and presence in healthcare systems. Anti-fat practices and beliefs are defined by author and activist Aubrey Gordon as “a sort of web of beliefs, interpersonal practices, institutional policies that are designed to keep fat people on the margins” (Yu & Summers, 2023). These anti-fat prejudices are foundational to many behaviors, decisions, and policies of healthcare providers and institutions. As a result, fundamental healthcare infrastructure and services can be inaccessible to fat people, from blood pressure cuffs to exam tables to recommendations for pharmaceutical dosages (Kaminsky & Gadaleta, 2002; Merrill & Grassley, 2008; Roe et al., 2012).

Fat people experience bias across healthcare settings. The implicit and explicit anti-fat bias of healthcare providers can affect communication between clinicians and patients, with self-identified fat patients regularly encountering anti-fat bias when seeking care (Alberga et al., 2019; Gudzune et al., 2014; Hebl & Xu, 2001; Phelan et al., 2015). Medical students have also shown explicit (67%) and implicit (74%) anti-fat bias (Phelan et al., 2014) and are more likely to think that fat patients will be non-compliant, are lazy, and lack self-control (Huizinga et al., 2009; Price et al., 1987; Wiese et al., 1992).

The effects of social stigma have been shown to create health inequities and impact population health. One survey of fat patients found that 69% of participants felt stigmatized by doctors, 46% by nurses, 37% by dieticians or nutritionists, and 21% by mental health professionals (Puhl & Brownell, 2006). Stigmatizing and inflicting shame due to body size, which 42% of American adults have experienced during their lifetime, causes mental and physical distress and harm (Alimoradi et al., 2020; Lee et al., 2021; Pearl & Puhl, 2016; Puhl & Heuer, 2010). Stigmatization also contributes to inaccessibility of housing, social services, and day-to-day interactions, which can all perpetuate self-stigma and impact health outcomes (Hatzenbuehler et al., 2013; Nyblade et al., 2019; Pearl & Puhl, 2016).

Identity, policy, and social factors affect quality of care for stigmatized groups. Experiencing anti-fat bias and prejudice influences how often patients seek care and the level of trust they place in their providers and health systems (Alberga et al., 2019; Gupta et al., 2020; Phelan et al., 2014). Studies have found that anti-fat bias increases patients’ stress around seeking healthcare and leads to less frequent care-seeking and decreased access to primary and preventative care (Alberga et al., 2019; Chrisler & Barney, 2017). Even if patients do seek care, evidence shows that providers misdiagnose fat patients or assume that their weight is the cause of any symptoms they might experience (Chrisler & Barney, 2017; Harper, 2021). In a study of 300 autopsies, “obese” patients were 1.65 times more likely to have un- or misdiagnosed medical conditions (Gabriel et al., 2006).

Anti-Fat Bias Investigations in Librarianship

Anti-fat bias touches professional, cultural, and research systems and practices. As a result, there are many opportunities for investigating and dismantling anti-fat bias across disciplines beyond the health sciences. With an understanding of the prevalence and impact of anti-fat bias in healthcare, we turn to the library and information studies (LIS) literature to understand how this topic applies to librarianship and inventory the work that has already been done.

Critical librarianship approaches LIS through the lens of social justice, the belief that all people should have equal rights and opportunities, and creates a natural space for anti-fat bias conversation and action. Its development has paralleled the growth of DEIA awareness and initiatives. Specifically, critical information literacy is an area of discussion and practice that challenges the notion of neutrality in library spaces, instruction, and engagement with information; it also recognizes and attempts to confront the power structures inherent within traditional instruction models and in information creation, organization, and dissemination (Tewell, 2015). Recognizing information as a social justice issue and the role of libraries as social, civic, and cultural institutions means that all areas of the library profession are well-positioned to engage in social justice work and research (Jaeger et al., 2016). While interest in this topic has increased in recent years, library research has been addressing social justice (in those terms) for more than twenty years (Winberry & Bishop, 2021). In practice, libraries also support health equity and address social determinants of health in several ways, including facilitating access to quality health information, building health literacy, facilitating community health connections, and providing evidence based research assistance to health equity researchers and policymakers (Wilson et al., 2023).

Academic librarianship presents many avenues for exploring fat advocacy within the profession: librarians’ roles and experiences as public service providers and educators; libraries’ existence as both educational and public spaces; information literacy’s focus on examining authority, bias, and context; representation in collections and cataloging; institutional hiring, inclusion, and employee protection practices; and the potential to influence the disciplinary areas we support through relationships with students, teaching faculty, and the curriculum. Librarians have worked on topics peripherally related to anti-fat bias, including addressing medical racism (Bishop, 2021; Pun et al., 2023), discussing the application of critical librarianship in health sciences libraries (Barr-Walker & Sharifi, 2019), advancing health equity through services and programs (Wilson et al., 2023), and examining LIS course offerings and program descriptions for health and social justice content (Jones, 2020; Vardell & Charbonneau, 2020).

Despite this continued professional engagement on a variety of relevant topics, library scholarship on issues of fat liberation, anti-fat bias, and fat experiences is still sparse (Chabot, 2021; Versluis et al., 2020). The literature that does exist discusses a broad spectrum of library-related applications and considerations, from general recommendations for addressing weight stigma (Rutledge et al., 2024) to specific examples of bias in and recommendations for revision of the cataloging of fat studies texts (Angell & Price, 2012). Weight normativity in physical library spaces is a significant theme, such as examining seating weight limits, seat dimensions, and armrests found in library furniture catalogs (Chabot, 2021) and surveying librarians’ experiences navigating offices, public service points, stacks, and teaching spaces (Galasso, 2023a). Survey work has also sought to understand the experiences of fat librarians, exploring topics of surveillance, visibility, and professionalism in larger bodies (Galasso, 2023a, 2023b). Librarians have also considered fat liberation and fat pedagogy in information literacy and library instruction (Chenevey, 2022) and how academic librarianship “reinforces expectations of performativity” and gendered labor for fat women in library service roles (Versluis et al., 2020, p. 56).

Function and Analysis of LibGuides

To explore anti-fat bias and weight inclusivity work in librarianship, we have chosen to examine resources curated with LibGuides. Whether print or digital, curated topical lists of resources have been part of the profession for a long time. Before the digital age, items like pathfinders, finding aids, and bibliographies were created in print to help patrons locate information, and articles assessing how these resource lists translated to an online environment appear in the mid-1980s (Jarvis, 1985).

In 2007, the company Springshare released a product called LibGuides. LibGuides, often called “resource guides” or “research guides,” offer a space for librarians to digitally curate and manage subject- or user-specific information for their patrons. LibGuides can host a wide variety of materials, including online tutorials, bibliographies, library databases, and more, which allow the creator to tailor and organize the guide for its intended audience and purpose. LibGuides are an extremely common format for resource curation across all types of libraries—Springshare currently reports over 900,000 publicly available LibGuides across a variety of academic, public, school, and other libraries.

Formal studies of LibGuides appear in the LIS literature shortly after their release by Springshare. Many of these studies examine the subject content and usage of LibGuides to determine best practices for LibGuide creators (Burchfield & Possinger, 2023; Chen, 2019; Stevens & Fajardo, 2021). This scholarship is divided on the medium’s best use and utility for guide users; the versatility of LibGuides and their array of uses by institutions, creators, and users allows for a multitude of content types, foci, and designs (Dobbs et al., 2013). Another body of scholarship looks at LibGuides as an artifact of libraries to learn about how librarians are engaging on a specific topic or with a specific user group (Nyitray & Reijerkerk, 2022; Piper et al., 2021; Stevens & Fajardo, 2021). As explained in a previous study, “LibGuides also play a key role in the transmission of institutional values and culture to the public” (Piper et al., 2021, p. 193), which makes them a prime candidate for study.

Aims

Our aim in analyzing LibGuides is to gain insight into how academic librarians and library workers are engaging with the topic of anti-fat bias and what ideas they are communicating to their users. We posed the following questions:

● Are academic librarians engaging with anti-fat bias?

● What types of anti-fat bias materials are academic librarians presenting to their users?

● What context frames anti-fat bias content that academic librarians provide?

● Are academic librarians discussing anti-fat bias more for health sciences audiences or other general academic library audiences?

While there are potentially many avenues to explore these questions, we focused on LibGuides because of their research value as a tangible output of work in academic librarianship and the current dearth of evidence in the literature. We seek to increase understanding and inform practice and future engagement within librarianship on this topic.

Methods

This research is based on content analysis methodologies from the LibGuides literature (Horton, 2017; Piper et al., 2021; Stevens & Fajardo, 2021). These studies select a group of LibGuides and analyze the types of resources selected, the presentation of information, emerging themes on the subject, and occasionally usage statistics. By identifying LibGuides on anti-fat bias and analyzing them, we hoped to learn more about the types of resources selected, specific featured content, the general presentation of the subject, and basic information about the host libraries and institutions. We chose not to request usage statistics or conduct interviews with guide creators; this could be an avenue for further research to understand quantitative engagement and a qualitative context for the guides.

To begin, the authors searched Springshare’s LibGuides Community (https://community.libguides.com/) to locate LibGuides with anti-fat bias content. At the time of writing, the LibGuides Community website allowed users to search 953,731 LibGuides authored by 300,388 creators from 5,796 institutions across 107 countries. The LibGuides Community includes active, public guides that have the “Share Guide Content” option set to “Community.” Although the entire universe of LibGuides is not included in the LibGuides Community, guides are shared with the LibGuides Community by default—in other words, the creator of the LibGuide must elect to make a guide unshareable or only shared internally within their organization. Private guides, even if their content is shareable, are not included in the LibGuides Community. While some existing LibGuides studies first identified a subset of libraries, such as Association of Research Libraries members or health sciences libraries (Piper et al., 2021; Stevens & Fajardo, 2021), we searched across all types of libraries to maximize the possible number of LibGuides and to characterize the types of libraries that were sharing anti-fat bias content.

The authors used their knowledge of the topic to generate a list of keywords to search in the LibGuides Community. (See Appendix A for the full list of keywords.) Selected keywords served as a sample set: “anti-fat bias,” “fat bias,” “weight bias,” and “fat phobia.” This sample set was used to conduct test searches and develop inclusion and exclusion criteria for screening LibGuides. The following inclusion and exclusion criteria were determined:

● inclusion: in English; academic library (community college, college, or university); anti-fat bias content; general, subject or course guide; guides that focus on weight bias and privilege.

● exclusion: non-English; school library or public library; content on body image, health, or nutrition not related to weight stigma or anti-fat bias; LibGuides with three or fewer content items related to weight stigma or anti-fat bias; LibGuides that accompany short-term offline material, such as an exhibit, movie or lecture series, or other programming; LibGuides whose topic was eating disorders with no mention of weight stigma or anti-fat bias.

The complete list of keywords was then divided equally among the authors, and each author searched in LibGuides Community and screened results with the inclusion and exclusion criteria to gather LibGuides for further analysis.

To capture content that was public but not included in the LibGuides Community, each author also searched for their assigned keywords in Google by combining the keyword with an added search string, as follows:

[KEYWORD] AND (libguide OR "research guide" OR "library guide" OR "course guide" OR "subject guide" OR "topic guide")

Only the first five pages of results were evaluated because the team noticed that, due to Google’s default relevancy ranking, results became much less relevant after five pages. Once the first round of both LibGuides Community and Google searching was complete, all keywords were reassigned to another team member to be searched and screened a second time. LibGuides that remained after applying inclusion and exclusion criteria again were collected in a spreadsheet.

The team created a rubric to analyze the included LibGuides. (See Appendix B for the LibGuide rubric.) The rubric captured basic information about the guide, such as title, institution, date created, and whether the anti-fat bias content comprised an entire guide, a page, or a box within a page. To capture how information was presented, we coded the overall context of the content into the following general categories informed by themes from reviewing guides during our searching and screening process: social justice/DEIA, nutrition/wellness, or other.

We also noted the types of resources included in each guide. Since anti-fat bias is often discussed in more popular or widely accessible formats like videos, blog posts, and social media, we wanted to know if librarians were curating this more mainstream content or sticking to traditional scholarly materials like journal articles and monographs. Using a grounded theory approach, the team examined the LibGuides’ content and generated the following list of resource types: popular articles, news articles, social media posts, blogs, events, podcasts, videos, articles from academic journals, books, associations/organizations, glossaries or word/term definitions, journal titles, databases, search terms, original written content (typically an introduction or descriptions of resources), self-care materials, and allyship materials.

To calibrate our individual analyses, the team reviewed a few LibGuides together using the rubric. All of the included LibGuides were then divided evenly between the three authors. After the first round of individual reviews, the LibGuides were reassigned so that each LibGuide was reviewed separately by two team members. Any conflicts were resolved together as a group.

Results

The authors analyzed 36 published LibGuides from 34 institutions that met the study’s inclusion criteria. Three were from Canadian institutions, and the remaining were from institutions in the United States. Thirty-three guides were affiliated with college or university libraries, and three guides were from community college libraries. Of the colleges and universities, six shared a campus with a school of medicine. Most institutions offered degrees in the health sciences, although eight offered no health-related degrees, programs, or majors at all. Only one LibGuide was created by a health sciences library. Of the 36 guides, 33 were original guides created by the parent institution, and three were copies of LibGuides from other institutions (two copied from Simmons University and one from Boise State University).

Of the 36 guides, four were complete, standalone LibGuides about an anti-fat bias topic. They focused on topics such as fat phobia and size-inclusive library collection development (Fat Liberation from the Pratt Institute, https ://prattlis.libguides.com/fat-liberation; and Fat Positive Young Adult Literature from San Jose State University School of Information, https://ischoolsjsu.libguides.com/c.php?g=1148029).

The remaining 32 guides contained a page, tab, or box with content related to anti-fat bias that was within a LibGuide about a broader topic. For example, UMass Boston’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion guide (https://umb.libguides.com/c.php?g=1291292&p=9644453) contained a “Body Size Diversity” page among several other pages about topics like “Age Equality,” “Gender Equality,” “Neurodiversity,” and “Race Equality.” Of these 32 guides, 21 of the guides presented information within a social justice context, and six guides were classified as a nutrition/wellness context. We categorized five guides as “other,” and their larger contexts represented topics as: Africana studies, life skills development, a library science class guide, fashion resources, and pastoral care (Figure 1).

The guides classified as a social justice context used frameworks like DEIA, anti-oppression, and body liberation; sometimes these guides presented anti-fat bias content alongside information about other stigmatized groups or other explicitly DEIA-related topics. Examples include Rider University’s Privilege and Intersectionality (https://guides.rider.edu/c.php?g=926249&p=6679320) with a tab for “Physical Appearance: Body Size, Hair, Colorism,” and Manchester Community College’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: Different Kinds of Diversity (https://library.mccnh.edu/c.php?g=951022&p=6867113) with a box for “Sizeism.”

In contrast, the nutrition/wellness category guides used titles like Diet, Nutrition, & Health and Empowering Women’s Health and shared content about dietary choices, nutritional information, and related topics like mental health, sexual health, and movement. For example, Southern Adventist University’s research guide titled Diet, Nutrition & Health (https://southern.libguides.com/c.php?g=813454&p=8678542) contained a tab entitled “Diet Culture.”

Figure 1
Context of analyzed LibGuides, by number of LibGuides.

The most frequently featured content types for the information presented within these guides were books, popular articles, videos, associations/organizations, and academic articles. Figure 2 shows the complete breakdown of the types of resources used in the included LibGuides.

Of the top 10 most frequently featured resource types, we classified four (40%) as academic resources and six (60%) as popular resources. For example, 24 research guides featured popular articles while 17 guides presented academic articles. We observed no differences in resource types between the LibGuides classified as social justice and those classified as nutrition/wellness; the prevalence of popular and academic resources was similar in each category.

Certain popular books, podcasts, and blogs were presented multiple times across many LibGuides, regardless of the guide’s framing context. Frequently featured materials included the books The Body is Not an Apology and Fearing the Black Body, the podcast Maintenance Phase, and TEDx Talks by activists and authors such as Sonya Renee Taylor (Hobbes & Gordon, n.d.; Strings, 2019; Taylor, 2021; TEDx Talks, 2017).

Figure 2
Resource types, by number of LibGuides analyzed.

Discussion

Thirty-six guides met our inclusion criteria, which is a very small number considering there are 950,000+ LibGuides searchable in LibGuides Community. Given the significance and prevalence of discussion around anti-fat bias, the overall LibGuide engagement with this topic is much lower than expected.

Because of the nature of the subject, the team expected more health sciences librarians to share anti-fat bias content on LibGuides. Of the 36 guides analyzed, only one was associated with a health sciences library. The remaining guides were hosted by general or other specialized academic libraries, indicating that health sciences libraries do not seem to be regularly providing anti-fat bias content to their patrons in this format. However, this data point is difficult to ascertain, since only 95 of the 2,878 identified academic libraries in the LibGuides Community database were classified as medical libraries (the closest category label to “health sciences”), but health sciences librarians can also work in libraries that serve broader audiences.

To better understand the guides’ connection to the health sciences, we researched the institutions that hosted the LibGuides. Only six of the authoring institutions shared a campus with a school of medicine. In fact, a quarter (23.5%) of the institutions had no health sciences degrees or programs whatsoever. In terms of direct curricular support, only one LibGuide was a course guide associated with a particular class; in this case, the course was about cross-cultural communication in a school of information science. Because both medical schools and health sciences programs are training future health professionals, we hoped to see more on this topic at those kinds of institutions. Using LibGuides as a metric, anti-fat bias and weight inclusivity engagement by libraries, librarians, and library workers that support the health sciences is low.

In our context analysis, we discovered that when anti-fat bias content was presented, it was most often presented in the context of social justice or DEIA as opposed to health or wellness. Obviously, social justice issues, such as societal inequities, disparities connected to race and socioeconomic status, and food and housing insecurity, are also health and wellness issues. But elucidating the health implications of bias, particularly anti-fat bias and weight stigma, is particularly important in the education of future health professionals. We expected much more engagement from health sciences librarians, or at least from individuals supporting health sciences programs, and we expected the issue of anti-fat bias to be presented as a concern with strong health implications. Future qualitative research could explore the reasoning behind this gap, but it is possible that the lack of engagement stems from the deep-seated anti-fat bias in American culture and the academic medical establishment, which academic librarianship generally upholds as authoritative. Weight inclusivity and weight-inclusive care and education do not align with accepted norms. As a result, social justice and DEIA frameworks may receive less resistance to engagement than a health or health equity perspective—a social justice approach highlights inequity, but pursuing health equity would require directly challenging the root systems, which is more disruptive and potentially carries more personal or professional risk.

When examining the content of the LibGuides, we considered the following resource types to be “academic” in nature: academic articles, books, glossaries/definitions, journal titles, databases, written explanatory content, and search terms. The remaining resource types we deemed “popular.” We recognize that certain categories, such as books, may contain both popular and academic titles at the individual resource level. Further analysis could be done at the item level to more accurately characterize resources as academic or popular, but categorizing the resource types in this way offered a general sense of the nature of the materials LibGuide creators are sharing on this topic. Across all guides analyzed, popular resources (such as blogs, social media, or videos) were listed more often than academic resources. We believe this accurately represents the nature of anti-fat bias resources available. It also supports our earlier impression that anti-fat bias is a topic being addressed in popular spheres but less so in academic arenas. Interesting avenues for study that would contribute to our understanding of engagement include more concrete insight into the coverage of weight-inclusive topics in academic and popular spheres and a comparison of the results discussed here to overall trends for popular vs. academic resource inclusion by academic librarians in LibGuides.

Limitations

This method of searching LibGuides captures a content sample from a particular moment in time that can provide valuable insight and uncover pathways for future work. But, as previously mentioned, the LibGuides Community only indexes a specific, shared subset of the entire universe of LibGuides. Our LibGuides Community and Google searches both only retrieved public LibGuides; it’s possible that there are private guides, which are only accessible by direct link, or guides that were once public but have been archived or unpublished for revisions or other reasons.

It is also worth noting that, in general, guides created for classes or workshops may have a short or inconsistent lifespan. The longevity of a class guide can depend on the nature of a course—if it repeats, if the syllabus or teaching faculty member changes, if the librarian supports it once or many times—and many institutions hide class guides after the semester or term is complete, even if they will be republished later. Undiscoverable guides aside, identifying persistent, public content is still distinctly important, especially if we consider public engagement to communicate the level of importance of a topic or a statement of values of the librarian(s), library, or institution.

Conclusion

In this analysis of LibGuides with anti-fat bias materials, the authors found that most were created with a social justice and anti-oppression lens. Offering educational and allyship resources on anti-fat bias has potential for individual, institutional, and societal impact. Anti-fat bias is an intersectional topic with heavy connections to social justice work, but also to health equity and health literacy. This is a space where librarians, and specifically health sciences librarians that support future and current healthcare professionals, could invest and curate more content and resources. Acknowledging the limitations of the methodology, the analysis did not find much evidence of curricular support around anti-fat bias or weight inclusivity, which is an opportunity for librarians to interact with library users and educators and influence social and practical change.

The diversity of resource types found in LibGuides on this topic is encouraging. This examination of the resource types curated in LibGuides raises questions about the perceived value and validity of different forms of information (scholarly and otherwise) by librarians and society more broadly, and how that impacts LibGuide creators, consumption of materials by users, and what voices and experiences are uplifted over others. This prompted the team to evaluate their own biases about the validity and authority of certain resource types and how those biases might impact the elevation of fat voices and fat experiences in the creation of LibGuides. LibGuide creators may want to question their own assumptions about which resources and types of resources are included in research guides and whether those choices affect their ability to elevate marginalized voices in general.

Conducting this analysis opened communication and built connections with other groups and individuals at the authors’ institution doing anti-fat bias work and instruction. Reviewing the guides created by others will inform the creation of an anti-fat bias LibGuide by the authors, using the input of community and campus stakeholders. Engaging in this work could create similar opportunities at other institutions, enriching interdisciplinary collaboration and quality of library support.

Anti-fat bias work and weight-inclusive education is an intersectional field that is increasingly entering mainstream discourse. Librarians are well-positioned to support this work as educators, advocates of critical information literacy, and information providers. There are opportunities for further analysis of specific anti-fat bias content, such as exploring curriculum development and support, surveying librarians about their commitment to and knowledge of the topic, and providing suggestions to LibGuide creators interested in developing anti-fat bias content.

Author Contributions

Christie Silkotch: Formal analysis (equal), Investigation (equal), Methodology (equal), Validation (equal), Writing – original draft (equal), Writing – review & editing (lead) Laura Haines: Conceptualization (lead), Formal analysis (equal), Investigation (equal), Methodology (equal), Validation (equal), Writing – original draft (equal) Amalia Dolan: Formal analysis (equal), Investigation (equal), Methodology (equal), Validation (equal), Visualization (lead), Writing – original draft (equal)

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Appendix A

List of Keywords Searched

anti-fat bias

fat bias

weight bias

fat phobia OR fatphobia

weight discrimination

fat discrimination

size discrimination

body discrimination

weight prejudice

weight stigma

fat shaming

body shaming

body type discrimination

sizism or sizeism

fatmisia

anti-fatness (with a hyphen)

fat hatred

fat liberation

body liberation

“thin privilege”

“diet culture”

"body positivity"

Body image

Eating disorders

Appendix B

Rubric Used to Analyze LibGuides

Date Analyzed

Reviewer

Second Reviewer

Title of LibGuide

Title of Page

Title of Box

URL

Institution

Library Type

Health Sciences guide?

Original or Reused?

Last updated

Creator

Additional information

Free standing or part of a larger guide?

Context of guide

Resources listed: