**1. Introduction**

The relevance of libraries as allies against fake news has been evidenced, unfortunately, amid the pandemic caused by COVID-19. In this period, they have provided their support to citizens in their queries about numerous of hoaxes, rumors, and suspicious contents that they received or found through their devices when they were connected. However, this role is not new; in the fight against information disorders ('misinformation', 'disinformation', and 'malinformation'), libraries have assumed a leadership role for years by creating grea<sup>t</sup> variety of materials, tools, and resources for those users [1], from the smallest children, to young university students, to adults, so that they can critically face any type of content (disinformative, pseudohistorical, and pseudoscientific) and learn to evaluate it before giving it credibility.

For researchers, this is a natural role; the libraries of the XXI century must educate and help users to become critical and intelligent consumers and producers of information and defend the importance of the veracity and reliability of the information [2] that librarians provide; together with teachers and journalists, they constitute "the Triad of Truth-Workers" [3]. In this sense, librarians feel competent to guide users in the face of fake news [1] because they are concerned about the phenomenon of disinformation and other related challenges, such as an overproduction of digital content—which is unattainable— that they should deal with; bots that mimic academic writing and are capable of creating seemingly scientific documents; the proliferation of databases with predatory journals; or the use of unreliable sources in academic papers, among other threats [2,4]. Furthermore,

**Citation:** Herrero-Diz, P.; López-Rufino, C. Libraries Fight Disinformation: An Analysis of Online Practices to Help Users' Generations in Spotting Fake News. *Societies* **2021**, *11*, 133. https:// doi.org/10.3390/soc11040133

Academic Editors: Eugène Loos and Loredana Ivan

Received: 1 October 2021 Accepted: 28 October 2021 Published: 1 November 2021

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

we cannot forget that prestige is at stake, since "the way libraries classify materials related to the past, that is, history, fiction, beliefs, counterfactual narratives, etc., has an impact on the credibility and legitimacy of what has been classified" [5] (p. 960).

In this context, and taking into account the perception that users have of the service provided by libraries—approximately eight out of ten adults consider that public libraries help them to find reliable information, to learn new things, to obtain information and to take decisions [6]—the scientific community proposes to raise the information literacy skills of librarians to a completely new level [7], to produce professional trained and dedicated staff to meeting the needs of information users [8]. The most recent initiatives include the updating of the syllabus of the public examinations for library staff stands out, to incorporate the fake news topic, with the aim of covering the knowledge and skills necessary for the professional profiles that currently manage and energize libraries [9]; the creation of a model to automate the evaluation of digital content that librarians classify [4]; the claim of librarians as influencers [10]; and the repositioning of the profession in the public sphere through the reinforcement of librarians' professional identity, as experts, so that they form part of the circle where the fight against disinformation is discussed [1]. Having acquired this role as members of mediating institutions [11], librarians must work on designing practices that allow people to develop skills so that they themselves can identify false information [12], critically evaluate sources, and find sources of reliable and authoritative information [13].

This research aims to find out, in an exploratory way, what the practices are (videos, tools, resources, materials, events, etc.) that librarians make available to citizens to help them deal with misinformation. For this reason, this article examines the repositories of 216 libraries of different characteristics. The results point to a wide range of checklists, video tutorials, guidelines, workshops, etc. Regarding the content of these resources, it is also diverse; while some place emphasis on activities that promote critical thinking, others do so on those that allow the acquisition of skills and abilities proper to verification.

### **2. Literature Review**

#### *2.1. Libraries' Authority to Face Disinformation*

There are a grea<sup>t</sup> many libraries in the world: 320,000 public libraries and more than one million parliamentary, national, university, scientific and research, school, and special libraries. They all ensure that the information and knowledge to use information are available to all, making them fundamental institutions in the digital age [14]. However, according to Bridget Forster, a library teacher at Strathcona Girls' Grammar School in Melbourne's eastern inner suburbs, libraries' relevance will depend on their ability to upgrade and modernize [13]. For the teacher, the increase in disinformation on the Internet and the accentuated use of social networks to be informed show the necessary intervention of libraries to teach students to critically evaluate content. In the case of university libraries, the researchers also claim to reflect on the role of the librarian in relation to fake news and its relationship with ALFIN (media literacy) and the training of users [15]. At Forster's school, where the teacher-librarian professional category exists, they are training students against disinformation: "We're equipping students to be discerning consumers of information and that entails not only being able to identify fake news and the like, but also knowing where to go to find reliable, authoritative sources of information" [13]. In university libraries, they try to do the same, even in a timid way [16].

This enormous challenge posed by disinformation for librarians, which has opened the debate on expanding the concept of Media Literacy and its methodological application [16], has become clear during the health crisis caused by COVID-19, due to its proven capacity to act as an intermediary between users and access to reliable information: from raising awareness, teaching how to search for information, filtering false information, supporting researchers and teachers, providing consultation services or sending documents, to solving doubts about questionable content or pseudoscientific content. On the other hand, the confinement of the population in their homes, also motivated by the health situation, exponentially increased user access to electronic resources related to health [17], which in turn shows that innovation and permanent modernization in libraries has made it possible to offer quality information when it is most needed (hence its relevance). All this invites, therefore, one to promote more open-access projects [15] and to rethink the provision of new services and pedagogical actions to train the different agents in the new context of digital information [16].

## *2.2. Anti-Misinformation Practices*

In the era of "factual recession" [3], libraries, as social services integrated in plural communities, must propose collaborative actions to help people develop the capacity to use information effectively and preserve information to guarantee permanent access for future generations, as set out in Goal 16 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), of the new United Nations 2030 Agenda [18]. In addition, this goal says that librarians are committed to promoting literacy-related skills in the use of data to ensure that they are used and interpreted correctly; generate strict standards on information ethics; guaranteeing digital inclusion through access to ICT, with the help of specialized personnel to promote new digital capabilities in its user community; and taking charge of processing, preserving, and making available information acquisition procedures that users need, among other responsibilities.

In recent years, there have been numerous libraries that, in addition to providing proven and reliable information, have tried to respond to these demands by building websites and guides to help both the general and specialized public to recognize fake news, beyond its function as a mere facilitator of bibliographic tools. Moreover, they have encouraged students to work more in the research and evaluation process. However, there is still a need to develop programs to help community members detect fake news (such as false or misleading statements, videos, or images displayed out of the proper context; questionable statistics; manipulated content; partisan propaganda; or satire) and evaluate information online [17]. This last practice is where the experts place the greatest emphasis because, when teaching information literacy, librarians must focus on something more than the reliability of the editor or author of the news; the reliability of the news sources used by the author also must be evaluated [19]. It is necessary to develop a strategy that affects an evaluation of the source based on authority; librarians must promote critical thinking by making use of educational tools and actions aimed at information literacy to discern what information may be true or false [20]. For all the above, first, it is important to analyze the tangible practices of libraries, discuss their efficiency, and provide a categorization of those practices [21].

To date, libraries have included among their training proposals sessions on the use of electronic resources aimed at developing skills and abilities to respond to the informational needs of users [22]. For example, the library staff has produced updated material in multiple formats and has focused on the importance of the verification of information and the use of sources, for the responsible and committed consumption of information by users. These initiatives are complemented by the European Higher Education Area with the training of students in transversal skills related to information management. However, it is up to libraries to lead strategies that exercise a continuous evaluation of the quality of the information [18].

The most recent research [10] includes some proposals with the aim of reducing the effect of fake news and protecting the veracity of information: permanent collaboration from childhood, in schools, to awaken critical thinking from an early age, for the younges<sup>t</sup> to question, reason, and discuss approaches and sources and distinguish between quality and truthful information and doubtful or partially or totally false information; training to learn to distinguish sources and citations; promotion of media literacy to recognize misleading elements not only in texts but in all information records, such as photographs, videos, and infographics, among other formats; and transmitting and sharing with the user the knowledge and techniques that the librarian has developed to identify authority over

content (this is the prestige and recognition of the source), as well as learning to find out the purpose of the information (political, economic, propaganda, etc.).

#### **3. Method and Materials**

The general objective of this research, which is of an exploratory nature, is to know the role of libraries as mediators in the fight against disinformation, through the observation of the websites in which they host practices (events, training, guides, resources, contents, etc.) to assist users in this task. To achieve this goal, the following research questions were posed:

RQ1: What kinds of libraries have practices to help users deal with disinformation?

RQ2: What are the practices undertaken by libraries to help patrons deal with disinformation?

RQ3: Who owns the authorship or intellectual property of the practices that libraries make available to users to help them deal with misinformation?

RQ4: What user profile is the recipient of the practices that libraries make available in their web spaces to combat disinformation?

RQ5: Who is the mediator between the practices offered by the library to combat disinformation and the user who receives them?

RQ6: What skills favor the practices that libraries make available to users to deal with misinformation?
