Here is what was on the agenda for this week:

• International Student Workshop II
• Introduction to LibAnswer and Libinsights
• Exhibit Logistics Check-in Meeting with Supervisor
• Meeting and Tour in the Libraries Technical Services Building
• ALAO Conference
• Pop-Up Exhibit for Día de los Muertos

I will only be discussing in detail the pop-up exhibit. If you are interested in hearing more about the Academic Library Association of Ohio 2019 conference, check out my overview here.

The day that we have been prepping for since early September finally arrived! We had our Día de los Muertos adjacent Pop-Up Exhibit in the Cartoon Library and Museum. The scope of the exhibit was pretty broad and consisted of items from our special collections, some of our newest acquisitions from SÕL-CON: The Brown and Black Comix Expo, and other comics and graphic novels currently in the collection. My job was to find items that fit under Immigration, Migration, and Mobility.The image below is a table featuring the many graphic novels I found in our collections related to the topic, including:

• The Arrival by Shaun Tan
• The Four Immigrants Manga: a Japanese Experience in San Francisco, 2904-1924 by Henry (Yoshitaka) Kiyama
• Migra Mouse: Political Cartoons on Immigration by Lalo Alcaraz
• Étrange by Jérôme Ruillier
• Diary of a Reluctant Dreamer: Undocumented Vignettes from a Pre-American Life by Alberto Ledesma
• The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir by Thi Bui

The Immigration, Migration and Mobility theme also led me to pull many political cartoons and original art by Bill Schorr, Eric J. Garcia, Kate Salley Palmer, and many other who had very poignant commentaries on immigration in the United States. My supervisor was in charge of pulling and transporting the special collections items which included original Jose Guadalupe Posada broadsides. Overall, the exhibit was a great success. We had over 130 people come in and take a look around. I was especially excited to see people interested in the graphic novels I pulled as well as the material acquired from SÕL-CON. I was worried that people would not want to touch any of the material we left out for them, so I would often go around and handle the material, signalling that it is okay to touch this stuff. Whats the point of even having this material if no one can see it or touch it?

I was not tasked with any of the logistics of the exhibit this time, but next year, I might be heading the charge! Aside from stopping by the exhibit to see if they could use extra help, my partner and I were given the freedom to explore the other events happening for the larger Día de los Muertos celebration. We drank hot chocolate, ate tamales and pan de muerto, checked out the altar where people left items for their loved ones, and explored the gallery exhibits in the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum.

The planning and execution of this exhibit was helpful in a lot of ways. It taught me how to find material in our circulating and special collections, who most important people are when you need logistical support, and what the execution of a pop-up exhibit looks like from start to finish. I have plenty of experience in programming and exhibit planning, my past experience has been on a much smaller scale. I was also able to watch how my supervisor interacted with patrons. As someone who is very shy, I was blown away with how willing my supervisor was to just start talking to people about what they were looking at. This event was also an opportunity to network with some of the faculty in the department, demonstrating to them what we have in our collections and ways in which they might incorporate these materials into their classes.

Now that this event is over we can focus on our other collaborative efforts. Stay tuned for what we do next!

Long time no see! I want to pop in here and share some things I have been reading/watching along with my election thoughts.

Both the Parts and the Whole: Leadership and Systems Thinking I read this in preparation for a meeting with my supervisor. I mentioned that I was interested in learning more about systems thinking so this was her suggestion. I thought this was a really helpful introduction into systems thinking and I found it easy to frame examples from my own life with a systems thinking approach.

• Takeaway 1: Today’s solutions can become tomorrows problems if they are not well thought out (i.e. we look at the whole system and not just the problem in front of us). We must balance quick fixes with long term solutions so that we minimize the problems we run into later. Shooting the alligator vs draining the swamp.
• Key Takeaway 2: Goal Displacement is what happens when we focus more on the “how” (i.e. bureaucratic processes) instead of the “why” (our organizational goals and values). I think many of us can find examples of this in our organizations.
• Key Takeaway 3: We do not want systems with a lot of friction. Friction leads to exhaustion, cynicism and apathy.

Thinking in Systems (Chapter 1) In this introductory chapter, I got a more in-depth overview of systems thinking.

• When we are looking at systems (which are made up of elements, interconnections, and functions), pay less attention to the elements, and more attention to those interconnections or relationships.
• If you want to know what the function/purpose of a system is, just look at what it does. Stated goals and aspirations are not the same as a systems function/purpose. This can be seen when we talk about anti-racism work. We can say we are doing the work, but if we aren’t ACTUALLY doing the work, it will be obvious.

Are white women going to fuck it up again in 2020 In this video, Kimberly Foster interviews Jenna Arnold, author of Raising Our Hands: How White Women Can Stop Avoiding Hard Conversations, Start Accepting Responsibility, and Find Our Place on the New Frontlines.

• This video really reinforced meeting people where they are. It makes no sense for me to give my Tr*mp-voting aunt a James Baldwin book and to expect her to read it AND to understand it. We must work hard to talk to the communities we are accepted into. I am trying to navigate how to have these conversations within my own family.
• White progressive women need to practice more humility and stop performing wokeness for each other. This point comes from an observation Jenna made during her research. She talked about how progressive white women could never really get to the meat of conversations with each other. There was very little curiosity and a lot of one-upping each other on the fine details and nuances of social justice issues which obviously isn’t very conducive to action or progress.
• Somewhat relatedly, this video reminded me of White Supremacy Cultures’ role in reinforcing this behavior from white women (and people in general). Off the top of my head, I think about defensiveness and perfectionism as characteristics of White Supremacy Culture and how this overlapped with what Jenna saw in her research.

From Being to Doing: AntiRacism as Action at Work This was a an ALAO conference session by Ione Damasco that I watched asynchronously. I am always interested in how we can go beyond talking about issues to putting in some actual work.

• Ione’s presentation went through some of the characteristics of White Supremacy Culture and offered liberating actions we could take against those characteristics.
• My biggest takeaway from this presentation was the mention of generous accountability coined by McKensie Mack.

Shifting the Center: Transforming Academic Libraries through Generous Accountability I wanted to see the context in which the term generous accountability was used, so I watched this presentation by McKensie Mack (they/them/theirs).

• McKensie also discusses how White Supremacy Culture and how libraries continue to perpetuate the characteristics. They also touched on how White Supremacy Culture makes accountability feel punitive, bad and scary due to the focus on defensiveness, perfectionism, etc.
• McKensie reminds us that accountability should not be seen as punishment! This made me think about previous conversations I’ve had with people about cultural humility (or just humility) and being able to accept being wrong, learning from mistakes, and moving forward. Can you even imagine accountability that does not feel like punishment? This is something I will have to work hard to unlearn.

Challenging the Good Fit Narrative: Creating Inclusive Recruitment Practices in Academic Libraries I read this article for a workplace discussion on EDI and this was pretty eye-opening. It talks about this notion of a candidate being a “good fit” and how this can be coded language to exclude people of color (or anyone outside the white supremacy culture norm) from the organization. I thought this was super interesting, especially how the research shows that most people can’t even articulate what a “good fit” is, but use it as a way to exclude people. Obviously there was a conversation about how this takes so many diverse candidates out out of the pool. This then leaves the impression that there aren’t enough people of color out there and is the reason why our organizations diversity percentages are pathetic. The authors talk about “extending fit” vs. “good fit” and how we should consider the former. We might actually want people who will come in and challenge the ways we see and do things. This is how our organizations can evolve. So those are some of the things that have been percolating in my brain the last couple of weeks! Let me know if you read/watch any of them and have any thoughts. As of writing this, Joe Biden won the Presidential Election and this has drudged up a lot of things to think about. I am relieved, but has shown me how the systems we are part of at a micro level are mirrored at a micro level. Let me explain. We talk a lot about anti-racism work in libraries and how it should not be the responsibility of BIPOC to educate folks or to do the work on their own (and without compensation!) Everyone has a part to play, not just BIPOC. And most of the time, BIPOC are already doing the work with no credit or compensation OR with very tokenized acts of acknowledgement. Now look at the voting demographics of this election, where we see Black people showing up for our democracy, leading many grass-roots organizations, and building communities despite the obstacle placed in front of them while the white vote continues to be split (weighed on the Tr*mp side). People on social media are thanking black voters and Georgia and I get that sentiment. But instead of thanking them, how about we actually listen to Black people? organize with Black organizers? pay Black organizers for their work? rebuild the systems that systematically oppresses Black people? listen to Black folks? A familiar scene, just at a national level. I’m not trying to be a bummer. I just wanted to share how jarring it was to make that connection between those two situations. Anyways. I hope wherever you are, that you are staying safe and that you can breathe a little bit easier tonight. I know I can.

This blog post was originally written on November 08, 2020

It’s been a little over a year since I began my diversity resident experience. More interesting is the fact that I have spent half of my time working from home because of the pandemic. Sometimes I wonder how different my experience as a resident would have been had the pandemic not happened.

• Would I have nailed my lightning talk at SALALM?
• Would I have learned some cool stuff at HILT about text encoding?
• Would I have been closer to publishing something?

When I ask myself these questions, I guess what I am really asking is if I would have been further ahead by now. But what does further ahead mean and why does it matter?

Success in the tenure-track academic sphere is measured by how much you are willing to (over)exert yourself to produce things: papers, presentations, service, etc. There is the expectation that you work more than your 40 hours with the justification that its okay because your hours are flexible as faculty. When you combine these expectations with the fact that I am on borrowed time, I feel this immense pressure to succeed in order to ensure that my CV will need to be competitive for the (hopefully) post-COVID job market.

So what does this have to do with my one-year anniversary as a resident?

I’ve been reflecting on this definition of success and am at the point where I am questioning if that definition is what I want. Do I want my career to be so focused on measures of success that are outside of my control and dictated to me by my organization and the larger higher education culture (which happens to overlap with White Supremacy Culture)? Hell no. But if I want to be an academic librarian, am I resigned to conform to the system? I don’t know yet.

So in this first year, I’m still negotiating how much of myself I want to give to the profession. Do I want everything I do to be defined by my job? Or do I want to carve space for myself to explore things that bring me joy outside of my work. These are the questions that will guide me into my second year. What is the balance that works for me?

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am so glad to be celebrating my first year as an academic librarian. The amount of growth I have seen in myself both personally and professionally has been remarkable. I even had the opportunity to be the Latin American Studies Librarian for five months! And at the same time, I have witnessed (first-hand and second-hand) how unwelcoming at the individual and institutional levels how our profession can be to those who identify as BIPOC. These experiences live side-by-side every single day and I am not sure I would have these perspectives if I wasn’t a resident.

For that, I am weirdly thankful.