Author: ACRL DVC

Tell me about your path to librarianship:

Like many people, I had a circuitous route. My undergraduate degree is in English, and that is because I wanted to be a writer. It wasn’t until I was close to graduation that I realized that “poet” is not really a job, and I didn’t want to teach.

But I had gotten a part time job at my local public library and they cross trained me. I worked the circulation desk, I did interlibrary loan, I paged and shelved, and when the reference librarian went on her lunch break, I could sit at the reference desk to sub for her. That really clicked for me: the idea of helping people find the information that they needed to answer their questions and accomplish what they wanted to accomplish really resonated with me. I found my home.

I knocked around for a few more years, but decided to go to graduate school and become a librarian.

What do you most enjoy about your current position?

Ironically, it’s teaching! The thing I thought I would avoid by becoming a librarian! 

So what changed?

My students have elected to be there rather than the compulsory nature of public school, so already it’s an easier crowd. They’re a little more mature. I don’t have much experience with little kids, but I can handle 18 year olds. I’m lucky enough that my university allows me to teach a first year seminar of my own design and that’s probably the biggest asset that I have in this position.

Of course it’s an information literacy class, but in the thinnest of disguises. It’s called “Seems Legit: What’s Real and What’s Fake on the Internet”. We talk a lot about social media, which is a place where my students already are, so I’m meeting them where they are, which makes it easier for them to progress.

They teach me so much, because you know, I’m old! I don’t know about who’s influential on Tik Tok, but it’s an important resource for where they get information that they actually use to make decisions. It’s a changing world.

So they keep me somewhat abreast of what’s going on in the world and I help them develop the skills they need to navigate and evaluate information. It’s fun!

More traditionally, I like research consultations, the teaching that happens in a one-on-one meeting, which is so much more effective than a one-shot, classroom session. For me, the most rewarding part of traditional librarianship is when a student has an Aha Moment, where they find something that clicks for them and they can make real progress on something they’re working on.

These are difficult times for many people. There’s a global pandemic, its devastating effect on the economy, people are acknowledging anti-Black racism and protesting and political unrest. There are so many people in real turmoil – and there are real challenges in higher education as a result as well. How have these things impacted your work?

There are some in-person experiences happening on campus now, but for the most part, Arcadia has been entirely online for a year. It’s a whole new way of teaching and learning and connecting and living. It has been a long time and the winter was rough. I think a lot of people have hit a real wall.

For my teaching, I’ve learned to focus on what is essential and I’m hoping that I can bring this forward. I’ve always been student centered, but I think even more so now, I understand students’ real need to be able to determine what works for them. So if we accomplish the learning goals that we agreed on, I’m a little bit less concerned about the details of how that happens.

Racism has long been an issue in higher education and my campus is no exception. My university is taking active steps; we have an Anti Black Racism Initiative with many different prongs and faculty, staff, and students are all involved in trying to identify what racist policies exist and to make the changes we need to make. We’re recognizing the lack of diversity in our full time teaching faculty and trying to elevate people of color, especially Black faculty and staff, so that their voices and perspectives are heard more around campus. I really hope that the university remains committed to these initiatives. We’ve only just begun, and there’s so much work to do!

And for me in my own classroom, because I have access to first year students, I made sure that we talked about the issues of the day. Our “common read” was How to Be an Antiracist, so we spent a lot of time focusing on that book and the ideas that Kendi presents. It surprised me to see how so much of that content was news for many of my students – that systemic racism exists. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by that, but I was. But I was heartened to see their response to the book and their commitment to doing what they can in their own lives to take antiracist action.

Let’s switch gears… What have you read, attended or participated in recently that has had an impact on your professional development?

One of my colleagues is hosting a Community of Practice for our team. We had tried to launch this once before, and it failed to take flight, but we’re trying again. We’re still in a fledgling state, but I have really appreciated her dedication to getting us to commit and so far, so good.

It has encouraged a lot of reflection, which is something that I don’t often do in a written sense, but she’s encouraging that and that has been really useful for me. I’m a note taker and a note reader, but I’m not a journal keeper. It has been helpful for me to adopt some of the practices that she has been advocating and it helps our team. We discuss our concerns about teaching and librarianship in a productive and directed manner and it’s good.

With so many responsibilities and so much going on, why did you choose to contribute so much time and energy to the Delaware Valley Chapter of the ACRL?

Well, I was asked to participate, but I said yes because I had been to DVC events before that I thought were super cool because they took a more progressive approach than something that, say, ALA would do. For example, I’m thinking of the Fall 2018 program held at Drexel, which was about advocacy in the library. I thought it was so awesome – that was probably the best event I’ve ever attended. There was a lightning round and someone from Penn State gave a presentation on the work they were doing with students’ knowledge of internet privacy. It was so cool. I had a really good impression of DVC and have found since I’ve become a part of the board that my suspicions of how progressive the group is have been confirmed, which is great. It’s my people.

What are your goals or hopes for the upcoming year?

Like everyone, I hope that we can do more things in person safely in the coming months. I hope to take some of the lessons that I’ve learned about my privilege and about my teaching forward with me in my everyday practice and to model critical thinking not just about information, but about myself and my place in the world for my students. And I hope everyone can get vaccinated.

But what about your non-working time? Tell me about your interests — even though it may be challenging when working from home to separate working time from non-working time…

For real – especially when you are at the kitchen table! We are two people in a two bedroom apartment. I had the spare bedroom for several months and now it’s my turn to be out here, especially since I’m not teaching my class right now. 

One of the things that has been successful throughout this whole thing is that my book club has continued to meet. We have not missed a single meeting and have discussed nine books on Zoom! We moved the meetings to Saturday nights since there are some members with young children and that’s a time that works for them. It works for all of us and it has been really nice.

I miss concerts so much! Today is actually one year to the day since the last concert I attended. I saw Wire at Underground Arts on March 10, 2020. I remember my partner and I talking before going, wondering if we should go. Looking back, it was pretty risky, but I also don’t regret it because we didn’t realize at the time that it would be more than a year before being able to do that again.

Another hobby that has fallen by the wayside, is that we like to play Dungeons and Dragons. Some people make it work online, but that doesn’t really work for our group. The last time we played D&D with our friends we were talking about what might happen. One friend was confident that the pandemic would be under control within a month. I think about that almost every day.

I also collect records – LPs. We have way too many records. We have a pretty eclectic collection, you can find a little of everything in there. It’s kind of nice to sit down for 20 minutes and just really listen to one side of a record. I can’t wait to spend quality time digging through the bins in a record store again.

Tell me about your path to librarianship:

My path to librarianship was not a straight path. In college, I was really interested in art and fashion and I bounced between the two for a while. First I thought I wanted an art career, but then I ended up working in the fashion industry for about six years after college.

I worked in what’s called fashion production: looking at things coming in from factories before they were shipped to stores and putting things on fit models to make sure the look and fit was ok. It was interesting, but after about four or five years I was wondering if I wanted to keep doing it forever. That’s when I started looking into grad school for librarianship.

I talked to a few librarians – mostly academic librarians, because that’s what I had been around my entire life. Both of my parents were university professors at a state school that extended privileges to state residents, so I grew up in and around University Libraries. When I was 12 or 13, I could use my library card and go to the library at night, which was really nice.

I had studied art history in college and I always really liked the research aspect of it and thought maybe I could be an art librarian. So I went to library school but didn’t get a job right away so returned to fashion for a few more years until I got a library job.

I thought I would be an art librarian or work at a fashion school, but my first job was at a small liberal arts college and I found I really liked working with undergraduates. That led me to where I am now at Drexel, where I started as a librarian for undergraduate learning. I continue to be really interested in what students are doing in the first year of college and that transition from high school. So much changes for them. One of the things I love about my work is hearing about all of their different backgrounds and paths.

What do you most enjoy about your current position?

I really like working with undergraduate students and also, my current position gives me quite a bit of autonomy – I can set my own priorities. I’ve managed a reference program at Drexel for a few years and I’m getting to the point where I feel comfortable saying “This is what I think we should do” rather than asking other people what we should do. It took me time to get there and have the confidence to know what I’m doing and what I think we should be doing or how to investigate if I’m not sure. I like being able to set the priorities and decide what is most important.

I’m working with a new, part-time person who is helping out in reference. She’s a newly minted librarian having finished grad school in December. She’s doing reference and helping out on a project for me and it’s great to work with her and feel like I’m helping her get experience and a good start.

I enjoy teaching too, but I don’t do as much these days, not only due to the pandemic, but really due to the complexities of Drexel. It’s nice to have a real mix of things to do.

This past year has been difficult for many people. There’s a global pandemic, its devastating effect on the economy, people are acknowledging anti-Black racism, both social and political unrest. There are so many people in real turmoil – and there are real challenges in higher education as a result as well. How have these things impacted your work?

I’ve been working from home since March 13, 2020, so it has been a year. I actually enjoy working from home and it’s really nice that I’m able to. I’m also able to work from my Mom’s house and my sister’s house. They both live about an hour and a half drive away from where I live and it has been nice to have that flexibility even though I end up working the same hours.

Drexel was already set up so well to transition to remote library services. Chat was already set up and we had been using zoom, so that was a fairly easy transition. My actual work isn’t that much different due to the pandemic.

In terms of the other things, I had been thinking about racial injustice a lot even before, but the police murder of Walter Wallace last October happened about 15 blocks from where I live and I’ve been thinking about that a lot.

Our library staff is somewhat diverse, but our student body is very diverse. I wonder how I’m serving the student body as a white woman with a lot of privilege. I don’t have answers.

Drexel Libraries wrote an anti racism statement and I’ve been working on updating reference training materials for new librarians to include our diversity and accessibility statements. It will also include a section on bias in language because I think it’s really important.

One of the things I’ve worked on in the past few years is to eliminate “guys” as a way of addressing people. To me, it was meant to be gender neutral, but I know that it’s not. I’m trying to not assume gender or ethnicity based on the names I see, but it’s hard to unlearn these things, so it’s a constant awareness to practice. I participate in an anti racism libraries group and I’ll think about what we’ve talked about over time. It’s a constant learning process in both my personal and professional life, because they really go hand in hand.

Let’s switch gears… What have you read, attended or participated in recently that has had an impact on your professional development?

I’ve been trying to take advantage of anything that is free since our budget for professional development was eliminated this year. I attended the North American Virtual Reference Conference a few weeks ago and it was interesting to see what folks were doing during the pandemic. One of the presentations I saw was about the concept of “slow librarianship.” The pandemic has really shone a light on many things, including that we live in a productivity culture, which tells us we need to be productive and implies that whatever we’re doing, it’s not enough and we need to do more.

I’ve actually been pretty good at setting boundaries between my work and home life, but I got a lot out of the sessions about making time for yourself, not getting consumed by work and not getting consumed by capitalism and productivity culture. I found that really helpful.

With so many responsibilities and so much going on, why did you choose to contribute so much time and energy to the Delaware Valley Chapter of the ACRL?

A few reasons! First, to give something back to other people in a specific way and then to meet other interesting people who don’t necessarily work at my institution.

I’m also on the board of ACRL in the Instruction Division and chair of a committee this year. That has really helped me develop some of my leadership skills too. It’s nice to be in a position like the chapter board where I’m not so much a leader, but a contributing member.

What are your goals or hopes for the upcoming year?

I crafted goals last February, but some of those don’t really fit for where we are right now. The hope is that people will get vaccinated and that we’ll get back to some semblance of seeing one another and feeling like it’s safe to see each other.

I definitely have work projects I’d like to see moving forward. The new person I’m supervising is helping figure out how best to use the library FAQs we have set up in Springshare. We need to do some work on those and create a structure for folks to be able to do more with those.

And then I’ve also been working with other librarians at Drexel to develop a community of practice around teaching and I’m really interested to see where that goes and how that develops.

What about your non-working time? Tell me about your interests:

Well, in normal times, I like to travel and I’d like to go back to travel. When I talked about setting boundaries between work and home, I’ll admit I’ve been bad about taking time off this year because there’s nowhere to go and I don’t like to use vacation time to stay home. Maybe by the summer I’ll be able to travel somewhere close by.

I enjoy reading a lot. A lot of people have said that during the pandemic they haven’t been able to read. Well, I’ve kept reading.

My sister has two children, aged three and six and I always spent a lot of time with them, but during the pandemic, I’ve been helping out more. My six year old niece has learned to call me on a tablet and video chat. She’s going to zoom kindergarten so she’ll reach out between kindergarten zoom meetings.

Exercise has always been important to me and it is something that has helped me deal with the pandemic. I look forward to getting back outside when the weather is nicer, maybe meeting friends in the Wissahickon for walks.

Before the pandemic, I started taking art classes, and during the pandemic I’ve been doing it over zoom, so that’s been fun – to have one night a week to just do art.

I knit and do some sewing at home too (but not like my sister, who has made a lot of masks for children and for charity and to donate!)

Tell me about your path to librarianship:

I actually went to school to be a teacher, ideally a social studies teacher. I had a couple of really great teachers in high school, so I decided that’s what I wanted to do. I got a dual degree in history and education and graduated right in the middle of the Great Recession.

At that time, a lot of teaching jobs were being cut, but it was especially hard for a couple of subjects and social studies was one of them. I was at a loss for a while, substitute teaching and doing what I could to try to get experience.

One day I was substituting in a middle school and I learned that many substitute teachers go to the school library for their break. While I was in the library, the librarian was giving a micro one-shot lesson for middle schoolers and she described herself as a researcher.

Until that point I had thought of Librarians, especially School Librarians, as stereotypical older women with the horn rimmed glasses who probably read a lot and I realized I didn’t know what they actually do. But listening to her, I thought it sounded interesting, and at that point since I didn’t have any jobs lined up anytime soon, I started looking into librarianship.

In Pennsylvania, if you’re certified in one subject, you can get certified in a number of other subjects if you pass the Praxis exams, so I began looking at other subjects as a way to get another job, including the possibility of a school librarianship/media specialist position. I took the Praxis exam, passed it, got certified and then moved on to a few longer term substitute teaching positions, which ultimately led me to getting a long-term librarian media specialist position. I had the chance to work in a high school library for about five months and got to experience what it was like.

The work was interesting and fit my interests, so I thought I might as well go from my MLS and I started taking classes at Drexel. When my long term substitute position ended, a library assistant position opened at Drexel in the Hagerty Library working with the Career Services Collection and it corresponded exactly with what I had just been doing. I ended up getting that and then from there, I got hooked on academic libraries. I’ve worked in a kind tour of them moving from Drexel to Rosemont College, next to St Joe’s, and now I’m at Penn State Abington.

So I’ve been working my way around Philadelphia schools over the last couple years. Most librarians I’ve talked to have had a roundabout path into librarianship. This was my roundabout way.

What do you most enjoy about your current position?

I still love teaching and working with students. I have a student intern this semester and it has been great to be able to work with him, ask him about his responses to ideas and to learn from him what students may think or like. He’s motivated and funny so it’s been really great to work with him.

At the same time I like the backend stuff too. I like the ability to take a break from teaching and outreach to do research. My position is a tenure track faculty position, so this is my first opportunity to dive into the research side of things, which is fun. It’s funny because it feels like you’re back in high school or college because there are deadlines and papers to write, but that stuff is fun. I’m able to choose topics and develop ideas I’m interested in that are relevant to my work. It’s exciting to have the opportunity to learn things that make me a better librarian and can help other people do their jobs better. It’s interesting and engaging and it allows me to balance the different aspects of my job: when I’m tired of one thing I can get back into the classroom and after a day like yesterday when I taught three classes back to back, I can look forward to sitting down and reading some articles quietly, taking notes and not talking. The flexibility is what makes my work enjoyable – being able to work on different kinds of things at the same time.

I just reread this next question, which I first formulated almost one year ago, and have just added to the following list of challenging things happening. These are difficult times for many people. There’s a global pandemic, its devastating effect on the economy, people are acknowledging anti-Black racism and protesting, and more recently, political unrest. There are so many people struggling, and there are real challenges in higher education as a result as well. How have these things impacted your work?

So speaking of the political turmoil, I worked with a colleague at Abington to create a project and embed it in a Mass Media and Society class, a communications class at Abington.

It was an extra credit project, where we basically had students develop fact checking skills and build up their ability to evaluate sources and determine what’s appropriate and what’s not, and what’s credible and what’s not.

We started it as a way to prepare for the election but with the events that have happened since the election, it’s actually become even more relevant. We were planning on doing the course project in the spring anyway, but it has really shown the value of this – to have the students really work through this process.

We’ve tried to keep the topics as neutral as possible, offering things like nutrition, misinformation in sports, and misinformation in technology in addition to political topics. We want students to be able to choose anything they’re interested in as a way to practice these skills.

The last five or six years have provided ways to show the value of the ability to evaluate sources and why it’s very important to do that, but it’s been reemphasized recently. It’s helped us show the value of this type of project. The faculty member has been amazing and helping with demonstrating value, so that has been encouraging – to know that the work we’re doing is relevant and pertinent for the students.

As far as the pandemic, that’s been difficult, because as an Outreach and Engagement Librarian I’m trying to engage with students that are not physically there. We’re not unique, this has been the case across our campus and at every campus and every institution that I’ve heard about, but it’s still hard to build relationships and make connections with students when they’re not there. Last Spring was definitely a struggle, the Fall was a little bit better. We’ve built some relationships that are now carrying over, so it’s been great, but it’s still hard.

I go to the library only once a week and it’s not what it used to be. Most of the staff used to complain about how noisy it is in the library, and now we walk in and see two or three students at most, so it’s dead and it’s odd and it’s difficult. We’ve figured out some best practices, ideas and strategies that have worked at least a little bit, but we’re not at the level of engagement that we were at the beginning of the spring semester last year, even though we’ve noticed that students want to engage and they want to be engaged.

We were meeting with someone in a student organization in the fall and they were talking about all these events that they wanted to do, planning for all of them to be in person for the spring, because they were just itching to get there. It’s hard to balance that with all the other things they have on their plate that they were not anticipating – plus the work they’re doing in school. What’s the incentive for them to engage with the library in a remote way? They’ve been staring at screens all day already, why would they want to do that again for another half hour? Trying to find a balance has been difficult, but moving forward thinking about when we do return, we have some ideas about how to create a new normal for working with those students.

Also, going back to the question to think about everything that happened over the summer, it helped me crystallize what I wanted to focus my research on. I always had a somewhat nebulous idea that I’d like to do research on students who are coming to higher education from outside of a white, middle class or upper middle class background, but I wasn’t quite sure how to do that. Events this summer helped to confirm that it’s what I really want to focus on.

Abington is a majority-minority campus. I work with students on a daily basis who, even if they were accepted into a traditional university, can’t afford the room and board. They’re trying to save money and they’re students from all sorts of different backgrounds.

Events of this past summer helped crystallize for me that I want to focus my research on looking at how libraries can effectively assist these students.

Let’s switch gears, although this next question overlaps a little with what we were just talking about… What have you read, attended or participated in recently that has had an impact on your professional development?

This question overlaps a little with the last one! But I’ll mention an article I read by Amanda Folk from Ohio State titled Reframing Information Literacy as Academic Cultural Capital: A Critical and Equity-Based Foundation for Practice, Assessment, and Scholarship that talked about this idea of cultural capital and academic cultural capital. I thought it made a lot of sense and really fit in with what I was thinking about – students coming from Philadelphia public schools where they haven’t had libraries, they don’t have access to libraries, they don’t know how to use libraries, and even beyond that, lack experience in an academic environment. The lack of cultural capital is going to impact their ability to function on campus.

And not just looking at their academic backgrounds, but also looking at their social backgrounds: what have they been exposed to? And their cultural backgrounds: what have they experienced that has helped them to succeed in this environment?

We often talk about students who don’t know what a database is, or a catalog, or an abstract. How can we make the library understandable and relatable to students who are coming into the library because they need help, but they don’t know where to go and they don’t know how libraries work or function? The events of the summer helped spark this direction for me to research how we can make libraries accessible to students without much cultural or social capital.

That really helped me focus on wanting to research how we can help students beyond the one-shot class and improving instruction, to finding out how we can structure the library differently to make it accessible to all students, whether they’ve experienced libraries before or not.

It also inspired the idea of creating a Student Advisory Board to get student input and get their ideas of what they appreciate or don’t appreciate about the libraries and to learn about things they wish could change. My overarching idea is that I’d like the libraries to be a student organized space. I’d like them to have a strong voice in how the library is organized and how it runs and functions so that they can make the libraries their own, so they can feel comfortable and enjoy that space and know that it’s theirs. That’s the goal.

With so many responsibilities and so much going on, why did you choose to contribute so much time and energy to the Delaware Valley Chapter of the ACRL?

When I was at Drexel and a prospective librarian still trying to learn about the field, I remember attending some ACRL DVC events and it was such a great welcoming community. People really encouraged my exploration of the field and inspired ideas. It was such a great introduction to academic librarianship that I wanted to help give back to the organization.

I’ve worked in four different libraries in the Philadelphia area and have been exposed to different librarians in different roles at different institutions that I’ve really come to see just how valuable this community is. You start to see people multiple times and colleagues you’ve worked with previously at meetings. I’ve seen the value of this community. There is so much talent, innovation and commitment here. I want to encourage that. It seemed like a natural fit.

What are your goals or hopes for the upcoming year?

First and foremost to make sure everyone stays healthy and safe and in hopes that the pandemic wanes so that we can get back in the fall.

Beyond that, since this is my first tenure track position, I hope to make a mark and start publishing things in addition to having presented at a few events. I’m trying to develop a larger research project and hope to get that off the ground. I’ve been exploring it, but I hope to really dive in and get started.

And then, I hope we’re back in the Fall, taking what we’ve learned from this experience and applying it to fix the things we could update and strengthen what the library is doing moving forward.

What about your non-working time? Tell me about your interests:

I’d like to know what non-working time is! I have a toddler and a preschooler, so personal time is at a premium. Being a Father is a driver of everything right now, which is great. I always wanted to be a parent so it’s fantastic.

But when I do get a little time for myself, I like to play music, I play guitar – when my girls let me!

I consider myself a lifelong learner. I love trying new things, learning new things and building new things.

My wife teases me about my love of watching documentaries. I’d rather watch a good documentary than almost any other kind of show. I recently started going down the rabbit hole of documentaries on YouTube. My history interests are focused on the older history of Ireland and the British Isles, so that’s something that has been interesting to watch. Occasionally when I get to read something that’s not a Disney Princess story or Dr. Seuss, I’ll try to pick up something on the history of Britain or Ireland. That’s my kind of jam.

And if I get another half hour or so to myself and it’s not raining or too cold, I like to go for a run. I was a big runner when I was younger and I like to try to keep that going when I can, but it’s more difficult now because I need to fit it in before naptime or before the girls wake up, or it has to be warm enough to put them in the stroller so that we can all go out. It has been a little difficult this winter, but it’s still nice to get out and move around in addition to playing Barbie or having tea parties.

Tell me about your path to librarianship

I was an English major in college (at the University of Kansas) and started working in libraries in my undergraduate research library, which was where the rare books and special collections were housed. A Special Collections Librarian there mentored me and encouraged my interest in pursuing an MLIS after graduation.

I took some time to mull it over. I was encouraged to get very bored before going back to school, which I think is good advice! I worked for a Public Library for a few months. Then, I worked as a Readers’ Advisor for the New Jersey State Library Talking Book and Braille Center, where I met another librarian who became a mentor. We talked a lot about the value of building digital skills, regardless of whether I would remain in libraries. 

This led me to consider coding programs, but I realized I could also explore my interests in technology in a public-centered context such as a library. I found an internship at the Penn Libraries in their technology-rich learning commons, and I worked on my MLIS (at Rutgers) at the same time.

My first full-time position was also at the Penn Libraries as a Teaching and Learning Librarian. At this time, Penn Libraries fostered an immersive technologies initiative, and I became increasingly involved with those tools and platforms, which led me to my current position at the University of Rochester. I’m the first Immersive Technologies Librarian here at the River Campus Libraries on the Digital Scholarship team, and I am helping to establish an immersive technology space and program here called Studio X.

What are immersive technologies in this context?

Extended reality is the umbrella term that encapsulates:

Virtual Reality (VR), which uses advanced display and immersive audio technologies to create an interactive, three-dimensional environment. Users are in a headset, and they can ride roller coasters, walk around ancient Egypt, and examine molecular structures, for example. 

Augmented Reality (AR), which uses digital technology to overlay virtual information and objects on the real world. Pokémon Go is the go-to example.  

Mixed Reality (MR), which is a hybrid between the two in which the digital and real world are interacting and responding in real time.

In terms of technologies, it’s working with things like 3D scanners, 3D modeling tools, 360 cameras, and gaming engines, such as Unity and Unreal, to make virtual worlds and experiences. It’s using photogrammetry to take photos of objects and then reassembling them into the digital space with software. These technologies are being used across disciplines.

They’re being used to train surgeons, to help archaeologists reimagine and reconstruct cultural heritage sites, and to augment teaching and learning. The pandemic has really accelerated their use and development. For example, there are now so many social VR platforms, which users are leveraging to recreate physical spaces and connect with other people without the need to social distance.

This is so interesting! And it’s raising a question in my mind, the old one about whether Libraries and Information Technology Services are separate organizations in higher education settings or whether they’re blended and which entity on a campus takes responsibility for this kind of work. I think it’s really cool that this work is happening in the libraries.

Well, libraries have always been at the forefront of adopting, thinking critically about, and providing access to new technologies, so it makes sense that we’re the folks who are there first being the innovators. And these technologies require interdisciplinary collaboration and varied perspectives – you see that in a ton of the projects that are cropping up – so it’s important to have this type of program and space in the library. It’s a natural cross-unit space that can bring all those users together into a community of practice.

What do you most enjoy about your current position?

The people. I started at the end of February, and I worked for about three weeks on campus and have been virtual ever since. It’s a strange way to start a new position! My colleagues have been so supportive and understanding of how bizarre this is.

I’ve also been able to collaborate with some amazing students who are participating in a fellowship program. They’ve helped me to connect with other students and keep me informed of the student experience here. Their enthusiasm for the program we are building together has also been inspiring during these challenging months.

Moreover, one of the best parts about my job is that I’m encouraged to be creative and to try new things. I’m learning something new every day.

These are difficult times for many people. There’s a global pandemic, its devastating effect on the economy, people are acknowledging anti-Black racism and protesting – there are so many people in real turmoil – and there are real challenges in higher education as a result as well. How have these things impacted your work?

Because I’ve been virtual this entire time, I haven’t really been able to connect to campus in a satisfying way. I’m grateful to be working, but people are very tired and worried about the future. I see it on everyone’s faces on Zoom. I see it on my own face in my tiny Zoom window. In spite of this fatigue and low morale, I see folks continue to push forward and not in a business-as-usual way but more in trying to make interventions, or educating themselves, pushing themselves to try new things.

One example is how our students and my colleagues have participated in the Black Live Matter protests in Rochester – in particular their continued support for Daniel Prude and his family – throughout the semester. That was a really great introduction to Rochester for me – to see this community forming surrounding this movement, not only in the city in general, but in groups at the university.

I’m starting to see more people participating in these challenging conversations about EDI initiatives and educating themselves. While I’m seeing more awareness, education, and reflection, I’d like to see more systemic change in addition to the educational resources that are being developed. It’s a good time to take a hard look at how we recruit and retain staff.

Engagement in general has also been so much more difficult. I’m trying to start a new program and trying to connect with people, and I’m so aware of all of the extra burdens everyone is shouldering daily, which I’m also experiencing, and it’s hard for me to ask them to hold some space to consider something new, such as immersive technologies.

Fortunately, a lot of immersive technologies are being used for social justice work in really creative ways, so I pay attention to that, and I’ve been documenting a lot of those use cases to show others because that’s something that people can appreciate right now.

Let’s switch gears… What have you read, attended or participated in recently that has had an impact on your professional development?

One of the good things about the pandemic is that I’ve been able to attend so many more conferences than I normally would be able to attend. In particular – and this is shameless promotion for ACRL DVC but I really thought our Fall Program was great! – I enjoyed Fobazi and Eamon’s conversation, which was very nourishing and real. I feel like we’re all trying to persevere, keep working, and approach business as usual, but it’s just not possible. I really appreciated hearing about their struggles and the critical questions they are asking. That made me feel more validated at a time when I’m not feeling especially powerful.

I also attended the 2020 Unity for Humanity Summit (Unity is one of the creation platforms that is really big in immersive technologies), a two day conference during which presenters shared how they use these technologies to drive social impact and change. I attended a session on Black creators and was introduced to the work of Anatola Araba Pabst, Steven Christian, and Joel Kachi Benson, among others.

With so many responsibilities and so much going on, why did you choose to contribute so much time and energy to the Delaware Valley Chapter of the ACRL?

It has been really nice to participate consistently in this community throughout my transition to a new position and state. It has been challenging for me to get integrated into my new library just because I don’t see my colleagues in other departments regularly. There aren’t any visual cues or spontaneous conversations that you would otherwise have in the library, so I’ve really appreciated being able to maintain this connection.

After participating in a few ACRL/DVC programs as both a presenter and attendee, I was able to join the chapter’s social committee. Building off the success of the fall 2018 Librarians as Advocates program, we held an event with Books Through Bars, which was really cool. I was then asked to join the Board, and it has been wonderful to collaborate with this group across so many libraries.

The other thing I really like about this chapter is our focus on students and the ways we support them through scholarships and mentorships. That was so important to me as a student, so I really appreciate that focus of this group.

What are your goals or hopes for the upcoming year?

As the planned physical space for Studio X has been delayed by a year, we focused on pilot programming and needs assessment this fall. We’re now planning to open next summer, so I will begin to shift gears to thinking about policies, equipment management, and hygiene, etc.— shifting from the virtual to the physical realm as we plan for the open.

What about your non-working time? Tell me about your interests:

HA. This has been pretty challenging! Work / life balance for me is very minimal and is something I’m working on. That being said, the Rochester area is absolutely beautiful. We’ve been able to go hiking and running to get out of the house but still maintain social distance. 

The other thing I’ve been doing is a lot of cooking. I even finally started to use my grandmother’s pasta maker that had been sitting on a shelf for about 7 years, so – progress!