Author: ACRL DVC

Tell me about your path to librarianship

I fell into librarianship by accident. After college (I got my English BA at Penn State), I wasn’t sure what to do next. I worked as a paraprofessional at a vocational school and then I worked at a bookstore for a little while. When I was working at the bookstore I thought that being the person that buys the books would be a great job. During that time my Mom had been pushing me to go to Library School because I loved to read so much, and by happenstance I got a job at the Allentown Public Library and decided that it would be even cooler to do acquisitions for a big library than a small book store. 

I was a reference librarian and then an acquisitions librarian at a public library for a number of years. I liked it, but I was at a point in my life where there were a lot of changes and I had gotten a lot of encouragement during my MLIS to get my PhD, so I applied to programs. I received an ALA Spectrum Doctoral Fellowship, and decided to study human information behavior in groups at Rutgers.

I love theory and research, but PhD programs are geared towards developing academic teaching faculty members. I liked teaching, but I didn’t love teaching and because of my experience in academia and librarianship, academic library work seemed like a good direction for me. So that’s how I ended up being an information literacy librarian at Kutztown University and then a library director at Cedar Crest College, where I am now.

What do you most enjoy about your current position?

I started in April, which was a crazy time to come into a new job as a director. I had been at Kutztown for the last couple years. I worked with a lot of great people there and had a lot of freedom. I was flourishing, but at the same time, there was no way for me to really move up. I had so many ideas about what I wanted to do and so I started to think about how I was going to move forward and began to look at Directorships. And then, this one opened up, and it’s two blocks from my house. It’s also in Allentown. I grew up in center city and the possibility of being able to contribute by helping to forge connections between the school and the community was a big draw for me.

What do I like the best about my current position? I like that I can have an idea – especially since we’re small – we can think about it, and then we can try it. There are lots of limitations, like budgetary cuts, especially right now. But I came in with a completely different vision from the prior director and it’s been fun to try new things. It has been great to watch my staff become a real team. They are so talented and have been very supportive.

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?

I am hopeful that the capture on video of George Floyd’s horrific murder by the police and the Black Lives Matter protests and movement that followed are causing a fundamental cultural shift. Diversity and Equity work used to be “extra.” It felt so often like I was spinning my wheels, but suddenly people seem to see the need for change like never before. This gives me hope. It also provides an opening for me to do the kind of work that I’m passionate about and hopefully we can get some traction for the real systemic changes that are necessary. I know the news cycle will change, but I think this time is different.

This would be a completely different job if I had come in at a different time. I’m six months in, but I feel like I have gained so much more experience than I would have had if I had come in under normal circumstances. I was involved in the college’s COVID-19 Task Force. I’m a member of multiple committees devoted to diversity and equity.

I think, also, that one of the benefits of coming in at a time of great change is that people expected change. I was so different from my predecessor and the staff were on board for change, but this moment in history demanded it. They couldn’t say “We don’t do it that way.” because none of us have done anything this way before.

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

I feel right now that everything I do is professional development. I’m learning hands-on how to manage and lead. I’ve also been involved in college-wide task forces and I am a member on a number of committees and initiatives focused on diversity and equity.

Recently, I have been able to focus more specifically on LatinX culture and have returned to reading about teaching and providing services to Latinx students. Often, diversity work is more generally focused, so it has been great to be able to come at the work from a more personal vantage point and work outward from my own Latina identity. To be able to think more specifically about my community is exciting and also kind of a relief for me.

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?

I kind of got involved on a whim. Martha Stevenson, the Library Director at Kutztown, sent an email to the staff asking if anyone wanted to volunteer. When it first went through, I ignored it, but the second time I saw it come through, I thought “That could be good for me professionally.” So I went back to Martha and she said “Well, there’s only one position left, the Vice President/ President Elect.” I wasn’t sure about that, but decided to do it anyway. I had the whole year with Jess as president to get acquainted with the responsibilities and then I got to work with Jasmine and now Maisha’s coming in and the whole board and planning committee have been so great to work with. Joining the DVC has made me feel more a part of the library community than I had ever felt before. 

Being president of the org last year was also central to me thinking about myself as a leader and taking on administrative responsibilities. If I hadn’t done that, I don’t know that I’d be as ready to be a library director. I don’t think it had much to do with me getting this job, but it did have a lot to do with me thinking that I could do it.

What are your goals or hopes for the upcoming year?

I have a lot of goals for the library. The library has been very traditional in the past. There was a website, but there was no Chat, virtual appointments, social media engagement, remote teaching and so on. Getting these things set up were my main goals coming in.

And then when the pandemic happened, everything needed to be reinvented. So then we had to shift all of our resources and services online.

We’re also trying to increase our community engagement by building an authentic voice on social media. We’re sharing ourselves in a way that goes beyond a lot of the more formal library accounts that exist. We post about our resources, but we also share articles that we think are interesting, whimsical videos, staff interviews, etc. Our Black Lives Matter statement went out over social media. We make our stances specific to us, why we do what we do and who we are.  It is going well, but we’re still trying to make inroads with the students.

Figuring out how to connect with the students is definitely a priority.

We also have a lot of student workers and in the past, they would have done their homework during their shifts at the library. We are trying to take things in a new direction.  We want the library student workers to think of themselves as campus leaders. They should know about our resources and about information literacy. They should have the opportunity to run events, create displays, build libguides, and have an influence on library decisions.

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

I’m a Mom of elementary age kids and they are doing online schooling, so it’s a lot – trying to have this new position of leadership and take care of my kids’ education and their psychological well-being. Beyond the actual doing, there’s all this Mom-worry. Online schooling is such a feat of management with all of the assignments, platforms, and meetings. We are lucky that my husband is able to work from home, so he’s taking on a huge amount of it, and we have family helping as well, but it’s still so much. So there is all that comes with that, while we simultaneously try to build a happy and healthy home. We also want our girls to be informed about what’s happening in the world. We’re a very political family, which is very charged, especially at the moment. So, to deal with all that, we focus on them as much as we can. We are trying to get outside as much as we can. We’re going hiking, biking, doing puzzles, watching movies. I take a lot of long walks to keep myself sane and grounded.

I’m reading fiction a lot more now too. I recently read The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett and Conjure Woman by Afia Atakora. I used to read so much fiction before my PhD work, but the program was so consuming that I stopped. But now, I’m trying to read novels instead of reading the news, instead of going to Twitter. So instead, I try to go to my Kindle app, and sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t.

I also love television and I usually watch before I go to bed in order to relax. I’m watching Vida right now on Starz, which is a story about two Mexican American sisters who are taking over a bar after their Mom dies. It’s really centered on LatinX culture in the US. You don’t realize how important representation is until you get some. It feels great hearing the music, the cultural references, the food, the Spanglish, and so I’m loving that right now.

I’m also watching The Good Fight. It deals specifically with what’s going on right now politically, and is critical of the administration in a way that other shows just aren’t, which I find refreshing. It’s hard to walk around all the time like everything is normal when it most certainly is not.

Tell me about your path to librarianship:

I have known that I wanted to be a librarian since High School. I was initially considering journalism but hated the deadlines of being a reporter – even in High School when it wasn’t very consequential. But I really enjoyed the background research and talking to people – asking questions. One of my friends asked “Have you thought about being a Librarian?” and I said “No, but that’s a great idea. Why don’t I think about that some more?”

So I did some exploration in all different kinds of libraries. I ended up doing my undergrad degree at Temple in English and Computer Science because I thought those two things would lead to librarianship. While I was there I had a really great mentor, Kristina DeVoe. I walked into the Paley Library and said “I’m going to be a Librarian and you need to help me!” And they said “No one has ever done that before!”  Kristina very kindly offered to create a reference internship experience.

I really connected with the experience of doing reference interviews. But I still didn’t really know what my track in grad school would be and I ended up doing Competitive Intelligence and Knowledge Management because I thought it was interesting. I’m so happy that I ended up in Higher Education because I love the diversity of experiences, I love talking to students – I try to impart the joy of doing research to students. I love making it a moment for myself and I hope that students make it a moment. It makes me so sad when their procrastination results in their stress and rush, because it’s such a joy to me.

I feel very fortunate because it feels serendipitous. As a young kid you don’t know very much. I knew I liked school. Now it’s my career.

What do you most enjoy about your current position?

One of the things I appreciate about my job right now is that it facilitates the lifestyle that I want. I love the work, but I also love the way the work fits in my life.

I also really appreciate my colleagues at Muhlenberg. I could be in the same position and without good relationships I would flounder.  I currently have collaborations with librarians, faculty in various departments, instructional designers, students, administrators – so many relationships that add so much value to my life.

I’ve also enjoyed the opportunities that I’ve had to connect with people outside my college. It’s the people that really make the work.

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?

I really felt the emergency of Donald Trump becoming President four years ago. I found that I can handle situations better if I feel that I’m taking action and so I got involved in community organizing and I continue to work for justice in my community. Right now, my focus is on disruption of mass incarceration and getting police out of local schools, and I try to impart my values on my work within my library community. That kind of action has sustained me when things feel really terrible because I try to change what I can, and… I don’t know… not worry about the things I can’t.

But I also found a really good therapist! It’s easy to catastrophize catastrophes and not know what to do. But one thing I’ve been reflecting on is the good fortune I have to be in a better place than I was four years ago. So even when I felt like the world was ending, I have still found great joy in the past four years. I try to recognize the fortune in that situation and also weaponize myself to destroy systems of injustice. It’s a balance between working to help other people and taking care of myself.

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

I’ve recognized that the pandemic is a global trauma and I watched this awesome webinar, The Introduction to Trauma-Informed Librarianship led by Karina Hagelin. They did a really nice job and it’s recorded and you can get the slides.

The other thing is a 2020 CLAPs (The Critical Librarianship and Pedagogy Symposium in Arizona) presentation titled “Beyond Self Care and Standardization:  Creating a sustainable teaching practice through engaged pedagogy” by Veronica Arellano Douglas, Emily Deal, and Carolina Hernandez.  

These two resources also demonstrate this balance of supporting others, creating a compassionate environment, and also taking care of ourselves.

Veronica has been a force in my professional life. She started Librarian Design Share, which is a website about design for libraries. In my first academic position, I was one of four librarians in a college library and was doing all of the outreach. I found Librarian Design Share and it was a huge resource for me. When Veronica decided she wanted to focus on other things, she (and her co-administrator April) gave it to me and a friend to continue.

Veronica also recently edited a book with Joanna Gadsby and I have a chapter in it. It’s forthcoming and titled: Deconstructing Service in Libraries: Intersections of Identities and Expectations. This book is incredible. I’m so excited to read it and I’m really honored to have a chapter in it. My chapter is about the application of a community organizing method to my teaching practice.  In community organizing, we use a tactic called vulnerability practice. It’s a community-building strategy in which you share your personal experience by reflecting on guiding questions in order for other people to realize that your identity characteristics impact your experience, but also how our experiences are similar across those things. It’s supposed to allow you to create a network of trust, but also be able to call people out and in to combating white supremacy. Writing that chapter has helped me articulate what I value in my library practice, and how engaging in this way benefits students, but also benefits me as a teacher so that I don’t feel lost.

Honestly, I find the whole idea of “one shots” to be really troubling. It just is not an empowering experience. So it has been a struggle for me and still kind of is, but I find if I enter the classroom as a whole person, share with people about my life and the real experience of information seeking, it changes the encounter for everyone.

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?

I joined DVC leadership because I wanted connections and I wanted to expand my leadership capabilities and I think it worked! So I would encourage anyone who is looking to grow as a librarian to become involved in something like DVC. And I continue because I believe in the work and the community.

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

I try to spend as much time outside as possible. It’s not really exciting…hiking, walking, gardening, mowing the lawn, sitting! Anytime I visit with friends it’s in my backyard. Fresh air is always good for my spirit.

Tell me about your path to librarianship:

Like many librarians, I didn’t actually plan to become a librarian even though I come from a family of librarians. My grandfather was a library director at Salt Lake City and the Ramapo Catskill Library System, my uncle is currently the Director of the Newburgh Public Library, yet I had no expectations to become a librarian. I have an undergraduate degree in Italian Literature and European Studies (from the University of Delaware) and I thought maybe I’d be a translator. I had very vague ideas.

I was in my senior year in college and my best friend’s mother, the director of the Kent County Library System, learned that I had no idea what I wanted to do. She asked if I had considered being a librarian and I replied that it had never crossed my mind. I drove home for spring break right past Rutgers, stopped, met the faculty there, filled out an application, and by the time I got home, I had applied to grad school and basically decided to become a librarian. Serendipity!

What do you most enjoy about your current position?

Officially, my title is Electronic and Instructional Services Librarian. It took some time to come up with that title, since “Library Ninja” is apparently not a professional title! I do a lot of things. It’s a small school and a small library. There are only five of us, so there’s not one person who does only one thing. Our cataloging librarian helps out with instruction when I’m overloaded. I’m responsible for all the undergraduate instruction. Even if I don’t teach it myself, I design what we’re doing. I maintain all of our online resources (databases and journals) and also buy all of our print journals. And I designed the library website and maintain it. I do a little bit of everything.

I’m very lucky that I have a boss and colleagues who, when I say I want to do something that sounds a little crazy, they say “Let’s try it” rather than “no.” I’m very fortunate.

In some ways it’s nice being at such a small school because if I want to learn about cataloging, I can go to our cataloguer and offer to help out. At a big school you wouldn’t get the chance to do that. On the other hand, at a big school you probably aren’t trying to teach everything. I taught fifty sessions last spring while trying to maintain everything and set up authentication systems. And I designed the new website over the summer, so I need to try to do all of that at the same time.

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?

One of the things that drew me to DelVal was that the founder of the school was a Jewish Rabbi who really was a social reformer and very ahead of his time. Back in 1896 he created this school because he wanted anyone to be able to get an education regardless of their race or gender. The school has gotten a little bit away from that mission, but they are trying to get back to it. Like many agriculture schools, there has been tension on campus at times, although things are really great now. We have a new President, Dr. Gallo, our first woman President and that has really changed the character of the campus for the better.

Before the pandemic, we had really been focusing on LGBTQ+ students, who didn’t necessarily get as much support before. The Library got a big donation of resources and changed some washrooms to become gender neutral. We had been trying to really connect with those students. But now we’re just trying to get through the year and doing what needs to be done to support the students to get through the year. We have these great initiatives and I hope we can go back to them when we have a little more time to put a little more effort into them. The donation we got was from an alum who graduated about 30 years ago. He was a gay man on this campus in the middle of rural Pennsylvania and this library was a haven for him. So that’s why he’s been reaching out to us and trying to connect and trying to support the students who are in the position he remembers being in.

We LOVE being that haven. We want to be that place and we can’t do that now and it’s so hard to wrap your head around. When you’re used to welcoming people in and sharing with them and building this community and suddenly that’s all taken away from you – it’s hard. The building is essentially closed. All of our wings are serving as classrooms. There is nowhere for students to study in the library. They can come into the lobby and pick up a book and leave. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that – how I can connect with them when I can’t see them or talk to them. So, lots of zoom calls, online reference, tutorials, anything we can think of to reach out and say “Hey, we’re still here.” It’s tough for everybody.

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

Being in a pandemic has thrown my world into a loop trying to work at home while having a toddler, while my husband is upstairs in his office on conference calls all day. I’m lucky that I have flexibility in my work, but it also means that it’s harder to make sure that my work is a priority.

So, there’s this really great comic called “You Should Have Asked” by Emma. It’s about women generally and their partners, and even if their partners are trying to step up, there’s this mental load that typically women carry keeping a house running, keeping a family running – just keeping everything going, remembering everything that needs to be done and watching a toddler for the thirteen hours he’s awake and then he goes to bed and then I have to go to work for however many hours I can manage… It’s been tough. The first time I saw it, I cried a little. It’s like I had never seen it put into words. I knew that’s what I had been doing. My Mom was a stay-at-home Mom and I’m sure she must have felt similarly, trying to do everything.

There’s also “How Not to Hate Your Husband After Having Kids” which sounds meaner than it is! It’s a very positive book. It helped to be reminded that I have to ask for help, that I’m not expected to do all this myself. Reminding myself – especially in a pandemic – that the house does not have to be immaculate – if the laundry doesn’t get done today, it will get done tomorrow. That’s ok. We have food, we have what we need and I have to let my standards go a little bit, ask for help and not correct when things are not done exactly the way I’m liking. It’s tough! I would have folded the napkins differently! But does it matter? No – they’re napkins.

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?

Part of it is that ACRL DVC makes me feel like a small fish in a big pond, but in a good way. I get to see what these schools that have much more funding and many more resources are doing and then I can find ways to adapt it and make it fit my little corner. I wouldn’t think “we need to reconsider how to catalog things” because a lot of what I do is just trying to get through the day. And so to have these bigger conversations, I can say “hey, that’s something that I can do and I can talk to my cataloger about.” There are things we can actually implement and we can make a difference for students. 

In my position, I don’t really influence the direction of ACRL DVC that much. I manage the website, but I like to think that by having a website that’s navigable, it’s more welcoming to people who might be more interested in looking into it and reaching out and joining because they’re finding stuff. That’s my little way of giving back. Plus it’s fun for me – I like website design – it’s my creative little tinkering.

What are your goals or hopes for the upcoming year?

I’ve been working on a series of online tutorials. It’s part of my mission for how to connect to students. So I’m making them in response to all these questions we get regularly and trying to make them engaging. So many times we want to teach students something, and it’s really well intentioned, but it doesn’t connect with them. And not that I have the answer to that, but I’m trying to figure out how to get students to understand “searching as exploration.” How do I get them to understand that the concept might actually make a difference. So that’s been my immediate project.

And then I’m actually going to work on a second master’s degree. I was supposed to start this fall, but I pushed it off until the spring because who knows if daycare will be open? And the thought of trying to do my job and another degree and take care of another human being is a bit too much. The degree is in Management and Organizational Leadership, because maybe I’d like to become a Director someday? I don’t know! It’s in the family, right? We’ll see. It’s sort of a way to explore that, because with so few staff, how else do you learn about that?

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

My birthday was in March and I signed up for bread making classes and pottery classes. I was excited about those. Those were going to be my things. But I do watercolors and I’ve taken up needlepoint, like half the people in quarantine. I’m not very good, but it’s fun – it’s very soothing and methodical to make one stitch after another. It’s something that helps me focus my brain.

Tell me about your path to librarianship:

The most literal version of this story is that although I have always been a regular user of libraries, since childhood, I never considered it as a career path at all. My understanding of things began to shift because I decided to go to library school!

I have an undergraduate degree in history and in my senior year I started working for a research company out of the University of Chicago working at the National Archives in Washington D.C. collecting data. I was looking at Civil War records and I fell in love with the work that I was doing. But if I’m honest, I fell in love with the place and the idea of being connected to work of such importance – seeing all the different kinds of research that was going on and the idea that I could be in contact with so many other people’s research in addition to my own research if I were in the archivist’s “seat.” And “Archivist” was surely something I had never heard of before.

So I started looking into what it meant to be an archivist and found out my alma mater, the University of Maryland, had the number two archives program in the country and so I thought “Well, why not?” So I applied, I got in, and started classes the next fall. I graduated with a concentration in archives and records management.

Still, figuring out what that meant for me and the kind of work I wanted to do took some time – I just wanted to work somewhere cool and be connected to researchers. My original plan had been to be a teacher, so the education piece and helping people – finding that sweet spot between being a teacher, an educator and an archivist was really my goal.

But this was in 2008, there was a recession and there were not many jobs available. I also did not have the best guidance when I was in grad school – I didn’t do a lot of networking and connection building that would have been helpful. So I had this degree in hand and not a good idea of what to do next and needed to support myself. So I became a school librarian first.

I worked in a K-12 Charter School in Washington D.C. for 5 years as a school librarian, teacher and Jack-of-all-trades, since that is what it takes to be in a charter school. I helped with the Dance Team, taught after school tutoring and Saturday School. It became my world as a 25 year old figuring out what it means to be an adult. But after five years, I thought “I have to get out of here, this is exhausting.”

I ended up at MontgomeryCollege, a community college right outside of D.C. What an experience! The Libraries were in a restructuring mode, so I got to be a part of that. The work helped me hone my skills as a research librarian, but also exposed me to all kinds of other things like organizational development. I got to work on a redesign project and strategic planning projects. I got connected with other work happening on the campus. I discovered that academic libraries were where I wanted to be. I had found the sweet spot I was looking for: I got to help with research, I got to be involved with projects that teachers and students are doing, I got to be an educator, and I could be connected to the mechanics of it all.

Five years later (the millennial timeline!) I came to UD (The University of Delaware.) My husband and I came to UD together and it has been exciting. I’ve been here since 2017. UD has a lot of opportunity.  

What do you most enjoy about your current position?

My current role, Organizational Development and Learning Librarian is new to our organization. There were things that had been partly covered in other people’s work before, but now are formalized into this new role. The first thing I love about it is the excitement of creating something new. I’m always finding out where the boundaries lie and redefining what my work means. My job description is in flux. I find myself either being pulled into or sticking my nose into all kinds of things that maybe are not included in the job description, but having that flexibility is fun – I’m not a person who can do the same thing every day.

The other thing I love is that despite the libraries having a pretty traditional organizational chart of divisions and departments and units within departments and a long history of those reporting lines being how people work together, I don’t have to worry about that at all because I’m actually in an HR “bucket,” which is floating outside of all of that divisional stuff. The nature of my job is to work across the entire organization.

I get questions, requests for help, and am involved in coaching for our leadership team. It’s not my job to be an expert in the work that people do. My job is to be involved with development, learning, leadership, and staff support – helping them find their way to whatever it is they need to do and I get to do that with everybody from the AULs to individual staff people. People can come to me with HR related issues but also questions like “how can I make this process better?” That flexibility is really fun.

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?

The first thing I have to say is that I feel blessed because this is not affecting my life outside of work. I’m stressed but I have a job, I have a paycheck, my work can continue and my work translates really well to a virtual environment.

I think the biggest thing is that while much of my work is still important, and people think of it as important (people need to learn, to retool, to deal with this new environment) part of my job is to think about ED&I (Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) for our organization and I spend a lot of time providing training and trying to do culture building around how we talk about equity. The seeds that were planted before the pandemic are sprouting.

People think it’s important and still want to work on it, but everything takes a back seat right now. That’s the biggest issue for how it’s affecting my work. The things I want to do related to social justice, continuing the learning and growth we’ve been experiencing, facilitating conversations or the REAL work which we have to do, which is to look at our policies and start to ask “How can we make these things anti-racist?” Everyone agrees it’s important, but who has time?

We’re opening our doors on Tuesday [September 1] to completely new circumstances and the unknown. And then there is the spectre of wondering how long it may last. How long before we need to shut down anyway? It’s wild and fatalistic. If I were to show you my calendar and show you the things I’m spending time on, I’m not spending much time at all on longer range plans. I’ve been too busy in meetings trying to figure out our service model because I’m part of the leadership team. 

Priorities have shifted because we are in short term, put out the fire, high anxiety mode. And to add to that, I’m a teacher – I’m thinking about changing behaviors. If it’s about retooling or relearning how to do your job better, or if it’s about how to manage your time or if it’s about reflecting on your bias and how it shows up in the decisions that we make, or how it allows you to see or not see systemic racism… Your brain can not be all cortisol-ed up when you’re doing that work.

The physical manifestation of the stress we are all dealing with does not allow folks to reflect, to slow down, to learn, to build toward the long term vision that we all want to anchor to. Who can anchor to a long term vision when we have no idea what’s around the corner?

So it’s been hard to put those things to the wayside, but some of the things we’re sticking to – it’s on the calendar, it’s what we do. On Tuesday we had our regular, summer, professional development lightning talks and it was great. There were great presentations, there was good conversation. Are people going to take that and run with it like they may have in normal circumstances? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe they’ll come back to it in three months when things have calmed down, if they calm down, fingers crossed!

There is something about the fight or flight feelings that we are all experiencing right now that makes the work that I was hired to do, which has two parts, learning and organizational development. The learning needs to go to the wayside for now. Instead I’m spending my time on planning the training that will allow staff to do different work. We’re in the meeting, we’re making the decision, and I’m putting on my facilitator hat thinking about what questions I can ask, how can we look at this from a different angle that will help everyone in the room move past the sticky point in the conversation?

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

Because of the times and because of where we are and needing to decide where I want to put my energy, I’ve been thinking about anti-racism. I just finished Ibram Kendi’s book “How to be an Anti-racist” for the second time. I have a list of things I want to read, but decided to start here.

It’s a lot. It’s a different approach – a different way of using the language of racism. I was able to host a discussion about the content with our staff last week, which was really good. Folks seemed really engaged. We watched a TED Talk that he did and then had a discussion. I appreciate that folks are making space to be direct. The language we have used to couch the issues and provide comfort and a soft landing for some of these ideas is going away. We realize enough is enough.

And it’s not just white people! It’s important that we recognize what Kendi does in his book (and this is what makes it difficult for some people). Dr. Kendi really believes that we all are suffering from the cancer of racism. And we have to figure out how to stop seeing each other’s sickness as something that is inherently about ourselves, and see the culprit – the culprit is the policies and racist structures – and begin to put policies and actions in place that are going to dismantle that so that we can be well.

The impact of anti-Black racism on my life is so much more than the doors that have been closed or opened to me or ways in which my first name has maybe changed how people see me. When people think about racism they think about the inter-personal, or privilege vs discrimination. It has been ingrained in me to judge others based on all kinds of racist criteria even though I push against it all the time.

While this is professional development, it’s totally personal development too. It’s giving me tools to help my colleagues as individuals and giving me tools to help us reframe the conversation for how we make sense of the work that we do, but it’s also helping me heal, and helping me prepare to raise this child and learn to be an advocate in a completely new way. So I’ve really enjoyed engaging with that content.

Reading a book is not going to teach me how to be anti-racist. Reading the book is the beginning. Then there’s the conversations that I’ll have, the self-reflection, the quietly thinking about it. While it’s just the first step, at least my email isn’t distracting me. I can focus with the analog experience of reading a book.

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?

I’m new to the area (I’m from the DC area and moved here in 2017) and the first local thing that I did was the chapter event in the Fall of 2017 in Philadelphia, Fact, False or Just Flawed: Critically Examining the News in the Age of Truthiness, with keynote speaker Dr. Pamela Newkirk.

I had never gotten involved in local librarian organizations and ALA was just overwhelming, so to come to this thing and realize that not only is it for librarians, it’s academic librarians. It was focused, the content was rich, the people were wonderful. I remember I recognized someone right away. There was an immediate community I was excited to be connected with because moving away from where you grew up and having to build a whole new community is really tricky.

It was not my intention to run for future president! I thought I’d just get involved, be on the board and help out with events, but the question came my way and I loved the people that I was connecting with and the conversations that I was having and so I said “why not!”

I’m humbled by the opportunity to be in a leadership capacity. The only reason I feel like I can do this is because I know Jasmine will be there and Stefani and Jess and other people that will do this with me. This isn’t about my vision, it’s about helping this community to thrive and I’m grateful to have the opportunity to do that.

What are your goals or hopes for the upcoming year?

“To live!” (joking) But literally, I go through my ups and downs of how hopeful I can be. It’s real. I’m lucky to have a house and space and my health and my family is healthy – including the new baby I have on the way, but any of that can change, so it’s scary.

Along with health, to live, is honestly the election. I don’t want to make it political, but it’s that we can have an election and that we get through it and that this country can continue to make itself better. The local elections are so important and that’s really on my mind. Can we all continue to use the model of American democracy to support one another and do what’s needed to get us out of this hell, or is it all going to go down? That’s the deep stuff.

It’s so hard to care about anything beside this little baby right now! My life is about to completely change, but beyond that, I’m very interested in seeing how education will shift. Anyone who wants it to go back to the way it was, is crazy. To me it’s the same conversation as the one we’re having about racism: If you’re confronted with something that shakes your understanding to its core, of course you’re going to say “No, I want to pretend I never heard that! I want to pretend that I’ve never heard of Covid 19. I want to pretend that we’ve never been in this place” But we can’t do that. We have to figure out how not just how to deal with this moment, but ask how do the things we’ve learned change the way we operate going forward?

And I think there’s lots of room for growth in higher education in terms of access, affordability, flexibility, the ways that we hold one another accountable for good pedagogy and stewardship of the work we’ve been asked to do. If it takes a bunch of students taking classes in their pajamas to stand up and ask “Why am I paying so much for this?” If that’s what it takes for us to start to really think about what it is that we’re doing here, who is this supposed to be for and what is the value of it? Then it’s worth it. Because we’re creating even more inequity in continuing to do things the way we’ve done them.

I’m excited about the ways that this crisis will turn into opportunity for growth. And that’s not only about the library. Think of what our online services have become! Wow. There is silver lining and light at the end of this tunnel – if we can survive to the end of the tunnel, there’s light for how things can be improved. But we’ve got to get there. Wear your mask, wash your hands, stay at home!

Tell me about your path to librarianship:

Like many librarians, I loved libraries as a kid. I was a military kid, so there was lots of moving around, lots of new neighborhoods, new schools and friends, but even though there were new libraries, libraries were a constant. I could always find libraries, and could always find librarians too, who were always friendly and like kindred spirits. They always treated me like an adult, they valued my questions, thoughts and curiosities so they have really special places in my heart.

Honestly, when I was an undergrad, I really didn’t know what I wanted to do and then I started working in my library at Pitt (The University of Pittsburgh) and I heard people talk about librarianship and thought “This makes a lot of sense!”

So I went to get my MLS after that, but I graduated into the recession, so it took awhile to get a professional job. I worked an overnight shift at Carnegie Mellon for a few years, and then got a job at Temple working the night shift. While I was at Temple I was lucky to have great supervisors who knew I wanted to be a librarian and they allowed me time and space to go out and do other things, like be at the Reference Desk and get experience doing other library work. I also earned another Masters Degree while I was there and that really helped me to get the Research and Instruction Resident Librarian position at Swarthmore College. 

That was such a wonderful experience. I remember how wonderful Swarthmore was and the library staff. I remember my supervisor Pam Harris would say that the Residency was like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book – I could follow my interests and be supported.

From Swarthmore I went to Lehigh and have been here five years. I think I’ve grown a lot – especially in my philosophy of librarianship, which has expanded to include thinking about students and faculty and community members as people more holistically – about how the library can support who they want to be beyond their academic work.

Quick follow-up – in what discipline is your second master’s degree?

It’s in Educational Psychology. I always wanted to teach and have been interested in teaching, but I was never taught how to teach, so it was great to learn and think about learning theory and cognition.

What do you most enjoy about your current position?

Lots of things! I work with our College of Education and they are super special and wonderful and so inclusive and they’re like-minded because they’re thinking about education too. I’m learning so much from the students and the faculty. And since it is an applied program, most of them know why they’re there, what they’re doing and what they want to get out of it, so there’s an immediacy that’s important.

The other part of my job is that I’m a manager now – I manage our Instruction and Outreach Librarians, so I work with amazing people who have such creativity and kindness and intelligence in thinking expansively about the role of librarians in our institution. It’s been great to do things like an Escape Room or a Poetry Workshop. The opportunities for creativity and experimentation are what I really value and the spirit of that in the people I work with too.

There are frustrations at my institution, like there are at any institution, but when you find like-minded people across the institution who are willing to partner and collaborate, so many wonderful and impactful things come out of that.

So what I enjoy most about my current position are the partnerships, the cooperation and the community, both within the Library, but also within the Institution and even the wider community. We have the opportunity to think broadly about what library outreach means and what it can look like.

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?

Everyday there is something that has changed that we now need to figure into our planning without really knowing what changes are actually going to happen. There are so many contingency plans.

I’ve been thinking a lot about change and change management because accelerating through change too quickly can be detrimental rather than useful to any organization, but yet, we’re in a time when there is no not-changing fast.

But in terms of what is the hardest thing? For me and for my colleagues, it’s about how we best support our students in relation to remote learning and being visible and available to students who are in different time zones and who might have varying access to devices and quiet space to talk. Also supporting our black students and students of color who have done tremendous work in voicing their experiences to our administration who don’t seem to really care because they don’t make changes. So how do we hold the Library accountable – what can we do to support those students, but also as a pretty critical part of the University, how can we hold the Institution accountable for making the changes that we need?

So there are definitely not any answers to that yet, but there’s been a lot of thought and the start of taking action. We’re pretty student centered, so the challenge is that we want to be available to them in whatever way that they need us but also keep in mind that they will be stressed and overwhelmed in all sorts of situations… Navigating that is the hardest thing.

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

I thought of something from about a year ago: I went to Rare Book School in Philly at the Free Library. The name of the class was Community Archives and Digital Cultural Memory. I’m not an archivist, but that was the best professional development experience I’ve had personally. It was almost spiritual and it was deeply affecting.

The group of people who were in the class were so diverse in every way: their professional backgrounds, where they were geographically located, it has been to date the only library space I have been in that was at least half black or brown – it was mostly people of color.

The conversations we were having about reimagining archives were so rich and imaginative. It made me think differently about things I take for granted. Archives are human records, but yet they’re often not accessible in any way shape or form, so what are some ways of reimagining or re-envisioning the archive so that it is more useful? History is so important to understanding where we’ve come from so that we know where we’re going.

We had field trips to the Mutter Museum, which was an interesting conversation because that place does some problematic things. We went to the Library Company of Philadelphia when they had an Afro-futurism Exhibit. We went to the William Way Community Center and talked to the archivist there. It was really special to hear about all these people who are doing community archival work around the city and to be in this community with all these super wonderful people. 

I’ve been thinking about it because we all just met on zoom last week, which was so wonderful. It boosted my spirit to see them all again.It was intellectually stimulating and it also stimulated my imagination and I think we don’t leave space for that so much in our daily work lives. Let’s use our imaginations! It can feel unproductive, but it’s not wrong.

That sounds almost magical.

That’s the word for it!

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?

I’ve gotten so much from being a part of my local library professional community. I was a part of our Lehigh Valley group and was pretty active with some of the programs there and I just looked forward to seeing those people and talking with those people – even if we might have disagreements, I feel I grew so much with the work with them.

And then when I started going to the DVC things, the keynotes, the panels, there were so many substantive things that I brought back and started plugging in to my institutional context. So, basically giving back because I wouldn’t be where I am or who I am as a professional or a person without those networks. I want to help contribute and develop and grow the wonderful work that has already been done so that other people have those opportunities

What are your goals or hopes for the upcoming year?

The recent past presidents Stefani and Jess were so good and their leadership was such a great example. They were so great about articulating DVC values. So I want to maintain that momentum forward, and also think about how we can think outside the model of a Fall Event and a Spring Event and have ways for our members – and even people who aren’t members – to continually engage with each other and the Chapter.

That’s really the heart of it: facilitating opportunities for growth and keeping in mind an expansive view of professional development too. You don’t necessarily have to have a presentation from a librarian talking about a project although those are wonderful and I’ve learned so much from them. But what are some other things we can do to be in dialog with each other and then bring that back to our institutions?

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

Well, I love to read! [laughter!] I love to read, especially biographies. There’s something about them I find endlessly fascinating.

I also like to write. I’ve taken writing workshops.

And I’m a harp player – I have a lever harp. I like to play Celtic music – that is what my harp is made for – and also pop music – I try to adapt pop music for it.

I’m a big fan of taking walks – it’s my quiet, reflective time in the early 5am morning.

And in the past five years I’ve been more and more involved with my community with various groups, like youth focused non-profits that are related to the arts in some way. Those things have been valuable to my personal and professional growth. I’ve learned so much from those kids and also the people who run those programs.

So those things keep me pretty busy!

Sounds like it! This conversation has been delightful for me, thank you! Before we close, is there anything else you want to say or want people to know?

Only to let people know that if there is anyone who is reading this, if you’d like to be involved in the Chapter, don’t hesitate to reach out – there are a lot of opportunities and we’re really open to new people!