Power and Empowerment: Labor, Agency, and Dynamic Relationships in Academic Libraries
June 2, 2023 | University of San Francisco – Fromm Hall – 2497 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117
In our 50th anniversary of the California Conference on Library Instruction, we sought to examine the many power structures that influence the work of library instruction. Our work exists within structures that experience tensions between labor and power. We have the responsibility to recognize our power/authority in our space, yet we acknowledge challenges. We are constrained by budgets, lack of power, existing power structures, understaffing, and expectations to do with what we are given. We have the ability to empower students with information literacy and instruction through careful thought and understanding of their needs. We engage in work that challenges conventional wisdom, but we have constraints. Many other power dynamics impact our work as well.
Our honored keynote speakers were Cynthia Orozco and Erika Montenegro.
Code of Conduct & COVID Protocols
9:00 – 9:30 Registration and Refreshments (Fromm foyer)
9:30 – 9:45 Welcome Remarks (Xavier)
CCLI 2023 Chair: Daniel Ransom – Instructional Services Librarian, California College of the Arts
Shawn Calhoun – University Library Dean, University of San Francisco
9:45 – 10:45 Keynote Address (Xavier)
Finding Power in the Margins: Community & Positionality as Epistemic Tools in Library Instruction
Cynthia Mari Orozco, OER + Equity Librarian
East Los Angeles College
Erika Montenegro, Instruction and Outreach Librarian
East Los Angeles College
10:45 – 11:00 Break
11:00 – 12:15 Workshops, Lightning Talks, & Discussion
Looking for Joy in All the Wrong Places: A Literature Review Workshop (Maraschi)
Katherine Luce, Instruction and Web Services Librarian
CSU Maritime
Margot Hanson, Science Librarian
Saint Mary’s College of California
What does joy mean? Could it come from the workplace? Should it?
This session reviews current research surrounding joy and well-being in workplaces, inviting participants to consider their own organizational culture.
The literature on toxicity and low morale in library workplaces is extensive. Neoliberalism, trends towards a care economy, and ramifications of the COVID pandemic place considerable demands on library workers and exacerbate existing inequities. Top-down efforts to improve well-being can be ineffective or self-serving. Recent literature outside the library field describes the need to make work joyful, reflecting workplaces’ joylessness, barriers to changing the work itself, and our desire for transcendent delight. This session identifies exacerbating trends such as positive psychology’s false hope, the mythology of self-care, and management approaches that offer snacks instead of real change. Improving workers’ autonomy and interpersonal connections can impact well-being, but can such changes bring the alluring concept of joy within reach?
Lightning Talks (Xavier)
Caminando Preguntamos: Demonstrating ‘servingness’ with library instruction
Stef Baldivia, Equity & Outreach Librarian
California State University, Chico
Highlighting BIPOC scientists and researchers: A library one-shot for STEM disciplines
Josh Rose, Instruction and Reference Librarian
College of Alameda
Practicing Radical Equality in Library Instruction
Richard M. Cho, Research Librarian for Humanities and Literature
University of California, Irvine
Rising Scholars: Academic Librarianship for the Incarcerated Student
Karrie Bullock, Faculty Librarian
Merced College
Match.COM(unication): Librarian as Matchmaker
Kristin Peace, Research & Instruction Librarian
Pepperdine University
Teaching Epistemology for Knowledge Justice
Maggie Clarke, Reference Coordinator
California State University, Dominguez Hills
Notes from Dismantling a Library: The Case of Holy Names University’s Cushing Library
Michael Nicoloff, Library Co-Director and Head of Information Literacy
Holy Names University
Veronica Churchill, Library Co-Director and Head of Collections and Digital Initiatives
Holy Names University
Discussion Tables (Berman)
Empowering Each Other
Hosted by the CCLI Steering Committee
This session will provide participants with an opportunity to meet other librarians, network, and discuss relevant topics and issues. Participants will be welcomed to gather and visit tables with the following topics or create their own topics:
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- I have a library instruction problem…
- What’s new?
- What empowers you?
- Make something (Origami and Zines)
- Build and bitch (LEGO)
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12:15 – 1:15 Lunch
1:15 – 2:15 Breakout Sessions
Whiteness as Property is Epistemic Violence, Student Cultural Wealth is Harm Reduction (Berman)
Dr. kim l. morrison, Equity, Diversity, Outreach and Inclusion Librarian
Chabot College
kyzyl fenno-smith, Associate Librarian
California State University, East Bay
We focus our work on mitigating the epistemic violence of library practices which erase and deny the wealth of BIPOC lives. We center the lived experiences of BIPOC peoples and communities, while framing harmful academic knowledge and research practices as engines of inequality which reproduce Whiteness and enhance its property value. Students are rewarded for knowing and validating epistemically violent academic knowledges over community values, knowledge, and practices. This devaluing of the community is not outside of the student’s experience – these research practices require complicity with Whiteness by the student researcher, requiring that the student participate in self-harm and harm of the community. We posit student cultural wealth approaches that value and build upon students’ assets. We will examine theoretical approaches to inclusive and sustaining educational practice for BIPOC students, teaching anti-racist and FUBU research methods to students, and the epistemic power of BIPOC student knowledge production in an academic library context.
When Peer-Review Won’t Do: Exploring Expertise and Knowledge (Maraschi)
Justin Torres, Ethnic Studies Librarian
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
As academic librarians one of our duties is to ensure we provide students with the toolkit to become adequate researchers. However, it has become commonplace for students to seek out peer-reviewed or scholarly articles without knowing the culture of academia. Students who want to be active in academia should know the issues that exist in peer-review. In this session, participants will assess the importance of challenging traditional academic sources. Participants will also be able to design instructional strategies that enhance a student’s ability to find sources that exist outside traditional academia. We as librarians need to be transparent about power sources like peer-review and encourage students to challenge and be skeptical of the voices who author information. By challenging power sources we better position students to fully understand the culture of academia but also give a voice to figures of expertise that exist outside traditional scholarship.
Transcending Silos: Communicating Across Roles in Academic Libraries (Xavier)
Alysa Cua, Access Services Assistant
University of California, Riverside
Blanca Garcia-Barron, Library Technician II
Mt. San Jacinto College (& San Jose State MLIS Student)
Sandy Enriquez, Special Collections Public Services, Outreach & Community Engagement Librarian
University of California, Riverside
Librarians may struggle with the one-shot, but front-line staff (such as access services) have an even smaller one-shot. Facilitating more cross-departmental communication can make those interactions with students more effective. This session will discuss how library workers from different job titles can communicate and collaborate more effectively across their different spheres of work, while acknowledging contractual constraints. We will provide an introduction to different labor/DEI issues affecting the academic library and their impact on cross-departmental communication. The presentation will be followed by active learning activities where attendees can explore how cultivating cross-departmental communication can positively impact student engagement in the academic library. In addition, we seek to brainstorm and explore strategies for librarians to advocate for and support professional development of staff and student workers. We represent a range of library workers (circulation/access services) and librarian(s), including representation from both community colleges and R1 institutions.
2:15 – 2:30 Break
2:30 – 3:30 Breakout Sessions
Invisible power at play: How microaggressions against IBPOC librarians affect information literacy instruction (Xavier)
Estelle Frank, Vernon Campus Librarian
Okanagan College
Kisun Kim, Learning Services Librarian
Okanagan College
As the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL)’s Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education suggests, effective information literacy should embrace risk-taking and spontaneity. Nevertheless, we believe that not all librarians have the same freedom to do so, particularly IBPOC librarians who experience racial microaggressions by white teaching faculty.
This panel will consist of two IBPOC librarians from Okanagan College, situated on the traditional, unceded, and ancestral territory of the Syilx Okanagan, Secwepemc, Ktunaxa, Sinixt Peoples. We have personally experienced racial microaggressions and therefore understand how that affects information literacy instruction. This panel will build on the existing research on how microaggressions experienced by academic librarians impact information literacy and on racial microaggressions experienced by IBPOC academic librarians. We will share our experience as IBPOC librarians and discuss how non-IBPOC librarians can support IBPOC librarians, highlighting the importance of EDI in information literacy.
Mutual Aid: Working across Systems to Integrate Labor and Community History Primary Sources into Instruction (Berman)
Michelle Morton, Instruction Librarian
Cabrillo College
Tanya Hollis, Director, Labor Archives Research Center
San Francisco State University
Enrique Buelna, History Faculty
Cabrillo College
Nicholas Rowell, Political Science Faculty
Cabrillo College
This presentation by a SFSU Archivist, a Community College Librarian, and Community College faculty from History and Political Science will share the process for creating two Canvas modules using primary sources on labor and community history. These two modules — the first on the Watsonville Canneries Strike and the second on Labor Organizing 101 — empower students to examine labor organizing strategies and community-based activism using local primary source material. This collaboration involved working across departmental silos, institutions, and professional boundaries and building connections between archives and the communities they document. We will discuss working across the CSU and CCC systems, developing instructional materials to support labor history and community history research, and working with faculty to integrate library and archival materials into courses using Canvas. Attendees will have an opportunity to engage with the modules and hear directly from faculty about how students engaged with the materials.
Empowering Ourselves Through Community to Grow Together and Teach Better (Maraschi)
Jenny Wong-Welch, Head, Research, Instruction, Outreach Unit
San Diego State University
Mara Cota, Lead Librarian
San Diego State University-Imperial Valley Campus
Erika Esquivel, Latin American and Indigenous Communities Archivist
San Diego State University
Suzanne Maguire, Research, Instruction, Outreach Librarian
San Diego State University
This presentation will highlight how four librarians disrupt isolating and [negative] workplace experiences by empowering each other. Academic librarianship tends toward siloing; the lived experience of an instruction session, good or bad, is one librarian’s alone; relationships with faculty may be strained or stressful; our colleagues may provide more judgment than support.
Learning, and by extension research, is a social, relational activity. Through open reflection and mutual respect, the presenters have created a space that encourages thoughtful inquiry amongst colleagues and within the classroom. This community gives them the confidence to interrogate and challenge the traditional power dynamics in academia and within the library instruction classroom. It provides the care and support that enables growth and efficacy.
3:30 – 3:40 Conference Closing by Vice-Chair Penny Scott (Xavier)
4:00 – 4:30 Gleeson Library Tour
A brief tour of the Gleeson Library with a discussion of USF and Gleeson Library history. Those interested in joining the tour should meet near the front entrance to Fromm Hall following the closing conference remarks.
4:00 – 5:00 Happy Hour
All conference attendees and presenters are invited to join the CCLI steering committee for a non-hosted happy hour at Barrel Head Brewhouse [1785 Fulton St, San Francisco, CA 94117].