2023 CCLI Keynote
Finding Power in the Margins: Community & Positionality as Epistemic Tools in Library Instruction
As librarians working in community colleges, Cynthia Orozco and Erika Montenegro often find themselves and their students on the outskirts of scholarly conversations. Reflecting on their personal teaching practices, they’ll share how they deconstruct and challenge academic norms and authority. Furthermore, they’ll share their unique perspectives on how their peripheral positions encourage them to spark subversive conversations that demystify and even dismantle academic norms. Ultimately, they invite us all to reflect on how to find power in the margins.
Cynthia Mari Orozco
Cynthia Mari Orozco is the OER + Equity Librarian at East Los Angeles College, where she provides reference, instruction, and outreach services for community college students. In this role she also supports faculty in open educational resources (OER) and scholarly communications more broadly. Prior to ELAC, she was the Student Services Librarian at California State University, Long Beach and Librarian-in-Residence at Loyola Marymount University. A happenstance interaction with a librarian in grad school sparked her interest in library instruction, which led to a transformative online MLIS experience at San José State University where she became an advocate for distance learning. She is currently a PhD Candidate in Information Studies at UCLA, which has prompted her to think about library instruction in the context of transfer, as community college and university libraries have uniquely different cultures.
Erika Montenegro
After finishing an MA in English and teaching at community colleges, Erika Montenegro switched gears to librarianship. From 2008 -2010 she worked for the Los Angeles Public Library and is currently an Instruction and Outreach librarian and Professor of Library Science at East Los Angeles College. She feels most empowered when she’s teaching, collaborating across disciplines, demystifying the culture of academia and scholarship, and mentoring new librarians. Recent selections of her work include “A Case for the Framework in Community College Libraries: Deconstructing and Challenging Scholarly Discourse and Communication Practices from a Community College Perspective” co-authored with Cynthia Orozco, “The Cultural Artifact Collaboration: An Info Lit Love Story between a Sociologist and Librarian” co-authored with Marcellino Morales, and “Building a Library Family: Community College Internships and Non Traditional Mentor Models as a Means of Recruitment, Growth, and Retention of Librarians of Color” co-authored with Rita Suarez and Nathasha Alvarez.