Diversity or Lack there of in Libraries and their staff

As someone who is a white ciswoman I navigate the world with a lot of privilege this includes seeing myself and my race represented in all of the industries available to work in. This especially includes Libraries. These building\spaces are supposed to be warm and inviting but up until I worked in two I didn't find them inviting. The stereotype of the Public Librarian is an older white woman that shushes you if you are too loud around the books and others quietly reading. But I still have always seen my race in libraries and as librarians. For most others, this isn't always the case. Yesterday I met an undergraduate student, Megan, at a Library event that my friend was hosting in the Undergraduate Library or UGL as it is more widely called which will be closing at the end of this semester due to the expansion of the Archives Library into that space. One of the things that Megan brought up yesterday was that she was sad that the UGL was going to be combining with the Main Library or Graduate library and that it gave off to get your shit and get the fuck out vibes because of the closed stacks whereas the UGL has an open stacks policy. Open stacks mean that you can enter whenever the library is open and carry your bags around with you. Versus the closed stacks mean that you have to check your bag in a locker and go into the stacks and basically the deeper down you get the more like a dark basement it looks and feels like! Even I usually request my books and pick them up at the front Reference desk in front of the closed stacks so the librarians do the hard work and I just come and pick the items up! Then tonight she came to the Gender and Women's studies Solidarity night around the Anti-trans bills going around the country and she said something that I had in the back of my mind but it didn't click in my head because of my privilege of her not ever seeing herself in any of the librarians she had ever met throughout her education career. So this inspired me after I got home from a long day of work and events because after the GWS event I went to an open mic night with my friends to start researching Filipino American Librarians and I found one! She died in 2011 but she helped to found the Filipino American Library in California! So I texted the student to alert her of this! I just had to get this on this! 

Resources to check out:

Diversity in Publishing

Why aren't there more black librarians?

Rough and busy week!

 This week started out really rough! I got a C on a paper that I know deserved a B, didn't win the appeal or the opportunity to rewrite and the professor had the guts to tell us all in class that she doesn't have the time to teach us how to write an annotated bibliography! I explained to her during my appeal of the essay that an annotated bibliography is either short and sweet like she had stated in her instructions or a full paragraph with all the details and specific things that she thought she had conveyed in her instructions. Only after that did she step back and say that she would make it more clear before the group project one is due. Let's see if that actually happens! She absolutely hates my section because we actually bring our opinions into class and state them openly about how we want more diverse readings not just about Academic librarians and not just about Eurocentric topics! The best part is she is from Japan so she has real-life experience of living and working in that country but the US school system has brainwashed her into this Eurocentric robot of a professor! I am also in an amazing but difficult class called Asian American Youth Literature! That professor is absolutely amazing! If I wasn't working two jobs and taking a Python class this semester I would take her Teen Materials class after Spring break! She is also very understanding! She allowed me to have an extension on my book talk project because I had worked 15 hours 5 days straight the week before it was due and just didn't want to submit literal trash and get an F! She stated that she would rather have her students feel good about what they submit vs submitting on time. I just got her approval to include her name which is Dr. Dahlen. She has amazing resources for books (http://sarahpark.com/) and other types of resources to help educate yourself and children you work around or your own (https://padlet.com/readingspark/AsianAmK12Resources). I have a group project due by Friday at midnight and have to also get a group presentation done for Monday and then present Monday evening over Zoom! I hate presenting but especially over Zoom because you're just doing it into the void because everyone is muted and talking in the chat and you still get the notifications about it! That should be a feature that we as presenters should be able to mute and unmute while presenting but I don't work for Zoom so again I am just posting into a void to right now no one!