As a librarian, my goal is to facilitate learning and curiosity. I work as the Collection Development Librarian in a mid-size public liberal arts university in northern California. In my view, the purpose and mission of higher education at every level is to create new knowledge and explore new ways of thinking, to find answers to difficult questions and solutions to challenging problems. We work closely with students to engage them in the process of thinking, writing, and research, to show them how learning leads to new ideas, new processes, new technologies, and new solutions. We show students how knowledge is created in our classrooms, labs, through field work and community-engaged learning, and in the library. The library supports the creation of knowledge by designing spaces where students and researchers can work, providing access to the tools and information they need, and offering experiences that can broaden their perspectives and enrich the learning process.

Whether in a university or not, we are surrounded by dubious information created by unscrupulous people, hallucinating AI technologies, and corporations motivated by profit over truth and knowledge. My job is to support students in developing the tools to evaluate information and use it effectively to support their own growth. Our work is focused on making sure that we can provide access to the right information and resources at the right time, to help our students develop the ability to think critically, ask good questions, and to become creative and resourceful problem solvers.

I work in a small library, and each of us plays multiple roles in supporting learning and knowledge creation on our campus. As the Collection Development Librarian, I am responsible for ensuring that our collections adequately support learning and research for our community. I evaluate collections and work closely with faculty to ensure that we are purchasing, preserving, and providing access to useful and meaningful information. As a liaison, I work with faculty and students in the classroom and outside, directly engaging students in learning to evaluate and use information in their disciplines. I collaborate with faculty to make sure that our time in the classroom together is productive and to explore new ways of incorporating information literacy into their pedagogy and curriculum.

Why Riot Librarian?

My feminism was born in the early 1990s, as the riot grrrl movement surfaced in mainstream media. To me, a middle class white girl growing up in conservative suburban Southern California, the vision of riot grrrl showed me that there was something beyond the world I had always known, and that it was ok to be unfeminine, to be angry, to be loud.

While the problems with the riot grrrl movement have been well documented, I still believe there is something valuable in the riot grrrl ethos, something from my younger self that I want to hold onto, and bring into my adult life.

To be, being a riot librarian means questioning the way things have always been done so that we can dismantle the patriarchal, white supremacist structures that have dominated Western cultures for too long. It means looking at my professional life with a critical, feminist eye, and being willing to be vocal about the problems they see. But it also means being willing to be vulnerable and real.

I value collaboration, justice and fairness, openness, inclusivity, and equity, and I try to bring these values to by day-to-day work in the library and in the wider campus community. By collaborating and including more voices in decision-making processes, we can find better solutions that take into consideration a wider range of perspectives. I aim to flatten hierarchies and disregard markers of status and rank because I believe everyone has useful knowledge to bring to the table, and that we can build a stronger library and a stronger university by working as equals instead of focusing on power and position. Maintaining hierarchies of status and rank in our workplaces re-inscribes inequality. We cannot claim to work for social justice while continuing to concentrate power in the hands of only a few people in the organization.

I have seen how lack of transparency can hobble a team and make it harder to get things done, and I generally take the position that unless there is a compelling legal reason to keep information secret, openness is always the best policy. I define transparency as being very clear and honest about how decisions are being made, about the status of a decision or a project, and about my own thoughts and perspectives.

I try to center learning in my own life, and recognize that learning requires vulnerability. You have to be able to admit what you don’t know in order to learn something new. We have been conditioned to believe that we can’t show weakness, that we should always try to be the smartest person in the room, that we shouldn’t ask for help or admit when we’ve been wrong. This competitive mindset doesn’t foster the conditions for learning, and doesn’t foster the conditions for solving problems. Being willing to be vulnerable is necessary to build teams where people can feel safe to take risks, and it is only by taking risks that we can learn something new.

Being a riot librarian to me means that I am going to fight to create the kind of environment where I want to work, and the kind of library our students deserve.