Adriana Sisko
ALA Divisions:
ALA Roundtables:
Interdisciplinary, collaborative, and strategic
Being in school for so long temporarily changed my relationship with reading. It turned a passion into this laborious task associated with late nights and early mornings. Now that I’ve been out of school for long enough, thankfully, I’ve been rekindling that part of me. This has been so exciting and rewarding. I tend to read one nonfiction book and one fiction book at a time, little by little each week. Currently, my dose of nonfiction is G.M. Barker’s The Biology of Terrestrial Mollusks, and my fiction fix is Hyperion by Dan Simmons.
Supportive, collegial, and inspiring
ACRL was new to me when I was first hired. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to join a couple of committees (the IS Inclusive Pedagogy Committee and the WGSS Instruction Committee) and attend conferences where I’ve met other members. I have come to know ACRL as a place for collegial support and inspiration. Every time I have participated in, say, a panel discussion or talk, the level of sincere interest and support I would receive in return genuinely surprised me.
Every time I’ve participated in a panel discussion or talk, the level of sincere interest I received in return surprised me at first for how supportive it was. Since then, I’ve looked to fellow members of committees for inspiration in terms of how they approach their work and how I can best approach mine.
I’m both the Student Engagement Librarian and liaison librarian to Gender & Women’s Studies and Geography. I’d say my primary role as Student Engagement Librarian is to design learning experiences and develop partnerships that help foster student belonging, success, and information literacy. Whether I am creating an asynchronous module for supporting information literacy in first-year composition classes or running learning labs designed specifically to support first-generation student information needs, my work connects me with academic departments and student programs across campus. That I can do a variety of projects, rather than being stuck in one task, is one of my favorite aspects of this position. Overall, my goal in building these relationships is to promote library visibility, resources, and to create a welcoming space for all members of the student population.
My journey into libraries was unconventional. It began, somehow, in Gender & Women’s Studies. I stumbled into the field when I was an undergrad at The College of New Jersey. I had this research assignment to do, and I was looking for a specific book at the campus library, and while I was walking up and down the aisles I noticed there was an entire row of books that focused on LGBTQ+ history. I still remember the first book title I spotted—George Haggerty’s Men in Love: Masculinity and Sexuality in the 18th Century. I hadn’t realized it was even an option to study LGBTQ+ history, or more broadly, the history of sexuality, before. I was overjoyed. This led me to Gender & Women’s Studies, where I focused on queer identity and lesbian history for my doctoral research here at the University of Kentucky, and it all came full circle when, after doing some work conducting oral history interviews for the OutSouth Oral History Project at the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, I realized I could apply my knowledge and skills to the librarianship context. I worked circulation, archives, then did my MLIS, and the rest is history.
I could not be happier with where I have ended up. At the core of my librarianship is a belief that students deserve to feel empowered, that they belong in the library, and that their needs should shape our practices. While my journey started elsewhere, I’ve found that libraries are the best place for my to apply those values.
Credentials:PhD, MLIS
Title:Student Engagement Librarian
Job Function:Design learning experiences and develop partnerships that help foster student belonging, success, and information literacy.
Workplace:University of Kentucky
Location:Lexington, KY