By: Tina Chan, Reference Services Program Manager and Social Sciences Librarian, MIT Libraries Self-care Strategies for a Healthy Work-Life Balance Staying at home during the COVID-19 pandemic has been challenging for many people. Like many, I practice social-distancing and wear a mask while outside, and I work from home since my library closed. I had to set up and adapt to my work-from-home space while setting boundaries since my work and home spaces were in the same location. I recognize I am privileged to work from home while others were laid off,...
Intersections
About Intersections
Intersections, the blog of the ALA Office for Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services (ODLOS), highlights the work of library and information science workers as they create safe, responsible, and all-inclusive spaces that serve and represent the entire community, as well as initiatives and projects supported by the office that promotes their work. Please note that these blog posts are by individuals and do not reflect the views of their employers.
By: Karen I. Berry, Instruction Librarian, John Preston McConnell Library at Radford University In early 2020, two of my instruction librarian colleagues and I had finished reading Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility and felt prepared to address the symptoms of white fragility that we had seen in ourselves and our coworkers. While previous efforts toward social justice in the library had fizzled out, reading this book and hearing first-hand from a Black faculty member of a microaggression they had experienced in the library made us decide that it was time for another try....
By: Melody Scagnelli-Townley, Outreach Librarian, Bayonne Public Library I think we can all agree that 2020 is indeed a strange time. “Self-care” seems like such a trite phrase to use when in the midst of a literal global pandemic and many of us feel like we’re in damage control and self-protection modes most or all of the time. I was suddenly thrust into work-from-home by my library’s closure on March 16. My job as Outreach Librarian focused on helping patrons in person at the Reference Desk...so how was I supposed to work from home? People...
By: Kevin Adams, Information Literacy Librarian, Alfred University Libraries This summer I was lucky enough to begin working as the Information Literacy Librarian at a small private liberal arts college nestled in a rural village in upstate New York. As I made the move from a city in the Midwest, I was concerned that I would lose the anti-racist energy that I had been personally building through involvement with marches whose size rivaled the entire student population of my new institution. By happy coincidence, my first day on the job included a librarian faculty...
By: Emma Wood, Associate Librarian, UMass Law Library Libraries may emerge from the COVID-19 crisis in a posture of growth. There are two clear opportunities for librarians to seize. First, the pandemic has brought to light the importance of “third place.” The term refers to space that is separate from home and work where we seek conversation, neutral ground, and comfort in feeling connected. Examples include bars, coffee shops, churches, and beauty salons. Urban Sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the phrase in his 1989 book The Great Good Place. ...
By: Hannah Lee Park, Education and School of Professional & Extended Studies Librarian, American University Library The Writing Studies/Information literacy committee at American University, which is a joint committee between the Writing Studies Program and the Library, received an Inclusive Excellence Collaboration mini-grant to gather, annotate, and disseminate scholarship in antiracist praxis. There were three prongs to the Antiracist Praxis project: the creation of a subject guide and two in-person Teach-Ins. The Antiracist Praxis subject guide identifies the main ideas, key...
By: Maggie Halterman-Dess, Library Annex Coordinator, University of Iowa Libraries At Thanksgiving last November, before the Sars-Cov-2 Novel Coronavirus was even a news oddity, I said goodbye to my elderly relatives with a sense that this might be the last time I saw some of them. Although I would be spending the December holidays with my in-laws or at home, we parted looking forward to seeing one another again at Easter. You know the rest. Our traditional Easter potluck was canceled, along with everything else after mid-March. It was a disappointment to miss one of...
By: Deborah Hakes, Director of Communications and Marketing, Georgia Public Library Service For the 35,000 residents of Harris County, Georgia, the local library has been a lifeline during COVID-19 closures. The two-year-old facility is a focal destination point in Hamilton, a rural town with around 1,100 residents located just north of Columbus, Georgia. “To say libraries are still offering a vital service during the pandemic would be an understatement,” said Ryan Willoughby, the Executive Director of Habitat for Humanity of Georgia, Inc. “There is...
By: Tommy Vinh Bui, Teen & Adult Services Librarian, Los Angeles County Library Any number of things can be the source of surplus stress these days for a librarian. From the sight of aisles completely abandoned of patrons to the unrelenting uncertainty and feelings of displacement stirred by constant teleworking, these are turbulent and disorienting times we’re enduring, and day by day the challenges seem to compound. Our very identity as librarians are ostensibly being existentially dismantled before our eyes. But if librarians are adept at anything,...
By: Nick Demske, Community Resources Librarian, Racine Public Library (Wisconsin) and Elkid Alvarez Maldonado, Community Engagement Specialist/ Especialista de Alcance Comunitario, Kenosha Public Library (Wisconsin) In January 2019, before COVID-19, George Floyd, and before the Racine/Kenosha community was literally on fire every night, ALA put out a call for applications for library workers to become “Racial Healing Circle (RHC) Facilitators.” After reading all the materials provided, neither one of us understood what it was, but it was evocative. We applied and were...