Q&A with Priya Charry: Community work and "jugaad"

What are some skills you learned in your MLIS program that you have applied in your role as a project coordinator?

As project coordinator (and sole full-time employee) for Not Just Art, my budding management skills have grown. I prioritize and delegate tasks, collaborate with artists and colleagues, and evaluate resources. My Library Management coursework on strategic planning and project management has been extremely useful here.

Creating artist portfolios and developing the NJA website involves cataloging and resource description. As a librarian, I know the importance of metadata for search and retrieval, but I underestimated just how crucial it is for accessibility. Without proper metadata like descriptive alt text and structured web pages, an entire community (i.e. people with visual impairments using screen readers) is excluded. This has boosted my awareness of accessibility practices in public spaces online and in the real world.

Finally, I am able to gain library development skills. Youth4Jobs partners with a local school for visually impaired girls, and upon learning of my background, one of its teachers proposed a side project: an audio library to supplement the girls’ courses. This opportunity is exciting and daunting, limited by time, funding, and resources. But I am drawing inspiration from my research on libraries in developing regions and services for people with disabilities--as well as basic collection development and reference coursework. Both Not Just Art and the audio library are brand new initiatives, so the sky’s the limit!

You've said before that you “hope to use this opportunity to learn about the Indian NGO sector--specifically, how I can apply my library experience to increase information access in India and in underserved communities in the US as well.” What have been your greatest takeaways so far, and have you learned anything that has surprised you?

One key takeaway is the value of flexibility. Resources in the development sector are limited by accessibility, organizational (dys)function, language, infrastructure, and more; to make progress, one must be willing to adapt. This is well illustrated by the Hindi term “jugaad,” roughly translated as a “hack” or ad hoc solution. For instance, our website’s basic design template doesn’t allow a specific accessibility option; we don’t have a budget for a custom template, so my jugaad was to sneak in a few lines of code to create it myself. Workarounds like this can be positive (clever/innovative) or negative (lazy/“good enough”), but above all they are a creative use of limited resources.

I have also learned to value my humility. No matter what my expertise, there is always something new to learn. This is true in my work--being non-disabled while working with and on behalf of people with disabilities--as well as in my personal identity. While half of my family is of Indian ancestry, my Indian experience is vastly different from those around me. Rather than comparing and contrasting, I try to weave each new experience into a greater tapestry of understanding: of my own identity, of the people with whom I share so much and yet differ so much from, and of how we interact and learn from each other. It has been a truly humbling journey so far--one that I hope to weave into my professional pursuits from here on.

Perhaps the most surprising lesson learned is that the problems faced in the Indian NGO sector are quite similar to those in the American library world: lack of funding and support, few opportunities for people from underrepresented groups, inaccessible public and digital spaces, and more. The context varies, but the people fighting to overcome these barriers are inspiring no matter where they are.