BLM: Why is it so hard for some libraries to say?

Posted on Posted in Current Events, Library

So, before we dive in to the meaty subject of this post – a COVID-19 update on the librarian front. I’ve filled my work-from-home time becoming a new publisher for the KCLS website (writing blog posts, creating content, etc.), volunteered as one of the judges for the adult entries in the Rhyme On! poetry contest (lots of very emotional poetry, it was more taxing than I anticipated), finished captioning and editing a video interview I was lucky to conduct earlier this year with Alson Kelen, am co-leading a KCLS collaboration with the Seattle Public Library for a new service they are pioneering, stepped up to lead planning for a series of LGBTQ+ community conversations as part of Pride, I’ve created video tutorials that have been shared with all staff instructing on the process of close captioning videos posted on Facebook….I’m sure I’m missing a ton of stuff, but the joke is that my name keeps popping up everywhere recently. Librarians all worried for a while we wouldn’t know what to do working from home, but I’ve definitely been filling my days.

Something I’ve learned about myself on this journey of landing in a library career is that I’m very passionate about the work of libraries. And I can’t help myself – if I feel like the library missed the mark, I say something about it. Bless the eternal patience of my manager, who probably had NO IDEA when he choose to hire the lowly Library Technical Assistant as a temporary Librarian what he was actually getting himself into. He listens to me, he laughs with me, and then he helps me speak up when there is room for my voice to be heard.

And something I can’t help but speak up about quite a bit lately is the disappointing way that the King County Library System leadership has responded to recent events. I’m referring specifically to how we have failed to step up for our Black patrons, Black staff members, and Black communities right now in any way that feels meaningful.

Allow me to demonstrate.

Continue reading “BLM: Why is it so hard for some libraries to say?” →

Programming for a Pandemic?

Posted on Posted in Library

Well I sure picked a weird year to start off my librarian career!

I was off to a strong start – in February I offered a workshop on completing the low-income housing assistance application (which was open in King County for only ~3 weeks) and had 21 people show up (plus their partners/children/etc)! For the Auburn Library that’s a really successful adult program and I was really proud that I was able to offer something so needed by the community.

I was helping to coordinate a special Earth Day event this month that would have hosted several special guest speakers including the mayor of Auburn, the director of KCLS, and real live honeybees! It was going to be awesome…until it got cancelled, along with everything else for the foreseeable future.

My fingers are crossed for summer programming to still happen – I lined up a local improv company to come perform, set up paint and sip events with a local art instructor, and so many other fun things!!

But in the meantime, I’m scrambling to figure out how to best serve patrons in a remote role. I mean, I think all librarians are in a similar boat right now. We’re used to libraries as physical locations and physical resources – but right now, those aspects of service are out of the picture. The community where I work has a prominent disadvantaged population and I wonder about how they’re doing – how they’re staying safe, how shelters are functioning, what libraries could be doing from a distance to support that work. As an adult librarian, what can I do to best help adults during this time?

One thing I did do was I created my own directory of easily navigated links here.

mypage
This is the simple link directory I made – scroll down and there are separate sections for children, tweens/teens, adults, and general Washington state COVID19 information.

I’ve been sharing this directory around on social media and with my coworkers – while this isn’t an official KCLS website, it contains everything you can find on the KCLS website but formatted in a simple, direct way.

 

theirpage
This is the main website for KCLS after it finally got updated with the black header of “Online Resources” – still too busy and difficult to find the really valuable stuff the library has to offer. 

I also researched the senior center locations across King County and compiled a list detailing what services they are currently offering (focusing on meals, mainly).

So I’ve been keeping busy….but right now everything feels so uncertain.

When the US National Archives start censoring historic photos…

Posted on Posted in Archives, censorship

To celebrate the 100th year of (white) women’s suffrage, the US National Archives created a special exhibition. At the entrance, a large color photograph of the Women’s March which took place the day after President Trump’s inauguration that, when viewed from another perspective, morphs into a different black and white photograph of women marching for suffrage back in 1913. A really impactful visual linking the present to the past.

Except the modern photo had been altered.

Per the Washington Post article on the topic:

The Archives acknowledged in a statement this week that it made multiple alterations to the photo of the 2017 Women’s March showcased at the museum, blurring signs held by marchers that were critical of Trump. Words on signs that referenced women’s anatomy were also blurred.

And:

“As a non-partisan, non-political federal agency, we blurred references to the President’s name on some posters, so as not to engage in current political controversy,” Archives spokeswoman Miriam Kleiman said in an emailed statement. “Our mission is to safeguard and provide access to the nation’s most important federal records, and our exhibits are one way in which we connect the American people to those records. Modifying the image was an attempt on our part to keep the focus on the records.”

Archive officials did not respond to a request to provide examples of previous instances in which the Archives altered a document or photograph so as not to engage in political controversy.

A sign in the original, unaltered photo of the 2017 Women’s March on Washington. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)An altered version of the sign as it appears in the photograph shown at the National Archives. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

Left is a sign in the original, unaltered photo of the 2017 Women’s March on Washington (Mario Tama/Getty Images) while above is an altered version of the sign as it appears in the photograph shown at the National Archive(Salwan Georges/The Washington Post). 



As a fellow information professional, I am speechless that any form of censorship was approved as part of the National Archive’s display. While I can understand not wanting to appear to endorse a certain political statement, an archive presenting historical artifacts as they are – unedited, uncensored, representing the reality of that moment – is simply an archive doing its job. Someone who believes that a political agenda comes with factually representing a historic moment is someone who has much to learn from keeping the truth uncensored and confrontational.

On a somehow both related and unrelated note, it was recently announced that the National Archives in Seattle is closing. The plan is to move the collection out of state into California and Kansas. The most frustrating part of this move is that the collection contains many tribal documents, some which have already been moved out of Alaska down to Seattle. Now those documents will be even further removed from the tribes whose history they, in part, represent.

MY FIRST LIBRARIAN JOB!!

Posted on Posted in Library, Life Journey, Personal Perspective

There’s no way I thought, so soon after graduating earlier this year with my MLIS, that I would have news like this – BUT! – I have actually been hired for my first librarian job! It’s a full time, temporary position as an Adult Services Librarian for the Auburn Library in Auburn, Washington (yes, the same city I wrote about here) and was open only to applicants within the King County Library System. It’s kinda the perfect job to serve as a stepping stone into a librarian career.

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Photo of the interior of the Auburn Public Library, a branch of the King County Library System. Source here.

I feel incredibly, incredibly lucky. The staff at the Auburn Library seem like an excellent team and I think I will have a set of fantastic mentors to help guide me. In September of next year the person who occupied this position previously will have the option of taking the position back – and my old job as an LTA will be saved for me, although everyone already knows I’m not planning to come back.

My specific job duties will include:

  • providing reader’s advisory
  • answering reference questions
  • managing parts of the collection
  • maintaining and creating community links
  • develop/design/host adult programs

And, frankly, I’m so excited I struggle to express it in words.

A career was never part of my life plans – I was raised in a conservative religious environment where women were actively discouraged from becoming career-oriented (luckily, there has been some progress in recent years regarding this attitude). I had zero professional guidance from my parents – my mother hasn’t worked since getting married and my father joined the Navy after high school, taking various jobs to support his growing family until he landed a job at Boeing (where he’s worked ever since). My siblings and I are all first generation college students, and I’m the first and only to earn a master’s degree and also to be employed in a field requiring a degree. But while I’ve worked hard, I know I have also been fortunate – fortunate that my random job-jumping landed me at Green River College, where I talked with the educational advisor to flesh out ideas for my future. I got hired on to KCLS as an LTA, not a Page – everyone tells me that rarely happens. And now I’m jumping from LTA to Librarian – again, incredibly rare as mentioned to me more than once!

I feel very grateful and equally determined to prove myself worthy of the rare opportunities I’ve been afforded. My start date is December 16th, so in the meantime I think I’m going to put together some ideas for “tools” I can use in my librarian role.

 

Confrontations with history

Posted on Posted in Intellectual Freedom, Library, Personal Perspective

There is an ongoing struggle in public discourse to tackle how to acknowledging the harm of the past without giving it power to cause harm in the present.

This New York Times article focuses on an excellent example. From the article:

In the debate over the 13 murals that make up “The Life of Washington,” at George Washington High School, one side, which includes art historians and school alumni, sees an immersive history lesson; the other, which includes many African-Americans and Native Americans, sees a hostile environment.

Following the “Continue reading” cut below, I’m going to share a few images of the murals as taken from the article. Content warning for depictions of violence and historical racial oppression.

Continue reading “Confrontations with history” →

Happy Halloween!

Posted on Posted in Library, Personal Perspective

While creepy fiction is fun this time of year, personally I enjoy creepy nonfiction even more. In the spirit of Halloween, I’ve picked one of my favorite local true crime stories to share. These murders happened in a city near where I live, and part of why I find this particular crime so fascinating its connection to public libraries and one of their core foundational principles in the United States: intellectual freedom.

The city of Auburn, Washington was originally named the city of Slaughter back when it was settled by non-indigenous residents in 1893 (1). The city hotel was even named the Slaughter House (1) – side note, with a name like that I would definitely want to stay there!! Little would anyone have guessed that the city’s original name would become prophetic over a hundred years later. Most who think of killers in Auburn would point to the obvious: Gary Ridgeway, called the Green River Killer after Auburn’s Green River where he hid many of his victims’ bodies. However, in 1980s Auburn there also was the much lesser-known case of two murders which sparked worry of a nationwide poisoning…

Continue reading “Happy Halloween!” →

Terrifying Tales Contest Entry!

Posted on Posted in LibraryTagged

One of the libraries where I work hosted a TERRIFYING TALES short story contest! Being the Halloween lover that I am, I couldn’t resist entering. Especially because, in my humble Halloween-loving opinion, adults don’t take as many creative risks as we should and I like to be the change I want to see in the world.

Image of a "Terrifying Tales: Short Stories Contest" poster

Here are the contest details:

Description
Ages 10-adult.
Tweens, teens and adults! Submit an original eerie, horrifying, and/or spine-chilling short story to the Fairwood Library by October 23 for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card.
Winners will be selected from each of the following age groups:
Ages 10 to 12, 13 to 15, 16 to 18 and 19 and older.
All participants are invited to read their original terrifying tale aloud on Tuesday, October 30 at Fairwood Library. Refreshments will be provided by the Friends of the Fairwood Library.
7pm: ages 10 to 18
8pm: ages 19 and older
Contest Rules
One submission per person.
Include your name, age, phone number and/or email address.
Submissions may be typed or handwritten. Handwritten submissions must be legible to qualify.
Limit your story to 1000 words or less.

 

And now, without further delay, here’s my entry….(cue lightening flashes, a wolf howling in the distance, and menacing organ music rattling dust and cobwebs while the rats skitter deeper into the shadows)…

PURPLE

by Mary

“Well, at least I can check one off the list.”

Becca smiled, looking down at the library book in her hands. She thoughtfully moved an orange-gloved finger across its cover. The purple cover had been what first caught her attention – the particular shade drawing her eye. As she pulled the book from the shelf and examined it, she realized she couldn’t find an author or title – not anywhere on the front or back of the book, not written within the first pages as she peered curiously inside. Even library staff were unable to identify the book (something about it being “bulk cataloged”). That was when she knew – this would be the first library book she had checked out in years. The first book she’d read in almost just as long.

Who had time to read anymore, really?

But making time for reading has been top of her list of New Years’ resolutions. Stepping out from the library into the cold February wind, Becca felt hopeful the year was off to a good start.

~

As the garage door closed behind her car, curiosity got the better of Becca. The engine still running for heat, she unbuckled her seatbelt and tugged off her orange gloves. Flicking on the overhead dome light, she checked the time – 4:13 – and thumbed past the initial few blank pages. She found the first block of text and began:

“Purple like rotting plums, flesh ruptured with the overly-sweet juice of decay. Purple like old blood lingering in dark, broken veins. Purple like wet fallen leaves, spent past autumn’s glorious yellows and reds. When he saw the book cover in her hands, it colored her similarly.”

Her pulse was quickening. What kind of book is this? Becca paused to stare at the purple cover again, the hue somehow less inviting in the pale yellow light. Was someone playing a sick joke?

Continue reading “Terrifying Tales Contest Entry!” →

Inspirational Ideas Post

Posted on Posted in Inspiration, Library

This entry is going to be a post I will continually edit to come back and add ideas I find for library programming and display ideas. I find that I collect ideas from a variety of resources and am not inclined to rely on any specific medium for accumulating them all, except through a list I can arrange as I please.


Library Program Ideas

      • Day Storage for homeless (source)
        • The city of Eugene and St. Vincent de Paul Society of Lane County have joined forces to provide free day storage as a pilot project.
        • People can store belongings in a PODS container on a county-owned lot on Olive Street between the Public Library and The KIVA grocery store. People can stow backpacks, baggage and other items seven-days-a-week, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., through Sept. 30. St. Vincent de Paul employees are on site to manage the container. Any items left after 4:30 p.m. will be disposed of.
        • The city is paying St. Vincent de Paul $7,350 a month to operate the program, plus expense reimbursement, according to the contact.
        • St. Vincent holds a lottery every three months for the use of the 20 lockers at the service station.


Library Display Ideas

      • Binge Boxes (source)
        • Boxes containing 5 (or more/less) DVDs within a certain genre
        • All movies are listed and covers displayed on box label
        • I appreciate that the fines and check-out times are addressed on the flyer to be as clear as possible

bingboxes

binge

Graduation!!

Posted on Posted in Library, Life Journey

I started this website three years ago while attending the orientation for my masters of Library and Information Science (MLIS) degree at the University of Washington. Amid discussions about future career opportunities and ways to create a presence for yourself as an online student, I decided I wanted to create a website/blog where I could talk about things that interested me at school and share my other passion, artwork.

Wow, how the time has flown!!!

I worked full time my first year of doing school part-time and found that I couldn’t manage that work-life-school balance. So I quit my administrative job at a college with the intention of getting some public library experience instead. Volunteering perhaps? But I was able to get a public library JOB, which was even better! The part time work along with 3/4 time enrollment kept me busy, but not completely and utterly overwhelmed (at least, not all the time). My partner Katie and I moved from our apartment into a cheaper space, a basement apartment where we have now lived for two years.

Katie and I got engaged this March, with a wedding date set next September. We also are set to move again, this time in mid-July into a beautiful townhouse. I got a full-time position at the library system, which are coveted and rare positions with a lot of competition! And I graduated last Saturday in a convocation event for all UW Information School (or iSchool for short, we like the Apple influence apparently) graduates.

PSX_20190607_105322

Life has changed a lot in the three years I’ve been in school. Graduation felt like a celebration of the slow burn of life, of the eventual progress and overcoming of obstacles that seem at first so huge and insurmountable.

My Katie and I have a motto: Together, we can do anything. And moments like this it feels absolutely true. PSX_20190608_154552PSX_20190608_154615

Now, on to the next phase of life’s adventures!

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Is Homelessness a Public Library Problem?

Posted on Posted in Library, Personal PerspectiveTagged ,

My current public library job is in an area known as south central King County, where many individuals experience the challenge of homelessness. Official counts cite Seattle and the King County area as having the third highest population of homeless people in the country (as of 2017, the last official census count).

And we experience that reality in the libraries where I work.

What does that mean? It means that people sleep outside of the library doors in anticipation of opening. That there are uncomfortable bodily smells (of varying intensities) throughout the library. It means that people come in laden with bags and carts and animals, which take up extra chairs, tables, and computer space. That often the root of homelessness is connected with mental illness and/or addiction, and this means behavioral issues in libraries are not uncommon.

Continue reading “Is Homelessness a Public Library Problem?” →