Week 3 Journal - LIB 5060

Another week of presentations are done!

This week, we had to present on the best practices for our culture in the library. My group presented based on research that we found that would make the Mooresville (or any) library better serve the Hispanic/Latino population. Overall, I think we could sum it up by saying we need to incorporate more bilingual signs, bilingual books, books that are written by Hispanic authors, and we need to reach out into the community to partner up with a liaison from their culture. Simply advocating for their culture will do wonders!

Next week, we have to design a space that shows how we would support our cultural group. I'm really excited to build out a library. I love projects like this. They let us get creative and design our own libraries the way that we would want them!

We also were supposed to read the article "The Culture of Comfort" by Annette de Faveri. This was quite eye opening, honestly. The whole article talked about how librarians themselves are a barrier in the library. And then, the last paragraph was just fantastic:

"We need to make ourselves and our institutions inclusive and accessible. We need to create policies, programs and services that are committed to equitable communities. To do this we must shed our culture of comfort. We need to emphasize ideas over tasks, and processes over solutions. We need to insist that experiences and effects are as significant a measure of our success as counting heads at a library program. Collectively we can debunk the myth that the current definition of the library and librarian is complete and needs only to be reproduced to be successful. This is not a "them or us," or an "old versus new" split in our profession. It is simply the recognition that if we are indeed society's most egalitarian institution we must become egalitarian." 


Yes. All of this. This is perfect. Not often do I read an article where I passionately agree with something that someone else has said. This article, though, summed up exactly how I feel about the library. I love the ideas of putting ideas above the tasks themselves. That librarians have the power to make the library truly equal for everyone. This was just perfect.