Editor’s note: This guest post has been authored by Jessie Loyer and Melissa Bowles-Terry. Jessie is Indigenous Engagement Librarian at University of Alberta. Melissa is the sciences librarian at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. This post is the fifth in our series, “Discussing the 4 Pillars of Immersion.”
This series was inspired by conversations during a January 2024 Immersion Facilitators retreat that examined our relationship with the foundational pillars of the program. The team explored each pillar by sharing questions and perspectives and considered how to integrate each pillar into the future portfolio of Immersion programming. The first post in this series focused on information literacy, the second on the changing roles of librarians in higher education, the third on leadership, and fourth on critical reflective practice. In our conversation about these pillars, we also considered the importance of community and community building as a core value and outcome of the Immersion program. This post is a consideration of the role that community plays in our practice — and we have a short survey to learn what you (our extended community) would like to see from Immersion professional development opportunities!
Melissa: In our facilitators’ discussion about community in the context of our profession, we came up with a couple of ideas that really resonated with me:
Taking care of each other: being able to identify when our colleagues are being undervalued and underserved and speaking out in solidarity with them.
This is closely related to what our colleagues Carlos and Mary wrote about in the last post on critical reflective practice, and I think it’s tied to our responsibility to question workplace norms and practices that devalue or dehumanize us.
Mobilizing as a whole when there are threats like budget cuts, devaluing library labor, and violence.
These threats, sadly, have impacted most if not all of us. Standing in solidarity and mobilizing where we can is an important role of our community. Last December there was a shooting on my campus, and in the wake of that horrible experience, one of the meaningful things that happened was outreach from librarians at other institutions. The library staff at UNLV got care packages from our colleagues at University of Nevada Reno and College of Southern Nevada and others. It meant a lot to know that our community was thinking of us.
Jessie: Those ideas resonate deeply with me as well. Weaving as a metaphor can seem a bit cliché, but I find that when we look back on the last four blog posts by our fellow Immersion facilitators, community is truly what weaves these ideas together. Information literacy is necessary because of the way we exist within communities and must make sense of our differences and similarities in understanding information. Librarians’ role in higher education is often that of creating community – nurturing those relationships we have with students, fellow instructors, and information itself. Leadership, at its most thoughtful and aspirational, is deeply committed to creating community, and, more importantly, sustaining it. And of course, critical reflective practice reminds us that our work does not exist in isolation. We must be thoughtful and aware in order to live well, together.
There’s a phrase in the language that I speak, nêhiyawêwin, that refers to the good life: miyo-pimâtisiwin. Now, this is not referring to a good life of ease and comfort (although that might be a component of it), but rather, the good life as a reflection of the maintenance, care, and reciprocity of the web of relationships we exist within. Care is found in action, and I think that the Immersion program is interested in offering participants the opportunity to take action.
Good teaching cannot be divorced from actively choosing to be a good community member.
Melissa: Yes, absolutely! Your phrase “Care is found in action” points to the idea of mutual aid. It’s so important to be in community and abandon the fiction of “self-reliance.” We can’t depend only on ourselves. These ideas about belonging make me think of an important conversation we’ve had very recently in our facilitators’ group about how to frame our Immersion programs in a way that is reflective of our shared values, but also inclusive of librarians who need state funding to attend, but have restrictions on the kinds of programs they can attend. Creating community in a fractured political environment brings even more challenges, but it also becomes even more important to come together.
Jessie: These challenges are always evolving. We need to embrace change in our communities too, even as we deeply understand the core work of a library. As we adjust Immersion to meet our communities’ needs, we want to ensure that your experiences are being addressed in the work we do.
To that end, tell us what kinds of professional development you are interested in, related to information literacy and the role of librarians in higher education. We have a short survey about professional development needs and Immersion.