Belonging, Power, and the Big Heart Building Work Between

Belonging is often described as a feeling—something we either experience or lack, as if it is found by chance rather than actively created. In institutions, belonging is frequently seen as incidental rather than the outcome of ongoing relational effort. But belonging is built through care, attention, and the often-invisible work of those who make room for others. Moments of transition make that labor visible, inviting us to pause and give flowers thoughtfully while we can.

This piece is a reflection on what it means to build belonging through librarianship, and on the communities and colleagues who make that work possible. It also asks how belonging is defined and distributed within a profession that is predominantly white and female, and how individual narratives—like my own—fit within, benefit from, and must be accountable to that broader context.

With Intentionality

Within university settings, librarianship and archival work have devoted significant time, energy, and resources to fostering a sense of belonging among students, faculty, and community members—often positioning libraries as sites of welcome, care, and connection within complex institutional landscapes. This was certainly what drew me in to the profession as an undergraduate. At a time when I struggled to understand who I was or what I could offer, librarianship felt less like a calling and more like a possibility. It seemed like it could be a space where belonging seemed not only valued, but intentionally built.

That isolation is not accidental. I’ve always been intensely aware of how lonely a university campus can be, and how much heavier this experience weighs on people who are already marginalized. That awareness drew me to librarianship. I wanted to counter that isolation.

Universities are often described as communities, yet within contemporary higher education–shaped by market logics, austerity, and increasing precarity—that language can feel aspirational at best. Even while benefiting from significant racial privilege, I did not experience the university as a site of meaningful belonging beyond my relationships with library staff colleagues. And even within that space, class distinctions between staff and librarians created points of tension that shaped how belonging was felt, distributed, and sustained.

Measuring success

It was at Arizona State University Library that belonging began to feel less aspirational and more tangible. While libraries are embedded wIthin the same institutional structures that shape higher education more broadly, they can have the possibility of operating through relational rather than strictly heirarchical practices. Care, attentiveness, and responsiveness are not abstract values but daily requirements of this work. And, I genuinely believe, values that ASU Library both champions and accomplishes through direct action. In this environment, belonging has emerged as something built collectively through trust, shared responsibility, and sustained relational labor.

At ASU, I experienced that sense of belonging most clearly through my colleagues. I was trusted to bring my full self to the work, encouraged to take intellectual and professional risks, and supported in ways that made sustained engagement possible. That support mattered profoundly. In a field where emotional and relational labor are often undervalued—and where isolation and burnout are common—experiencing collegial belonging shaped not only how I worked, but how I move through the world. It made the work feel shared rather than solitary, and it affirmed that building belonging is not an individual effort, but a collective one.

This did not mean the absence of tension or inequity. Librarianship remains shaped by the same racialized, gendered, and classed dynamics that structure the academy, including disparities in status, pay, and authority. And yet, within those constraints, I encountered colleagues who modeled what institutional belonging can look like in practice: collaboration, partnerships, and growth rather than competition.

The Potential for Repair

But my ASU story was also about complexity. Even when you believe in the work, it is exhausting to make a change. I discovered how draining it is to care deeply in spaces where change outpaces relationships. And I recognized how tenuous belonging can become when university politics shift around you.

That sense of belonging grew stronger and became real through the work itself, especially by caring for the Theatre for Youth and Community Collection. Working with this collection showed me that archives are not neutral, but shaped by who is included, who is invited, and whose stories are kept, and offers a chance to repair.

This potential for repair became most evident to me in moments when students encountered materials that reflected their own identities, communities, or creative lineages—sometimes for the first time. Watching a student recognize themselves in the historical record underscored how deeply representation matters. Importantly, these encounters were not incidental; rather, they resulted from intentional stewardship, collaborative description, and sustained relationship-building with artists, donors, and communities. As a result, belonging here was not symbolic. It was experienced.

At the same time, while these moments were powerful, they also revealed the significant labor required to build that sense of connection. Activating a collection in ways that feel inclusive, ethical, and responsive demands time, trust, and profound emotional investment. This experience is often in contexts where such labor is undervalued or under-resourced within an institution.

It is important to name the irony here: the sense of welcome and even belonging I found was largely cultivated by colleagues who themselves occupied marginal or precarious positions within the academy—arts faculty, staff members, colleagues with disabilities, and BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ librarians and archivists whose labor has historically been feminized, undervalued, and structurally constrained.

The Cost

Building belonging through librarianship is deeply meaningful work, but it is not without cost. The same relational labor that makes libraries feel humane can also be exhausting, especially when it is unevenly recognized or structurally unsupported. Care, when treated as an individual disposition rather than a shared, structurally resourced, institutional investment, becomes difficult to sustain.

At ASU, I became increasingly aware of the emotional weight that accompanies this kind of work. Advocating for community-centered collections, ethical archival practices, and inclusive engagement often meant navigating institutional constraints that moved faster than relationships could be built. The work required patience, persistence, and a willingness to sit with ambiguity. While I was fortunate to experience strong collegial support, the broader systems in which the work unfolded did not always make time and care for relational practice.

This tension—between the values that draw many of us to librarianship and the structures that shape how that work is resourced—was one of the most difficult lessons of my time at ASU. It sharpened my understanding of how fragile belonging can be in transition, and how quickly care-centered work can slip into burnout. And yet, naming that cost also clarified what I believe the work requires: not less care, but more collective accountability for sustaining it.

Going Grief

Leaving ASU for a new role in early 2026 has stirred a grief I was not entirely prepared for. Stepping away from students whose growth I have witnessed, from collections I have stewarded with care, and from especially colleagues who offered trust, generosity, and challenge in equal measure. This is not the grief of regret, but of genuine gratitude and connection that form when work is shared and deeply invested in.

There is a particular ache in leaving a place where you have poured vision and labor into something ongoing. Much of the work I was engaged in at ASU was iterative and future-facing: collections in the process of being reimagined, relationships still unfolding, students still finding their footing. To leave knowing that some of those seeds will continue to grow without you is both a testament to collective work and a reminder that belonging is never owned by a single person.

That grief is also evidence. It shows that something real was built. The ability to grieve a workplace and miss colleagues is rare and meaningful. It reflects a model of librarianship based on being changed by the work.

Carrying the Work Forward

As I move into my new role at the University of Chicago Library, I carry this work with me not as a completed chapter, but as an ongoing practice. The context will change. The questions will deepen. The communities and institutional cultures will be different. But the commitments that shaped my time at ASU remain the same: to build relationships grounded in care, to approach librarianship as an ethical practice, and to treat belonging not as an abstract value but as something made through daily, collective effort.

To my ASU Library community: Thank you for giving this early-career librarian a shot, and for showing me the way. Special thanks to Shari Laster, Nancy Godoy, Renee James, Harold Housley, Jessica Salow, Seonaid Valiant, Jasmine Torrez, Vina Begay, Elizabeth Dunham, Suzy Morgan, Rachel Leket-Mor, William Yates, Josh Maki, Zoie Ypsilanti, Allinston Saulsberry; and, of course, my Humanities Lab chapter writing crew, especially Matt Harp, Rachel Fernandez, and Joyce Martin.