Kevin Adams

Reflections on ACRL 2021

As I logged into the ACRL 2021 Virtual Conference Opening Keynote, I was excited and nervous for the conference. I didn’t know what to expect. Would I find new and inspiring ideas? Would I find old and tired conversations that I’ve participated in over and over again? Would I find the virtual format engaging? Who would I be hearing from? How difficult would it be to find non-dominant voices?

My recent focus in research has primarily been on critical librarianship, information literacy, and open pedagogy. These subjects were well represented on the calendar. And, in the actual sessions, I found perspectives and conversations that were entirely new to me. Now, this isn’t true across the board, but the virtual conference allowed me to watch other sessions if I didn’t find the discussion in a given session to be meaningful.

From the opening keynote with Tressie McMillan Cottom and conversations about information and platform capitalism, to a deconstruction of imposter syndrome by former library pages, I found many of the new perspectives to which I was exposed to be helpful and well-grounded in a critical theoretical framework. The critical perspectives brought by the presenters helped me to articulate some of the challenges that I have been wrestling with recently: feeling gas lit by higher education conversations focused on productivity rather than recovery and healing, an alarming preference for surveillance of students rather than connection with students, and the continued omission of critical anti-racist approaches from conversations about progress. Luckily, I haven’t felt this in my library specifically, but I have found the broader discourse in higher education to be discouraging, especially since the start of the spring semester.

In addition to McMillan Cottom’s keynote, the session with We Here, “Systemic Oppression Requires Systemic Change,” highlighted specific instances of racism and oppression in librarianship. Recently, I’ve often felt as if I am blindly gesturing at these issues on a strictly theoretical level. For the most part when I speak about the systemic racism of libraries, I get a few nods, but more blank stares. The presentation underscored that there are concrete and present manifestations of white supremacy in academic librarianship, and it is not strictly an obscured, ominous force that is difficult to uncover. While many conversations about anti-racist work have died out since the summer, this presentation encouraged me to continue seeking anti-racist organization within librarianship and without.

I walked away from the ACRL Virtual Conference with new ideas, a handful of lesson plan sketches, and a re-assurance that I am not the only one trying to have conversations about critical librarianship. In fact, the ability to quickly move between virtual sessions allowed me to find something that really felt like a community. I only wish I had the opportunity to build more connections with that community. At future ACRL conferences, whether virtual or in person, I am excited to find ways to intentionally build relationships.

Strategies for Collaboration

While completing my master’s program, I was surprised by how frequently team projects were assigned. Collaboration was one of the most commonly used words at my institution, to the point that the manager for my graduate assistant position would excitedly (and sometimes sarcastically) refer to collaborative projects as “collabos.” It wasn’t until my final semester that I had an instructor, who explained her reasoning for assigning multiple group projects in a single course: as a librarian, she said, you will constantly be working with other people, and you need to make sure that you are prepared for that.

While, on a certain level I understood that I wouldn’t be working alone, I did not truly comprehend the degree to which this would be true. As a first year librarian at a small private college, I have spent my time working closely with each and every librarian on a variety of projects. I also work closely with teaching faculty across my liaison areas, faculty and staff in Information Technology Services, university administrators, faculty, and staff on committees, graduate and undergraduate students, and other librarians outside of the university.

I am still learning and adapting with each new partnership and project, but I would like to share a few strategies that I have developed when collaborating with my colleagues.

Establishing Working Norms

A colleague from another institution introduced me to the concept of establishing working norms before embarking on a collaborative project. We took about half an hour, opened a google doc together, and had an open and honest conversation about our strategies and tendencies for project management. In this conversation we explored the best pathways for our future communication, the flexibility of our timeframes/deadlines, the best ways to schedule our meetings, our tendencies to work ahead or last minute, and our ability/willingness to work outside of traditional work hours. This conversation was somewhat challenging for me, because I frankly had never verbalized some of these norms. As we discussed, we recorded our preferences for future reference. Establishing these working norms has been extremely helpful over the course of our project.

Simplifying Scheduling

Finding a time to meet with a group of people who have varying schedules can be a nightmare. There are a number of ways to simplify scheduling, and I have found it helpful to establish what is best for all parties, as early on in the collaborative effort as possible. If you are working within an institution and everyone keeps an up-to-date calendar on a shared platform like Outlook or Google, it is much easier to schedule. When this is not an option, I rely heavily on websites like Doodle or When Is Good. None of these are perfect and the main drawback that I have encountered is that they all require team members to take time out of their busy schedules to record their availability. My least favorite, but sometimes the most effective, approach for quickly getting everyone’s input is through an email or text chain–or just good old fashion conversation. Then the problem becomes compiling that data and figuring out the best option.

Communication Methods

Similar to scheduling, people have a variety of preferences for communication. If you are working within an institution that has an official method for communication that is great, but it is still best to check and make sure that the institutional method works for the team members. While the official method for communication at my institution is email, and I prefer to use email, it is not best for everyone nor for every task. A quick conversation with team members to decide on primary and secondary forms of communication can go a long way in helping to select from the plethora of communication platforms we have available.

Flexibility

Finally, I have found it important to establish personal boundaries on flexibility. In what circumstances am I willing to be flexible on communication methods? When will I adjust my availability for meetings? When, if ever, is it okay to work during lunch or even after regular work hours? By establishing these boundaries for myself and holding to them, I am able to preserve my mental health and energy so that when it is time to work and collaborate I am able to be fully present and contribute.

Combatting Imposter Syndrome with Comradery and Critical Pedagogy

One of my friends from my graduate program is currently an instruction librarian at another institution. At the beginning of the academic school year, he asked if I would like to join him in reading partnership centered on instruction and pedagogy through a critical lens. So far this year, we have read bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress and Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. While reading these books we have met weekly or biweekly to discuss the contents of each chapter. I am as sick of Zoom as the next person, but these meetings were often the highlight of my week.

During these sessions we have shared our experiences, opinions, and instruction strategies as they relate to the work of hooks and Freire. It is hard to select just one topic from hours of lively conversation, but one common theme has been resonating with me as I reflect on last semester and look ahead to the new one – the complicated student-teacher relationship.

Both authors problematize the traditional hierarchical classroom setting where the teacher is always the leader of the classroom and students are often stripped of their agency upon entry. Rather, hooks and Freire explore the ways in which it is necessary for teachers to empower student agency, and to enter into a teaching and learning relationship with the students.

Creating a classroom where students have agency, and their experiences and voices are truly valued is demanding work that becomes more complicated when applied to the library one-shot instructional model. Part of this complication comes with the course instructor/librarian relationship. If the course instructor teaches with a traditional lecture model, and does not see the value of centering student voices and experiences in the classroom, librarians may not feel empowered to create this environment, or may even run the risk of not being asked to return.

As a new librarian at a new university, building relationships with teaching faculty has been one of my primary goals. Through my various communications with faculty in my liaison areas, I have not encountered any strong push back to my instruction style. However, and this may be completely in my head, I often feel that there is an expectation that I will come into the Zoom room as the Expert and fill the students with my Librarian Knowledge. This unspoken, and perhaps fully imagined, expectation feeds into something I have written about before – imposter syndrome.

This is made worse by the fact that I am what some of my colleagues like to refer to as a “generalist” – I do not have a master’s degree in any of the fields with which I liaise. This is where student experiences, voices, and expertise come to play. My reading comrade and I have been discussing strategies that implement hooks’ engaged pedagogy and Freire’s dialogics – essentially centering student voices and experiences in the library one shot.

In reality, I am not a generalist. I specialize in library pedagogy and information literacy. When I give over half of the classroom time to the students to share their thoughts, experiences, and even expertise on information literacy topics, I am seeking to empower student knowledge, and allowing for them to teach and learn from each other. Of course, I bolster their ideas with additional perspectives where and when it is helpful. By creating a learning environment that centers students, I am able to bring together my subject expertise and their knowledge base.

Learning to navigate classrooms norms and pedagogical power structures is something instruction librarians are always participating in. In conversation with my reading comrade, I have developed several new strategies for this. It is my hope that as I push and break down the boundaries of the hierarchical classroom, my new colleagues will see the value of this practice.

Seeking Creativity in the Pandemic

I have always struggled with forced creativity. Working in an office, working at a desk, working at a computer have always been stifling. Good thing I chose to be a librarian, right? Of course, I have developed several strategies to help cope with this and inspire creativity and positivity in my work: multitasking, going for short walks, breathing exercises, and perhaps most importantly, listening to music. In high school I discovered that I did my best, most focused school work when I blasted music.

Music sooths my anxiety, allows me to focus, and inspires creativity when I need it most. This has led me down some fascinating music rabbit holes and to develop quite the record collection. As the pandemic began and I transitioned to working from home, I quickly realized a silver lining: I’d be able to listen to my records while working. In fact, I am currently spinning David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

Working from home has opened the door to other new paths to inspiring creativity. A couple of weeks ago I attended an LIS Pedagogy Chat moderated by Lisa Hinchliffe. I have been extremely grateful for each LIS Pedagogy Chat that I’ve been able to make this semester, but there were a couple of discussion points from this one that really hit home. The session titled “What’s Going Well?” encouraged all sixty or so participants to share what had been working for them this semester. I didn’t have the energy to weigh in during this session, but listening to the successes of the other participants was a nourishing experience. For me, the question that brought out the most inspiring and relatable answers was, “What environments bring out your best work?”

The answers to this question included a variety of environments and actions that ranged from taking a nap after an instruction session to baking cookies while brainstorming. The librarians sharing their experiences not only portrayed these practices as legitimate but in some cases as necessary. This broader understanding of work environments and practices has been helpful to understanding the ways in which I work best.

Throughout the work day I often get urges to get up and cook, water my plants, take a shower, walk my dog, or generally get out in nature. In the past this has felt like some kind of breach of professionalism. And, while I have felt apprehensive about giving myself over to these meanderings, I have found that my most productive and creative brainstorming frequently occurs in environments that do not include the cold light of my computer screen. Taking a moment to unpack this, I realized that the act of doing something creative but relatively mindless, like cooking, triggers my creativity in ways that a standard work environment does not. Alternatively, less creative, but physically active measures keep both my mind and body from stagnation.

I’ve felt guilty about my wandering path to creativity and productivity, but hearing from other librarians that this can be a legitimate strategy has allowed me to embrace that work can take different forms and my best work doesn’t always happen in the conventional work environment associated with academia.

Transitioning Supervision Models

Three years ago I would start my day by opening a restaurant – taking down the chairs, laying out the silverware, starting the coffee, turning on the food warmers, setting up the bar, and commiserating with coworkers. On long days, I would end my day 14 hours later closing up a different restaurant – putting up the chairs, rushing the silverware back to the dish pit, dumping out the old coffee, tearing down the server station, and sweeping the floors. In those moments, I was quietly working by myself or catching up with a coworker. In either case, I was free from supervision – the front of house manager was usually counting money somewhere or just relaxing in an office with a coffee or beer depending on the shift. I mostly enjoyed working in the food service industry, particularly in the moments when my coworkers and I were free to exist and work without being monitored and surveilled.

There are a myriad of difficulties that come with transitioning from food service industry work to library and information science work, but one of the most bizarre has been the transition away from a strict supervision model. As a food service industry worker I was often micro-managed in my work and there were specific workflows. There was little room for creativity or taking time for self-care. As I transitioned to a gig as a reference graduate assistant, I found that I had more freedom but still had guidance. Projects and tasks were defined for me, workflows were mostly established without my input, but I was not micromanaged or surveilled. I enjoyed the work that I did and I learned a ton, but I still longed to define my own projects and workflows.

As it turns out, that freedom is a bit of a double edged sword. In my current role as a librarian, I have generally defined goals from the strategic plan of our library and my job posting, but my path is totally up to me. This has been a little anxiety inducing. While I know that I could reach out to my colleagues at any time, the nagging thoughts loom: You’re doing it wrong! You don’t know what you’re doing! Shouldn’t you have someone check your work?! These thoughts are vestiges from work and education experiences past. The reality is, I know that in choosing my own projects and pursuing my own workflows, I am able to bring a unique and valuable approach to the tasks at hand. But how do I ward off those nagging thoughts?

A few strategies have been helpful in combatting the ever present self-doubt. One is regular communication with my colleagues and peers. It has been particularly encouraging to have honest conversations with folks that have more experience. One of my colleagues told me they regularly ask themselves what the heck they are doing. Which helps remind me that being cautious and critical is natural and can be positive!

I’ve also found it helpful to stay connected with librarians through social media and regional and national library organizations. I’ve been able to ask questions when I need to, but often times I find that just reading and hearing that other librarians are struggling with similar issues and even making similar decisions has been helpful.

I do miss the work I did as a food service industry worker, but I don’t miss the strict supervision model. Librarianship comes with its own responsibilities and challenges, but also rewards! Some have said that imposter syndrome never really goes away. While I hope that this is not true, I suspect that I wouldn’t be a critical and creative librarian without a good healthy dose of self-doubt.