Zoë McLaughlin

Reflective Writing

Over the winter break, I completed a translation of a novel—the first novel I’ve ever translated. I’ve translated excerpts from novels before, as well as short story collections, but a complete novel was a new (and somewhat intimidating) experience for me.

Ultimately, my process for translating the novel was no different from any other translation I’ve done, involving a rough translation and then many, many revisions, including one where I read the whole book aloud to myself. When creating the actual translation, I was lost in the language—working out the author’s style and parsing the ambiguities within individual sentences—but when it came to the revisions, I found myself moving further and further away from the original words in the text and thinking more and more about the novel as a concept. By the time I submitted it, my eyes were practically spinning around in my head and I was muttering to myself, “I see how he did it. I see how he did it.” Through the revisions, I got closer and closer to the bones of the novel, to the way it was working on a structural level—Why did the scenes come in the order they did? Why did it center around three friends?—I saw it all.

What all this introspection made me want to do was write a translator’s note—an impulse I have never before understood. Translator’s notes have always struck me as a little too meta. I want a translation to stand on its own, without any notes telling a reader what to think. I want readers to come in with their own knowledge and use that to make something of the story. After all, that’s quite literally how I approached this translation: the book was assigned to me and I read a couple of sentences about it in Indonesian before I began. But after spending so much time with such a long work, I wanted to get meta. I wanted to talk about everything I’d seen while translating and everything I had learned (and am still learning) about the author.

Some translations do include translator’s notes, but that’s not going to be the case for this particular publication. Instead, I’ve decided to channel all my reflective impulses into a zine, because that seems like an easy communication method for me lately (more on that to come in another post).

What this has raised for me, on a higher level, is the concept of reflective writing in general. For big projects like a book, it makes sense to get a little reflective, but I wonder what would happen if I put more reflective writing into practice on a more regular basis. I obviously do some reflecting for this blog, but I’m wondering how writing reflections after I teach a class or after I attend a talk might impact my overall work.

It’s my plan in the new year to try some of this. I’d like to pause from time to time and do some writing on things I’ve accomplished—what I’ve learned, how I’ve worked through things, and what I’d like to do differently or try next. I don’t want to be too prescriptive about it, but I do want to see what structuring more writing time into my work might do. At the very least, I’m hoping it will help me retain new things I’ve learned, but I think it will also help me identify patterns and come up with new ideas or things I want to try.

What about you? Do you have any goals or resolutions for the new year? Do you regularly incorporate writing into your work? How has that gone for you?

A Zine Fest in the Library

A couple of weeks ago, in conjunction with Open Access Week, my library held a zine fest featuring nonfiction zines. I had absolutely nothing to do with planning or running the event, but instead participated in a completely new way for me: tabling.

For those of you who are new to zines, they’re generally described as DIY self-publications. They can be printer paper stapled together or more elaborate, hand-stitched booklets. Subject matter also varies widely, but zines are often seen as a method for those with non-mainstream viewpoints to make their voices heard. Zine fests, then, are gatherings of zine creators where they sell or exchange their zines.

I got into the world of zines via acquiring them. MSU has housed a zine collection since before I began working here, and the librarian for the collection is luckily very open to international zines. After hunting down enough interesting Asian zines, I started to think that I could make zines too. One thing led to another and now I’ve authored several zines, mostly on subjects that I’ve thought about too much, including Benjamin Britten’s Turn of the Screw and poison hemlock.

When I collect zines for the library, I strive to be widely representative, collecting first-person accounts, art zines, fiction, and more. Personally, though, I’m most interested in instructional zines that tell me how to do something or teach me something new. This was why, when I saw the call for tablers at the Common Knowledge Zine Fest, I looked twice. Zine fests are fun to attend, but I’d never been to one so focused on my niche interests. I also thought that, given it was occurring in my workplace, it would probably be a low-stakes venue to see what tabling was like.

Indeed, the event was low-key and fun. I walked around to browse all the tables and made a few trades. I also lucked out in setting up next to someone with zines about protest songs, which were very cool and also fit in with the casual vibe I was looking for. My zines are of the simple variety, so they meshed well with the protest songs. There were also many beautifully constructed zines available, including one on leavening techniques that I ultimately purchased.

As for the tabling experience, I had my zines on display asking for donations to a couple of charities. I also took the opportunity to do some light library outreach and included my zines about recent Asian American and Pasifika acquisitions in the library. The fest was well-attended, but not so busy as to be overwhelming, so I was able to have good conversations with people, including a faculty member who I connected to another of my colleagues.

At the conclusion of the festival, the organizers hosted a conversation on zines and open access publishing. The speakers discussed the similarities and differences between both movements as well as how alternative forms of publishing can provide avenues to access information that might otherwise be hard to find.

Overall, I’m pleased to have participated in the fest. It was nice to experience a different side of the zine world and I was impressed by people’s generosity and energized by the conversations. I also liked the thinking that tied zines into the pre-existing Open Access Week programming. As I look at promoting my collections and fostering engagement, especially with people who aren’t coming into the library already for other reasons, I should probably also consider how to work my ideas into ongoing or upcoming programs and events.

So, in conclusion, a big thank you to the organizers both for allowing me to join in and for hosting this interesting event. Let us know in the comments if your library hosted any Open Access Week events or if you’ve participated in any other fun programming lately.

Funding Cuts and Collaboration

A few months ago, I wrote about how federal funding for international studies education, including language programs, was likely going to be cut and, indeed, recently national resource centers around the country, focused on various areas of the world, received word that their programs were no longer a governmental priority. This will have wide-ranging effects on programs as well as student scholarships, but that’s not actually what I’m here to talk about. Instead, I want to focus on work that’s still ongoing in area studies on campus.

Fall marks new exhibit openings at the art museum here, which this year include an exhibit entitled Mekong Voices: Transnational River Justice in Mainland Southeast Asia. The exhibit covers life and work along the Mekong, a river that flows through mainland Southeast Asia. It includes art about the changing environment along the river, as well as traditional handicrafts. Along with these tactile pieces, there are also a few film clips covering communities along the river and how climate change and global trade routes are impacting livelihoods.

The exhibit grew from the Mekong Culture WELL, a project on my campus focused—unsurprisingly—on the Mekong, agriculture, and community. Since its inception, it has had a library component, and I have often been brought into discussions on culture mapping, compiling historical data, and writing up reports for NGO’s—along with more standard instructions sessions.

The Mekong Culture WELL has been in existence in one form or another for several years now, and it has been rewarding to build relationships with faculty members and students over a long period of time. One lesson I’ve learned, though, is to pass queries along when necessary. Every so often in meetings of liaison librarians here, the question arises of how subject liaisons and liaisons with a specialized skill such as GIS can work together.

For me, this has never seemed particularly complicated, but it’s possible that this is because I’m lucky enough to have good colleagues. When a student or faculty member comes to me looking for technical knowledge that I don’t possess, I’m more than happy passing them along to a coworker, and my coworkers have also been gracious enough to receive them.

The one area where I do struggle is keeping on top of all the ways faculty members from my subject areas interact with the library. If someone, for example, is working on a digital project or a project with maps, I might never hear about it. The only solution I’ve found is getting out as much as possible, either talking to other librarians or, even better, keeping open lines of communication with faculty about their projects in general.

On the other hand, sometimes I’m just surprised. Right before the grand opening of the Mekong Voices exhibit, one of my faculty members called me. I answered, assuming we were going to discuss a research proposal I’d recently sent her. Instead, she said, “Come downstairs,” citing the presence of one of the Mekong Culture WELL faculty members. Downstairs I went, to find a group from the museum, including the co-curator of the Mekong Voices exhibit.

It turned out they were there for an impromptu tour of the exhibit on the Vietnam War currently on display in the Libraries. I had put together a popup display of related books that could be checked out, but the main exhibit used materials from the Michigan State University archives, definitely not my unit. Luckily, I’d already put together a guide for student visitors to the exhibit, so I did show them around, while relying heavily on my own previous research into MSU and the Vietnam War.

While they were there, we also visited an exhibit of African materials from the MSU Museum, a separate entity from the art museum. Because they are currently undergoing renovations, portions of their collection are on display in other locations, including in the area studies display cases in the library. Seeing the African materials prompted a discussion between all of us on how the memory institutions on campus work—or don’t—with one another. Some collaborations are happening, but we all agreed that there was room for more.

Over the coming year, I hope to work on these ideas more. Even in the face of funding cuts, I’d like to look for ways to work with people across campus to make sure that international studies maintains a presence.

How do you work with librarians with other specialties? How do you keep track of campus projects? Are there any interesting collaborations between your library and museums or other organizations on your campus or in your community?

What I did for my summer vacation: library edition

The summer, for many academic librarians, brings a lull, and for me that sometimes means that I have the opportunity to travel. Budgets here, as I imagine they are in many institutions, are currently a mess, but I was luckily still able to visit Southeast Asia a few weeks ago. I didn’t do nearly as much purchasing as I would have liked (see the aforementioned budget problems), but I was able to buy a few things and I also met a lot of great people to hopefully collaborate with in the future. So, without further ado, here’s a little bit of what I did on my summer vacation.

Kediri, East Java

My first major stop was Universitas Nusantara PGRI in Kediri, a city in East Java. For the AIFIS-MSU Conference on Indonesian Studies this past June, faculty at the university composed and choregraphed a piece for their students to perform as part of the opening ceremony, drawing on local performing arts traditions. They had a larger festival planned in July, so I, of course, wanted to attend. After I gave a (very embarrassing) speech about the importance of preserving cultural heritage, I relaxed and watched several musical and dance performances presented both by students and by community groups.

History students from the university also took me to see some important historical sites in the area, including Tegowangi Temple, where I met the woman in charge of maintaining the temple. She grew up in the area and it was her father who decided that the temple should be looked after and maintained. Kediri was home to a historically important kingdom in Java and it was fascinating to learn more about this history from the students and to hear what excites them about their studies.

Place Marketing

Everywhere I visited, I also stopped by a tourism information center, or found other ways to pick up place marketing materials for MSU’s collection. This meant everything from wandering through a Jakartan construction site looking for one of many, many malls to visiting an office located inside an Arc de Triomphe lookalike in the middle of Kediri. Collecting place marketing materials is always fun because they’re everywhere but it’s still an adventure hunting them down—a kind of library scavenger hunt.

“Academic” Meetings

Then, of course, there were the more standard library- and academia-focused meetings. I’m hoping to get more involved in collaborating on research with practitioners in Indonesia, either in traditional research collaborations or through other methods such as translating research papers into English so that they can be published for a different kind of audience, so I had several different meetings discussing ideas.

On the library side of things, a highlight was visiting the library of Surakarta’s Grand Mosque. The National Library of Indonesia and the provincial Regional Library have started a program seeking out so-called “hidden” manuscript collections: collections not found in libraries, but instead in private homes or in community institutions such as mosques. I was invited to sit in on a meeting at the mosque to go through their collection and identify which pieces would fit into the scope of the project. I got to see everything from books of tafsir with notes in the margins to student report cards, learned about different kinds of paper and what they signal about time period and preservation, and ferried a lot of archival housings between tables.

When I visit libraries overseas, I try to make note not only of what kinds of materials they have, but also how they can be accessed. If a student comes to me looking for Javanese Qurans, do I know the person they need to contact to gain access? Is there an online catalog? Even better, are there digitized copies available to browse? In the case of the Grand Mosque, there’s as yet only a paper catalog (currently out of print), but there are a large number of manuscripts that have been digitized and made available online.

My other big library meeting was with the Library of Congress field office in Jakarta. The Library of Congress has offices around the world that funnel books back to the US, including to research libraries. I can report that despite everything going on politically in both the US and Indonesia, operations at the field office continue. Shipping costs are rising and there are other unexpected hurdles that come up, but it was heartening to meet with everyone face-to-face and hear how things are going.

Zines

Finally, I planned my itinerary around a zine festival in Jakarta, a city whose zine scene I’ve watched from afar for some time. The festival was held at KONGSI 8, a small studio and café space, but they managed to fit in a good number of vendors as well as a large collection of zines from makers who weren’t present. I had to resist buying everything, and instead focused on political and environmental zines, as well as zines about identity.

Collecting zines for the library helps to provide immediate access to what everyday students, activists, and creators are thinking. The next step, of course, is making sure library users know the zines are available. One thing I’d really like to focus on in the coming year is communicating with students about the library’s zine collection and brainstorming with them ways they can use zines both as sources for their research and as a way of expressing their ideas and findings. But more about that in another post.

What have you been up to this summer? Any interesting projects? Any bright ideas? Are you ready for the fall semester?

Conference Methods: Are there other options?

As I sit here preparing myself for a weekend of ALA Annual, I find myself ruminating once again on other modes of conferencing and what is gained or lost depending on how a conference is organized.

I, personally, come to ALA only for Asian Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA) events. Any activity related to my core job duties happens at a different conference or, increasingly, online, and thus every year I find myself torn on whether or not to go to ALA. Attending APALA events is, of course, lovely, but it would be much more fulfilling if I could get more work done in conjunction with them.

And so, virtual conferences. While I like the concept, I’ve found them to be relatively hit or miss. The convenience factor is obviously a plus. No travel means lower costs, both financial and environmental, as well as less time potentially lost to travelling. Video presentations can also in theory be accessed later, relieving some of the time crunch of an in-person conference, at least if you’re organized enough to go back and watch more panels once the conference is over.

On the other hand, virtual conferences require a lot more organization to incorporate the spontaneous interactions of an in-person conference. Forced interaction in a Zoom breakout room is not the same as chance encounters at a conference. Sometimes you do find that spark in a Zoom room, but sometimes it’s missing.

The best “informal” encounter I’ve had to date in a virtual conference was during an early version of the AIFIS-MSU Conference on Indonesian Studies, a conference notable for having been conceived of as an online-only affair in order to achieve equitable participation by Indonesian and American scholars. Still in the midst of COVID, when a panel was going well, organizers allowed the conversation to continue past the panel’s allotted time so that attendees could chat more informally with presenters. This ensured that everyone in the Zoom room already had some level of similar interests and laid the groundwork for a conversation not based on ice breaker questions. This might be harder to organize, but I can imagine interest-based Zoom rooms as one way to organize socialization.

Again, this runs the risk of being too forced, which is where enhanced virtual profiles with research interests and other information that attendees can browse might be helpful. I’ve never taken advantage of these features at an online conference, but perhaps they’re working well for others.

Continuing in the realm of virtual conferences, one other mode that I recently heard about was explicitly designed around limiting the environmental effects of travel, in this case through a conference designed around zines. For DIY Methods, Researchers propose their topics, create a zine when accepted, and then copies of the zines are distributed to all participants and made available online. Again, this significantly cuts down on the chance encounters aspect of conferences. That said, it also provides a different way of communicating research and works in progress for those who may not be interested in communicating via another paper presentation but also aren’t ready yet to make the jump to a book chapter or article. I can also imagine a way for this to be expanded to include discussions from “attendees” about the zines.

At any rate, I’m here at ALA, but still not convinced by either in-person or virtual conferences. Have you seen any interesting iterations of conferences focused on inclusivity in some way, be it geographic, financial, or otherwise? If you were to redesign conferences, how would they work? Or, alternatively, just come say hi to me at ALA!