Category: Uncategorized

Tenure-lite: Proving Value to Systems That Don’t Value Us

This past week, I submitted my 3-year probationary review dossier. I am currently working towards a promotion with a multi-year probationary period, and without going into detail for this post, I have incredibly complicated and often contradictory feelings about academia.

The ability to hold contradictions—to critique systems while working within them, to name injustice while building alternatives, to acknowledge precarity while finding meaning in our work—has become essential to succeeding as an academic librarian. But let’s be clear: this constant negotiation is emotional labor. It’s exhausting to simultaneously perform competence for evaluation while questioning the validity of those very metrics. And it’s draining to build community and solidarity while competing for limited positions. It’s demanding to maintain hope while documenting the ways systems fail us.

This emotional labor is real work, and it matters. Working through these contradictions—rather than resolving them or pretending they don’t exist—is itself valuable labor. It’s also labor that is often overlooked in our promotion criteria.

It’s complicated

My job provides me with significant academic freedom. I have the opportunity to publish, present, and share my work. When I started this position, I had never written anything for publication or presented at a professional conference, not even during my undergraduate or graduate studies. I am learning as I go, leaning into making mistakes and learning quickly rather than striving for perfectionism.

Yet even this support reveals the contradictions we navigate. Colleagues offer generous mentorship, but their most common response is, “It depends”—a phrase that simultaneously acknowledges the flexibility of our roles and signals the very ambiguity that creates anxiety. The academic freedom I value exists alongside unclear expectations. The opportunity to grow professionally comes with the burden of figuring out how to document that growth for systems that don’t quite know how to evaluate it.

These aren’t complaints about individuals—my colleagues are doing their best within structures that don’t serve any of us perfectly. But the emotional labor here is real: I’m genuinely grateful for support while simultaneously aware that I’m navigating challenges endemic to our profession. We lack the established paths that teaching faculty enjoy, and our unique contributions don’t fit neatly into academic frameworks. When I explain to non-academics that many positions require an additional master’s degree, a PhD, or getting another master’s for tenure, they ask, “All that for a librarian?” That question stings not because it’s wrong, but because it reveals how little our work is understood—even by institutions that employ us.

Learning to hold these contradictions—gratitude and frustration, support and uncertainty, professional growth and systemic dysfunction—is part of the work itself.

Before diving deeper into these challenges, I want to make clear that I am not naïvely optimistic or cynical.

Instead, I believe that transformation is possible within unjust systems, paired with an unflinching analysis of those systems’ limitations. It means acknowledging structural inequities—invisible labor, inconsistent evaluation criteria, limited access to research time or mentorship—while still building practices that affirm agency, solidarity, and purpose.

For hybrid or mixed-status librarians navigating promotion and tenure, this means:

  • Naming structural contradictions openly, refusing to internalize them as individual failings
  • Building communities of practice that counter isolation through collective accountability
  • Reclaiming narrative agency in our dossiers and professional identities
  • Cultivating sustainable imagination about what academic librarianship could become

This approach guides what follows.

I made a meme! Thank you, Zohran Mamdani, NYC mayor incumbent.

The Statistics–And What We’re Building From Them

The statistics reveal a complex reality: only 30% of academic institutions hire tenure-eligible librarians (Bailey & Becher, 2022). Moreover, a 2017 ACRL survey found roughly half of academic libraries categorize librarians as faculty, while nearly one-fifth classify them as non-tenure-track faculty.

At private institutions, 77% don’t offer tenure-track positions for librarians (Bailey & Becher, 2022). As one analysis notes, academic librarian status has undergone a “seismic shift away from faculty status and tenure-track positions,” with many universities operating “a mixed model where some librarians are hired as tenure-track and others with fixed-term contracts” (Academic Librarian Status, n.d.). Many of us fit into hybrid categories—”academic professionals,” continuing appointment tracks, mixed-status systems where “professional librarians” blend faculty and staff roles. That’s my current status.

These statistics could be read as evidence of professional decline—and many do read them that way. But they also function as evidence that academic librarianship is actively creating new models of academic work. We’re not failed faculty; we’re navigating uncharted territory, and that navigation itself is generative. The question isn’t whether we fit existing academic structures, but whether we can leverage our liminal position to reimagine what academic work can be.

This requires naming the contradictions openly—not to accept them, but to refuse to internalize them as individual failings. By articulating these tensions in our dossiers, in peer conversations, and in collective statements to administration, we engage in transparency as a pathway to reform.

What the literature doesn’t capture is how the metrics used often don’t match library work’s real demands. In reality, this constant evaluation—whether formal or informal—creates a hyperawareness of professional performance that can transform the joy of helping a student find precisely what they need into yet another moment of self-assessment.

The Structural Contradiction

The most absurd aspect is the fundamental contradiction at its heart: we’re asked to prove our value to systems that consistently undervalue us. We must justify our worth to provosts who regularly cut library budgets and positions, viewing us as expendable overhead rather than essential academic infrastructure. A profession that academic administration routinely underfunds is still expected to meet its standards and gain its approval.

This dynamic places the burden of success primarily on librarians themselves and on the mentorship networks within our profession. While other academic departments can count on institutional investment and colleagues who understand their field, academic librarians often find themselves advocating for resources while simultaneously having to prove we deserve them. We’re expected to demonstrate impact and innovation within systems designed to limit our influence.

The faculty liaison model exemplifies this dysfunction. We’re judged partly on how well we connect with faculty who have little institutional incentive to collaborate with us. Finding a faculty member who genuinely seeks meaningful partnership can be difficult. However, the institutional setup often shows that collaboration is more a matter of choice than necessity.

We’re held accountable for building bridges others have no motivation to cross—building relationships within systems that structurally discourage them, showing research impact with limited budgets, and showcasing educational innovation while frequently being excluded from curricular decisions. We’re asked to achieve academic excellence, yet administrators often view our work as secondary to the institution’s core mission.

Many librarians are already creating alternatives within this system:
  • Some libraries have formed peer review and writing groups across ranks, creating alternative mentorship structures when institutional support is inadequate.
  • Professional organizations like ACRL are developing new frameworks for evaluating library impact that don’t simply borrow from other disciplines.
  • Individual librarians are using local governance structures to advocate for clearer promotion pathways, submitting proposals for revised evaluation criteria that reflect our actual work.
  • Cross-institutional networks are sharing documentation strategies that make invisible labor legible—relational pedagogy, community partnerships, affective labor.

These aren’t solutions—they’re experiments in collective refusal. They represent librarians saying: “We will not compete in isolation; we will build alternative structures of support.” This is a complicated compromise, working within failing systems while actively building their replacements.

The Ambiguity Dilemma

Compounding these challenges is how RPT (review, promotion, tenure) documentation handles service expectations. Research on service satisfaction found that ambiguity in tenure documentation can cut both ways. It should be noted that some librarians appreciate the flexibility—vague standards allow them to explain their work creatively and encourage mentorship conversations with senior colleagues. For them, ambiguity equals freedom.

This isn’t naïve—it’s strategic. When we can’t change the rules, we can sometimes leverage their vagueness to make space for unconventional contributions: community-engaged scholarship that doesn’t fit traditional publication models, teaching innovations that happen outside classrooms, care work that sustains institutional equity. Some librarians use ambiguous criteria to craft dossier narratives that foreground process over product, showing how sustained community impact matters more than one-off publications.

But—and this is crucial—this strategy depends on power. 

Senior librarians with established reputations can often interpret ambiguity creatively. Early-career librarians, librarians of color, disabled librarians, and those in precarious positions often cannot.

For many others, especially those on the tenure track, the lack of clarity creates constant anxiety. One librarian in the study explained, “I never know when enough is enough.” Another described it more bluntly: “we complain about this [RPT] document… we’ll be told by admin, ‘oh, well, it’s left short so it’s really open to your interpretation’ but then the problem is you walk into the room and you get told you interpreted it wrong… it’s a moving mark that nobody ever knows how to hit” (Rutledge et al., 2023, p. 7).

This isn’t just frustration—it’s a structural issue. To be clear, when administrators defend vague standards as “open to interpretation” but then penalize librarians for interpreting them “wrong,” the ambiguity stops being flexibility and becomes a trap. You can’t meet unclear expectations, which means you’re constantly second-guessing whether your service choices will count when review time comes.

Ambiguity can be leveraged strategically and it functions as a tool of control. The question then becomes: How do we collectively advocate for clarity where it protects vulnerable colleagues, while preserving flexibility where it enables innovation? 

The Ableism Embedded in Academic Evaluation—and Disability Justice Alternatives

The probationary review process exists within what disability studies scholar Jay T. Dolmage identifies as an inherently ableist system, where disability has always been constructed as “the inverse, or opposite, of higher education” (3) The metrics we’re expected to meet—constant productivity, extensive conference travel, rigid timelines, intensive networking—reflect what researchers call “academic ableism.”

The pressure to perform well during probation can be especially challenging for individuals with chronic illnesses, neurodivergent conditions, or mental health issues. This situation is made even more complicated by the way ableism intersects with the precarious circumstances many of us face. Early-career academics often worry that disclosing their health challenges may negatively affect their careers, especially in environments where temporary contracts are more common than permanent positions.

The dilemma of disclosure—needing to request accommodations while fearing professional repercussions—forces many librarians to make difficult choices during their evaluations. As someone with chronic physical and mental health challenges, I have learned to advocate for myself but still struggle with the shame from internalized ableism.

But what if we reimagine what “productivity” and “excellence” can look like? This might mean:
  • Documenting process over product: showing how sustained community relationships matter more than publication counts.
  • Proposing alternative timelines that account for chronic illness, caregiving responsibilities, or neurodivergent work patterns.
  • Using disability justice frameworks to argue that diverse ways of working aren’t deficits to accommodate but strengths that enrich our profession.
  • Crafting dossiers that highlight integrative knowledge work—demonstrating how teaching, service, and scholarship mutually inform one another rather than treating them as separate categories.

Our precarious positions—frustrating as they are—may actually give us unique leverage here. Because we’re already outside traditional faculty structures, we have less to lose by proposing radical alternatives. We can be the ones who say: “What if we evaluated contribution over four years instead of three? What if we valued depth of community impact alongside breadth of conference presentations? What if we made sustainability explicit professional values?”

The Innovation Trap and its Alternatives

The pressure to innovate during probationary reviews creates what Julia Glassman (2017) describes as the “innovation fetish”—a fixation on newness for its own sake instead of genuine improvement. This pressure particularly affects those of us in precarious positions, where we are compelled to chase “flashy projects that take more time, resources, and money to do what we could have done with something much simpler.”

During my own review process, I’ve caught myself questioning whether refining and deepening existing successful programs counts as professional growth, or whether I need to reinvent my work to maintain a perception of innovation. This anxiety reflects what Glassman calls the corporatization of academic culture, which increasingly pressures us to see our work as startup pitches instead of lasting, relationship-based service.

But sustaining meaningful relationships isn’t just a “maintenance phase”. It means librarians collectively saying:

  • “I’m deepening this existing instruction program rather than creating a new one, and that’s scholarly growth.”
  • “We are maintaining relationships with community partners over years to build trust”
  • “Our team is refining a reference service that already works, and that’s innovation—just not the kind that gets conference buzz.”

Some of us are already practicing this resistance. We’re writing dossier narratives that foreground sustained care over flashy projects; supporting colleagues who choose depth over novelty; using promotion materials as sites of narrative sovereignty, and, crafting documents that insist: the moral and relational dimensions of librarianship are scholarly contributions.

This transforms the dossier from a compliance document into an act of professional re-visioning. It’s not just about getting promoted—it’s about changing what promotion values.

Looking Forward: What We Need

The landscape of academic librarianship is changing. We need better ways to understand and evaluate our work. The changes in librarian status at many institutions mean we are creating new models for academic life, often without past guidance or established best practices.

We need:

  • Assessment frameworks tailored specifically for library work instead of borrowing from other disciplines
  • Slow librarianship principles that focus on meaningful, sustainable work over constant innovation
  • Disability-inclusive evaluation processes that accommodate different ways of working and contributing
  • Documentation of the experiences of librarians in non-tenure-track academic professional roles
  • Advocacy for compensation and benefits that reflect our educational credentials and professional responsibilities
  • Solidarity practices that move us away from individual competition toward collective support for all library workers

    Ideas for Supporting This Work
  • Connect with or form local peer review groups that practice collective documentation and mutual support.
  • Use ACRL forums and special interest groups to share alternative promotion narratives and evaluation models.
  • Propose institutional pilots at your library: portfolios instead of CVs, reflective practice documentation, community impact assessments.
  • Document what you’re trying to change and why.

    What Still Needs Building
  • Disability-inclusive evaluation processes that accommodate diverse ways of working and normalize flexibility.
  • Compensation and benefit structures that reflect our educational credentials and professional responsibilities.
  • Solidarity practices that move us from individual competition toward collective care for all library workers—not just those on promotion tracks.
  • Documentation and research on the experiences of librarians in non-tenure-track roles, building the archive future librarians will need.
  • Feminist, Indigenous, and community-engaged epistemologies integrated into promotion criteria, recognizing diverse forms of knowledge work.

The Personal Stakes

Writing this from within the probationary process, I recognize that this isn’t an intellectual exercise. These questions of status, evaluation, and professional recognition have real implications for our livelihoods, career trajectories, and sense of professional identity. They influence our ability to take intellectual risks, pursue innovative projects, or speak truth to power in our institutions.

The research shows that tenured librarians assign greater value to the benefits of tenure compared to those without it (Silva et al., 2017)—a reminder that job security and academic freedom are not abstract concepts but tangible realities that influence our ability to serve our communities.

By documenting our professional achievements and our journeys through these challenges, and by sharing our stories—our emotions, our obstacles, and our creative solutions—we help build the roadmaps that future academic librarians will need.

Every time we support a colleague through their review, we practice the solidarity that could transform these systems.

Every time we document care work and relational labor as scholarly contributions, we chip away at the frameworks that undervalue us. The very act of articulating these problems is part of building solutions. Writing through my own review process, I hold onto this: transformation doesn’t require us to wait for institutions to value us differently. It requires us to value our work differently, collectively, and to build the structures that reflect that valuation.

It can also mean leaving. I mean this for career change librarians as well as those who refuse to stay in institutions that will never recognize their value. Refusal to compromise is entirely valid and just as important to this dialogue.

The roadmaps future academic librarians need aren’t waiting to be discovered—they’re being created right now, by us, in our imperfect and ongoing experiments in solidarity.

What has your experience been with probationary review or professional evaluation as an academic librarian? I’d love to hear your thoughts, stories and supportive screams in the comments.

References

Academic Librarian Status. (n.d.). A list of academic institutions in the United States and elsewhere, sorted by the professional status of their librarians. https://academiclibrarianstatus.wordpress.com/

Bailey, E., & Becher, M. (2022). Academic librarian faculty status. Chicago, IL. Association of College and Research Libraries.

Cary, S. (2001). Faculty rank, status, and tenure for librarians: Current trends. College & Research Libraries News, 62(5), 510-520. doi:https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.62.5.510

https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/view/19384/22679

Dolmage, J. T. (2017). Academic ableism: Disability and higher education. University of Michigan Press.

Glassman, J. (2017). The innovation fetish and slow librarianship: What librarians can learn from the Juicero. In the Library with the Lead Pipe. http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2017/innovation-fetish/

Investigation of tenured and tenure-track academic librarians’ service satisfaction at public Association of Research Libraries’ (ARL) institutions. (2022). The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 48(6). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0099133322001677

Silva, E., Galbraith, Q., & Groesbeck, M. (2017). Academic librarians’ changing perceptions of faculty status and tenure. College & Research Libraries, 78(4), 428-441. https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/16639

Reframing Traditional Models: Research Needs in the Performing Arts

I occupy an unusual position in academic librarianship. As a continuing appointment performing arts librarian serving the School of Music, Dance, and Theatre, I straddle multiple worlds: subject specialist and generalist, curator and reference provider, researcher and daily practitioner. In other words, my work constantly shifts between different expectations and evaluative frameworks.

By comparison, my colleagues in music librarianship benefit from established professional infrastructure: specialized graduate training, the Music Library Association’s networks, standardized practices, and decades of scholarship. By contrast, librarians working with theatre and dance inhabit a professionalization gap. There is no dedicated graduate program, little in the way of shared training, and only fragmentary community infrastructure. As a result, this absence is not simply inconvenient; it shapes how tenure committees evaluate our work, how we articulate our expertise, and how effectively we support our constituencies.

Scott Stone (2023) notes that 40% of Music Library Association members now work beyond music specialization. Nevertheless, evaluation systems often remain grounded in older categories—either the “deep specialist” or the “broad generalist.” Hybrid roles like mine don’t fit neatly into either, even though performing arts librarianship often demands more disciplinary expertise, not less.

Consequently, this essay argues that performing arts librarianship requires frameworks that recognize creative research as distinctive: recursive, embodied, community-centered, and often resistant to the models libraries have traditionally used. To illustrate these dynamics, evidence from five studies—Fleming-May, Marini, Mayer, Dalal & Shane, and Stone—underscores both the gaps and the opportunities. My own practice with students demonstrates why new approaches are urgently needed.

Complementary Studies

Rachel Fleming-May’s (2025) meta-ethnography combines findings from 23 studies on how creative artists seek information (2019–2024). She sees that professional artists and scholars view emotions, memory, and experiences as valid sources of information. They describe creation as “dynamic information making.” This means research happens alongside practice, not before it (558). Artists seldom feel frustrated when they can’t find information. Instead, they see engagement as “an opportunity for creative dialogue rather than [addressing a deficit]” (558). Fleming-May shows how creative research differs from traditional academic work. Similarly, artists see making as a learning process. Even when alone, they keep a dialogue going. They also value exploration and chance discoveries.

Fleming-May examines professional artists in a broad manner, while Francesca Marini focuses her attention on theatre scholarship and its specialized practitioners. Marini’s 2007 study included 41 interviews. She spoke with theatre scholars and performing arts archivists from Italy, the U.S., France, and Belgium. Performing arts information professionals share five key traits with the scholars they help:

  • Attention to context.
  • Sensitivity to time and ephemerality. 
  • Creativity 
  • Passionate engagement 
  • Interdisciplinarity

Significantly, many have backgrounds as practitioners, like actors, directors, dancers, and designers. They also point out that there isn’t just one method, like there isn’t one form of theatre. Archivists and librarians are key research partners, helping users spot connections, both inside and outside the material, that might go unnoticed. By documenting proactively—arranging recordings, soliciting materials, they promote the creation of sources that would not otherwise exist. As one archivist puts it, “The archive has to be alive; it has to be an active entity… Theatre cannot be a dead issue” (29).

Impact on student experience

At the same time, these patterns become visible—and often troubling—in student researchers. Jennifer Mayer’s (2015) case study of upper-division performing arts students at the University of Wyoming found they struggled with multimedia discovery, couldn’t reliably distinguish primary from secondary sources, and found interdisciplinary research challenging to navigate. Dance students turned to Google, Wikipedia, and YouTube before library tools—not from laziness, but because these platforms matched their visual and exploratory habits (419). Students’ image selections often diverged from faculty expectations, revealing visual literacy gaps. Costume and scene design students reported unmet research demands and “tension between what sources the professors want versus what is realistically available” (423).

One sustained intervention demonstrates how to address these challenges. Heather Dalal and Robin Shane’s (2023) seven-year collaboration at Rider University embedded the librarian in courses and shifted toward collaborative, in-class research. Instead of demonstrating databases, they had students share images in Google Slides and conduct peer evaluation using prompts: “Is this first-hand research? What helps you know that? Does this feel like good research?” (1). Pairing iterative practice with ongoing feedback reduced anxiety and improved outcomes. Their approach succeeds because it treats creative research as distinctive practice requiring specialized support—not deficit remediation.

These studies mirror my experience: the gap between struggling students and expert practitioners is significant; traditional systems don’t fully serve creative researchers; and effective support begins by reconceptualizing what counts as research and how libraries partner in it.

Supporting MFA students

I work closely with MFA students whose research challenges assumptions about information-seeking. They often investigate connections between and embodied experience and knowledge; direct plays through non-linear, emotionally driven, community-centered processes where performance itself becomes research—creation and investigation happen simultaneously, not sequentially.

When they request research support, traditional frameworks often fail. Their processes are recursive: create, reflect, research, create again. Students draw from personal experience, community knowledge, and bodily understanding alongside scholarly sources. These are sophisticated behaviors, yet library systems and instruction models don’t consistently recognize them as legitimate scholarship.

Here, Marini’s framework helps me understand why certain approaches work. When I function as research partner rather than service provider—actively suggesting connections, participating in interpretation, understanding the ephemeral nature of their work—students respond differently. When I acknowledge my own theatre engagement (attending performances, understanding rehearsal processes), I build credibility.

Further more, theatre research still contends with Eurocentric frames that push materials into anthropology or religion rather than “theatre.” Play discovery remains challenging: cataloging rarely enables browsing by practitioners’ actual access points—theme, playwright demographics, historical setting. Eurocentrism persists not only in who appears in standard histories, but in the very definitions of “theatre” those histories assume.

Meeting these needs demands subject expertise most LIS curricula barely touch. These studies, combined with my observations, illuminate where library frameworks don’t yet align with creative research processes:

Photo by Ahmad Odeh on Unsplash

Gaps Between Traditional Library Models and Performing Arts Research

  • Performance as research. Artists don’t separate research from creation—performance itself generates knowledge. Traditional library models assume research precedes creation; systems do not yet account for knowledge emerging through practice.
  • Embodied knowledge. Academic and library frameworks often do not recognize bodily practice, kinesthetic learning, or experiential understanding as legitimate forms of research and knowledge generation.
  • Community expertise. Students focus on lived experience alongside published scholarship. Traditional hierarchies that privilege formal publications can undermine the legitimacy of community-based work.
  • Non-linear processes. Creative research is recursive and is frequently characterized by strong emotions. One-shot library instruction focuses on systematic searching. This often misses intuitive leaps and unexpected connections.
  • Visual information primacy. Artists across disciplines rely on visual representations, creating image “morgues” for research. Text-based discovery systems don’t yet serve visual searching well.
  • Serendipity over efficiency. Artists value browsing and accidental discoveries as sources of inspiration. When plays collocate with novels and poetry, or scores scatter across classifications, browsing becomes challenging. Library systems optimize for known-item retrieval, creating tension with exploratory investigation.
  • Interdisciplinary navigation. Students investigating trauma draw simultaneously on psychology, neuroscience, performance studies, and feminist theory. Disciplinary call number organization scatters related materials across locations.
  • Ephemeral materials. Theatre requires an understanding of materials that are “instantaneously past”—social, political, and artistic contexts and creative processes that disappear without documentation.

The Dalal and Shane Model: A Practical Approach

Fortunately, Dalal and Shane’s collaboration demonstrates several principles applicable to broader performing arts librarianship:

  • Sustained embedded partnerships rather than one-shot sessions. Developing evaluation sophistication, strategic approaches, and comfort with ambiguity takes years of practice. Mayer found that students who missed classes or transferred stayed behind. This shows that front-loading alone isn’t enough.
  • Peer learning occurs through practice rather than abstract instruction. Students build a “critical eye” by talking about real research choices and learning from their mistakes. Students develop intuitive judgment alongside analytical skills.
  • The need for explicit visual and primary source literacy teaching. 
  • Recognition of legitimate differences. Framing creative research as distinctive rather than deficient validates the sophisticated behaviors that Fleming-May and Marini document. 
  • Ongoing feedback and adaptation. By embedding themselves in courses and providing non-graded comments on individual submissions, Dalal and Shane offered point-of-need instruction. When they shifted to flipped classrooms with collaborative in-class research, “collaboration and source-sharing improved outcomes and reduced anxiety” (3).

Challenges and Ongoing Conversations

However, implementing these approaches faces significant challenges, particularly for tenure-track librarians in these specializations:

Within libraries: How do we prioritize sustained embedded relationships when staffing is limited? How do we assess impacts beyond traditional counts? How do we build subject expertise when LIS programs don’t teach it? Sustained partnerships, proactive documentation, and creative programming require resources many libraries lack.

For tenure and promotion: How do we make cases when creative research support doesn’t fit established categories? Stone notes the shift toward generalists means broader subject coverage, yet evaluation criteria remain designed for specialists or generalists—not hybrid positions requiring deep expertise across multiple performing arts.

Between libraries and academic units: How do we partner with faculty who may not recognize libraries as collaborators in practice-based research? The tension between desired sources and realistic resources means librarians must educate faculty about expectations while advocating for improved collections.

Professional infrastructure: We need more interconnected communities of practice like those music and art librarians have established. The Theatre Library Association (founded 1937) exists but remains largely inactive.

Training and standards: How do we advocate for specialized training in practice-based research? ARLIS/NA Core Competencies call for understanding users’ “research behaviors” and “visual literacy,” but no comparable framework spans music, dance, and theatre together. No specialized educational program for performing arts archivists and librarians matches film archivist training.

Community engagement: Prioritizing materials from BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and historically marginalized creators requires transparent stewardship models and long-term commitment. How do we balance proactive documentation with ethical engagement that doesn’t extract or appropriate?

Moving Forward: What This Means for Practice

Taken together, these studies argue for reconceptualizing library practice across many domains:

  • Information literacy. Shift from one-off sessions to embedded, semester-long partnerships that blend deliberate practice with ongoing feedback. Teach visual and primary-source literacies explicitly; treat creative research as distinctive rather than deficient; address strategic information avoidance as a legitimate professional boundary; emphasize synthesis and argumentation alongside tool mechanics; and confirm embodied ways of knowing as part of inquiry.
  • Collections & discovery. Foreground visual browsing invites serendipity, supports robust multimedia search, and proactively documents ephemeral performance. In practice, build thematic (not only disciplinary) pathways for discovering plays; furnish designers with heterogeneous formats (such as photographs, ephemera, pattern books, and technical manuals); surface increasingly interdisciplinary sources for dance; and collect popular/non-scholarly sources when they best serve creative work.
  • Reference & research support. Develop deep subject expertise—including knowledge of creative practice. As Marini shows, this often emerges through practitioner backgrounds, sustained engagement with performances, or targeted study—not LIS training alone.
  • Archives & collection development. Adopt proactive—rather than reactive—approaches. Following Marini, “promote the creation of sources” by arranging recordings, soliciting documentation, and engaging artists during their processes. Stone describes symposia that teach dance companies fundamental archival practices to preserve ephemeral work. This challenges traditional neutrality, but the ephemerality of performance makes intervention necessary; without it, evidence disappears.
  • Professional development and evaluation. Recognize performing arts librarianship as specialized expertise even when roles span multiple disciplines. Build competencies through ongoing learning, practitioner engagement, and institutional support.

The Specialization Question

Stone’s data reveal a striking trend: between 2009 and 2016, MLA members not solely focusing on music increased from 31% to 40%—a 9% shift in seven years. This acceleration toward generalist positions reflects budget constraints that make specialists seem inefficient, pressures to “do more with less,” and assumptions that information literacy skills transfer seamlessly across disciplines.

Yet paradoxically, the work demands deeper specialization. Mastering dance knowledge, visual skills for theatre design, community research methods, and archival documentation requires years of practice. The result: a professional identity crisis. Are we generalists serving the performing arts, specialists spanning multiple disciplines, or something neither framework describes?

For tenure-track librarians, this tension is acute. Traditional evaluation rewards either deep specialization or broad excellence. Hybrid roles must prove both: generalist flexibility and specialist competence. Current frameworks rarely account for that duality.

The irony is stark: the interdisciplinary nature of performing arts often requires more specialized expertise, not less. Supporting a dance scholar exploring trauma and embodiment involves performance studies, psychology, neuroscience, somatics, and feminist theory—far more epistemically varied than guiding a chemistry student to journals. This isn’t about “different databases.” It’s about how practice produces knowledge, how to evaluate embodied evidence, when strategic information avoidance is appropriate, and how community knowledge interacts with scholarly sources.

Proactive documentation depends on relationships built over time—impossible through transactional, generalist reference. Closing representation gaps requires community history, trust-building, and culturally responsive practice. Visual and primary-source literacy demand specialized pedagogy—the sustained, embedded collaboration Dalal and Shane demonstrate. Flexibility alone cannot deliver this.

Making the Case for Expertise in an Era of Generalization

How, then, do we make the case institutionally? Casting generalist breadth as “transferable skills” rarely satisfies promotion committees or honors the depth of expertise required. The question may be less “specialist or generalist?” than whether we need new frameworks that recognize boundary-spanning expertise anchored in deep disciplinary knowledge. Music librarianship built such infrastructure over decades; theatre and dance have not received equivalent investment. Building it now will require long-term advocacy—or a redefinition of specialization itself when disciplines are inadequate to the work.

For now, many of us are improvising hybrid practices while documenting their impact in promotion-readable ways: publishing on the epistemology of creative research, presenting at library and performing arts venues, developing adoptable frameworks, leading professional initiatives, and evidencing sustained intellectual partnerships beyond service statistics. We argue—often from positions titled “generalist”—that the work requires specialized expertise.

The structural contradiction remains: institutions want flexibility and efficiency; the work demands long-term, deep engagement. Until evaluation criteria recognize hybrid expertise—or positions are re-scoped to acknowledge it—individual librarians will continue bearing the burden of reconciling incompatible expectations.

Conclusion

The professionalization gap in performing arts librarianship beyond music creates both challenges and opportunities. We can build frameworks that recognize creative research on its own terms—including performance as research, embodied knowledge, affective experience, community-based practice, and non-linear processes.

What does this mean in practice? For those of us in tenure-track positions, advocating that supporting creative research forms scholarly work deserving of promotion and advancement is essential. Moreover, it means publishing not only about collections or instructional methods, but also about epistemological questions: What is research? How is knowledge generated? What role do libraries play in creative and community-based inquiry?

Fleming-May’s meta-ethnography reveals that creative information behavior differs fundamentally from academic models. Marini demonstrates that performing arts specialists who share characteristics with the scholars they serve can function as true research partners. Mayer documents that students cannot intuit the skills their work requires. Dalal and Shane prove that sustained, practice-based, collaborative approaches can bridge these gaps. Stone illuminates the breadth of support needs across theatre and dance, from play discovery to interdisciplinary collection development to emerging technologies.

Together, these studies provide evidence-based foundations for reconceptualizing performing arts library practice. The work ahead includes turning insights into action, building support systems, and advocating for resources. That future requires us to question traditional models, build new frameworks, engage in ongoing conversations across institutions and disciplines, and commit to supporting creative research with sophistication and resources.

I am most hopeful when I see the library function as a living partner in the creative process—alive to context and generous with curiosity.

References

Inheriting, Repairing, and Reimagining Collections

What happens when you inherit a world-renowned collection that needs fundamental reimagining? My time as Performing Arts Librarian at Arizona State University has taught me that transformational collection work requires both patience and urgency—and that the process itself is as important as the outcome.

From Child Drama to Theatre for Youth and Community

When I stepped into my role stewarding what was then called the Child Drama Collection—the world’s largest repository of materials documenting theatre for youth—I quickly realized that both the collection’s scope and its name needed evolution. The archive, established in 1980, had grown to over 3,600 linear feet of materials spanning centuries of performance history. But as I assessed the collection’s strengths and gaps, a troubling pattern emerged: in an estimated 5,000 linear feet of materials, only three people of color were significantly represented.

This discovery aligned with concerns that scholar-practitioners Shavonne Coleman and Meriah Sage have raised about the broader field of theatre. In their recent article, “The Opposite of Absence is to Occupy”1, the authors discuss their early research for the project, “Hidden and Erased Stories in Drama and Theatre for the Young: Exploring Untold Narratives“. Their work, alongside Kristala Smart and Josh Streeter, seeks to document how BIPOC/TYA artists, educators, facilitators, practitioners and audiences in theatre for youth have been systematically excluded from institutional memory. The goal of this national research project is to document unwritten and illuminate hidden history facts and experiences that have been pushed to the margins in order to maintain the status quo.

This work asks a crucial question: “What happens if we don’t uncover hidden histories?”

My collection assessment revealed exactly what happens—entire communities disappear from the historical record, not because they weren’t contributing to the field, but because collecting practices privileged certain voices while marginalizing others.

This discovery became a catalyst for change, but not the kind that happens overnight. Institutional transformation, I learned, operates on a different timeline than individual urgency—but Coleman and Sage’s work demonstrates that this effort extends far beyond any single collection or institution.

Nashville Children’s Theatre Records, Arizona State University.

Alt image description: A group of children and one adults sit in chairs and on the floor, facing the camera in what appears to be an indoor gathering or event, reimagining a storytelling.

Learning to Process—Collections and Change

I got my archival training through volunteer work and graduate school. But the real learning happened on the job. Thanks to mentorship from colleagues like Associate Archivist Elizabeth Dunham, I discovered that processing archival materials takes about eight hours for each linear foot. At that rate, and with current staffing, the processing of our physical collection would take decades.

But the mathematical reality became complicated by a more immediate challenge: my predecessor accepted the task of building the collection over nearly 40 years and agreed to fulfill every request. Her focus was on acquisition and supporting what was then a robust PhD program in Theatre for Youth (which has since changed to one faculty member and no longer offers doctoral degrees). As an MFA graduate rather than a trained librarian or archivist with an MLIS, she lacked formalized training in archival processing and librarianship. This situation unfortunately occurs too often in the field, particularly with specialized collections.

The result?

I’ve been working on decades of technical processing issues that I’m now resolving. Incorrect barcodes. Incomplete records. Materials that need rehousing. Collections that need fundamental reorganization. I love community-centered collecting and reaching more people. But a lot of my daily work is less exciting. I spend time fixing past mistakes: updating catalog records, standardizing folder labels, creating finding aids, and making materials accessible to researchers.

This mundane technical work doesn’t generate headlines or conference presentations, but it’s essential infrastructure for everything else. You can’t build authentic community partnerships when your collections lack organization. You can’t serve researchers well when your catalog records are incomplete. And you can’t advocate for resources when you can’t prove basic professional competency in collection management.

Collection management roles should require MLIS training or similar archival credentials. Making these qualifications optional isn’t enough. Technical skills go beyond just following procedures. They’re about grasping how information architecture impacts access. We must ensure that communities can find and use the materials they trust us with.

Navigating Legacy and Change

One of the most delicate aspects of reimagining an established collection involves stakeholders with deep emotional investments managing their relationships regarding past practices. My predecessor dedicated nearly 40 years to building this collection, and her relationships with donors, faculty, and students fostered a strong sense of institutional loyalty. When I arrived with plans to shift collecting priorities and rename the collection, some community members felt that the changes represented a rejection of that legacy.

I frequently heard the phrase “When Kathy was here…” Descriptions followed about the different ways people managed things. Some well-meaning colleagues called me “the new Kathy.” This left some donors confused or worried about the changes to established practices. Some faculty emeriti, who shaped the collection’s original direction, saw community-centered collecting as a departure from its “true purpose.”

These conversations required careful navigation. I have profound respect for the foundation established by previous stewards; without their decades of work, no collection would exist to reimagine. But I also had to establish that while I honor that legacy, I am not my predecessor.

#Loyalty

The challenge grew as performing arts communities built strong loyalties. They often protect their beloved mentors. Graduate students and alumni may feel that changes to the curriculum or collection focus criticize their education. Some long-time donors worry that others may not value their contributions anymore. This concern arises when collecting priorities change.

I needed to state clearly that when faculty or librarians retire, they no longer make decisions for the institution. Emeritus status brings honor and respect, but not ongoing operational control. Current staff should address current needs and priorities, not cling to past methods.

This doesn’t mean dismissing valuable input or ignoring institutional history. Instead, it means that we distinguish between honoring legacy and allowing it to constrain us. The collection’s strength comes from its evolution, not its stasis.

Learning from Hidden Histories

My work intersects with broader efforts to document marginalized voices in theatre for youth. Hidden and Erased BIPOC Stories in Drama and Theatre for the Young: Exploring Untold Narratives exemplifies the kind of collaborative research needed to address historical gaps. The team wants to uncover and record overlooked historical facts and experiences. Many of these have been pushed aside to keep things the same. This effort mirrors the challenges faced by academic collections.

A cross-sectional approach offers essential lessons for academic libraries. Rather than waiting for traditional donation processes, this project actively seeks out stories through community connections and alternative documentation methods. It acknowledges that significant contributors may not identify with conventional academic labels—they might be storytellers, social workers, or community organizers whose work doesn’t fit neat categorical boundaries.

This perspective has shaped how I approach collection development. Instead of only seeking materials from established theatre organizations, I’m learning to recognize that vital historical documentation might exist in community centers, family collections, or oral traditions that formal archives have overlooked.

Image: MSS-273, Rosa Lee Scott Papers, Arizona State University.
Alt image description: Black and white photo of a Black woman standing in profile, thoughtfully resting her hand on her chin—a quiet moment of reflection—wearing a light jacket over a dark top against a plain background.

The “And” That Changes Everything

The collection’s new name—Theatre for Youth and Community—reflects more than a semantic preference. The addition of “and Community” acknowledges that methods and practices previously labeled “for youth” now serve a broader range of audiences. But it also recognizes that youth are often overlooked even in discussions of “community.” This collection intentionally works toward strengthening their sense of belonging and advocacy.

This seemingly small change necessitated extensive conversations with library leadership, faculty stakeholders, and community partners. It demanded research into the field’s evolution and careful consideration of how language shapes collecting priorities. The renaming process taught me that institutional change requires building consensus while maintaining focus on equity and inclusion.

Balancing vision with infrastructure

Academic libraries face constant tension between managing existing resources and adapting to evolving needs. With our collection, this meant simultaneously:

  • Addressing technical debt: Correcting years of processing inconsistencies, updating incomplete records, and rehousing materials according to current standards.
  • Processing decades of unprocessed materials using proper archival methods while working within realistic timelines.
  • Developing new community partnerships to address historical gaps in representation.
  • Training graduate assistants in both technical skills and community-centered approaches.
  • Learning from ASU’s Community-Driven Archives Initiative on hosting workshops and oral history events.

The key insight? These aren’t competing priorities—they’re interdependent aspects of responsible stewardship. You can’t build real community relationships without showing basic skills in collection management. You can’t help researchers well if your passion for inclusive collecting lacks strong technical support.

The unsexy work of fixing barcodes and standardizing folder labels might not align with the transformational vision I brought to the role, but it’s what makes that vision possible. Community members need to trust that their materials will receive proper care and remain accessible to future researchers. That trust starts with demonstrating that you can manage what you already have.

Community-Centered Collecting in Practice

Shifting toward community-centered collection development means more than updating mission statements. It requires:

  • Transparency and shared stewardship. Community members need to understand how they will use and preserve their materials, and they should provide ongoing input into those decisions.
  • Long-term relationship building. There’s no rush or pressure for donations. Trust develops through consistent engagement and demonstrated commitment to community priorities.
  • Resource allocation. Meaningful community engagement requires dedicated time and personnel—not good intentions.
  • Regional networking. Partnering with other institutions helps collection development focus on broader access goals. This way, they can work together instead of competing.
  • Acknowledging alternative forms of documentation is important. Not all critical work fits traditional archival formats. Community storytelling, oral histories, and unique documentation can capture experiences that formal records often overlook.

Lessons for Academic Libraries

My experience suggests several implications for academic librarians navigating similar collection challenges:

  • Embrace collaborative learning. Early-career librarians should not hesitate to seek mentorship, and institutions should create environments where questions and mistakes are part of professional development.
  • Invest in professional development and proper training. Specialized collections require specialized skills. Enthusiasm and subject expertise aren’t substitutes for professional competency in information management.
  • Address technical debt with transparency. Inherited collection problems don’t disappear—they compound. Building new partnerships while ignoring existing organizational issues creates unsustainable workloads and undermines trust.
  • Plan for the long term. Real change in collections, especially for diversity and inclusion, needs ongoing dedication. This must go beyond individual roles or funding periods.
  • Document the process. How we transform collections is as important as what we transform them into. Other institutions can learn from both successes and challenges.
  • Collaborate with existing projects. Rather than starting from scratch, look for community-led initiatives already doing this work. Projects like Coleman’s “Hidden and Erased” prove how academic institutions can support grassroots documentation efforts without trying to control them.

The Ongoing Work

Over two years into this role, I’m struck by how much I’ve learned and how much work remains. Processing continues alongside community outreach. Relationships develop over time while immediate access needs remain. At the same time, technical corrections occur alongside visionary planning. The collection grows in new directions while I’m still organizing what came before.

This tension isn’t a problem to solve—it’s the nature of the work. Academic libraries support various groups over time. Therefore, to create real change, they must balance short-term maintenance with long-term goals. For example, updating catalog records may seem dull, but it ultimately helps make collections more accessible. Rehousing materials shows the careful care communities need to see before they trust us with their histories.

Unsolicited advice

For ACRL colleagues facing similar challenges, my advice is this: embrace the long game while establishing your professional authority. Institutional change occurs at a gradual pace, yet it does occur. Furthermore, document your process and build authentic relationships. Most importantly, remember, the key question isn’t if you can change everything at once. It’s about whether you’re heading in the right direction. Remember that the key question isn’t whether you can avoid disappointing people who preferred how things used to be—instead, it’s about whether you’re stewarding collections responsibly for current and future communities.

The Theatre for Youth and Community Collection will continue evolving long after my tenure ends. That’s exactly as it should be. Our role as librarians isn’t to perfect collections, but to steward them responsively and responsibly for the communities we serve—including communities we haven’t served well in the past.

What stories are missing from your collections? How can community partnerships change what you collect and how you collect it? We all share the power to document history. But we must create conditions that allow everyone to join in. As Coleman’s project reminds us, the opposite of absence is to occupy—and academic libraries have a responsibility to make space for those who have been systematically excluded from institutional memory.

Questions for Reflection

When you consider collection development and your ties to the institution, ask yourself these questions:

  • When you assess your collections for gaps, whose voices are missing? How might those absences reflect historical power structures rather than simply acquisition opportunities?
  • What community-led documentation projects exist in your region? How might your institution support rather than compete with grassroots preservation efforts?

About institutional change:

  • How do you balance honoring institutional legacy with responding to current community needs? When does the preservation of tradition become resistance to necessary evolution?
  • What technical debt are you carrying from previous collection management practices? How does that infrastructure work to support or hinder your ability to serve diverse communities?

About professional identity:

  • How have you built your professional authority after a long-serving predecessor while also honoring their legacy? What strategies help you navigate stakeholder expectations?
  • How do you share changes in collection priorities with donors and community members?
  • When implementing equity-focused changes, how do you distinguish between legitimate concerns about process or resources versus resistance rooted in preserving existing power structures? What role might your identity markers (race, gender, age, career stage) play in how stakeholders receive your initiatives?

About the long-term work:

  • What would success look like for your collection transformation efforts in five years? In twenty years? Moreover, how do you measure progress on work that spans many career cycles?
  • How are you keeping track of your processes and decisions? Future librarians will need this information to continue the work.

Sources:

  1. Coleman, S., & Sage, M. (2025). The Opposite of Absence is to Occupy. ArtsPraxis, 11(2).  ↩︎

White Fragility in Decolonial Spaces: When Inclusion Becomes Extraction

Reflections on facilitating difficult conversations about Indigenous knowledge and settler accountability in drama in education research.

The Moment

We were supposed to end the workshop with collaborative visioning and clear pathways forward. Instead, some participants felt confused and tense. Some thought they should avoid teaching Indigenous perspectives altogether. In contrast, others were uncertain about how to move forward in a responsible manner. I spent months getting ready for the international workshop “Honoring Indigenous Roots, Forging Inclusive Routes: Reimagining Drama in Education.” My colleague, Vina Begay, works as the Assistant Librarian and Archivist at ASU’s Labriola National American Indian Data Center. Working with Vina is a privilege and responsibility. I value her deep knowledge of Indigenous Knowledge Systems, cultural protocols, and decolonial librarianship. This expertise shaped our approach. There is simply no way the workshop could have happened without her expertise, and she deserves so much of the credit.

We carefully created frameworks to shift from extraction to relationality. We also made detailed guidance for educators based on their positions. Plus, we designed an activity to help participants map their ethical tensions. Vina’s leadership in centering Indigenous sovereignty and cultural protocols shaped every aspect of our presentation. Her vision of “Information is Sacred” and commitment to supporting Indigenous communities’ ownership of their knowledge guided our work. Vina had also spent precious time educating me about cultural protocols, dedicating countless hours to helping me in my anti-colonial work as a curator.

Somewhere along the way, we lost our message about building relationships before developing the curriculum. A participant asked how to show the Indigenous perspective in their play. I shared my thoughts on the key difference between real partnership and academic extraction. The conversation turned defensive. The participant argued that non-Indigenous playwrights should include Indigenous perspectives. They believed this should happen even without direct input from the communities involved. 

This desire for empathy might seem harmless at first glance. But, as was the point of our workshop, empathy cannot be the sole driver or result of collaboration. Good intentions can often lead to more damage, especially when working with Indigenous communities.

The Vision vs. The Reality

Looking back at our presentation slides, I see how thoughtfully we designed the content. We’d outlined clear “Pathways to Repair” that contrasted extraction thinking with relational accountability. Vina shared frameworks based on Indigenous Knowledge Systems, focusing on six Rs: Respect, Relationship, Responsibility, Reverence, Relevance, and Reciprocity. She created guidance for “Metropolitan (Non-Indigenous) Educators.” It highlighted cultural protocols as “the driving force in your classroom lesson planning.””

Our slide on educator responsibilities was clear: 

  • Avoid myths and legends.
  • Focus on modern Indigenous literature.
  • Center cultural protocols.
  • Acknowledge your limitations.

We understood that this work meant, as one slide said, “sitting with discomfort instead of seeking quick solutions.” It also meant “prioritizing Indigenous community needs over our teaching goals.””

However, we then designed a workshop that did precisely the opposite. We tried to compress complex, relational work into a single session. We asked participants to share personal tensions around colonialism and appropriation without adequate time for processing or relationship-building. We reproduced the very extractive dynamics we were critiquing—taking people’s emotional labor and vulnerability without providing sufficient care and follow-through.

The workshop format itself unintentionally demanded that participants engage with difficult personal and political questions within the constraints of an academic conference schedule, only to end abruptly when time ran out.

The Shock of “No”

What struck me most at that moment was the participant’s genuine surprise that their community work might be subject to critique. Here was someone doing what seemed like thoughtful, partnership-based work, and they appeared genuinely shocked to hear boundaries around Indigenous knowledge or questions about academic-community relationships.

This reaction illuminated something I’d been thinking about but hadn’t fully grasped: how rarely non-Indigenous people in academic settings hear “no” when it comes to knowledge. Librarians are trained to believe that if information exists, is published, and we can access it, then it’s ours to use. The idea that Indigenous communities might have sovereignty over how their knowledge is shared, taught, or represented often comes as a genuine surprise. And how uncomfortable it is for white folks who are allies to analyze their relationship to information critically. We cannot assume that there is always a “better” way to be more inclusive; sometimes, it’s better to stay in our lane.

In our presentation, I highlighted a key difference. Extraction thinking assumes that “if it’s published, it’s public.” In contrast, relational accountability values Indigenous leadership and respects protocols. Shifting from the first mindset to the second isn’t just about thinking. It means building emotional strength to accept “not for you” as the final answer, not just a starting point for negotiation.

White fragility

The frustration in that moment stemmed not from being wrong, but from the shock of encountering boundaries in a space that had felt open and morally correct. They thought about what happens when people dedicated to social justice realize their good intentions may not be enough. They also considered how their methods might need major changes.

White fragility appears in decolonial education spaces like this: 

  • People think good intentions protect them from criticism. 
  • They believe that doing “better” work means they do not have to hold themselves accountable. 
  • They assume that being on the “right side” spares them from facing discomfort about their actions and beliefs.

Ethical mapping

We planned to conclude the workshop with an “Ethical Mapping” activity that would help participants navigate exactly these kinds of tensions. The framework was simple but powerful:

  • TENSION: What is the ethical dilemma or site of friction?
  • RESPONSE: How did you navigate it—and what frameworks informed your decisions?
  • SHIFT: What change is needed—in your system, methodology, or institution?
  • LESSON: What did you learn?

The participant’s reaction would have been perfect material for this kind of collective processing. We could use that moment to ask questions like: What do we do when our wish to do good work clashes with Indigenous community protocols? How do we sit with the discomfort of having our approaches questioned? What does it mean to center Indigenous sovereignty even when it limits our pedagogical options?

Instead, we ran out of time. The workshop ended with raw emotions and no framework for processing them. We’d activated all the tensions without creating space to work through them relationally.

If we had time for ethical mapping, that participant’s experience could have been a lesson for everyone. We could have modeled how to receive critique as information rather than an attack and how to use discomfort as a starting point for deeper inquiry rather than defensiveness.

However, the workshop format didn’t allow for that kind of collective meaning-making. I returned to extraction. I took advantage of people’s vulnerability, stirred up their defenses, and then sent them off to deal with it alone.

The Deeper Structural Issues

This experience made me realize how abbreviated workshop formats often reproduce the very dynamics they’re designed to address. We critiqued extractive academic practices during a workshop. It took emotional labor but didn’t offer enough support. We were advocating for relationship-building while operating in a format that emphasized content delivery over connection.

The real problem is that academic conferences and professional development focus on efficiency. They often overlook the importance of building relationships. We cannot deliver transformative insights in 60-90 minute sessions, changing people’s fundamental approaches to their work without the time needed for genuine relationship-building or ongoing accountability.

Decolonial work takes time. It requires lifelong work: giving up power, questioning assumptions, sitting with discomfort, and following Indigenous leadership. It involves the kind of ongoing relationship that can hold complexity, conflict, and growth over time.

One-shot workshops, no matter how well-designed, can’t create the conditions for this kind of transformation. At best, they can plant seeds. At worst, they can create the illusion of change while reinforcing existing dynamics.

Lessons for Facilitators

This experience taught me several crucial lessons about my position as a white librarian trying to do this work responsibly:

First, good intentions aren’t enough. I spent weeks getting ready. I worked with a co-facilitator, Vina, who is Diné. She has over ten years of experience as an archivist and librarian. We also used frameworks created by Indigenous scholars. I still recreated extractive dynamics. I didn’t take into account the emotional and relational aspects of this work.

Second, the format is the message. You can’t teach about relationality in a format that prioritizes efficiency over relationships. The container matters as much as the content.

Third, white fragility will show up. Some people will see boundary-setting as an attack. They may view criticism as unfair. Also, they might think their good intentions should protect them from feeling uncomfortable. Building capacity to work with these reactions—rather than avoiding them—is essential.

Fourth, unfinished conversations can be more harmful than no conversations at all. Starting tough talks without enough time to think can make people more defensive and resistant.

Fifth, my learning is ongoing. I learned from this experience that I still had assumptions about what participants could handle. I also found that I was attached to others seeing me as a “good” educator who did things “right.”

Designing for Difficulty

If I were to redesign this work, I’d start with different assumptions:

Assume resistance. Create activities that help people see “no” as just information. Don’t be surprised by defensive reactions to boundaries. This way, they won’t feel the need to attack it.

Assume complexity. Don’t try to resolve tensions—help people develop the capacity to sit with them in a productive way.

Assume time—design for multiple sessions over time, with space between for reflection and integration.

Assume a relationship. Prioritize connection and trust-building over content delivery.

Assume accountability. Create structures for ongoing engagement rather than one-time events.

This might mean designing a 3-session series rather than single workshops. It may mean starting with relationship-building activities before delving into more challenging content. It might mean ending with commitments to ongoing learning rather than neat conclusions.

Most importantly, it means being honest about what can and can’t be accomplished in academic workshop formats and refusing to promise a transformation that the container can’t deliver.

The Work Continues

I’ve thought a lot about the participants who left quickly. Did they feel attacked for wanting to do good work? I wonder if our workshop caused more harm than good. I’ve drafted several follow-up emails, trying to find language that acknowledges the limitations of our format while still holding space for the critical questions we were trying to raise.

But I’ve also been thinking about what it means to center Indigenous sovereignty in these conversations, even when—especially when—it’s uncomfortable for those of us who aren’t Indigenous. The resistance at that moment might have been necessary. The discomfort might have been productive. The unresolved tension might be precisely what is needed to motivate a deeper inquiry.

This work isn’t supposed to be comfortable. It’s supposed to unsettle us, prompting us to question our assumptions about knowledge, ownership, and academic freedom. The goal isn’t to make white educators feel good about their diversity and inclusion efforts; it’s to support Indigenous communities’ sovereignty over their own knowledge and cultural practices.

Perhaps the challenge wasn’t that someone got upset but that we didn’t have adequate structures in place to help them—and all of us—work with that upset productively. Perhaps the lesson isn’t to avoid difficult conversations but to create more effective containers for them.

The ethical tensions we were trying to address through our mapping activity don’t disappear when workshops end. They live in our daily practices as educators, researchers, and practitioners. The question isn’t about fixing these issues forever. It’s about building our ability to engage with them thoughtfully and responsibly. We must also be accountable to Indigenous communities.

Work happens through ongoing relationships, and the complex journey of learning to accept “not for you” as a full sentence. It continues in designing educational experiences that honor the principles they’re trying to teach rather than reproducing the dynamics they’re trying to transform.

Decolonial work isn’t just a workshop topic. It’s a lifelong commitment. It involves building relationships, being accountable, and learning to unlearn.

Special thanks to Vina Begay for making the journey abroad for the conference and for patiently teaching so much. Your fierce protection and vulnerability inspires me.

Reconciliation Pole, Vancouver, BC.

Contribution & Collaboration

Somehow, when the ACRL conference organizers were picking dates for their 2025 biennial conference, they didn’t consider that it falls at the same time as my kids’ school’s Spring Break. I live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada and although this year’s conference is just south of my city, beyond the 49th parallel, in Minneapolis, I just can’t make it work with my schedule. With the political climate in the US as it is, and with increasing reports of Canadians being detained or being denied entry at the US border, I can say, at least at this moment in time, that it is a relief to not have to be potentially disrupted on a trip to the US.

While I’m not attending ACRL this year, my research collaborators and I have a poster accepted and one of our collaborators will be presenting at this year’s conference. We’re presenting our initial findings of the use of author contribution statements in library and information science (LIS) scholarship, and how gender plays a part in what research contributions (e.g., methodology, writing, project administration) authors play. Are LIS journals using or requiring the use of author contribution statements, such as CRediT? Which research contributions are most common in LIS scholarship? Is there any correlation between specific contributions and gender? These are the research questions we’re looking into.

Epic handshake meme

Our project on contributorship in LIS literature has got me thinking lately about the different ways my colleagues and I all contribute to each other’s work. In a lot of ways we’re siloed as liaison librarians, developing library services and responding to requests for our assigned faculties and departments. But also, in a lot of ways, we inform and contribute to each other’s work, in much the same way a research team contributes in different ways to their research study.

Whenever I meet with a colleague for coffee, I’m always interested in hearing about what they’re working on. Occasionally, at some point in the future, something will come across my desk and I’ll remember the conversation we had. At that point, I can touch base with my colleague again for their input or if I’m in a hurry, I can use the knowledge I received from my colleague to inform my own response.  I’m also a big fan of proactively reaching out to one of my colleagues if I run into a challenging situation, to get their take on it and what they would do, or what they have done, if they’ve experienced something similar.

It’s the same whether I’m working on something in the course of my professional duties, or throughout my service work, or in my research. It’s almost like a CRediT statement, but throughout your entire body of work: some of my colleagues may contribute and collaborate a lot on the things we work on together, or they may contribute in lesser—but equally important—ways, when I’m taking the lead on something or the person responsible to accomplish a task.

But to bring it all back to ACRL—I haven’t made it to an ACRL conference yet: I didn’t attend the online conference in 2021 and had prior commitments in 2023 to attend ALA’s LibLearnX and Annual Conference; maybe ACRL 2027 is the year I finally make it.  

For all those not attending ACRL, you can view the poster my research collaborator will be presenting here: https://osf.io/jb6vp. If you’re attending, be sure to say hi to Caroline Monnin in the Exhibit Hall (Poster #12) on Friday, April 4 from 2:00-2:45PM!