Program Learning Outcome 4: Lead and manage people and projects in an equitable, just, and culturally appropriate manner.
This learning outcome encompasses a lot of what I wish to build my career around. Not only do I want to assure that the spaces I work in are equitable and accessible for patrons in whatever way is most appropriate for the community, but also that I am treating my coworkers and team with the utmost cultural sensitivity and respect.
4.1 Apply leadership and management principles and practices to direct and manage people and projects.
Ongoing and formalized communication with your team is the key to good leadership and management. My interview with Jill Kehoe, Library Director at the Luce Library at SUNY Maritime, iterated this point very clearly. She talked extensively about the importance of investing in her team collectively and as individuals. It is not uncommon for a librarian to be in a position of management early in their career, and this interview enlightened me a bit as to how that would look in “real life.” This assignment made me more comfortable with the idea of advancing in the career of librarianship rather than simply entering it.
4.2 Use positional power to advocate for information equality and justice.
I can not assume that I know the needs of a community better than the members of that community themselves; it is crucial to do extensive community outreach before proposing resources or services. However, as a librarian in a leadership position, once I become aware of those needs, it is important for me to use my voice to advocate for those who can not, especially those oppressed by systems creating information inequities.
In my Literacy for School Libraries class (IST 668), I completed an assignment which required me to empower a particular student’s voice via a personalized literacy approach. Because I have focused much of my work on children with disabilities, I developed a literacy program for a developmentally disabled student that not only addressed their concerns as a struggling reader, but also consisted of material in which they would see themselves represented.
Personalized Literacy Approach
4.3 Apply principles of equity and justice to ensure ethical decision-making.
I firmly believe in the adage “nothing about us without us,” and that informs a lot of my decision-making in the area of equity and justice. Much of the time, even as a leader, my job will be to listen to the community and to those who will be affected by the decisions made, especially those who have voices that are typically marginalized.
In IST 511: Cultural Foundations of Information Studies, I completed an assignment called Responsive Librarianship in Action. I wrote about the New Orleans charter school system after Katrina, and how long-time Black teachers were driven out of the city by the storm, allowing young white teachers from other cities to take their place. The needs of the New Orleanian children were not considered, and the white teachers knew nothing about the cultural intricacies of New Orleans and its education system, thereby doing a disservice to the students. I proposed a possible solution with an eye towards ethical decision making: require already-hired teachers to attend mandatory cultural training sessions before taking their position.
Responsive Librarianship in Action
4.4 Solve problems using empathy, evidence, and critical and creative thinking.
Patrons (and employees!) will have differing degrees of familiarity with the library, different learning styles, and different ways of seeking information. Each instance of problem-solving should be tailored to each situation as much as possible, considering the mindset and skills of the person or group you are helping.
The most clear evidence I have for this is the Reference Scenario assignment I completed for IST 605–Reference and Information Literacy Services. This assignment required me to solve a problem posed by a potential patron: a woman who was searching out information about HIV because her brother was recently diagnosed. This large assignment required me to take into consideration the information seeking skills of the woman, who she would be presenting the information to, and how she would be using it.
4.5 Facilitate communication with users, colleagues, and community stakeholders.
Constant and ongoing communication with colleagues and community is the best way to ensure a healthy workplace. As a librarian, it is important to maintain this ongoing communication not just with coworkers, but also with library stakeholders, users, and the general public. I want to be sure to remember that it is my job to initiate this communication, and that though certain methods of communication may be outside my personal comfort zone, pushing through and facilitating constructive conversations will only make me a better librarian.
My job at the Brooklyn Public Library requires me to constantly talk to users, caregivers, and library leadership; I am continually re-assessing my accessible children’s programs and their goals changing the programs (or the goals!) when need be, all while maintaining the foundational beliefs of the program. I am only able to do this through conversation and collaboration with community.
4.6 Direct and participate in responsive public relations, marketing, and development.
Having excellent ideas, programs, resources, and services is crucial–however these assets will not matter much if no one knows about them! Learning how to market and share pertinent information is key to a successful project.
The program that I developed for my partner librarian project in IST 613: Library Planning, Marketing, and Assessment required me to create a marketing plan and budget that would be sufficient to execute the project. I created a social media posting schedule, designed posters to promote the program, and devised an outreach schedule in which library employees would go into nearby schools to promote the program.
4.7 Manage information resources through the information life-cycle, including processes of information creation, collection development, representation, organization, preservation, curation, access, and dissemination.
Managing information resources throughout their life-cycles is a responsibility that has to be implemented in a particular way; everyone interacting with the information resource has to be able to understand the system to be able to manage the resource as well.
The final project of Information Resources: Organization and Access class (IST 616) required me to identify and define the scope of a given collection, create descriptive and controlled values, create a full policy manual, metadata schema, and workflow for entering the information object, and ask classmates to test the records. Not only did the assignment assure that we knew how to manage the resource through its life-cycle, but checked that it could be accessed by others as well.
Being a good leader means leading with empathy and being devoted to the ongoing pursuit of cultural competence. As a leader, it is even more important to have these traits to facilitate an environment of mutual respect.