BuildingCommunity-Based Summers (BCBS) Podcast
In this monthly podcast we talk about topics that help library staff and communities build services that are equitable. Learn more about the project on our site: https://communitybasedsummers.org
Note: In March 2025 we re-named our podcast and associated work Building Community-Based Summers so to better center community.
BuildingCommunity-Based Summers (BCBS) Podcast
Why Does Equity Matter in Library and Information Science?
In this episode we are joined by Myles Cunningham a current LIS student and staff member of a public library in Washington. We talk about how equity is built into LIS coursework and ways in which equity can be embedded more specifically across courses in LIS. We also consider power and agency in LIS and library services and how that has an impact on staff ability to build and integrate equitable practices.
Building Equity-Based Summers is funded in part through the Institute of Museum and Library Services..
Hi everyone. Linda Braun here, one of the Building Equity-Based Summers team, who is here on our podcast for March 2025, and we're going to be talking about equity and LIS education and how all those things do and don't play together. And I'm here with my colleague, lakeisha Kimbrough. Lakeisha introduce yourself.
Speaker 2:Thank you, linda. Hi everyone, I'm Lakeisha Kimbrough and one of the team members for Building Equity-Based Summers the team members for building equity-based summers. I'm really excited to be thinking about equity and learning and what's that look like in an LIS program. What could it look like and how does that transfer from, maybe, the classroom into practice and how might it do that and all the things that go along with it. And to help us really explore this and think about this, we have the amazing Miles with us today. Miles, introduce yourself.
Speaker 3:Hi everyone. I'm Miles Cunningham. Thank you both so much for having me here. I'm a library and information science student, master's student at San Jose State, just finishing up my program there, and I'm also kind of an early career professional new to the library world, and I work for my public library system in Washington state as well.
Speaker 1:And Miles, one thing I wanted to mention because I think the way we know you is because you intern with us on another project about AI and libraries, and we've been talking a lot about equity as a part of that AI initiative. So there's lots of intersections here and so I've been thinking I'm curious, miles, about the ways in which, when we talk about equity in the AI project like how does it connect to what's happening in your world, either your LIS world or your library world? Are there intersections that you're seeing?
Speaker 3:Yes, to some extent. I think one thing that's really nice about working with you all in this AI project is that we're approaching equity as such a core component to this. We're considering it on kind of a fundamental level and letting that, trying to help that, let that inform you know all of the work that we're doing. And that contrasts a little bit with my experience, you know, in graduate school, where I think equity can be a piece and it can be something that a lot of students are interested in or interested in working on, but it's not brought in at that kind of that basic level or addressed kind of in its own right or thought through kind of equity as such or the set of problems in the same way. So that's one thing I really appreciated in getting to be a part of the AI work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, for Lakeisha and me it's always so foundational and I'm wondering, like, so what would the I don't know if either of you know this, lakeisha Miles like, what would it look like in a library education program to build equity as a foundation of librarianship? Right, like, how would you, what would you learn? What would a I don't, I mean lots of places have DEI-ish courses, at least at the moment you know, like equity and children's services or public libraries and equity, but is it something where you have to? It's got to be embedded in every course, is that?
Speaker 2:I'm trying to figure out how to say this, yeah I think, as miles um was, was sharing, um, that's kind of what I started thinking. Just, miles, you making that connection of the AI work has centered equity, and so we're constantly thinking about, oh, how does that show up when we are thinking about this component of AI or when we're thinking about having this collaborative meeting, or you know, it's always there. And so then when you were starting to share Miles about kind of that contrast, right that you've noticed, it did make me wonder what it might look like if one of the core classes just started off with exploring equity and librarianship and kind. And then what is a framework that maybe can be used to help embed equity in all future courses?
Speaker 2:And in the current moment that we're in and what will be many current moments for a while, it does make me concerned that even if a program were seeking to go that direction or had been making some attempts to go in that direction, there may be pause or rescinding of that and spaces like programs that do have those types of electives may pull those electives without you know. It just may be pulled and not like, how do we actually build this in? Because I think we can still do it even in this current climate, we just have to be extra intentional in how that's done. But, miles, I'm curious as a student a current student or you know you're finishing up when you reflect on your time and think about your lived experience working in the library. As you're also a student, where might that have been beneficial for you? And, as a student, if you were designing an LIS program or on a team designing an LIS program, how would you go about it or what suggestions might you give?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think there's really a lot there to respond to. I really like the idea of starting out a program with addressing some of these kinds of issues and getting people thinking about it, at least as they go, you know, throughout their studies and then kind of onto the professional world.
Speaker 3:I don't know if I have a lot of confidence in exactly what I would want that to look like because I think you know it's such a multifaceted issue and especially with people going kind of all these different directions, I really like the idea of having a core starting point, but I don't know exactly where to take that. And the way my program addresses these kind of issues it's almost the opposite of beginning with it. Addresses these kinds of issues. It's almost the opposite of beginning with it. So you can take courses as part of the program, electives that may address some adjacent issues. I don't know that, again, there's anything that really gets down to you know, kind of the fundamental equity as such. But what it does require is that it's a competency-based program and so at the end you're asked to kind of reflect on your time in school and address a variety of kind of skills and competencies and equity diversity inclusion is one of these. And equity diversity inclusion is one of these.
Speaker 3:Students are. Everyone has to in order to graduate. You have to be able to write about this, provide evidence, three pieces of evidence from your studies that kind of support your understanding. But it does feel a bit backwards to do that. It feels a little bit after the fact to me and I think that, while I appreciate that it is requiring students to engage with this kind of thing.
Speaker 3:There's sort of one of the problems that we encounter in, you know, dealing with these kinds of issues in the library world as well, which is that I think folks who are interested in engaging with them have the opportunity to do so and people who do not want to, and you know they're not able to graduate without addressing this in some way. But you know, I feel like you could put in kind of a minimal level of engagement, and you know that's sort of what I see at public library settings as well in some of the places I've worked. There's varying levels of interest, there's varying levels of awareness, and some people really want to work on these kinds of things in a variety of different ways and a lot of people do not want to, and there's nothing really that's pushing folks in that direction.
Speaker 1:You know it's.
Speaker 1:I'm remembering Lakeisha and I talked with Christine Bolivar, who you know miles in California, and Dr Nicole Cook, who's at the University of South Carolina.
Speaker 1:And Dr Cook said that people often say, well, if somebody is interested in equity, they'll take one of Nicole's classes, right, and that's what you're talking about, right. And so people can just decide not to do that and some faculty members sort of pawn it off on her Right, like we don't have to do it because Nicole's doing it, and then we're not. And then when you're talking about library staff, it's like then if library staff aren't talking about it and learning how to talk about it in their library school programs, you're not necessarily going to think it's important. In the same way and I think that's one of the things that's so important to me and Lakeisha is that we're not just we're talking about equity, but we're helping people to talk about it themselves and question practices. And so I'm getting the sense that that questioning and that learning how to talk about it is not really a part of either experience, right, lis or the public library. Does that sound accurate?
Speaker 3:Yeah, for me I think that's been true.
Speaker 3:I think that that, pawning off that you described, I think there's a lot of impulse to do that among folks working in all kinds of contexts but including the library, including as students in all kinds of contexts, but including the library, including his students.
Speaker 3:If it's something where maybe even even people who recognize the value of some of this work they it's easy to find excuses to not be the one who winds up taking responsibility for it. And so at an institutional level, I think you know it. And so at an institutional level, I think you know I've been part of some organizations that want to do equity work broadly speaking. But you know they assign it to somebody. They kind of allow those varying levels of participation. They don't make it a core component or something that's just kind of, you know, a part of every initiative, a thought that you're having that you're maybe applying to all the work that you're doing. It's its own separate thing. And then you know, in giving somebody else responsibility for it, it becomes a box you can check off instead of something that everybody needs to meaningfully engage with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, miles, you're. You're just highlighting some things. I think that come up for Linda and I quite frequently and and for many others, and I think some of that is kind of that whole well, somebody else will do it right, and it's not. That doesn't happen only with equity and equity work, and I think it happens quite frequently. This is one of the spaces equity and equity work where folks are like oh, but somebody else does it, or we have a committee that does it, and so because we have the committee, by extension I'm doing that because I work someplace or go to school someplace or am part of an organization that has a committee. So then by extension, I must be doing that work as well. But then it's not. It it's not embedded right in everything, and oftentimes those committees or if it's even a committee, it's often like one person, maybe two, right, they often don't actually have enough power to do the, the work of embedding the things that will lead to significant change or shifts, and so it does.
Speaker 2:It comes back miles to what you just shared of kind of checking off, um, just checking off the box, one of the, the things that also came to mind for me and Linda and I have talked about this and try to highlight this in the work we do, is that often folks will immediately go to racialized identity and experience when talking about equity and equity work, and that is something. Having those types of conversations is something that we are not good at in this country. We are not good at having conversations about racialized experiences, racialized identities, what it's meant and how it's impacted. Literally everything, every system has been impacted by the construct of race, and while it is a construct, the implications of how that construct has been created and lived out and played out are very, very real experience. We also want to remember that it's experiences based on ethnicity and national origin and age and ability, disability, right, it's gendered.
Speaker 2:It's all of these pieces and these components and they all kind of intersect Not kind of. They all do intersect and kind of play out together. So I think, too, just remembering or asking people to remember that when we're talking about equity and we're talking about embedding that in anything, especially in curriculums where folks are learning, it's thinking about all of these pieces. I think the reason that came up for me, miles, is, as you and Linda have been talking, something that I've heard people say on university campuses are things like well, this is math, we don't have to think about equity because I teach math, right. Or I teach biology. I don't have to think about equity in this, because it's biology and that's simply not true, right. And so how do we help folks see and understand that it doesn't matter what aspect of life it is or what class we teach, that equity is actually a part of all of these things?
Speaker 3:Well, that's something where I've really seen some encouraging things in my time in school. So one of the things I have seen is a lot of other students work as part of discussions. I edit for the Graduate Student Research Journal and so I'll see some manuscripts come through and one of the cool things there is that students are addressing equity in a lot of different contexts in a lot of different ways. Accessibility is a big focus, you know. Community orientation and kind of looking at or listening to the information you're getting from your community has been a big focus. I've seen some neat student work working on children and the experiences they're having at home and how that's affecting things. So it is encouraging that there has been such kind of a broad approach or a lot of these different components addressed by students in my program, by students in my program. There are people doing a lot of interesting work, even if we are bad at talking about you know certain aspects of this, like race like some of these kind of persistent, challenging issues.
Speaker 2:That's really exciting and encouraging Miles, and it does make me wonder how that's happening in many other LIS programs, in places where students are perhaps lifting these things up in their writing and even in conversations they're having in class, and so it does make me curious what the long-term perhaps impacts that will have on LIS programs.
Speaker 1:So, miles, if you were to build a library school program, what might you want to have as classes or opportunities that would help build equitable mindsets and practices?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I have some musings here. I don't. It's a complicated question.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But I think addressing the history of libraries, the history of our society in general, the history of our society in general, that's an important component to realizing kind of the contingency at the moment we're at.
Speaker 3:And in staying critical, which I think is one of the biggest pieces here we need to question what we're doing, whether that's on an institutional level or an individual level, and it's easy not to do that.
Speaker 3:It's easy to locate the problems somewhere else other than with ourselves. I think that we all have defense mechanisms that work to do that to a large extent extent Organizations. They tend to calcify or they have forces pushing them in other directions, whether that's big things coming from the outside, like some of the resistance to DEI type stuff we're seeing right now, or whether that's kind of this drive for efficiency or quantification or kind of the realities of the money side of things or operating a business, it's easy not to do this work and to look at stuff. And so I think, kind of beginning things with instilling that criticality, that sense that we need to examine what we're doing and rethink it and maybe not tear everything down every time, but at least recognize the set of issues, not take what we're perceiving as set in in stone, not taking the received world for granted, um, but really getting in there and questioning stuff yeah, I loved.
Speaker 2:I loved that and I also really appreciated the naming of not necessarily tearing everything down right like it's. It does mean and if we're building something, we we want to know well what's been working and why and what hasn't been working and why, because sometimes the things that aren't working could actually work if we reimagine them, if we, if we all we're doing is tearing down, what are we left with Right? And so there is this kind of simultaneous work of looking, reflecting, asking questions, and not just the questions that make us feel good, but you know that constant, non-weaponized critical reflection right and simultaneously shifting and building. And I think that is often where we're challenged sometimes, because you know, when you think about reimagining or redoing, or you know, sometimes it's like, well, we have to start all over. So, yes, tear it all down, but then what do you have? And so I think that it's kind of in some spaces, in some ways it's how do we recreate from within?
Speaker 2:And in some spaces, and sometimes we do have to knock it all down, but not always. If you think about like a gradual remodel of something, you may not gut the whole house, you make that one room and work there and go kind of room by room and sometimes you just have to gut the whole thing and work, work. So just yeah, I just think, holding, holding that and thinking about that and remembering that and thinking about what approach is going to work and be healthiest and be and allow for miles that transformation to take place. So is our goal simply to just tear something down because we don't like it, we didn't like how it functioned or operated? We didn't think about, yes, this has been harmful Maybe. What do we want to see this become and how does it get there?
Speaker 3:Or are we just kind of like, oh right, that we slow down and process, all incorporate the problem as part of the solution a little bit better, and maybe to see those things in combination? And I think that the way that we want things to be maybe involves acknowledging, incorporating parts of what hasn't been working as well, incorporating parts of what hasn't been working as well and just starting from scratch.
Speaker 2:It's easier to leave that component out Miles from the time that you've had in your program and the time that you've been working in libraries. What excites you? You know libraries. What excites you? You know where do you see possibilities? Yeah, being in school.
Speaker 3:it is kind of an encouraging place to be, and the working at the public library can be too to some extent. I get to see a lot of people who are very interested, very engaged, very passionate about bringing what they're doing out into the world, whether that's something they're imagining doing in the future or, you know, working in a library setting. I get to see people on an individual basis at least. It can be a little more challenging, I think, at an organizational level, but a lot of people exercising a lot of compassion. A lot of people exercising a lot of compassion. As much as I find it easier to see the challenges sometimes, I think when I look around the room and I see many of my colleagues, I read the discussion posts from other students, it does feel like there are a lot of very engaged, dedicated people, and so it's very encouraging to be in that environment. It rubs off on you a little bit.
Speaker 2:I've heard it a lot in some spaces where folks are like there's a disconnect between what I learned in library school and when I actually went into work. There's a disconnect and I don't think it's just in the library world, I think it's in most fields, right, what you learn in the classroom and then you get into practice and you're like, hmm, there's a slight disconnect, even if you did a practicum or an internship. When you actually start living it out, you're like, oh, I wish I'd have learned this or I wish I would have learned this in a different way. So I'm curious, miles, if you've had those types of experiences and if you have, what have you learned that has helped you shift that disconnect to a connect?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's something. That that sentiment about the difference between school and the work environment or the library environment is something I've heard a lot from colleagues. Folks who finished their library school programs are now in like leadership positions and they're like. You know, nothing I did has anything to do with what I'm doing now and I think people's experiences there do vary a lot. But I think part of that, I believe, goes back to something you were touching on a moment ago, where in school as a student, you kind of have a lot of agency with regard to your own projects. I can write about whatever I want within a small set of limits.
Speaker 3:Leaving and then going into a work environment where I don't necessarily feel like I have the ability to apply all that myself. Where I'm in a system of power relations that's really complicated. I have one set of relationships with members of the public that I'm serving who maybe see me as having up behind a desk with the backing of the institution behind me, and another set of relationships with colleagues, with management, and it becomes very, very complicated. So I think one of the places where there's a disconnect between school and work is to do with our agency there or our ability, or at least our perceived ability to make things happen. And that's something where you can move from what I feel like is pretty comfortable in school, where you do have control over a lot of stuff, to an environment where you need to navigate a much more complicated set of relationships and I think in a lot of cases people do have agency that they don't recognize but it becomes much, much more complicated to make things happen.
Speaker 2:Really appreciate it. Miles, you're reminding of perceived right, and that's often the space that we may move in and move from is, if I perceive I have no agency, then I am less likely to see where I actually do have it, because I perceive that I don't, and so it may take some reflection or someone asking me questions or someone providing me with an expectation or an opportunity to engage in an work that highlights where I actually can lean into agencies I didn't think I had, because I have perceived that I did not have any, and maybe my lived experience has been I've not been allowed to operate in those agencies, and so it becomes kind of a learned behavior. It's not just a perception, it's also a learned behavior. So I think this is a reminding, at least for me, of being able to pause and and ask myself questions, and I think is an is an invitation to all of us to ask ourselves questions such as um, is this a? Something I perceive which is does not invalidate our experience?
Speaker 2:Um, it does impact how we show up, and so we can ask ourselves when have I experienced this before and am I self-imposing this? Or you know, what data or what information do I have that's showing me that I don't have this. What conversations can I have with others Not necessarily colleagues, but maybe those folks that we trust in our life, that we can vet things with and just kind of start to pull things apart with and do some exploration around and really begin to then understand how you know libraries, hospitals, places of you know, schools are microcosms of our larger society. We forget that when we go into whatever spaces we're in, and we're told just show up and do your job, we're not told or reminded that showing up and doing our job means we're bringing all of our lived experience with us, and that does mean also bringing in our experiences with power and to power and how we've maybe been harmed by unhealthy power dynamics and relationships. And so then, how does that impact where I feel I have agency or where I perceive I do or don't?
Speaker 3:or where I perceive I do or don't. I think that was really exceptionally well stated. We're in such a complicated set of relationships all the time with these things and it does demand, I think, that we're really looking at ourselves and our situations and thinking about all the components that are going into that. I think, too, that one thing that can be happening sometimes when we're not feeling agency is it can be part of that defense mechanism. It can be a way to locate the problem somewhere else. It can be a way to avoid working on stock. So we need to take that in combination with that much bigger and more complicated picture, but I think that's an easy direction to go in as well.
Speaker 1:This is opening up my brain to ways of thinking that I hadn't before. So thank you both, particularly that idea of how what we're talking about has an influence on how someone thinks about their agency. Thank you, Miles, that was really awesome. Really appreciate that your willingness to talk to us about this and give us some insight into how it's an intersection right what's happening in your LIS program and how it's intersecting with your work experience. So it's really great that you're doing both at the same time and we get to find out about that. So thank you for being here today. Lakeisha, thanks for the conversation. Always appreciate it and listeners, we will be back in April 2025. Have a good month.
