OUR STORY

It all started when…

LaQuanda and Lorin first met at the first annual University of North Carolina (UNC) Greensboro UNC-Greensboro Library Institute for resident librarians in September 2018. Immediately, their personal and professional relationship began to bloom. They connected with other residents, as well as with each other as early career librarians and women of color. Over time, interactions between LaQuanda and Lorin became more regular to discuss and compare their experiences. Moments of micro and macro-aggressions brought the two of them closer together. They also began to think they were not alone. We thought that more WOC, as well as POC, could benefit from a digital community forum regarding the state of affairs for folks like us in the field, without the narrative being constructed or dominated by other established channels. We wanted to give focus to residents, early career librarians, library and information science (LIS) students, paraprofessional staff, and all PT and FT library workers. We, ourselves, wanted to provide opportunities to contribute to the mainstream conversation regarding issues and new initiatives in the field.

Honestly, we want to hear what you have to say and we want to read what you want to write. We understand that writing, publication, scholarship, presentations, professional development, have all been difficult for many WOC and POC. We thought we could create another way to begin to explore that intimidating process with support in order to build repertoires and skills that could support you in the future. While we imagine that many of the things we talk about may be centered on our identities, any work that we do that we want to share is significant and welcome on this site. What you submit does not need to be about your race, your disability, your gender, and so forth. You can write about whatever you want. We just want to provide a platform.

In the traditions of many womanist, feminist, Black, Indigenous, and class-struggle-identified publications work as deeply grounded in a social justice/grassroots framework, we realized there weren’t many spaces for us and we want to make one ourselves for ourselves.