Our Mission

WOC + LIB works to provide a digital platform for women of color (WOC) within librarianship.

WOC + LIB, co-founded by librarians Lorin Jackson and LaQuanda Onyemeh, is a website created to nurture and encourage open dialog about our experiences in the field. While colleagues have posted significant content about/connected to WOC in librarianship, a core, community digital resource that centers this viewpoint and its various intersectional implications did not previously exist, until now.

WOC + LIB is a digital “safe place.”

Together, we aim for this website to provide a safe, inclusive place for all people of color (POC) to introduce innovative ideas and showcase our achievements.

WOC + LIB offers a place to explore, investigate, and discuss.

We include features and posts about various topics to establish a community of unique voices, perspectives, and experiences of POC at all levels working in galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs). We welcome student and non-professional staff contributions, as well.

WOC + LIB acknowledges the challenges facing marginalized identities in the field.

It is our mission to create a simultaneous professional and personal outlet for our voices. This site is a place for WOC and POC to express innovative ideas, transformative work, commentary, critiques, personal experiences, original research, and other professional literature that promotes marginalized voices and identities.

WOC + LIB amplifies formerly-silenced voices with our digital presence.

This website is not exclusionary. However, we encourage WOC and POC to “move to the front” in regards to content submission. We aspire to feature proposals that will assist in the creation of a collective platform for WOC voices, POC voices, experience, and ideas otherwise hidden or submerged in the literature about the field. We also strive to offer an equal representation of different generations of new and more experienced librarians. Through the collaborative contributions of this site, we want the mainstream conversation to grow more inclusive. We want to counteract the narrative that libraries (and discussion about them) are neutral. Any discussion about libraries is a discussion about all of these perspectives. Everyone has a right to weigh-in and be heard.

WOC + LIB strives to be accessible.

We are constantly working to make our website as accessible as possible. We encourage and expect our audience to notify us if aspects of the site are inaccessible, as well as to offer suggestions regarding how to make it more accessible. We expect you to contact us in support of us meeting your needs.

WOC + LIB supports residents.

As early career librarians in (diversity) residencies, we understand the unique challenges and opportunities facing residents. Our “Resident Voices” section focuses on the issues facing residents and prioritizing conversations surrounding work happening to improve residency programs around the world.