My reflection of...

 my mental health. This will be triggering for those that are high-functioning anxious and depressed individuals so just be aware of this. 

Since the start of puberty, I have been an anxious and depressed person. I have hidden this side of me to protect myself from those that would take advantage of my willingness to be vulnerable. It has come back to bite me in the ass more than once. Everyone that I have hidden it from is extremely surprised when I come forward telling them that I have issues with my mental health and body image and the fact that I have for years. 

Mental health issues don't show in every person in the same way. The media unfortunately has helped to perpetuate this perspective and stereotype. This keeps the outside world on the outside and never truly able to understand what the person suffering is going through until it is too late most of the time. 

For me, it shows up when I am sick due to overworking myself to the point beyond burnout. These conditioned traits of overworking myself to the point of illness that I need to isolate which I hate more than anything. Isolation is a feeling and emotion that is not enjoyable to me but too much of it can push me over the edge. 

This happened recently around a week ago on my birthday and the day after. I had been ill and was finally getting better but was triggered by a family member on my birthday who called to ask if they could invite a complete stranger to my Master's degree graduation. This was after they got the Happy Birthday obligatory message out of the way! I then proceeded to drink too much alcohol and mix my medicines into the mix. These medicines include anti-anxiety and anti-depressants which are NOT SUPPOSED to be mixed with alcohol!! DON'T BE ME!! This pushed me to the point of asking existential questions and thinking that I would be better, not alive. 

I am doing much better! I wrote this to help others facing their mental health issues alone or are scared to talk about it to others! We all need help at times in our lives! Please call the 24/7 hotlines when needed, I luckily had someone who was staying with me so they made sure I was doing okay and not doing anything suspicious. Reach out to your people because they do care about you! 

My Reflection of...

 Defy Gravity and the Healing Movements workshop hosted and instructed by Athena. Defy Gravity is an amazing pole dancing studio in Urbana IL that I found and started going to over the summer to feel less alone and build a sense of community. I took this workshop in June for the first time and it was great then but I loved it the second time around because Athena made a requirement of having to take 3 classes of any pole level. I have been on fundamentals since this summer mostly because the fact of breaks from dancing due to traveling or school work just bogging me down. 

This second time around I felt that I really needed to feel less lonely and loved that Athena was teaching it again. I had updated them separately as to what I was and am still going through at this time. At this time I am not comfortable posting about the blog or Instagram due to some issues I am having at school. The first time they had offered for the class to show off a freestyle dance to whatever music we wanted. I was not willing to do it the first time. This time around I asked through Instagram first if that was still going to happen and so it did. Everyone in the class did one! It was amazing! 

I decided to record mine to help show how relaxing, reflective, and helpful this workshop was for me! The song I chose was Praying by Kesha. That is a deep and reflective song that I have danced to at home without people staring at me in a dance studio. I chose this song because it is helpful when I need to process something that I am going through that is deep and dark. This dance was a complete freestyle so I just let my body go with the flow which I don't usually like to do. 

So please take a look at the video on Instagram if you haven't already! Thank you for reading my blog and I hope to write more soon! 

My Reflection of...

 Yoni Circle, it will be two years in December since I joined one of my favorite online communities mostly due to the global pandemic and feeling lonely. I was super nervous about joining my first circle because once you get accepted and off the waiting list you are just dumped into this beautiful app experience with really no instructions or clue what is going on or anyone that you know they are all complete strangers. So I signed up for a circle with someone all the way in India which was interesting to me having someone on a polar opposite time than me running this! Her name is Anusha and is an amazing artist and creator that owns a small jewelry business based in India called Wanderlust Art Boutique. 

To give some context there are 4 parts to a circle: Intention, Introduction, Story, and Reflection rounds. 

At the time when I joined the app and community the leader of the circle, Salonniere, got to pick the prompt (or this is my understanding of how it worked at the time this could be incorrect). The prompt that was picked was about Family if I am remembering correctly, which was a slight bit of a trigger for me (still is if you have interacted with me recently, I am working on it with a professional therapist and I recommend you do as well if this is you). When it came to meditation time I struggled to settle down because I was so nervous about doing this correctly. When it came to coming up with my story I was going in the negative direction with the stories that came up in my mind. Any story is valid and I would say that if a negative one comes up it means that you need to get it out right then and there. But at the time my nervous and anxious energy around these complete strangers I didn't want to lead off with a negative story. Anusha started off the storytelling round with her amazingly positive story about her family and I think it was more specifically her mom if I am remembering correctly. Her story prompted me to tell a better story. I don't remember which one I told and I don't have it recorded. 

Overall the past two years have been amazing on this app. I highly recommend this app and community to any woman that wants to feel safe, heal and be able to be vulnerable again. 

My reflection of...

 The overturning of Roe v Wade. This is not something I take lightly at all, especially as someone who almost got one. As a 19-year-old, I experienced my first pregnancy scare with my first very serious relationship in college. This occurred of course after a conversation with my father about what the consequences would be if I came home pregnant with this person's child, option 1 get an abortion, and option 2 give the baby up for adoption if I carried it to full term. He felt that I shouldn't want to keep the child but if I decided that I wanted to keep the child I was going to be disowned by him at least because what he said went and anything that deviated from that he wanted me to no longer be a part of his life anymore. To have your own father have such a condition to his love and affection still hurts me a lot to this day.

Yet when it comes to voting politically he always votes against those politicians that support equal access for everyone to services like abortions. Why be such a hypocrite? Maybe because it doesn't directly affect him as someone who is cisgender heterosexual middle aged white man?!? These are just some of the questions I have been asking myself as I am feeling the aftermath of this overturning. 

As someone who is not ready to have children and this point in my life I will be getting an abortion if I become pregnant with an unplanned pregnancy. The person would be alerted but I would have the last say because it is my body going through this big radical and if they didn't at least buy be a lot of pain killers and provide me with food and heating pads afterwards they'd be out of my live. 

My reflection of...

 My first year of graduate school! It was rough to start graduate school with a broken ankle on a knee scooter. But I also met some amazing people during my first semester and second semester. I have worked on group projects with people that became my closest friends. After my ankle fully healed I thought that meant that I would feel better here and that graduate school would become more fun and easier. I was not correct not even close! 

There are only 2 required classes for my program. The first one I had taken in person with a great professor who knew what she was doing and I have spoken with her since the class has ended. In the second required class, the first red flag for me was that she had never worked in a library let alone studied to become one, and was now teaching us about Library and Society. I mean most of the people in my major have never worked in a library which I don't mind but to stick us with a professor who has never worked in one was bold of the administration, to say the least! The second red flag to me was that she never wanted to teach a class! She admitted that she was forced to teach this class on top of research for her own publications because she was a post-doctoral employee. The third red flag was when we all presented our final group project. My group had picked censorship but we were constantly told to narrow our objective so we did to Public elementary school libraries and how censorships have impacted the collections and the employees working at the libraries. Then when it came to the last group presentation we saw that they had also chosen censorship but just read case studies around the topic. Which somehow made them get a higher score than my group. 

I feel these required classes shouldn't be dependent so heavily on the professors that teach them. There should be a more consistent structure for all professors to follow so we as the students are more likely to learn the same things vs right now where we could be learning about anything from NFTs to Taxonomy or Schemas. I am excited for my second year of graduate school especially now that I will be a TA for two different Gender and Women's studies (GWS) undergraduate classes as well as taking two more graduate-level GWS courses. 

Response Paper #2

 Optional Reading: 

From Week 8 Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in LIS and Information Professions 

Hall, T. D. (2007). Race and place: A personal account of unequal access. American Libraries, 38(2), 30-33. https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2020/04/23/race-place-unequal-access/

Additional Readings:

1. From Week 5 A History of LIS

Brady, H. and Franky, A. (2015, September). A History of US Public Libraries. Digital Public Library of America

 

Over this semester, I wanted to learn more about the diversity or lack thereof within the Library and Information Science industry and the inequality between white and African American populations over history and the present day. When choosing the articles to read and write about for this paper I decided to look for articles that were based on these issues. The articles I chose were from weeks 8 and 5. The first article I chose was the article called Race and place: A personal account of unequal access, by Hall. The second article I chose was the article called A History of US Public Libraries, by Brady and Franky. I will be breaking down these articles with a critical analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the articles as well as relating them back to what we learned in class. 

The first reading, it was a first-hand account of the inequality of access in the rural deep south in the past and present for the year 2007. The author talks about the library where she went to growing up like this, “Anti-theft bars covered every possible point of entry….It was painted a yellowish color that, depending on how the sun hit it, read from pale canary to drab mustard” (Hall, 2007). Her descriptions of the library that she visited weekly as a child painted quite an image for me as the reader. Her description of the library “from the other side of the tracks” as she called it was, “their public library, a gleaming white, a newly blue-carpeted edifice to self-learning” (Hall, 2007). One of the main strengths of this author is her descriptions of the area and the libraries that she visited as a child and the big differences between them. Her writing helps to paint a picture of the past and the present that she is writing about at that time. At the end of the article, she described the renovation of the library that she had visited a lot as a young child after many years of not visiting when in need of the internet, “By the time I made my way to the new iteration of the yellow palace—now relocated, expanded, and situated across the street from a thriving shopping plaza that features the wonder of all wonders, a grocery store—my head was swimming with possibilities. My euphoria was short-lived. Inside the library, the large majority of children and adults gathered around a bank of computer terminals each waiting for their precious hour of allotted time” (Hall, 2007). The one weakness that she has within this article is that she doesn’t reference studies or anything academic about the changes over time but I think that’s why I like it because it reads more like a blog post than a scholarly article or the digital archives I chose to compare it to. I think that this article helps show that over time libraries in the rural deep south have evolved but still have inequalities. 

The second article I chose was the digital archives called A History of US Public Libraries. This article’s authors chose to have a more typical scholarly layout but in an exhibition way. Once you press the “Explore Exhibition” button when you first open the page it shows you the entire exhibition and you can choose on the left-hand side (Brady and Franky, 2015). I chose to go to the “Segregated Libraries” section because that goes into the history of inequalities in public libraries and the African American community (Brady and Franky, 2015). The main strength of this section is that it helps to show the inequalities through pictures and descriptions of the time. The history of the African American community when written by most historians tries to sound objective and like the inequalities, and adversities that they faced are in the past as if they don’t still exist. That is the main weakness of this exhibition because it sounds neutral and objective about these issues. In comparison to the article written by Hall, this exhibition shows more of an overall history vs a personal experience history of inequalities and adversity of the African American community. 

When it comes to this class we talked a lot about neutrality but not as much about the diversity and inequalities that libraries still perpetuate in present-day as well as in the profession's history. Both of these articles represented the Library and Information Science industry just from different perspectives. The first article written by Hall was more of a personal experience of the inequalities and adversity of the African American community and how it is shown through the public library system. This article to me helps show how libraries can not be neutral and ignore the socioeconomic issues that the community and populations of people are facing. The second article written by Brady and Franky showed a more broad picture of the history of libraries and some of it focused on the inequalities and adversity that the African American community has faced within the library system and industry. Overall I liked the first article more because of the personal touch and description of the inequalities and adversity that were faced and are continuing to face by those of lower socioeconomic standing and the African American community in the deep south. 

Response Paper #1

 6. Reference and User Services/6A: Employ techniques used to discover, retrieve, evaluate, and synthesize information from diverse sources for use by varying user populations and information environments. 

9. Technological Knowledge and Skills/9A: Identify appropriate technologies and uses that support access to and delivery of library services and resources.

When it comes to Public Reference Librarians\Librarianship I know more than most people in the class because I have worked as one of a Substitute at the La Grange Public Library. I took IS 501 last semester which is Reference and Information Services through the school. This class is coming in really handy for this response paper because I now have these resources to reference and bring input from in addition to my opinions and first-hand experience in being a Public Reference Librarian. 

I feel that overall this document doesn’t really connect Technology and Reference and User Services together when they are definitely more connected and needed to be seen as such. In the past, while subbing I have helped a Doctoral student from a local University to better understand how to use the databases that he was paying for through his tuition to help with his dissertation. Over the Finals week of last semester, I helped an Undergraduate student that called into the Library to submit his final assignment and found out that Google Slides doesn’t allow for easy ways to record audio over the presentation without a separate application. Both of these interactions might have ended very differently but they still both included the use of technology on their and my part. 

If these interactions had been with let’s say a business person coming in asking for resources to update their technology skills I would have pointed out this resource on the La Grange Public Library website, especially if they are library card holders; Research Page. This page helps lead them to the many different resources that the library pays for with the property tax money that they get every year. One of the examples is “LinkedIn Learning -  (formerly Lynda.com) Video courses taught by industry experts in software, creative, and business skills. (tutorial)” (La Grange Public Library). These resources help not only help those already in a certain industry but those also going through a career pivot. If these resources weren’t listed on the website and not included in the Reference Interview then this patron would be at a loss for this valuable information.

The Reference Interview according to the RUSA Guidelines, this process can happen in any environment including remote chat. So why don’t the Core Competencies relate them together more? I think it is this siloed thinking that helps to keep the industry and subcategories within the industry very separated and not willing to work together. We need to be more willing to collaborate and learn from each other to keep our jobs and the buildings open, especially when it comes to those who don’t want these spaces or buildings to exist. Two examples of this from the Guidelines; “4.2 In-Person; 4.2.1    Accompanies the patron in the search (at least in the initial stages of the search process) unless the patron prefers to conduct the search him/herself.; 4.3 Remote; 4.3.1    Uses appropriate technology to help guide the patron through information resources, when possible.”(ALA).  These guidelines have the same layout where in-person comes before remote. Remote was added because of the increase in its use during the pandemic and more libraries implementing virtual chats for those at higher risk. 

The Almanac could be used online or in print to help keep track of the moon cycle and look up healthy food recipes. When the Almanac was first published it was in print and the Public Libraries would subscribe to it. They would be able to be picked up at the main Circulation or Reference desk in the Libraries. Now that it can be accessed through the computers that can be used by anyone at the Library the size of the text can be increased to help with accessibility issues for those who are visually impaired. A perfect example of this would be this  Rhubarb and Cherry Crisp recipe (Yankee Publishing, Inc). The Public Reference Librarian would\should be able to help this patron figure out how to make the text larger for them to be able to read and then print it off with the printers provided if wanted. 

Overall this response paper helped to show that I feel that the Core Competencies are still separating the Reference and User Services and Technological Knowledge and Skills. These two skills are very important and should be seen as collaborative and helpful to each other. The Public Reference Librarian in me sees these two skills as working together more than separated. I hope in the future I will be able to provide my input and help make changes. 

Bibliography:

1. ALA. (2020, February 4). Guidelines for the behavioral performance of Reference and Information Service Providers. Reference & User Services Association (RUSA). Retrieved March 10, 2022, from https://www.ala.org/rusa/resources/guidelines/guidelinesbehavioral 

2. ALA's Committee on Education. (2021). ALA’s Core Competences of Librarianship, Draft 2021. [Core Competencies Policy]. American Library Association. https://www.ala.org/educationcareers/sites/ala.org.educationcareers/files/content/education/Draft%20-%20ALA%20Core%20Competences%202021%20Update.pdf

3. La Grange Public Library. (n.d.). Research. La Grange Public Library. Retrieved March 10, 2022, from https://www.lagrangelibrary.org/research 

4. Yankee Publishing, Inc. (n.d.). Almanac.com homepage. Almanac.com. Retrieved March 10, 2022, from https://www.almanac.com/  

Censorship Poster project

This was the final project for one of my classes this semester. My group was great and we came up with this amazing poster! 

Censorship Poster 

Reader’s Advisory

 Patron F. I would like to have a novel based on fact, that happened in the world. But put it into a novel form, so that there are fictitious characters in the book. I want to be able to relate the book to an actual country, a world, a situation that took place, an earthquake, or a fire, or a bombing, or an incident in a war that you know of or have heard of. The Bridge on the River Kwai is probably the movie that has stuck in my mind more than anything else. But, if you read the book On the Kwai River in Burma, it's not the exact situation of the movie, although some things are the same. There was a railway built, it was built by slaves, it was built by prisoners of war that the Japanese had. That's the type of book that I like. (male reader, age 60)

The books must be Historical fiction based on real life events, but relatability is key that could have been made into a movie or TV show or that was. For this one I used Novelist and LibraryThing databases that can be found on the IS501 Resources link under the Reader Advisory tab. It was interesting to see the overlap of some to the titles and different titles. The titles that I felt he would like from LibraryThing were, MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors by Richard Hooker; Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick, and Harvey Wheeler; and The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan. MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors was made into a TV show, and I thought of this one because I know my grandpa liked this show so maybe this reader would like to be able to read this novel and then watch the show to enjoy the story play in front of him on his TV. Fail-Safe is about the Cold War which is something that maybe this reader would like to learn more about that time.  The Narrow Road to the Deep is a book based in Australia which he might find interesting because we rarely learn about things that happen there but since he read\watched the Bridge on the River Kwai about the railway and this book also discusses this railway. On Novelist there was a list that an Adult Reference librarian had compiled into a list of specifically World War II books and some of the books that I had never heard of. The books that I think this reader would like from this list were, The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure, and When the emperor was divine by Julie Otsuka. The Paris Architect is relatable and could be made into a movie in my opinion, people hid Jews during World War II all the time, but this story would be interesting to watch as well as read because of the interesting perspective coming from an architect. When the emperor was divine I chose because these events happened in the states and to bring a different perspective that we don’t always hear about and maybe he knows someone in his life that was in a Japanese Internment camp, and he wants to better understand what they faced while in one.

Briggs, Krista. “World War II Fiction -- Display Idea for Adults.” NoveList, NoveList, https://search-ebscohost-com.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=noh&tg=UI&an=444998&site=novelist-live  

“Recommendations: The Bridge over the River Kwai by Pierre Boulle.” LibraryThing.com, LibraryThing.com, https://www.librarything.com/work/49632/recommendations.  

Patron H. I just watched the tv show "Love, Victor" and I'm looking for a book about teens learning more about themselves. I want it to be informational, not a story. Maybe it could explain a bit about some of the things I'm feeling? I'd also like it to be a book my parents could read later too if they have any questions. (male reader, age 15)

The books must be LGBTQIA diverse, be non-fiction, and have a self-discovery aspect since this reader wanted more information and be more helpful to himself and his parents about what he is going through. Fiction is more narrative-based whether that be in the first or third person and yes some of the non-fiction have narratives, but it is still informational because they can help provide more resources for further down the road or what the reader is experiencing now. For this one, I used Good Reads because they have Lists of good informational books for LGBTQIA+ Young Adults and Parents. I had originally tried Novelist but that seems to be just novels hence the name of the database. The five books that I found that I thought would be useful for this reader and his parents were, The Journey Out: A Guide for and About Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Teens by Rachel Pollack, Cheryl Schwartz; This Book is Gay by James Dawso, Juno Dawson; Queer: The Ultimate LGBT Guide for Teens by Kathy Belge, Marke Bieschke, Christian Robinson (Illustrations); GLBTQ*: The Survival Guide for Queer & Questioning Teens by Kelly Huegel, Steven Cozza (Foreword); and What If?: Answers to Questions About What It Means to Be Gay and Lesbian by Eric Marcus. Each of these books has a slightly different perspective and information but helps to bring more of a perspective that maybe he has never thought about and can help others within his friend group or high school community to come to terms with themselves as well. What If?: Answers to Questions About What It Means to Be Gay and Lesbian according to Good Reads it’s an “updated and revised informative, accessible guide..” which would be beneficial to this reader and his parents for more current information about the current resources. GLBTQ*: The Survival Guide for Queer & Questioning Teens is a bit dated at this point, but it might help to be able to see the differences and how far the world has come since 2003 when this book was published. Queer: The Ultimate LGBT Guide for Teens from what I read on Good Reads provides humor that I know helps me engage in a book and might help break the ice when learning\discussing this topic with the family. This Book is Gay this book seems to talk about everything and according to Good Reads “THIS IS THAT INSTRUCTION MANUAL” with illustrations and helps the reader leave with more self-love and acceptance of their identity and being. The Journey Out: A Guide for and About Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Teens claims to provide resources and helpful information about how to get through the rough parts of the readers self-discovery of their sexuality. These are the lists I got the books from,

“Non-Fiction Resources for LGBT Teens, Youth & Families (142 Books).” Goodreads, Goodreads, https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/26180.Non_Fiction_Resources_for_LGBT_Teens_Youth_Families  

“Fab & Spectacular LGBTQ Informational Books for Teens (17 Books).” Goodreads, Goodreads, https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/73137.Fab_Spectacular_LGBTQ_Informational_Books_for_Teens 

 

After-Class Reflection “What I learned this week” [1]

 I really liked yesterday's discussion about the different professions within the industry and how we have all been impacted by being questioned about choosing it. The one thing that I was disoriented by was that the discussion went more towards the profession and not diversity. I had read and taken more interest with the diversity reading because it is something that this profession is lacking in almost every subdivision of the Library and Information Science industry. It still has to do with the profession overall but just wasn't touched on as much as I had thought it would be. Overall the discussion went well because we all for the most part had similar interactions with outsiders of the Library and Information Science profession\industry as a whole.