LSLS16 Student Scholarship Recipient Kayleen Jones

This year’s Lake Superior Libraries Symposium took place less than a week after my graduation from the School of Library and Information Studies at UW-Madison. One of the themes from my classes in library school was social justice and what that means for the services provided by libraries. Fresh from my classes I was excited to attend Ray Lockman’s “You look like Ellen!”: Using a (Trans)Gender Lens for Library Social Justice breakout session.

Ray talked about the importance of patrons being able to see themselves in the library. As a result, I will be more thoughtful about who is being represented in my library and who is not. For those who are not represented, I will work with my library to increase visibility. One of my other takeaways from Ray’s presentation was to be careful about how the assumptions I make about a patron influences the interaction. Moving forward I will be more reflective about my interactions with patrons and where my assumptions about what they need are coming from.

Another breakout session I attended that was related to my recent coursework was from the librarian at Leech Lake Tribal College, Hannah Buckland’s Agindaasodaa!: Developing Youth Services from Scratch. One of my favorite classes in library school was Tribal Libraries, Archives and Museums (TLAM).  As the TLAM website explains, the course aims “to bring indigenous information topics to LIS education through service-learning, networking, and resource sharing with American Indian cultural institutions.” As a result of the class I was pleased to see a Native community represented at LSLS16 and to learn about its tribal library.

Hannah’s experience as a solo tribal librarian echoed what I had learned about tribal libraries in my TLAM class as many tribal libraries have small staffs.  She also talked about how the biggest challenge is funding, therefore she, like many tribal librarians, has become an accomplished grant writer and a cultivator of donations. The most salient practice that Hannah talked about as a tribal librarian, was that she listens to the community she serves and that helps her create a culturally relevant library. I loved that point because that practice can be applied to libraries of all contexts.

These two sessions helped me connect what I had learned about in my library school classes to real life practical experiences of information professionals in the region where I hoped to find a job. I did find a job at the Kathryn A. Martin Library at the University of Minnesota Duluth (YAY!) and I look forward to continuing to be a part of the Lake Superior Libraries Symposium in the future.